WHY WE CARE

In the U.S. from 1997-2008, childhood developmental disabilities increased 17% (1.8 million children) in parallel with the commercial use of chemicals.

Asbestos related deaths from Cancer between 1999-2013 totaled over 189,000.

New chemicals are designed at a rate faster than legislation can be adapted to include them, with 900,000+ chemicals in the EPA’s CompTox database, but only ~89,000 are regulated.

As a result, the Centers for Disease Control & the Environmental Protection Agency provide a wealth of information in publicly available databases of chemical related health issues. The CDC and EPA databases are the basis of
ChemClarity’s Risk Management Tool.

Chemicals can be a factor in the occurrence of health issues ranging from ADHD to cancer, to fertility, to endocrine issues, to impairing the barrier function of skin, for instance:

Why ChemClarity was founded:

In the span of 8 months in 2014, ChemClarity’s Founder, went from cycling 40 miles on Saturdays and being a financial executive at a Fortune 500 company to collapsing at work and being hospitalized for a week of testing.

She had developed uncommon symptoms: a hyperactive immune system, presenting as eczema over 75% of her body that could not recover its barrier function, and an endocrine issue, in that her blood pressure would drop would below life sustaining levels occasionally, and she would lose consciousness. 

She saw 15+ medical specialists and spent $75,000+ in out-of-pocket medical expenses in 2 years, but never received a diagnosis. Doctors finally suggested the cause was environmental. They never considered chemicals as a cause, because they didn’t have proper resources. Environmental?

Gradually, her research led her to understand the health impacts of chemicals as a Member of the CDC’s Immune, Infectious and Dermal Disease Council, which is researching chemicals that cause dermal disease. She first learned of chemicals from the remarkable work of the WELL Building Certification, Perkins+Will’s Precautionary List, and the Healthy Building Network.

The Environmental, Health and Safety Department within her firm tested for molds, which was helpful, but the amounts were negligible - clearly not the problem.

Contacting the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to test for chemicals, OSHA indicated that with over 89,000 chemicals in commercial use today, they would not know which chemicals to start testing, so the costs would be prohibitive.

Ann realized the burden of understanding chemicals falls to the patient and was determined to solve the problem for others.

Problem #1:

Medical doctors need resources about chemical exposures to refer patients to medical toxicologists for specialized testing and treatment.

Problem #2:

EH&S departments and OSHA need a tool that narrows the chemical universe of 900,000 to a list of chemicals of < 100 that may cause health issues in a building. That list reduces the cost of testing by supporting property managers when they budget for and gain approval to engage an industrial hygienist, test the building, and renovate to remove chemicals.

Removing roadblocks for real estate owners and employers helps patients as well.

Solution:

ChemClarity’s intuitive risk management tool leads users through a series of questions about their building and symptoms to derive a list of <100 chemicals that could potentially cause health issues for that building.

The list represents the chemicals to test in a given building and patient, so that the building can be renovated cost effectively and the patient can be diagnosed. Patients are rarely diagnosed today.

 Everyone from patients to doctors to property owners has a
significant learning curve to climb to understand chemicals,
or “chemical literacy”, so assigning liability is counterproductive.