The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pleased to issue the Healthy Buildings, Healthy People (HBHP) report, a vision for indoor environmental quality in the 21st Century. The importance of the indoor environment to human health has been highlighted in numerous environmental risk reports, including the 1997 report of the Presidential and Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management. On average, we spend about 90 percent of our time indoors, where pollutant levels are often higher than those outside. Indoor pollution is estimated to cause thousands of cancer...

You cannot see, smell, or taste radon. But it still may be a problem in your home. When you breathe air containing radon, you increase your risk of getting lung cancer. In fact, the Surgeon General of the United States has warned that radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States today. If you smoke and your home has high radon levels, your risk of lung cancer is especially high. The "Home Buyer's and Seller's Guide to Radon" answers important questions about radon and lung cancer risk. It also answers questions about testing and fixing for anyone buying or selling a...

This guide was developed for local climate and clean energy program implementers to help create or transition to program designs that are viable over the long term by considering how programs create and deliver value for target audiences and partners, how they raise revenue, and how they can operate cost effectively. Around the country, many local governments and their partners are taking up the challenge of implementing programs that help local residents and businesses reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, create jobs, and save money. Although climate change has global impacts,...

"Release Detection for Underground Storage Tanks and Piping: Straight Talk on Tanks" provides easy-to-understand descriptions of several release detection methods for tanks and piping, as well as explanations of the regulatory requirements for release detection. Release detection methods include: secondary containment with interstitial monitoring, automatic tank gauging, continuous in-tank leak detection, statistical inventory reconciliation, tank tightness testing with inventory control, manual tank gauging, groundwater monitoring, vapor monitoring, and release detection for underground...

The first edition of the EPA Peer Review Handbook was issued in 1998 and was intended to serve as a single, centralized source of implementation guidance on peer review for EPA staff and managers. Subsequent revisions of the Handbook have added necessary clarifications, incorporated insights and experiences gained through its use, and integrated changes to reflect updated government-wide guidance or policy related to peer review. These revisions have increased the transparency and accountability of peer review and helped ensure that Agency decisions are based on sound and defensible science....

The "Guidebook of Financial Tools: Paying for Environmental Systems" is a reference work examining a wide range of different tools for financing sustainable environmental systems. The term "sustainable environmental systems" refers to virtually any successful or potentially successful environmental protection initiative, including public and private environmental protection programs. Environmental protection initiatives that were not previously sustainable can be made productive and sustainable with the proper financing. The ten sections of the Guidebook present outline information on over...

Understanding the ways in which ecosystems provide flows of "services" to humans is critical for decision making in many contexts; however, the linkages between natural and human systems are complex and multifaceted. A well-defined framework for classifying ecosystem services is essential for systematically identifying and tracing these linkages. The purpose of this report is to describe the National Ecosystem Services Classification System (NESCS), which is designed to address these needs. The main objective of NESCS is to provide a framework that will aid in analyzing the human welfare...

Radon has been classified as a known human carcinogen and has been recognized as a significant health problem by groups such as the Centers for Disease Control, the American Lung Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Public Health Association. As such, risks from in-home radon exposure have been a major concern for the EPA. In 1992, EPA published its "Technical Support Document for the 1992 Citizen's Guide to Radon," which included a description of its methodology for estimating lung cancer risks in the U.S. associated with exposure to radon in homes. That...