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Mold Toxicity
Thought I'd share some work I did 3 years ago when faced with hidden mold in the HVAC system of an apartment we lived in. They ended up ripping down a 2-story exterior wall to get at the source of it. This was a 10-year old building that had water-damage from the roof at some point. Neighbors were getting all kinds of sick, even though nothing much was visible. You can easily see the colonies with a flashlight after removing the air vents. These were high-end units with granite counters and wood floors. They looked pristine. I came down with about 10 of the common symptoms over a few months before we knew what was going on. Many of them were Autonomic Nervous System problems. I read all of Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker's books and dove headlong into reading about the best-practices of remediation. Once I discovered there was no way the owners were going to spend the money to do it right, we were out of there. No sooner than we moved into our next one nearby, a few weeks later, I see these guys in hazmat suits and masks remediating an outer wall about 50 feet from our place. Broke our lease and moved again. The thing that prompted me to write this was this morning I was making breakfast for my mother-in-law at her assisted-living residence and I saw a nearby apartment that was tented-off with black plastic and lots of tape. Then I noted that there were six vans parked out back that were from a local mold remediation company and small teams of guys working on various sections of the building. I remembered that I saw a couple of these vans a few weeks ago. Whenever they do remediation, it stirs up the existing mold and it is extremely expensive to do it right, with positive-pressure machines (or negative, can't recall), and cleaning out the ducts, which in many cases is just impossible. Shoemaker describes how buildings actually breathe, and how spores travel all over a building, inside walls and ceilings and ultimately into all the ducts. It explains some recent symptoms I was chalking up to VA detox and upping my Vit C intake. Others, including my mother-in-law, have been experiencing headaches, sinus problems, sore eyes, sore throats, and who knows what other internal symptoms as well. I have all of those plus some peripheral neuropathy which was a big symptom last time. And I was feeling really good until just recently. It also seems like there have been more ambulances coming and going recently. I'm over there about 6 hours each day. Dr. Shoemaker is the top expert on this and he explains how the fungus colonies in HVAC ducts of Water Damaged Buildings are some of the worst there are. Spores are generated in the millions and billions and their mycotoxins can create cytokine-storms and massive immune responses. Spores and their toxic fragments get into and onto literally every piece of furniture, clothing, rugs, etc. It takes weeks to clean your stuff up properly. Shoemaker uses cholestyramine to bind the toxins in patients, to great success. Problem is that the immune system is often keyed-up to the point where ever-smaller exposures will generate the same immune-system over-reactions, even much later on. Headaches, muscle cramps, incontinence, heart palpitations, insomnia, strange visual disturbances, and more are among the symptoms caused by mycotoxins. We had a simple air test done in the first apartment and found 4 nasty species. Found toxins from the same ones in my urine via an expensive test. I learned that there's a much better test that uses PCR technology to identify genetics of 36 different types of molds, fungus, and bacteria. We're going to move my mother-in-law to a fancy new apartment a few miles away ASAP. I'm not looking forward to cleaning all of her belongings, since I'm going to have to sequester them in a storage facility first and then work at it over the next few weeks, doing a mess of disinfection (Sporicidin) and some necessary triage. Couch and bed are goners. Not even worth trying to clean them up and we sure don't want to take millions of spores to the new place. Just thought I'd throw all that out there since it could be a factor in what somebody reading here might also be dealing with, on top of VA detox. The fact that some of these symptoms overlap VA toxicity, (and perhaps the mycotoxins aggravate that as well), is the thing that popped into my head today. We had a friend who worked in a government building in Washington, DC that had water-damage and lots of sick people. She was so ill that she had to quit her job. She lost two friends who chose not to leave. Can't remember what they died of but that's how serious it can be. This is a much bigger problem nation-wide than anyone really wants to talk about (kind of like VA toxicity). Schools, apartments, houses, government buildings, etc. The legal side of it is a nightmare. I've read cases where Shoemaker was an expert-witness and it is really tough to win, even with bullet-proof evidence. Defense attorneys will drag litigants through the mud and health damages are very difficult to prove to the court's satisfaction, at least here in the U.S. I was just shaking my head today when I saw that the young guys doing the "remediation" weren't even wearing air masks with filters. Learn the hard way I guess. Once we get her out of there, I'll come back and try to educate them on what they might be facing if they don't protect themselves.
Horrific! D:
I have a split system air con in my lounge and in my bedroom. In the 2.5 years I've been here the air con was never cleaned. A few weeks ago I was notified that they would be cleaned. The cleaner was shocked by how much mold came out, he described it as a bucket full of mold from each aircon unit. I saw it, it was disgusting. He said some other apartments were much worse, he didn't know how the inhabitants were still alive, those were his words. My apartment has had a musty smell for ages. I purchased a $2000 Vorwerk vacuum cleaner with HEPA filters last year because there is this fine silt in the carpet and I can never get it all even with that vacuum. I assumed maybe the carpet is breaking down but I guess it could be mold spores from the aircon.
My property manager doesn't care and is full of BS making excuses, today I blasted her for not having this done earlier. I demanded to speak to the cleaner and find out all of the specifics to make sure I'm still not being poisoned. I'm worried about this because when I turn on the air con at night when I go to bed I can smell a musty smell.
A woman I was dating last year complained that she would get acne when she was staying at my place, it all makes sense now, it was the mold causing that.
It's very warm here but I'm going to try to live without the air con for a while. I wonder though if mold spores will come out even if it is off? Instead of wearing pants and a tee like normal I'm wearing a singlet, swim shorts and jandals instead of shoes, drinking plenty of water, I also have some windows wide open.
It seems as though mold is normal for air con systems... Gotta learn to live without it.
Hill Country posted this on his thread about his mice, Dr Bush is at the end (24 minute) and talks about 7 days of unrelenting airing out for a house....
We have also had water damage...
Some interesting ideas being shared in that vid but I have to disagree with the guy talking about mold. In an artificial environment like a home you can't create a forest biome. We have no choice but to keep a home dry and sterile to keep it healthy.
Quote from tim on October 23, 2019, 7:22 amSome interesting ideas being shared in that vid but I have to disagree with the guy talking about mold. In an artificial environment like a home you can't create a forest biome. We have no choice but to keep a home dry and sterile to keep it healthy.
Tim - sorry to learn of your mold issues. What a pain, eh? Agree on the Zach Bush thing, I just thought it was funny, especially in context where he's taking the alt-luminaries to task for making the same basic mistake as conventional medicine. That none of these guys has figured out VA toxicity is almost a statistical impossibility, but it is what it is I guess.
I think Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker has made the definitive case for the serious toxicity of the particular species that end-up inhabiting WDB's (water-damaged buildings). Zach Bush is making a sort of logical-fallacy argument, that doesn't consider concentration and relative species survival-rates, much less the fact that our houses and apartments are still a closed-system even if we do what he recommends, and it is the closed-system part of it that makes it so conducive to these critters. The mold-toxins are their defenses against other organisms, and they've been battling it out for millions of years. No wonder they can cause a cytokine-storm in humans. I'm beginning to think that any of the inflammatory culprits like mold-toxins, necessarily stir-up the retinoids, which would add to the initial disturbance. Dr. Shoemaker using Cholestyramine is kind of a clue there.
The spores can be in the billions easily, and even desiccated spores that are dead will fragment and carry toxins through the air. Buildings breathe, so the heater/AC unit doesn't have to be on as I understand it. It's obviously worse when they are turned on, as we learned down in Austin. Hope something works out for you on that problem.
It's probably a good idea to pull outside air into the heating/cooling system (even it if makes it less efficient)
I wonder about those air cleaning systems that I've seen some people using (the humidifier sized ones that you place in a room).
Borax is amazing against mold, when you do see it. Leave a film of borax water in questionable places.
I think we were meant to be able to withstand things like molds, pollens, dust etc. An overactive immune system gets miserable around these things. And systems with bad "epidermi"-- like the inside of my nose.
Thanks John, yeah it is a pain for sure.
I'll speak to the cleaner and do some research about how I can minimize the risks. From what I understand the air con mold grows when dust enters the system and combines with moisture which is present when the air con is on.
Your description of the effects of mold are definitely motivation to do some intense cleaning and vacuuming with my hepa vacuum lol
Those guys are eccentric, one guy is talking about the benefits of dog feces and another is discussing healing with light and sound in a non specific way as though that is a new concept. The mold argument was outrageously stupid yet nobody said anything, this indicates to me that they are more concerned with patting each other on the back rather than filtering out BS.
@Tim - they do put on a clown-show for sure. I've been wondering if they're all doing some kind of gate-keeping, pulling new rabbits out of the hat every few months, keeping people hopeful that one day there will be an answer for their illness. My wife was at a egg producer conference awhile back and was leaving with some farmers when Zach Bush got up to speak. They said something about "snake oil" and she laughed. We had just watched him pitch his Restore product to a small group in Oregon on YouTube and she didn't think much of his two-slide's worth of "evidence" for tight-junction repair. He was fading a bunch of heat on a Reddit microbiome thread for non-disclosure regarding the wonder humic? content of his formula. Eccentric is a good word to use. How about Mercola just discovering "dirty power" and how he'll never "ground" again after 10 years of promoting it. What a hoot.