Answers to the questions we hear most, and the science behind how we work.
Hunter's House currently serves the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metro area and greater Minnesota, as well as Wisconsin. If you're outside these areas, reach out — we're expanding and would love to hear from you.
The full assessment takes up to 4 hours depending on your home's size. We begin with a 30-minute conversation to better understand your goals, lifestyle routines, and any health concerns. Then we conduct the comprehensive assessment with our professional equipment. At the end of the assessment we will walk through the home together to discuss initial findings. Lab tests take 5–7 days to get results, so you should have your finalized report in hand within 2 weeks of the assessment date.
You receive a personalized healthy home report — a prioritized, room-by-room action plan for optimizing your environment across five domains: air quality, water quality, light, EMFs, and chemical exposures. The report includes the raw data from your assessment, an explanation of what each finding means for your health, and vetted product and service recommendations you can act on right away. If any issues require remediation we provide guidance and support through that process.
Pricing depends on the size of your home and the specific tests included. Assessments typically start at $1,500. Contact us for a custom quote based on your home's size and the depth of testing you're looking for.
I love to read peer-reviewed studies and have built this business grounded in research. These are some of the studies that inform how I approach every assessment.
Two-hour exposure to blue light (460 nm) in the evening suppresses melatonin. The maximum melatonin-suppressing effect is achieved at the shortest wavelengths (424 nm, violet). Melatonin recovered within 15 minutes after cessation. Even low light levels (5–10 lux) at night can induce a circadian response.
Bright light treatment and dawn simulation for seasonal affective disorder, and bright light for nonseasonal depression, are efficacious — with effect sizes equivalent to most antidepressant pharmacotherapy trials.
Lead pipes occur in all 50 states. Wisconsin and Minnesota are both higher than average — Milwaukee has 74,000 lead pipes and Minneapolis has 49,000. The data came from an FOIA request to the EPA using its most recent survey data.
More than one in five (23%) of sampled wells contained at least one contaminant at a concentration exceeding a human-health benchmark. Inorganic contaminants were most frequent, including radon, arsenic, uranium, manganese, and fluoride. The study analyzed 2,100 private wells across 48 states.
Formaldehyde exposure was associated with impairment across all cognitive functions tested. Longer exposure duration showed a dose-effect relationship. Recent exposure was associated with impairment in all cognitive domains. Study included 75,322 French workers.
The primary annual standard for PM2.5 was lowered from 12.0 to 9.0, citing explicit links to premature death, heart attacks, aggravated asthma, and decreased lung function. By 2032, the new standard is projected to avoid up to 4,500 premature deaths and 800,000 cases of asthma symptoms annually.
For households using gas or propane stoves, the stove accounts for roughly one-quarter of total long-term NO2 exposure. For high-use households (top 5% of cooking intensity), the stove contributes half or more of total long-term exposure. First nationwide ZIP-code-level estimate across 133 million dwellings.
RF-EMF effects on sleep were observed in 90% of the individuals studied, with all sleep variables affected in at least four subjects. The only consistent finding was an increase of stage R (REM) sleep under both GSM 900 MHz and WCDMA/UMTS exposure, occurring in 9 of 30 subjects. Study included 30 healthy young men exposed three times per condition.
530 unique VOCs were quantified across 30 products. Of those, 193 were considered hazardous. Even "green" products with fragrance emitted hazardous VOCs — only fragrance-free green products showed significantly lower emissions. Large variation was found between individual products.