Flood risk’s impact on home values
Buyer beware: Single-family homes in floodplains – almost 4 million U.S. homes – are overvalued by nearly $44 billion collectively, or $11,526 per house on average, according to a new Stanford University-led study. Published in
Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, the study suggests that unaware buyers and inadequate disclosure laws drive up financial risks that could destabilize the real estate market. The threat is likely to grow as climate change drives more frequent extreme weather.
“The overvaluation we find is really concerning, especially given the increases in climate risk that are coming our way,” said study lead author Miyuki Hino, who was a PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth) at the time of the research and is now an assistant professor in the University of North Carolina at Chape
The overvaluation we find is really concerning, especially given the increases in climate risk that are coming our way, said study lead author Miyuki Hino, who was a PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources in Stanford s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth) at the time of the research and is now an assistant professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill s department of city and regional planning. Improving how we communicate about flooding is an important step in the right direction.
Water hazard
In some states, such as Florida, as many as one in six homes are in floodplains. As more people have built more homes in areas exposed to cyclones, sea-level rise and other inundation hazards, flooding damage costs have skyrocketed. Since 2000, overall flood damages have quadrupled in the U.S.
Asbestos sites made risky by some remediation strategies
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) largely remedies Superfund sites containing asbestos by capping them with soil to lock the buried toxin in place. But new research suggests that this may actually increase the likelihood of human exposure to the cancer-causing mineral.
“People have this idea that asbestos is all covered up and taken care of,” said Jane Willenbring, who is an associate professor of geological sciences at Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). “But this is still a lingering legacy pollutant and might be dribbling out pollution, little by little.”
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) largely remedies Superfund sites containing asbestos by capping them with soil to lock the buried toxin in place. But new research suggests that this may actually increase the likelihood of human exposure to the cancer-causing mineral. People have this idea that asbestos is all covered up and taken care of, said Jane Willenbring, who is an associate professor of geological sciences at Stanford University s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). But this is still a lingering legacy pollutant and might be dribbling out pollution, little by little.
Willenbring has published several studies about asbestos behavior and, most recently, turned her attention to the lack of information about how asbestos may move through the soils where it is stored. Through lab experiments with asbestos fibers, which were detailed in a paper published Jan. 27 in the
Date Time
U.S. asbestos sites made risky by some remediation strategies, according to Stanford researcher
Efforts to prevent human exposure to asbestos may be mobilizing the cancer-causing mineral so that it can reach water supplies, based on new findings about how the fibers move through soil. By Danielle Torrent Tucker
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) largely remedies Superfund sites containing asbestos by capping them with soil to lock the buried toxin in place. But new research suggests that this may actually increase the likelihood of human exposure to the cancer-causing mineral.
“People have this idea that asbestos is all covered up and taken care of,” said Jane Willenbring, who is an associate professor of geological sciences at Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). “But this is still a lingering legacy pollutant and might be dribbling out poll