The contamination is TCE. TCE is a carcinogen and responsible for the “cancer spike” in the Whisman neighborhood about a mile or two away. It takes many years of exposure to increase your risk of cancer though. But its effects are much more acute against a fetus. TCE is destroyed by sunlight. It only becomes a problem when it accumulates inside a building.
With that in mind, the houses in the community were built with mitigation techniques — techniques that are familiar to anyone who’ve lived in areas with radon. First the houses are built with vapor barriers. This is to prevent the TCE vapors from seeping in. Second, the foundation have internal ventilation and vanes to draw air out (called sub slab ventilation). This is why you see so many of them at the roof of these houses. The design was approved by the EPA. (Google uses positive air pressure to mitigate in their buildings)
The EPA also monitors the plume and have done checks inside the houses to ensure TCE aren’t getting in. Also, the remediation and cleanup of the soil has progressed faster than expected. It should all be cleaned up within a decade, IIRC. Lastly, the plume has migrated away from the neighborhood and is basically headed towards the 101 and Google.
The people who should be concerned aren’t the people living in the newer houses but the ones who live in the houses built before the TCE issue was recognized.
A place I was renting had the same issue but from a different plume. As a renter the landlord wasn’t required to tell me this. I found out completely by accident after I had already moved in. I can’t believe that is legal since there is an acute risk to pregnant women, especially when the building has no mitigation methods. This is often the case because many buildings in SV are fairly old.
Here’s an article that talks a bit about the plume and community:
https://mv-voice.com/news/2011/06/14/new-cleanup-efforts-for...
And an updated one that tells you about the progress: https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2014/01/28/epa-reaches-3-milli...
Do you want to pay the cost of environmental remediation in your rent? I'm sure your landlord would be willing to allow that.
I don't want to pay the cost of environmental remediation through my rent. I would rather an agreement was reached to either deem the area uninhabitable or clean it thoroughly and deem it safe, in which case the non-liability clause oughtn't be necessary. I dislike the lack of guarantee either way.
I didn't mean to trivialize a complicated issue. It was more so hyperbolic musing that in an area that supposedly epitomizes Western civilization, technological progress and elevates humanism, we can't even guarantee basic safety from the elements.