Various experts have estimated that as few as 10% to as many as 60% of the population feels "sick" while indoors--but quickly feel better once they leave their office, home or school. If this is true for you, the first thing you must understand is that conventional tools and procedures for identifying and stopping exposures to indoor contaminants are not helping you. If they were successful, then your complaints would already be solved and you wouldn't be looking for this type of book.
The best efforts of modern medicine, advanced technology and professional products and services have not solved the problems of Sick Building Syndrome, toxic exposures, allergy reactions, chronic sinusitis and asthma triggers. Their lack of success is not because of a scientific failure or personal fault. Rather, the academic training and professional focus of both the medical treatment professionals and the exposure control experts are based on old ways of thinking about a new phenomena.
"Starting Points for a Healthy Habitat" builds the bridge from the old to the new. It shifts the old focus from solely on the environment (the operation of the building structure and systems) to the new focus on the occupants (their experiences while inside those environments). The old way excludes the occupants. The new way includes both the occupants and their environment.
This simple shift requires no new technology, no breakthrough prescription drug and no high-tech equipment. All that is required is a slightly different way of understanding what happens and how to respond. That shift generates new information in a way that you can understand and trust for making choices about what to do about any indoor habitat that is making you feel ill.
The breakthrough concept of "Starting Points for a Healthy Habitat" is simple yet powerful. It not only solves more problems for more people, it also acts as the catalyst for integrating professional products and services, medical treatment and advanced techniques of identification and measurement. The results have such clarity and simplicity that nearly any individual can be successful. In fact, they usually accomplish their goals in ways that no outside expert can. In a sense, the victim becomes the expert for which they had previously been searching.
The current multitude of books about unhealthy indoor environments and sick buildings are still useful. In fact, they are more important than ever. Most of these current resources--whether scientific, academic, medical or popular press--have critical facts and insights that work and that you should be familiar with. But they treat the issues as if everyone were the same. These public health standards, while necessary and very powerful for large groups of people, are not always applicable to individuals.
Do you have to do everything the experts suggest? What can you leave out? What if their recommendations don't apply to you, or perhaps make you more ill? How do you decide who to trust and what is best for you?
Once you ask these questions, you have moved from the venue of the health and safety of the general population (the objective public standards) to the realm of personal health and safety (the individual).
"Starting Points for a Healthy Habitat" is specifically designed to be your personal guide for becoming your own expert. It teaches you how to generate the answers to your dilemmas in a way you can both understand and trust. It is your resource and support system for making better choices, even in the midst of authoritative beliefs, conflicting claims and increasing fears--which usually polarizes all those involved to the compulsive extremes of pretentious denial and hysterical hyper vigilance. Unchecked, this game typically ends with the victim being blamed and further harmed instead of being helped and healed.
"Starting Points for a Healthy Habitat" shows you how to begin with whatever knowledge you already have, and then generate new information so you can best meet your individual needs for stopping indoor exposures and feeling well again. It provides a detailed, personal plan that will generate, specifically:
What to do. What to avoid. How to interpret the results. What to do next (your next starting point).
You will learn two new tools for determining which of the three most common exposure categories apply to you and how to prioritize your actions. Then you will learn how to evaluate products and services so you can successfully and safely remove those sources.
You will also discover that you are neither alone with your difficulties and complaints, nor in the minority. In fact, the number of people feeling "sick" indoors seems to be increasing faster than our advanced technology can generate names, let alone solutions, for all these newly emerging "illnesses."
"Starting Points for a Healthy Habitat" is an alternative to a private, on-site consultation by traditional experts--a consultation that typically costs from $200 to $5000. A consultation that is usually conducted "their" way, ignoring your experience and needs in deference to the measurements of technological instruments and the legal demands of regulatory compliance. This book, however, is structured for you to solve your complaints your way--while still implementing the experts--just like the thousands of clients the author has guided since 1987.
