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Press Kit — ZipCheckup

About ZipCheckup

ZipCheckup is a free, open-data platform that translates complex government databases into clear, actionable home safety reports for every U.S. ZIP code. The platform aggregates data from 50+ federal and state sources — including EPA (SDWIS, ECHO, UCMR5, LCR), FEMA, CDC, USGS, NOAA, PHMSA, CPSC, DOE, NWS, CFPB, IRS, Census Bureau (ACS income, housing age, home values), and others — to assess 17 risk categories: water quality, lead exposure, PFAS contamination, radon, flood risk, wildfire/smoke, earthquake, mold, CO/gas safety, infrastructure failure, air quality, Superfund proximity, school environmental health, nuclear proximity, bridge safety, energy costs, and respiratory risk. Unique L3 derived insights include estimated remediation costs, equity trap ratios, and safety-adjusted home value context. No registration, no paywall, no data selling.

Key Facts & Statistics

Metric Value
ZIP codes covered 41,344 (full U.S. residential)
Total pages 121,665+
Risk categories 17
Data sources 50+ federal and state agencies
Interactive tools 28 (calculators, checkers, maps)
City report pages 18,000+
Neighborhood pages 2,214
Metro ranking pages 2,310
Compare pages 10,000 (ZIP-vs-ZIP)
School districts analyzed 1,000+
Contaminant-city pages 7,565
Health condition pages 450+
Blog posts 20 (data-driven journalism)
Annual ranking pages 13 (2026 editions, all verticals)
Water systems tracked 33,000+ (EPA ECHO data)
CCR systems parsed 1,021+ (Consumer Confidence Reports)
Contaminants tracked 300+ (via CCR parsing + EPA SDWIS)
Anomalies detected 11,900+ (PFAS clusters, enforcement spikes, silent-danger ZIPs)
States + DC All 51 jurisdictions
Historical trends Safety scores back to 2021, violation timelines, lead & copper history
npm packages zipcheckup (CLI) and us-water-quality-data (dataset)
Open datasets HuggingFace, Kaggle, GitHub (CC BY 4.0, updated weekly)
Automated pipelines 21+ daily/weekly/monthly cron jobs
Update frequency Daily (violations, alerts, AQI), weekly (ECHO, CCR), monthly (EPA, Census, BLS)
Cost to users Free — no signup required

Data Sources (50+)

Environmental: EPA SDWIS, EPA ECHO, EPA UCMR5 (PFAS), EPA LCR (Lead/Copper), EPA TRI (Toxic Release), EPA Superfund NPL, EPA EJScreen, EPA NATA Air Toxics, EPA NEI Emissions, EPA UST/LUST

Climate & Weather: NOAA Climate Normals, NOAA Sea Level Rise, NOAA AirNow (AQI), NWS Alerts, NIFC Wildfire Perimeters, FEMA NRI (Earthquake, Wildfire, Flood)

Infrastructure: PHMSA Gas Incidents, PHMSA Pipeline, NBI Bridge Inventory, DWINS Infrastructure Gap, DOE Energy Codes, EIA Utility Rates

Health & Demographics: CDC PLACES, CDC Blood Lead, CFPB HMDA Lending, IRS SOI Income, Census ACS Housing, Census ACS B25077 (Median Home Values), Census Income, USDA Food Desert

Government: FEMA NFIP Flood Claims, FEMA Disaster Declarations, NRC Nuclear Plants, USGS Groundwater, CCR Reports (1,021+ water systems), Congressional Voting Records

Founder

Artem Akulov — Solo founder of ZipCheckup.com.

Bio — 25 words (for bylines, social cards, X profile)

Artem Akulov built ZipCheckup after realizing EPA already publishes the home-safety data most homeowners can't find. Solo founder. AI-first.

Bio — 50 words (for conference speaker blurbs, guest post bylines)

Artem Akulov is a solo founder who built ZipCheckup in 2026 after struggling to find clear water-quality data for a rental he was considering. ZipCheckup now covers 41,344 U.S. ZIP codes using 50+ federal and state datasets, powered by automated generation pipelines. ORCID: 0009-0000-1125-3060.

Bio — 100 words (for podcast intros, feature articles)

Artem Akulov is the solo founder of ZipCheckup.com, a free platform translating 50+ federal and state databases into plain-English home-safety reports for every U.S. ZIP code. He built the platform in early 2026 after struggling to find clear lead-service-line data for a rental he was considering. Artem also runs Lira Agency — 19+ years of PPC and Local SEO campaigns for U.S. home services contractors gave him a clear view of how disconnected homeowners are from government data. ZipCheckup is AI-first and runs on automated generation and enrichment pipelines. ORCID: 0009-0000-1125-3060.

Bio — 250 words (for long-form profiles, research citations)

Artem Akulov is the solo founder of ZipCheckup.com, a free platform that translates 50+ federal and state public databases into plain-English home-safety reports for every U.S. ZIP code. The site launched in March 2026 and now covers 41,344 residential ZIP codes across 17 risk categories — water quality, lead exposure, PFAS contamination, radon zone, flood, wildfire, school water safety, and ten others — generating over 121,000 interlinked pages from automated pipelines.

The project started with a personal question: whether the rental apartment Artem was considering had lead service lines. He found the raw EPA data, spent a weekend learning the schema, and realized nobody had put it all together in one place, keyed by ZIP code, with honest grades rather than marketing superlatives.

Artem also runs Lira Agency, a digital marketing firm where he has spent 19+ years running PPC and Local SEO campaigns for U.S. home services businesses (HVAC, plumbers, electricians, handymen, locksmiths). That vantage point — helping these contractors reach homeowners — made the public-data gap obvious. Most residents never see the public safety data affecting their daily lives, and the gap isn't about access (it's all public) but about translation and trust.

ZipCheckup is AI-first by design — generation pipelines, data enrichment, and QC are all automated — while editorial decisions (what counts as a risk, what deserves a bad grade, what to refuse to claim) remain human. The platform takes no venture funding and sells no user data. All underlying aggregations are published under CC BY 4.0 on HuggingFace, Figshare, Zenodo, and OSF.

ORCID: 0009-0000-1125-3060 · Google Scholar: user=mL75DPUAAAAJ

Founder Quotes (attributed, ready for use)

These quotes are pre-approved for use in articles and press releases attributing Artem Akulov as founder of ZipCheckup. No additional approval needed if quoted verbatim.

On the data gap: "The information homeowners need is already public. The work isn't collecting it — it's translating it into something you can actually use when you're standing in a kitchen deciding whether to drink the tap water."

On specificity vs reassurance: "I won't tell anyone their water is 'safe.' I'll tell them exactly which contaminants were detected above EPA limits in their specific system, and what the thresholds actually mean. Absolute reassurance is not my product."

On the solo / AI-first approach: "ZipCheckup is one person plus a lot of automated pipelines. I don't outsource the illustrator, the copywriter, or the data processor — the stack is the team. That constraint forces everything to be explainable in code."

On rankings methodology: "Every ranking on this site is published with its full methodology — datasets, cutoffs, how ties are broken. If a ranking isn't reproducible by a reader with a spreadsheet, it shouldn't be a ranking."

On who the site is for: "This was built for the homebuyer refreshing Zillow at 11pm, wondering whether the ZIP code they're looking at has lead service lines. Everything else — the rankings, the press, the partnerships — follows from that one reader."

Methodology

Every ranking, grade, and score on ZipCheckup is published with its full methodology. See Rankings Methodology v1.0 — datasets used, cutoff thresholds, tie-breaking rules, refresh cadence, and known limitations.

Journalists covering ZipCheckup data are encouraged to link to the methodology page when citing any specific grade or ranking. This makes the numbers reproducible for readers.

Embargo Template

For pre-publication review or coordinated release:

Embargo: Under press embargo until [DATE], [TIME] [TIMEZONE].

The information in this document is shared in confidence with the recipient for planning and preparation. Publication, summary, quotation, or attribution to any source before the embargo lifts is not permitted. After the embargo lifts, the full press kit at https://zipcheckup.com/press/press-kit/ may be used freely under CC BY 4.0.

To request embargoed data or early access, email [email protected] with the publication name, expected publish date, and the specific topic.

Logo & Brand Assets

Mascot — Quill the hedgehog. Quill is ZipCheckup's brand character: a "concerned neighbor" hedgehog who double-checks every data point. High-resolution PNG assets are available at the following URLs (1024×1024, transparent background):

  • Neutral (default, C grade): /img/quill/neutral.png
  • Approving (A–B grade): /img/quill/approving.png
  • Alarmed (F grade / 404): /img/quill/alarmed.png
  • Concerned (D grade): Coming soon — dual-ref pipeline v1.0
  • Celebrating (A+ grade, rare): Coming soon — dual-ref pipeline v1.0
  • Magnifying (investigation pose): Coming soon — dual-ref pipeline v1.0

For other formats (SVG wordmark, icon-only, dark/light variants), email [email protected].

Brand colors:

  • Primary green: #1B4D3E
  • Accent orange (CTA): #E86B2C
  • Background cream: #F7F4EF

Quill palette:

  • Body warm brown: #8B6B4A
  • Belly cream: #D4B896
  • Quill tips dark brown: #5A4430
  • Eye amber: #CC9400

Typography: System UI stack (SF Pro, Segoe UI, Roboto). Inter reserved for editorial slide decks only.

Usage rule: Quill may be used in editorial contexts alongside ZipCheckup attribution. Quill may not be used to imply endorsement of a third-party product or service, or to accompany claims that contradict ZipCheckup's own published data.

Media Contact

For press inquiries, data requests, interviews, or partnership proposals:

Email: [email protected] Website: zipcheckup.com Response time: Within 24 hours

Data Usage Terms

All ZipCheckup reports and derived data are available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

You are free to:

  • Share — copy and redistribute the data in any medium or format
  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the data for any purpose, including commercial

Under the following terms:

  • Attribution — Credit "ZipCheckup (zipcheckup.com)" and link to the original report page
  • No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits

Underlying source data comes from U.S. government databases which are public domain. ZipCheckup's added value — scoring, anomaly detection, aggregation, and presentation — is covered by CC BY 4.0.

Recent Data Highlights

Based on automated anomaly detection (updated daily):

  • 17 Risk Verticals: Every ZIP code now has data across water quality, lead, PFAS, radon, flood, wildfire, earthquake, mold, CO/gas, infrastructure, air quality, Superfund, school safety, nuclear proximity, bridge condition, energy costs, and respiratory risk
  • PFAS Clusters: ZIP codes in NY, CA, MI, and NJ show PFAS detections above EPA MCL in geographically adjacent areas
  • Silent Danger ZIPs: Hundreds of ZIP codes have elevated contaminant levels but zero EPA violations — reporting gaps or contaminants without enforceable limits
  • Infrastructure Decay: 1,154 ZIP codes show accelerating infrastructure decline. National average pipe age: 49 years
  • Wildfire Exposure: 3,512 ZIP codes classified as high or very high wildfire/smoke risk
  • Environmental Justice: Cross-referencing EPA EJScreen with income data reveals 2,806 low-income ZIPs with disproportionate environmental burden
  • Lead in Schools: 1,000 school districts analyzed — 133 flagged as very high risk based on water lead, housing age, and blood lead data

Suggested Story Angles

  1. "What's really in your tap water?" — Compare water quality in wealthy vs low-income ZIP codes in any metro area
  2. "The ZIP codes EPA isn't watching" — Silent-danger areas with high contaminants but no violations
  3. "PFAS forever chemicals: a map of contamination" — Interactive PFAS map shows detection across all 50 states
  4. "The school water nobody tests" — School district environmental health scores reveal gaps in testing
  5. "Home safety by ZIP code" — How a 5-digit number determines your family's exposure to 17 environmental hazards
  6. "America's crumbling water pipes" — Infrastructure decay model predicts which communities face pipe failures next
  7. "Wildfire smoke: the invisible home safety risk" — 3,500 ZIP codes with high smoke exposure most residents don't know about
  8. "The $1,020 hidden cost of where you live" — Compound risk portfolio shows median annual extra cost from environmental hazards
  9. "Government data, finally readable" — How one platform made 50+ federal databases accessible to every homeowner
  10. "Lead Risk Rankings 2026" — Annual ranking of worst and best ZIP codes for lead exposure, with interactive maps
  11. "The equity trap: when fixing your home costs more than it's worth" — ZIP codes where estimated remediation costs exceed 10-30% of median home value, trapping owners in unsafe properties they can't afford to fix
  12. "The hidden cost of buying a home" — Purchase risk scores reveal which ZIP codes have the highest gap between listing price and true cost of ownership including water filtration, lead abatement, radon mitigation, and flood insurance