ToxiMapp: Mapping 1,900 Toxins Near Your Home

0:00 I, I mean, I kind of always knew the world was polluted, right? But I was really, really asleep about the extent of it until I moved my child into, brought our home from the hospital to a neighborhood where a lot of people were getting strange brain and lung cancers. And this information came to me informally. It's not like there is a statistical, it's not like it's published in the New York Times or something. And it's not really widely known. None of them really are. Welcome to the Environmental Transformation Podcast, where we bring you interviews with industry leaders, climate champions, sustainability practitioners, EHS and hazmat professionals making an impact in their businesses today.

0:40 Each leader solving complex challenges and delivering solutions within their areas of expertise. I'm your host, Sean Grady, and thanks for joining us today. Before we jump in, make sure to follow us on your devices and visit my website at www.shawnkgrady.com and sign up for our newsletter and e-mail announcements. Now let's get started. Welcome to the Environmental Transformation podcast. I'm your host, Sean Grady, and today's guests are Deb Horton and Pete Seda. Deb is the founder and CEO of Taxi Map and they're an environmental intelligence platform that helps individuals and professionals know which toxicants are present in the area, water and soil near their addresses.

1:22 Many addresses across the across the United States. So think of it as like the Carfax for environmental surroundings in any location. So we're really happy to have Deb on. She has a PhD in quantitative sociology from Columbia University and has worked as a researcher at Harvard Medical Schools, Department of Healthcare policy. She has also been an organizational and leadership consultant and lived and worked all over the world. Man, she's been in Lima, Istanbul, Milan, London, Dublin. Wow, you've been around. That's awesome. Those are some beautiful. Yeah, that's some beautiful places. Oh, man. Her personal experience moving her baby into two different communities with cancer clusters awakened her to the hidden presence of environmental toxicants in an unexpected locations.

2:15 And that critically and of critically knowing where toxicants are to make informed decisions for her own and everyone else is in the family and for a business and organizational across the the board. That's what's driven her to develop Toximap Peter Seda. He's the chief environmental scientist at Taxi Map, and he's an instructor at Duke University's School of of the Environment. So he was formerly A contributor to the EP as Enviro Atlas. And he's a seasoned environmental consultant with a deep experience in managing high visibility projects leveraging environmental analysis, geospatial analysis and data management for government agencies, educational institutions and private consulting firms. He is a certified GIS professional and he also has a Geographic Information System Certification Institute accreditation as well.

3:13 So welcome to the show guys. Great to be here. Yeah. Thank you so much. We're really grateful. Deb, you and I got connected through a personal connection that you're a friends with another entrepreneur tech startup that we will probably have on the show here soon as well for an application that's really geared towards environmental education for kids and gaming. So I'm looking forward to that one. But it's amazing. Yeah, so. But thanks for coming on the show. And you know, I saw the application and looked at it and I was like, wow, this has a lot of applicability for the environmental field in the environmental consulting space not let alone, I guess, you know, from maybe the medical field as well.

3:57 But maybe talk a little bit about your origin, you know, the mission that you have. What was the turning point that made you want to start this? I think a little bit has to do with this moving around with your child in the communities. But why don't you share with us a little more on that? Yeah, sure. I, I mean, I kind of always knew the world was polluted, right? But I was really, really asleep about the extent of it until I moved my child into, brought her home from the hospital to a neighborhood where a lot of people were getting strange brain and lung cancers. And this information came to me informally. It's not like there is a statistical, it's not like it's published the New York Times or something.

4:37 And it's not really widely known. None of them really are. And so immediately I was like, oh man, I, I got to get out of here. So I moved closer to the actually to the country countryside. I had been in the city. And within three months of that second move, I discovered discovered that I had moved into the middle of a pediatric cancer cluster. And this is not like, you know, big waste industrial waste site. This is a beautiful part of the seacoast region of the seacoast between Maine and New Hampshire with lobster boating and lots of sailboats and access to the forests and the mountains nearby and beautiful architecture, expensive real estate, great schools. Like it's not with your typical kind of waste site that you would think. And then I read the New Hampshire State report about this cancer cluster and discovered all of the hypotheses about what the causes could be were environmentally related. And through that, I came across all these environmental environmental toxin maps that I've never seen before. And it just profoundly shifted my understanding of the environment in the world.

5:44 And I immediately moved from there thinking, Oh my God, I got to get out of here. But I had no way of knowing that the place I moved next to is going to be any different than the first two I accidentally moved to because I didn't have the tool that I've created in order to solve that problem, right? So I began digging in EPA websites and state cancer maps and slowly, slowly. I'm not an environmental scientist like Peter is. And I mean it just took me years to figure out what's going on and I I would spend hours and hours just looking up 1 address and sometimes days and weeks to get the full picture.

6:25 And because we have the right to the access to this information, I decided to create the tool I needed and what I think every human being needs to know to make smart, informed decisions about their life. And so that is the personal story. But of course, the data set we, Peter has created, he is an absolute environmental toxin data ninja. And he's been, we've, he's integrated over 60 environmental toxin geospatial data sets into a harmonized layer on our map with we're tracking 1500 different environmental toxins. And it has, we have this data asset, right? It's this and then an asset around the interactive map in the tool so that people can easily visualize, understand digest the information as opposed to what I found when I started digging around, you know, state data databases and and EPA because that's like in tables and with, you know, lat logs.

7:31 And I mean, it was impossible for me to digest. This allows anybody at any level, whether it be complete, you know, newbie like I was to a very sophisticated environmental scientist like Peter or yourself, to digest instantly and utilize in whatever way they need to. Right. Yeah. No, that's great. I mean, and I think there's always been a desire for some, some tool like this available to, to to individuals. I mean, because, you know, you've got the ECHO database for the EPA and it largely has a lot of good stuff in there. But there are some gaps obviously from state to state and industry to, to, you know, even if you look at the military.

8:17 So there's still, like a lot of, you know, gaps. And so, you know, Peter, how did you get plugged into this opportunity to help Dev? Yeah, great question. And you know to to speak to your thing about the ECHO data set, right, Like that's where we kind of start. We as environmental professionals, that's where we start. But we are like, you know, it's a rabbit hole. It's multiple rabbit holes. You have trouble, you like, oh great, now I see the sites, but not what's at each site and what's the deal and when and all that stuff. So definitely a tough user interface to for the, the layperson I was. So I've been out for after getting my masters and doing all that GIS learning all that stuff.

8:58 I've been out consulting for almost 20 years and in the 1st batch company I worked for supported EPA quite a bit, both at the national level, state levels, some state governments as well. One of them was what used to be called the Office of Research and Development, which had a group that dealt with landscape level data sort of management analysis and visualization. And it grew into the EPA's Enviro Atlas, which while the organization AKAORD no longer exists on paper in our government, the Enviro Atlas still doesn't. Many of the folks that are that that supported and are working are still there.

9:38 So I worked on Enviro Atlas and help them with hundreds of foundational data sets for that and really helped get them sort of developed and then help them prop it up tested. That sort of stuff is a great, great project. Loved it. Great people too, just amazing stuff. Really challenged me as a geospatial professional. And so I had that and being so excited about it. I had it on on my sort of CV resume there and on one of the business professional social media websites. I could certainly say it, Deb, shoot me a text. And I was like, hey, she's like, hey, this is an environment, this thing, What do you know about it? I'm like, well, I know a lot actually. So we started.

10:18 I haunted him down. I haunted him down and found. His. Research. Skills paid off. Yeah, no. He's really weird. It was so I'm like, OK, this is great. I'm not completed. He has an elite skill set that's really hard to find, and he has been navigating the data with incredible accuracy and and rigor and finesse and really showing incredible thought leadership. That's great. I mean you guys sounds like a good match there. You know the solution for a first time user. You walk us through like, you know, how does Toximap translate raw environmental data into a simple user interface that includes interactive map, you know, maybe mapping your neighborhood. So you've got this toxic neighborhood intensity score type thing.

11:09 Help us understand how this works if you could. And maybe what we could do is screen share and you can walk us through it that way. I don't know if that's the best way to to discuss it, but it might be I'm I've got a hunch. Yeah, no, that's that's great. So I will absolutely do that. So let's see here. Not sure that button is. I'll give you the high level while she's doing it. So you know, for me, I'm and, and you know, you've probably done this as well as you, you've taken a lot of data for, for clients and had to summarize it or rank it, rank it or put it in some sort of order of such. So essentially that sort of skill set. And with the geospatial analysis part, we take the sort of universe of potentials across the United States and say, OK, let's divvy them up statistically within each media and within each database and get sort of an independent score for each of those sets of data.

12:15 And then roll it up into a overall toxin intensity score for a given address with all those sort of calculations on the fly, right? Like you type the address in and, and now we're seeing it. Basically it zooms into a, a location or an address and, and at that point, we'll then produce both the Max, I'm sorry, the map. And then those scores sort of you can see there by air, water and land. And then within the different data sources, under air, water and land and then overall toxin intensity score. Yeah. So he, he had to download and harmonize and we have spatially aligned, you know, over 60 data sets into 111 CSV file.

13:00 And then we layer it on to to map box. And then he has a, you know, a special patent pending algorithm that takes into account toxin intensity of each area, I mean of each medium. And so this is where I was living when I learned about the cancer cluster and notice that it's, it's, it's not even a, an extreme toxin toxicity score. It's moderate. So this was my address and each, this is an interactive map. So each symbol on the map has a meaning. And this is basically my address at the time. And this is a Superfund site. And if we click on any of these sites, actually it will give you a list of what the what the toxins are present in that site to the degree that we have that information.

13:48 So arsenic, benzene and five more. And you won't click on area summary summary to see what five other ones. So arsenic, benzene, cadmium, lead, mercury, PHSPCBS, just in that one site. If we come back to the map, we can click on, let's just do this one. This is a brown. Go ahead. So that's a great example of a specific location where there is a contaminated site. Is there any information that you also provide related to like is there sounds like the exposure for the site is maybe it's on site, but is there off site exposure challenges or concerns are those identified in the the discovery of the information? Or is it just say, hey, here's the parameters of toxin that we know of that are here?

14:40 Is it, is it, you know, limiting to some of it? I mean, maybe you can explain that a little bit. Yeah. Do you want to do it or do you want me to? Sure. Sure, we've talked about this somewhat. Yeah, a lot. And not just the two of us, we've got other folks that help support us, including a board certified toxicologist too. So the reality is there's a difference between a hazard and a risk. And it's subtle. We shouldn't get into it because I'll mess it up. But all of what we're trying to do here is say, hey, these things are here. And of course, the time that these things were placed or became into existence, the intensity, the longevity, your own role in being around that, you know, all those things are just, they're too much variables for us to say this is your exposure. What we do is a risk of exposure, right? It's just to say this is all here, right? And this is so much more than you can get from any other place.

15:37 And you know from Echo that you can click on the points and it tells you the name and address and it gives you their unique UEPAID for their facility, their facility registration number, but that's it. They don't easily. You have to click three more websites to even get a list of what they do. And maybe you get a list of chemicals. Maybe you don't right. You have to do that for each individual site and you can't even do it for some of these data sets like the Tri sites that we've got. I had to do a some serious transformation and sort of a special request from E pay to do a data dump for me to then use to then harmonize with our data sets. So there's a definitely a couple steps to go in there that make this sort of a boom within 3 miles. Just how many of sites each of the things you got? This is a list of toxins in the different media. Boom, easy button, right?

16:22 Yeah, yeah, exposure. Is really dependent on how each individual interacts with those points. And it's it's actually a point of empowerment because people can radically reduce their exposure risk and their actual exposure if they simply abstain from interacting with the sites that are toxic. And they can't do that unless they know where they are at the same time there is spread, right? They're spread through storm waters, they're spread through wind over time, they're spread through groundwaters to the degree to which something's not contained. And so it's kind of like a little bit of a soup, right. We kind of live in A to some, to greater or lesser degrees, and if we know what we're being exposed to or what's present, yeah, for any other purpose, not only health, but also all kinds of decisions, financial decisions, real estate decisions, investment decisions, insurance decisions. You know what the risk set is to begin with or you have the data are incomplete like the EPA is not tested every single square inch of soil and water in the US. So our map is kind of an under representation. It's an underestimate, we'll say. It's a good indication of what your potential concerns are in the neighborhood.

17:40 So you can actually have an idea of if you think you have symptoms that might be related to something like that. Well, maybe there is a 'cause that's the 'cause that could be the 'cause. We never know. But I mean, at least you have a good indication of what areas that you maybe live in that have, you know, have had some exposure to. Yeah, I mean, it's it gives you a huge leg up, right. Yeah. And the reality is, it all boils down to knowledge is power, right? Yeah, absolutely. I know. I get you. You know when you when you guys track your guys are tracking over 150 different toxins. What specific public and private data sources aside from maybe like the EPA, you know, echo site are you guys using to aggregate to bring all this together? I mean, are you talk a little bit about some of the types of sources you guys are pulling?

18:30 Sure. Yeah. So in the current version that was just shown by by Deb there we we have about almost 1000 toxins from essentially five different major data sources there. We are in the process of pulling in not just the five major data sets but and Deb has said this already 60 data sets. So what we are socially doing is we start with the low hanging fruit that's EP as databases etcetera. And I see low hanging fruit still requires a lot of work and massaging and then starting to look at state data sets because we know that there's a lot of state data sets that sometimes roll up to the feds. Sometimes it takes a while to roll up to the feds. Sometimes it never goes.

19:13 Up never goes up there. Yeah, because they don't have money to do it, but they just track their own state, State lead sites, voluntary remediation sites, USD sites that don't go all the way up to the feds. There's, I mean, and of course, as with everything you go from one state to another, it can be drastically different. So our next version of release, we're going to essentially double the amount of unique toxicants in the land, air and water. We're going to get around, we're actually going to get close to 1900. It says 1500, but it's when we, when I get all done and said with this, this effort I'm currently under way on we're, we're going to have 1900 different toxins. We're going to drastically improve the number and ability for folks to understand not drinking water.

19:58 But the other one, the the contact surface water, lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, we're going to drastically improve that data set quite a bit in terms of detail. Also the air quality right now we went for the low hanging fruit air quality. You know, people know AQI, right? There's 66 sort of measured chemicals that go into that. We've got those six, but. There's hundreds that they're actually measuring, so we're going to bring those in too. Yeah, well, you know the the likelihood now too of well, not the likelihood the emergence of P Foss in the industry. I mean that one should be, I would think, a big hot topic for Toxie map to start tracking. It. Oh yeah.

20:38 Well, yeah, you saw it on that list, right there was the list she had of Yeah. It's. In there. Already it's in there. It is in there so and so. There's a difference between measuring it and a different difference between addressing it as a standard. And that's the hot topic right now is how much is too much, right? And you're getting different values associated from EPA and different state level. I live in North Carolina, and so you know. You got some contamination there for sure. What are the? PFAS. PFAS crucibles, if you will. Although you know. 1st in flight, first in PFAS, no. The. The reality is it was just the first time people really noticed it, right? And of course, yeah, we have a lot.

21:18 And so the states are coming up with their own guidelines and roles and all of that is is just so such new science, right? Like, I'm training individuals that I'm learning from that are in my classes that are learning with the toxicologist at Duke about how to deal with this PFS thing. I mean, it's just crazy. I feel lucky to be sort of in the room, if you will, with these folks because it's really neat to watch these smart people go at it. It's it's certainly it's not going to be something that goes away anytime soon in the market in our lifetime basically. And yeah, so there's always going to be an interesting and where the exposure is, where the concentrations are highest, what's going on with drinking water, you know, facilities where's, where's the watersheds that are, are mostly impacted.

22:06 I mean, so you know, when you mentioned you're going to start adding, you know, surface water type stuff to it too, that's that's going to be pretty interesting if there's a lot of data in there. I know for some recent conversations we've had with some state agencies that yeah, they've done some mapping, they've done the the sampling of where P Foss is kind of high in surface water. And they doing that because they're trying to figure out where the public intakes are from the drinking water facilities and should they go upstream and who's the environment, who's the industrial dischargers and things like that. So. Yeah, and this is The thing is we're learning that PFAS, not to stay stuck on it, you know, it's using a lot of different things and in some cases it's used in very important things like firefighting foam, which. OK, great, Well, OK, great.

22:51 What if we use it once on an airplane or a fire, a Firehouse or firehouses, store it, whatever, right? Like all these things that aren't just necessarily industrial producers of Teflon, but just like plastic. What do we use that has plastic in it? Everything. Almost everything. Everything. Yeah. There's an article recently that came out that indicated research has found PFAS in the bloodstream of polar bears in Greenland. So it is ubiquitous. It's not just like, you know, in our drinking water, It's been spread all over the world. Our assumption is that it's ubiquitous. And, you know, where do we go from there? What are we going to do about it? What, how can we manage that and what protect our bodies from it? And there are techniques, there are things that can actually pull PFAS out of drinking water.

23:42 So which is a really good? News yeah, there's a lot of really good technology for that and and that's great. And and finally, you know, there's there is some, you know, I think some security down the road for a lot of people who are concerned about exposure. But it definitely is going to come at a cost, unfortunately for the ratepayers of a lot of drinking water facilities who weren't the cause of the contamination, unfortunately. And they're paying the the cost and it's it's unfortunately not really a fair proposition. But what are you going to do? Are you going to have bad water or are you going to, you know, so that's the crux that we're in with a lot of these communities that are highly impacted. Hello ET Nation, I want to thank you for listening to the podcast. If you're enjoying the interviews we bring you, consider supporting the program by visiting my website at seankgrady.com and buy me a cup of coffee. Proceeds will go towards helping me continue producing timely content and offset production costs. I'd also like to take a moment and recognize a few of our sponsors of the show who have been amazing partners and our ET Nation legends.

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26:51 If you're ready to take control of your waste management processes and optimize your business, visit wastelink.com to schedule a demo today. You know, when you look at this technology stack you guys are working on, talk about building a platform that geolocates toxins with the three mile radius and you know this massive data challenge, you know, what core technologies are you using to power this visualization? Yeah. You know, Peter has his GIS, you know his amazing, his technology there in his office, but we also have a CTO and he's working on that. He's using a number of different technologies. I'll just mention a few. He we are using map box for the, the, it's the kind of the very user friendly kind of a simple interactive map program that's out there.

27:41 We're using super base for the data and React for some of the coding and it's on AWS so it's it's a. Cloud system. Yeah, it's a very big data set with obviously backed up many times. And we also have a lot of security, you know, cybersecurity measures in place that in fact we have one of the top cybersecurity experts on the board and she's advising us on that matter often. So we had, it's a very complex but very manageable stack and we have a really capable, we're blessed with the capable technology, yeah. He's straight. Keeping it fast is important, right? Yeah. Right, that is the the the trick right?

28:22 And and curious, is AI playing a role in this? I don't know this stack for you guys as well. Well, we are not predicting anything, OK? We are. We are presenting reality. So we're not doing any predictive modeling. We're not. We, our CTO may use AI in some of the code creation process, but that's it. All the data are real life, real world accurate. And I think paradoxically, in this age of AI mania, it's a strength of ours to be grounded and rooted in the real world. Yeah, they're, you know, we, we've had discussions about oh, no, OK, wouldn't it be great if there was a sort of site based agentic or agent AI to help someone explore this explore Toxie map or explore the data that comes out of their St.

29:13 search. So it's definitely on our horizon, but we're not, we're certainly not. We're just using, we're using cloud storage, right? Like I joke, we're using server farms as opposed to corn farms. We're using server farms and so does everybody else. Basically we see if we, you know, we have an amazing road map. There's so much on our road map that's exciting. And one of the things not only having sort of like a chat bot or something to help somebody through the massive amount of information, but also we envision a future where maybe there is a pollution copilot, you know, for, for every person on their iPhone or their, their Android. And that's definitely going to be have an AI component. So we're we're using AI for some features, but not around the data in the building, but not around the data itself. Now some road map features.

30:03 Let's talk a little bit about some of your features. You kind of think I mean because I can think of 1 right away that seems to be like an ideal fit for this solution. What is that? Well, say I'm a concerned citizen and I'm looking for, you know, impacts in my neighborhood. And I want to know once I figure out that I've got contaminated sites that let right around my my home and do I have any exposure that I need to worry about whether that air, water, those types of things. Maybe there's a way to kind of link up and partner with a, a company that could offer, you know, a drop ship sampling prop, you know, program to sample your water, you know, type thing and you use that data, start building further data sets into this rate. That's right.

30:51 Kind of Crowdsource other things, right, Right. Yeah, Crowdsourcing is actually on our road map for sure, not just people that use Toxie map to then get a sample. But the reality is a lot of people have information already right, one way or another. And so we're going to build that in as part of a road map is to think, how do we really get the community involved? Because this is this is all of us, right? Like we care about this. We all do. And the the more we care, the more benefit we get to each other. You know, another, another one. And just so, I mean, I think Deb, I told you this before, but I've, I've, I used to operate and manage a software product too. And so we had sprints and road map planning and you know, all the, you know, I had a good scrum master and you know, it was a lot of fun. But here's another thought, you know, like where's the recycling center, my closest recycling center to my property so I can recycle those toxins that are, you know, maybe getting in the system because not everyone, you know, usually knows where they can find that data.

31:52 Another little interesting tidbit. Or where's the landfill, right? I mean, there. So those are things I think, you know, just kind of thinking out loud maybe, you know, helping you kind of build out this future view of this program. Since I've been in the environmental field a long time myself, former consultant for 23 years myself and a regulator for aid, I kind of kind of know the the mindset of these guys. And so yeah, that's another one that would be really good. But when you talk about your target audience a little bit, let's talk through that. I mean, you partner with networks like the Mosaic Diagnostics, maybe talk a little bit about who they are, what they are with it, what's their the relationship with them? How does that product help them? Yeah.

32:34 So we have sort of AB to B to C model right now as well as AB to C model. And we are working with and through healthcare practitioners and Mosaic Diagnostics is a reference lab and they have three tests that assess the bio accumulation of environmental toxins, you know in our body. And so that's a really important partner because that gives our our B to C consumers users point of, you know, an action that they can take that has very, you know, that has great potential for healing. Also, we are in the process of supporting integrative naturopathic and functional doctors to really profoundly change the standard of care around every touch point with a patient to include a Toximap report for each patient. So that not only are we talking about symptoms or diagnosis or medications or whatever, but also what are your potential exposures and which tests should we be ordering for you? And then we can build a plan to create detoxification for your body if you have stuff that's in the body, which most of us have. And then how not to re toxify because when we are there and there are great technique for detox, but if we're constantly being retoxed at the same time, it's kind of a race between detox and Retox.

33:55 And if people the interventions not going to to be sustainable if they're just everyone's just being retoxified. And so Toximap helps detox win that race because people can they're incredible mitigating actions patients or people can take. If they are aware of what toxins are in their environment, they can avoid the points of potential contact. They can test their soil and maybe use garden raised beds or something if they're going to do gardening or flowering. So they're not interacting with the soil that much. Water filters, air filters, you know, avoid the locations. I'll tell you what, I do not allow my child to swim in any water body that I haven't toxi mapped. And that lesson was hard one, because there was a public town pond in Massachusetts where we used to live that everyone went to.

34:46 Very sweet, you think this world sweet little pond, great beach and she I would let, I would unknowingly let her swim there. And after I create a Toxie map, turns out it had elevated levels of mercury and that actually was confirmed in her and some of her lab work. That is a very powerful action I as a parent can take to protect my child and myself. You know, if I just don't interact with these points of potential exposure, it really supports the healing process that that's happening. Well, maybe Peter, you can maybe kind of talk a little bit about some of the environmental consulting community type use cases or any EHS professional and you know some of the other potential personas of A use case that could help out and maybe give us an idea of what you see there. Yeah, sure.

35:40 Yeah. So Deb's already kind of mentioned how we've got functional doctors, we've got mosaics. So the, the company that provides the test to test the human part and, or other companies that have the test kits for the soil and water, right? So, you know, taking, taking the knowledge that we give you and go to the next level. And that's what we tend to do in environmental consulting, right? We, we are helping investigate, summarize and visualize and then make a recommendation. So a lot of what we do and, and I still do in the environmental consulting world is we do a like a landscape level analysis. And then you start identifying sites of interest, whether they're sites that are good or sites or that are bad, and then you start to rank them, right?

36:25 That's what we do for all sorts of things as environmental profession. And so the environmental consulting community, what Toximap can do is provide a short, a short circuit, right, a shortcut. And in in the consulting world, you are billable to a project. You take time, you take money, it takes budget. If you can do something in 30 minutes and QA it as opposed to 6 to 8 hours while you save a lot of money and time, right. And then you roll that up over time. It saves a lot of money and time for the company and the clients. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's a lot of work on the environmental side. So just for instance, all appropriate inquiries related to, you know, a phase one kind of due diligence type project.

37:09 You know, we've typically will go through an EDR request and and pull the data and see what sites you see there. It's not always identifying the containment concern, but you, you see a site, if you're doing NEPA work, you've got to identify what are potential concerns out there there. So I think you guys got a nice niche here that you can get in front of the consulting community and, and use this as an additional layer or additional, you know, source of information for them to actually grab this data quickly included in their report that you've done, you know, this additional taxi map level, you know, reviewed identifying these containments of concern. Because you know, you're always trying to educate or, you know, I guess not educate, but to, you know, inform the, the clients what the concerns are in, in, in their area where they're looking at whether it's a brownfield site or, you know, IPA projects, you know, so, so if there's a way that I, I see a pathway where you guys could get, you know, more in front of that aspect of the environmental assessment phase and use it as a tool for that, that would be really, I think powerful. Yeah, absolutely.

38:23 I mean I used to do Phase 1 Esas and and I know all that goes into them and Toximap is of course not going to replace that. But I can certainly in a big way, like I said, short, short circuit or supplement that any even, you know, the same thing applies. And and Deb can talk more about the relationship we have with a National Association of home inspectors, right? Like home inspectors rely on databases and things and, and put them into their report to you, right, If you're going to buy a piece of property. And so you get a home inspection right through that due diligence period of of home buying. And so we we're in conversation with them about that to supply sort of a plug in add in add on thing as well, right.

39:08 So this huge database has a lot of great applications just like you, you identified for environmental consultants for home inspector. Yeah, insurance, yeah. I mean, yeah, there's so much there. I think. Yeah, I think you guys are on to something really cool. Like I like where you're going with this, the maps very interactive. I think the data is very insightful. I do kind of like the, the scoring metrics that you pulled together, although I think maybe do you guys do any, do you kind of summarize how you derive these scores for the user when they use it, they kind of have a little peek behind like how they come up with this rating. You know, what's the the process, because you probably I can envision some engineers or some other scientists going, hey, you know, what does this even mean? And they're going to challenge at least the rating. So I'm.

39:55 Scared. We welcome the challenge, We absolutely welcome any challenge, any feedback to. The you, you know where I'm coming from because that's just the nature of the nature of scientific community, yeah. Yeah, let's, let's open the hood and take a look at this thing. Yeah, right. And so we want to open the hood appropriately. So it's not. It's patent pending. So we we have a few patents on this, but you can talk a little bit about it it. Really, it really is true to to what it says. It's an intensity, right? And intensity has to do with the number and the density, spatial density, right. So what we've done is and to inform why did I get a moderate or OK, I've got a moderate, but this one's really high.

40:41 Like, that's why we give you those sort of broken out levels of intensity by media. Yeah. Because maybe you never go swimming. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. So it's not a big problem for me if I'm not going swimming, right. You know, it's like I don't have that exposure. I don't eat fish, I'm not fishing, I'm not going to get in the water, that sort of thing. But maybe, you know, we have some colleagues that they love going swimming. Yeah, well, I mean, you're right. So it says, I got a question. How does toximat bridge the gap between identifying a risk and taking action through healthcare or mitigation? Yeah. So we provide our users with mitigating in you know mitigating steps that they can take like for instance if there is has been some water drinking water contamination identified. So we'll provide them information about how to which water filters might be appropriate for the particular contaminants in the drinking water. So water filters either centrally through the house or at each tap point in the house, which water bodies to avoid Mosaic diagnostics, we give them a lot of resources for toxicologist, functional doctors, naturopathic doctors, chelation.

41:53 There's a huge amount of amount of resources on the site that we can provide. Of course, the diagnostic testing as well, we're also about to bring on the course from EMEI, which is Environmental Medicine Education Institute that actually trains doctors, but they have a course for the general public about how to thrive in the polluted world or toxic environment. And so they'll have lots of tricks and information there. We also provide limited information about like opening the detoxification pathways. We're not, we're not medical doctors. We are not prescribing or diagnosing or giving any sort of medical advice, but there's some really simple things that people can do like dry brushing or taking NAC or taking vitamin C and, you know, certain kinds of detoxifying foods for infrared sauna, that kind of thing. So that people feel like they're not just dumped with all this information and know, you know, test the soil, test the water, come up with there are solutions. You know, I'm even hearing about people are inventing ways to clean up.

43:04 There's this new the mush, this kind of mushroom that can eat certain types of toxins. So I can imagine a world in which we're spawning a whole new set of industries for cleanup. So but that that's down the road. What right now we're focusing on is informing people and making them feel empowered around this information. No, that's great. That's really good. I mean, yeah, you, you, you just kind of touched on some stuff and it just hit me in the my mind too. It's like you guys could do a plug in with web MD or something like that. You know, where they, you know, oh, you've got this. Just go right here and look it up, right? I mean, there's some cool stuff there that you're you're the possibilities of this application are pretty endless. I mean, I guess yeah, you guys are got. I like it.

43:48 I like it. So let's talk about funding. Let's talk about funding and growth. Funding and growth. You guys are an emerging leader in the environmental with environmental health. So where do you currently stand with your funding? You know your seed, your Series A, you know what kind of key milestones are you aiming to hit to attract your next round of investors. Yeah. So we would really love to get a few more partners on board and we are in conversation with five different potential partners or more. So we are in the process of engaging these partners. And once that is, they're sort of like B to B to C partners, B to B partners who can really amplify our reach to the general public and also to the professional professionals who are connected to our product.

44:33 So we are hoping to get those partners on board and and start, you know go around with the next funding which would be seed A. Seed all right, So still trying to get the private investors to kind of jump on board and partner with you now before you go into the next round of seed fund. Is that, well, our priority right now is Angel investors, individuals who are, you know, they're passionate about this topic or any organizations that are strategically connected to the value chain in this space. And yeah, individuals, we're, we're not, we're not ready to really crowdfund yet, but we will. We're open to the different sources. Yeah.

45:17 No, I think there's a lot of venture capital or investment venture, you know, investment type companies that be very interested in this product and learning more about it would be really great. And maybe they can hear about it through this podcast, and that'll be great. Well, take your call for sure. Yeah, No, exactly. So I mean, there's a lot of VCs out there that probably would say this sounds like a great opportunity to help you help you guys. You know, the biotech industry's huge. I'm surprised they wouldn't be jumping on this to help support the, you know, the, the medicine diagnosis of, you know, exposure to their patients that come in. Yeah, I, you know, there's that would be a huge one, I would think. Absolutely.

46:00 Talk a little bit about privacy and ethics a little bit like environmental data can sometimes impact property values and local reputations. How do you balance the ethical responsibility of transparency with potential sensitive sensitivities of the communities that you map? Yeah, that's a really good question and an important question, So thank you for asking it. We do not share toxicant source information like private company names or addresses. We don't attribute pollution presence to anyone or any entity. We just really focus on on what's present. We don't other organizations are focusing on that and our primary ethical commitment is around data accuracy and accessibility.

46:47 So we feel obligated to represent the data that is available in the most rigorous, you know, accurate manner. And it's possible that property values could be disrupted or shift slightly as we become our information is more widely spread out there. It's not too unlike what's happening in climate risk. I'm not sure if you're, you know, 1st St. let's just say they have some really interesting predictive models about heat and flood and wind risk around different locations in the US And of course our coastlines are shifting. So, you know, the properties and coastlines are definitely going to be valued differently.

47:32 And so there's a possibility that that may happen. But our ethical commitment is really towards information symmetry creating, you know, making this information ubiquitously available to people, businesses, organizations who are making decisions that this to which this data would contribute. No, that's really good. I mean, yeah, I can see it is a can be a challenge, but I think the the good outweighs the bad in these scenarios. People need to know that they are have the potential exposure. They, a lot of people probably have been living in the surrounding areas for decades and don't even know that there's an issue or they're the, that the property that's 2 miles from them or a mile from them. And, and you know, all along it hasn't really affected their property value anyways.

48:22 So they're probably. A. Big issue with it, but you know, I think it's, it's a good, good question and, and I'm glad you are concerned about it. When you look ahead, you know, what's the future vision here? What, what you know, look, five years from now, what do you think Toximax going to become? You think it'll become a standard part of real estate transactions or mandatory diagnostic tools in the medical field or, you know, for primary care? What do you, what do you, what do you see this going? Yeah, that's a beautiful question, So thank you for that one as well. Our vision is really to provide the environmental intelligence infrastructure that can be used across all industries wherever it's it's needed. You know, that could be health insurance, could be risk insurance, underwriting medicine, healthcare, real estate.

49:12 We're really democratizing access to this information to the general population and and across all industries. So we don't limit it just to real estate or healthcare. It's data that's pertinent to all kinds of business and municipal government decision making. So we are providing that we have the infrastructure that the data asset itself and we hope to make it ubiquitous. That's pretty awesome. You know, I think, I think you guys are on track the feature wise. I think you've got so much in the road map that you could deploy on, and I think that your biggest challenge is going to be what do I prioritize? Yeah, 100%.

49:56 Yeah. We talk about a lot of things. Really. Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if you had a Toximap app on your phone so that you got just like you get a lightning, a lightning strike proximity alert, you're like, hey, you're, you're within 1/4 mile of a Superfund site. Yeah, OK. That's good to know. Another really interesting use case could be institutional investors, you know, mortgage-backed securities and even financial market data platforms, you know, having this data feed, you know, as a decision part of their regression models or whatever. The data are so pertinent to so many levels of society and business. So it's it's really exciting.

50:38 No, no. OK. So one thing we didn't cover though was how much does it cost to be a user? We got to go through there. I mean, we can't end the program without that. So, yeah, yeah, sure. We for right now the pricing model is very simple. And for now the cert the to search 1 address is about 1999 and we have bundles for organizations or individuals depending on what the purpose is to have higher volume searches at a lower price. So it goes up. And of course we'll we also have licensing kind of options as well that will be individually priced according to the the partnership.

51:21 So that's the basic right now. And yeah. Well, I think there's a few lab contacts I want to connect you with that could be good for you that, you know, you might be able to use them as plug insurance at some point to offer the service. I mean, unless you already have them, but there's some people that are probably interested in that. Yeah, environmental consultants, I mean, if there is a consulting firm that feels they're going to use our data or platform to I know with Peter, he, you know, using one address search on Toxie map could save him 4 to 8 hours and searching for that data for a client. So you know, if there's a consulting firm that needs, you know, just a lot high volume of address searches for sure that could save them, you know, save them a lot of money on their back on their PNL. So we come up with deals that benefit everybody, right? We want to help our B to B customers really benefit from the product.

52:23 Have you started to attend any conferences, environmental conferences, to present this product anywhere? Because that's where your audience is going to be going for the most part to. I mean, Peter, you know this as well as I do, but you know these guys, they, they go to a lot of conferences, they listen and see presentations. You know, the sale cycle of a lot of this takes time, but you know that could be a really good venue for you expanding into the environmental market. Yeah, it's on the, it's in the plans as well as healthcare conferences. Yeah. So you're right. So I know there's, you know, there's an annual brownfields conference that we were looking at going to, you know, this sort of functional functional medicine and, and other unique ways of of sort of holistically addressing health issues.

53:19 There's some great conferences about that. Of course, we hear it in the news about people thinking about PFAS, if you think about healthiness, all sorts of things, right. So I think the sort of ground level consciousness of these things is really is rising and we're here for it. Well, this is great. You know, Deb, Peter, thanks for coming on to the show. We really appreciate your time today. And, and I like what you guys are doing with Toxie Map and you know, hopefully the listeners will dive into this and and take a look at the the application. We welcome your or any of their feedback. If any of your listeners want to test it out and ask, ask questions or share ideas and feedback, they find some bugs. We welcome it all. 100%, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, that.

54:10 That's great. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean it does. It takes, it takes a lot to go through and identify, you know, workflows and user experience and you know, all that good stuff. So. Yeah, we have an exciting version 3 coming out in the next few weeks, which is really, we're adding landfills where we're making the UUX way simpler and you basically get a whole dashboard on one screen instead of having to click back and forth. That has a lot of very exciting to us features. So we'll let you know when that comes out. Please do and, and maybe tag me when you hit a release and we'll push it out to to our audience as well. But you know, this is great. I, I wish you guys the best of luck on this. And you guys are got something here that I don't know. I haven't come across another product like it yet. So, and I've been seeing, I see a lot of technology, you know, and tools and, but this is a good one that caught my eye and, and thanks for meeting with me today. Thank you and thank you for your great work with this podcast. It's a great.

55:13 Thanks so much. Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Dad. Appreciate that. OK, we'll talk to you guys soon. Thank you. All right. Thanks for listening and watching the show. If you enjoyed the show then please share it with your friends and coworkers on social media and tell somebody in person. Thanks for being with us, ET Nation.