We would like to be sharing some of the questions we receive from our readers and the responses that we give. There may be some people out there who may benefit from these questions and answers. Please feel free to send your questions even though we may not have answers to every question.
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—–Original Message—–
From:
Sent: November 16, 2005 7:16 AM
To: info@moldbacteria.com
Subject: Pollutants is my house
Dear mr. Jackson Kung’u”,
My apartment is still not well cleaned of all the stuff that causes me to cough (my lungs out somewhat) constantly. I was in the house without a mask for an hour and a half and had coughs for half a day and headaches again.
I would like to discuss what was found in the air and determined in the first place:
1. LIVING ROOM
aspergillus niger (105 cfu), eurotium emstelodami (11 cfu), penicillium chrysogenum (23 cfu).
2. BEDROOM
aspergillus niger (110 cfu), aspergillus chraceus (2 cfu), cladosprorium herbarum (29 cfu), eurotium amstelodami (40 cfu), eurotium chevalieri (12 cfu), eurotium herbariorum (15 cfu), penicillium chrysogenum (40 cfu), penicillium corylophilum (10 cfu).
A cleaning company with good reputation suggested a (rather expensive) way of cleaning my apartment of all the pollutants. The owner voted for a cheaper version and following is the result after cleaning:
1. LIVING ROOM
aspergillus niger (21 cfu), aspergillus versicolor (5 cfu), cladosporium sp.
(42 cfu), eurotium chevalieri (9 cfu), penicillium chrysogenum (17cfu) and penicillium glabrum (2 cfu).
2. BEDROOM
aspergillus niger (43 cfu), aspergillus versicolor (6 cfu), cladosporum sp.
(50 cfu), eurotium emstelodami (4 cfu), eurotium chevalieri (13 cfu), mucelia sterilia (5 cfu), and penicillium chrysogenum (68 cfu).
So, HOW CLEAN IS MY HOUSE. I believe there is still too many pollutants to call it “safe to live”.
Also, there have been some tests from the stuff that is visible and these contain the same names. But in the air is what I breath and what gives me the headaches and coughs. Please advise.
Thank you very much for your understanding and help in this matter. I need to educate myself or I may (sooner or later) die if and when I am forced to breath in all these pollutants.
Best regards,
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Dear:
Two of the reasons why it is difficult to deal with health problems associated with mould are because people differ in levels of mould they can tolerate and it is difficult to completely eradicate mould from our living environments. I have no information on which method was used to sample (i.e., settle plates or volumetric sampling) air in your apartment so I may not be able to comment on your results. However, some of the moulds reported are known to be a health hazard. You may want to find out from the company that did the clean-up whether it is possible to reduce the counts further to a level you can tolerate. You may also consider moving to another apartment if this could help.
Different categories of moulds have different water requirements. Some moulds such as Stachybotrys, Ulocladium, Acremonium, Fusarium, Trichoderma and Chaetomium thrive well on very wet building materials. Some of these moulds have come to be associated with water damaged buildings and their presence in a building is an indication of a moisture problem.