Medical Health

Buying a House in Arizona: Home, Termite, and Mold Inspections

First I’ll tell you about the information you can get from the Arizona State Government. Then I’ll tell you about my conversations with house, termite, mold, and fungi inspection companies in Phoenix and Mesa, Arizona.

You can phone the Office of Pest Management at 602-255-3664 (and 1-800-223-0618). Or go online to the www.sb.state.az.us web site, where you can use their “Consumer Resources” section to search for companies licensed for Pest Control, Termite Inspection, and Fungi Inspection (Mold Inspection). For termites, you are probably best off looking at companies that have both the pest control/treatment license (the B2 license) and the pest inspection license (the B8). For mold, the fungi inspection license (the B7) might only apply to the exterior walls of buildings–you’ll want to inquire with the inspection service providers.

Here is how to perform a license search on the www.sb.state.az.us web site in its present form:

1) Click on “Consumer Resources” in the menu on the left side of the www.sb.state.az.us homepage. A drop-down menu will open up.

2) In the drop-down menu, click on “Licensee Search.” A new menu will open up. Click on “Pest Management Company.”

3) You are now on a page called “Search for Pest Control Companies in Arizona,” where you can either a) type in the name of the company you want to know about, or b) just type in the name of the city where you want the inspections performed.

4) When all you do is type in the city name (and then click on the “Search” button) you will see a list of business names, their license numbers, and their statuses (expired or active). Click on a company’s license number to find out more about them.

5) Additionally, you can choose a “License Category” and then perform the search for your city.

Here is how I went about finding home, termite, and mold/fungi inspectors in Mesa (and Phoenix), Arizona:

First of all, I phoned Chemtec Supply (the phone number is 480-833-7578) and asked for Jack. Chemtec is a supplier for pest control and inspection companies. Jack recommended talking to Steve Schaeffer at Foothills Pest Control (480-759-8700) about home inspectors. Jack also said to talk to Scott Agee at Action Termite Control (623-780-3132).

Steve Schaeffer at Foothills Pest Control recommended two home inspectors: 1) Comprehensive Property Inspections, azcpi.com, and 2) Dan Harris, inspectaz.com.

The office manager (Jeremy) at Action Termite Control recommended Jason Bradley at Win Home Inspections Red Mountain (480-659-0895), www.wini.com. We spoke to Jason, and he does both house and termite inspections. His termite inspections are performed under the auspices of Action Termite Control.

Jeremy at Action Termite Control also advised us to phone David Gilpatrick at Residential Environmental Services of America (RESA), www.resaaz.com, about mold and fungi inspections (602-230-9500). We phoned RESA, and David recommended hiring Kurtis Nelson at AJF Engineering, www.ajfengineering.com (480-661-8888). David said that Kurtis had taken his mold inspection training classes and that Kurtis had eleven years experience as a home inspector. Kurtis is also licensed to perform termite and wood destroying insects inspections and treatments.

Flat Feet and Arch Supports

Maybe you visited your doctor after taking up running, and the doctor told you that your feet hurt because your arches fell. In other words, you have flat feet. Well the chances are that it’s your shoes, not your flat arches, that are causing the pain. The arch supports hurt your feet: You do not want humongous arch supports. You want shoes that are built with very mild (low) arch supports.

Both New Balance and Vasque make athletic shoes that fit flat feet and wide feet. Vasque even says that their Perpetuum last is “comfortable for people with flatter feet.”

So don’t quit running, walking, and hiking. Just buy the right shoes!

Dangerous Household Ozone Generators

Last month I looked up information about in-home ozone generators. A friend of mine was thinking of buying a house in Arizona (she bought it), and the sellers were using indoor ozone generators. The ozone gave my friend a severe headache and caused her blood pressure to rise to dangerous levels. (She takes blood-pressure medication and had to increase the dosage after inspecting the house.)

I rushed to my computer and found quite a few useful websites, and, yes, ozone causes headaches, high blood pressure, sore throats and coughs (see Effects of Ozone Pollution on Seniors and Ozone Generators May Be Dangerous to Your Health). Ozone irritates the lungs, exacerbates lung disease, accelerates aging, and damages home electronics and wiring. In combination with air fresheners or household disinfectants, ozone will produce formaldehyde, a chemical that can cause cancer (see Study Warns of Cleaning Product Risks). The California Department of Health Services began warning consumers about indoor ozone generators back in the 1990s. And Health Canada says, “If you have an ozone generator in your home, stop using it.”

Take a look at these web pages, too:

California Indoor Quality Program

Hazardous Ozone-Generating ‘Air Purifiers’

Ozone Generator Fact Sheet

American Lung Association

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Air Cleaners

National Institutes of Health: Ozone.

Hiking and Trail Etiquette

If you join a hiking group you will, of course, meet people from a variety of places and backgrounds. And you will usually meet them early in the morning and then carpool to the trailhead, which is fine when your fellow passengers are courteous enough to refrain from riding along when they have bad colds or bacterial bronchitis. The morning doesn’t seem quite right when the stranger in the backseat shakes your hand, coughs repeatedly, talks about the antibiotics he’s taking and about how his live-in girlfriend died last month after a very prolonged illness that required multiple hospitalizations, how he is looking for a job because he has spent his savings after buying a 2700-square-foot foreclosed home and because his dead girlfriend’s social security checks have stopped coming.

Then later, on the trail, when he keeps sliding on loose rock (you don’t want walk below him), you see that the soles on his 20-year-old hiking boots are worn smooth — there’s no tread.

H1N1 Swine Flu News

If your local news stations announce that H1N1 vaccinations are available at special clinics in your area, make sure you double check the facts.

This last weekend in the Phoenix, Arizona, area one news station stated that H1N1 vaccinations were available for children and pregnant women at about 15 clinics. Another evening news program provided the same information and added that individuals with underlying health conditions were also eligible.

Long line-ups at the flu clinics ensued.

But if you were able to talk to the H1N1 clinics before you took half a day to stand in line, you discovered that only children and pregnant women were eligible to receive H1N1 vaccinations. The clinics were not dispensing vaccinations to individuals with underlying health conditions (unless, of course, they were children or pregnant women).

Double check the TV news. Phone the health clinics.

Beware of Advice from Meetup.com Members

If you join a Meetup.com activity, let’s say a hiking group, and you hear the members giving out impromptu advice regarding survival, health, injury, etc., make sure you consult a professional, too, or at least do some reading.

You might find that at a monthly hikers’ meeting, an attractive know-it-all is showing you a stretching exercise for your sore knee. But if you go to a good physiotherapist, you might learn that the stretching will only exacerbate your knee or hip injury, that what you really need to do is build muscle strength in the injured area.

Similarly, someone might tell you that no one dies from rattlesnake bites and that the Mojave Rattler is no more dangerous than a Diamondback. However, if you take the time to read page 583 in A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert (Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum) you will find that world-renowned experts write, “The Mojave has a very toxic venom that has caused human fatalities.”

Here’s couple of good (but brief) desert survival books:

Desert Survival Tips, Tricks, & Skills

The Ultimate Desert Handbook : A Manual for Desert Hikers, Campers and Travelers

98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive

Blood Tests Away From Home

If you must have blood tests every 4 to 8 weeks while you are away from home, then compare what the lab provides with what your doctor requires. Your doctor might ask for a series of individual tests, but the lab might include all those tests in one package. The package of tests is often cheaper than the total cost of the individual tests ordered separately. For example, the Hepatic Function Panel (which is a group of liver-related blood tests) is cheaper than the total
price of the separate tests ordered individually.

Have your doctor give you a lab test requisition form. Then when you arrive at your vacation destination, ask the lab if they have a package of tests that includes the tests your doctor has ordered. If their package is cheaper, phone your doctor, tell him the name of the package of tests, and have him FAX a new requisition to the lab.

from Palm Treo

Joint Stress and Bone Bruising

I was telling my brother that when a joint starts clicking (when he feels the bones in the neck, spine, hip, or knee, etc., click on one another or clunk by one another), he should change his position in such a way that the “clicking” and “clunking” goes away. I’m not talking about an occasional clicking noise. In fact you probably won’t hear an actual noise. I’m saying that I don’t want to feel my bones clunking by one another. I don’t want to feel my joints clunk.

For example, if I am doing shoulder raises (shoulder presses) on a weight machine, and the vertebrae in my spine start clicking (or noticeably sliding, clunking, bumping, or thumping by one another), I press my head back against the headrest/seat. If my knee or hip joints start “clicking” when I am on the recumbent bike, I move the seat back one notch. And if my hip starts clicking/clunking while I am doing sit-ups, I adjust the angle of my foot and leg.

Repeated “clicking” or “clunking” of the bones in the joints leads to bone bruising, bone wear, and pain, leading to physical compensations that put unhealthy stresses on the muscles, tendons, and joints.

If an exercise causes excruciating pain, stop that exercise. If an exercise causes a joint to clunk, find another way to do that exercise.

C-Reactive Protein

Most of us have our cholesterol and other lipids checked every year. You might also ask your doctor to order a test for c-reactive protein, a measure of inflammation. However, my family doctor says that the c-reactive protein test is no longer in vogue and that the results would not alter the way she goes about preventing and treating heart disease.

Does Soap Irritate Your Skin?

My mother told me that liquid bath soaps leaves a film on the skin that can lead to irritation. She said to switch to Dove bar soap.

Now that I use Dove for Sensitive Skin, a hypoallergenic fragrance-free bar soap with moisturizing cream, my skin no longer feels dry, scratchy and irritated after a shower. I even use it during humid weather, but not on areas where I sweat easily.