Word: brennan
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...secret that soft money has flooded the American political process. But only now has the extent of the deluge emerged in clear relief: According to a report released Wednesday by New York University's Brennan Center, the unregulated funds, which corporations and other wealthy donors filter into campaigns via the political parties, are surging to record levels. For the first time, party expenditures are outpacing spending by the campaigns themselves...
Temperature and humidity readings indoors are similar to outdoor levels, according to Brennan's calculations. Moisture is the first thing they look for inside a house. Recent studies have shown that mold spores, which thrive in dampness, are potent allergens and an asthma trigger. Some studies have even shown that they can cause memory loss. Our biggest concern is the roof leak, which took the roofer three shots to fix. "It seems pretty much dried up," Brennan says, running his moisture meter up the wall. "You might have some dead mold back there, but I wouldn't bother ripping...
Everything was looking good until we got to the kitchen. Brennan noticed that there was no outside vent for the stove. Bottled smoke, which determines air flow between walls, led him to the crawl space. "Here it is," he called out from the darkness, pointing a light above his head. "It's all dumping right in here. The clothes dryer too." Contractors frequently forget--or don't bother--to hook up stoves and dryers to outside venting, says Brennan. "We see this all the time in problem buildings." In this case, the fumes we thought were leaving the house were...
Inside the crawl space, Brennan also found dryer lint clinging to the walls. "There's a lot of moisture dumping in here from the dryer too," he says. "And we've got some rodent poop by these holes around this ventilation duct." Mice can pass through a 3/8-in. hole, he says, and "they will come back to the house from two miles away if you don't kill them." Brennan used to be more casual about mice before 1993, when the Hanta virus, traced to mouse urine, killed 19 people in New Mexico. "They started finding it in New York...
...store chlorine bleach and ammonia-based cleaners together in the upstairs bathroom. If combined they can produce highly toxic chlorine gas. The paint-storage room would be better off vented out of the house. Fumes from the garage are not an issue because our garage is freestanding. Still, Brennan urges us to get a carbon-monoxide detector...