Mold Prevention Is The Key To A Healthy Environment
The saying goes better safe than sorry for a reason. Many things, including mold, can be prevented from making a harmful impact on your health by following a few simple steps. Most of them can be done on a daily basis, without interrupting any other daily habits.
First of all, fresh air is your weapon in the fight against mold. It will lower the humidity level and dry wet surfaces such as walls, windows, curtains, etc. Try to keep your windows open as often as possible, especially in rooms such as the kitchen and bathroom. In case there are no windows, or if its too cold outside, your next best weapon are air vents, and even dehumidifiers if the humidity level is extremely high.
Secondly, you have to ensure your house is clean, because dust, spoiled food, and any similar dirt are molds favorite food. Of course, it doesnt mean you should be obsessed with cleaning, but things like washing the dishes every day, cleaning the excess water after the shower and vacuuming at least once a week will do the job.
And last but not least, if mold is already present in your home, there is little you can do on your own. In that case it is best to call professionals to test and confirm the mold type after which they will give you information about the remediation process and future prevention.
If youd like to get in touch with a professional mold inspector, contact Mold Busters. We provide all-inclusive mold testing, inspection and removal services at affordable prices.
About Dr Jill Crista:
Dr. Jill Crista is a naturopathic doctor, bestselling author, and nationally recognized health educator on mold-related illness. She helps people recover their health after exposure to toxic mold.
Her book, Break The Mold, provides tools for anyone wanting actionable steps to conquer health challenges related to mold exposure.
What Causes Mold In A House What Does Mold Smell Like
Do you smell that? Did you forget to wash your gym clothes? Does the dog need a bath? I cleaned everything, and I cant find the stench! Its so musty! What could it be?! If this sounds like your home or office, you might have a problem with mold and MVOCs.
MVOCs or Microbial Volatile Organic Compounds are compounds created by fungi and bacteria during their metabolic processes. MVOCs can be detected by simply smelling the air. The smell of MVOCs has been compared to stinky socks, locker room odor, wet dog, or old cheese. They give off a distinctly musty, moldy smell. There are over 200 compounds that have been identified as MVOCs. MVOCs can be dangerous and even toxic to humans. MVOCs can be mycotoxins or can cause allergy symptoms. It depends on which ones are present. If you smell odors like this, you may have a mold problem in your building.
There are also compounds called VOCs or volatile organic compounds that can be produced by household cleaners, paints, aerosols, disinfectants, air fresheners, glues, and even furniture. VOCs are not caused by mold or other microbes, and give off a distinctly chemical scent.VOCs can cause health problems as well.
What Kinds Of Damage Can MVOCs Cause?
There have been over 200 different chemical compounds identified as MVOCs that are produced by fungi and bacteria. The chemicals produced include alcohols, arsenics, benzenes, toluenes, acids, sulfur compounds, and many more.
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Symptoms Of Black Mold Exposure
Many types of indoor mold, not just black mold, can cause symptoms if you are sensitive to them or are exposed to them for a prolonged period of time. Symptoms of mold exposure include:
Symptoms of mold exposure may be worse in people who are most at risk, including:
- People with an allergy to mold
- People with a weakened immune system, who may develop infections
- Older people
How Your Carpet Could Be Making You Sick
Comments 4 | 2018 Jan 22 | Author John Ward
Carpets can make your home look more tidy and appealing. With a variety of colour options, pile heights and patterns, your choice of carpet adds a unique personal touch and an authentic feel to your rooms overall appearance.
Apart from making your space look more pleasant, carpet floors also cushion your feet from hard or concrete flooring, making it more comfortable for you to walk and stand on.
Compared to other materials like hardwood or tile, carpets also assist in insulating your home. Thicker carpets make room temperatures much warmer, and thus, they help you save on electricity bills and cut down on natural gas usage to maintain a cozy atmosphere.
Carpeting also works as a sound barrier to block sound transmissions between rooms, making your home more peaceful and quiet. It also goes without saying that carpeted surfaces increase safety by preventing slips and falls.
Given all these advantages of carpet floors, it is important to understand that using carpets in your home or office requires a good amount of maintenance, not only to preserve their appearance, but also to ensure the good health of occupants.
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How Can I Prevent An Allergic Reaction To Mold
There is no cure for allergies. But you can reduce your allergy symptoms by avoiding contact with the mold spores. Several measures will help:
Reduce Your Exposure to Mold Spores Outside
- Limit your outdoor activities when mold counts are high. This will lessen the amount of mold spores you inhale and your symptoms.
- Wear a dust mask when cutting grass, digging around plants, picking up leaves and disturbing other plant materials.
Reduce Your Exposure to Mold Spores Inside
- Use central air conditioning with a CERTIFIED asthma & allergy friendly® filter attachment. This can help trap mold spores from your entire home. Freestanding air cleaners only filter air in a limited area. Avoid devices that treat air with heat, electrostatic ions or ozone.
- Lower your indoor humidity. No air cleaners will help if excess moisture remains. If indoor humidity is above 50%, fungi will thrive. A hygrometer is a tool used to measure humidity. The goal is to keep humidity below 45%, but below 35% is better. If you have to use a humidifier, clean the fluid reservoir at least twice a week to prevent mold growth. Air conditioners and dehumidifiers can also be a source of mold.
- Prevent mold and mildew build up inside the home. Pay close attention to mold in bathrooms, basements and laundry areas. Be aggressive about reducing dampness.
To Reduce Mold in Your Bathrooms:
To Reduce Mold in Your Kitchen:
To Reduce Mold in Your Laundry Area:
To Reduce Mold in Your Bedrooms:
To Reduce Mold in Your Basement:
Could My Rash Be Something Besides An Allergic Reaction
There are several options for rashes besides an allergic reaction, let alone an allergic reaction to mold. Some other forms of skin conditions that may be the source of your discomfort include:
If you feel like your symptoms might be caused by any of these conditions, you can seek a doctors advice online to discuss your rash and any other symptoms you may be having.
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Treating A Skin Rash Caused By Mold
Antihistamines are often used to halt or decrease allergic responses. You can buy antihistamine drugs like Benadryl or Allegra over the counter or you can get a prescription for antihistamines from your doctor. You can also get antihistamine creams to apply directly to your rash to relieve itching. Taking cool baths with baking soda or colloidal oatmeal added to the water is a simple home remedy that will help relieve itching and discomfort, as well.
As long as you continue to be exposed to mold, though, youll probably continue to have symptoms, even with treatment. To get rid of a mold-related rash for good, youll need to have all mold removed from your home.
Testing For Mold Toxicity
If you find mold in your home or workplace, it is important to test for mold toxicity in your body. Oftentimes, people who are struggling to get healthy , are dealing with mold toxicity.
Mold toxins increase the burden on the liver and create chronic inflammation in the body. These toxins are highly indicated in neurological disorders and symptoms like brain fog, depression, and anxiety. One very effective option for testing mold toxins in the body is the GPL-MycoTOX Profile.
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Know When To Clean And When To Call
Its not hard to take care of mold as a homeowner, but its a good idea to know when to call in the pros. If you smell a musty odor in your home you cant identify, or have health problems associated with mold, its time to call in the professionals. If an area of mold covers more than around 10 square feet, there is a good chance the mold problem is more than an isolated issue, and its time to call the professionals.
Especially if you dont live in our service area, check out our post: How to Choose the Best Black Mold Removal Company. We help you know all the questions to ask and give you all the correct answers.
The company you choose should know all the answers to the questions in our article. Dont get scammed! Get smart! Always ask a lot of questions before hiring anyone to work on your home.
Is There A Test To Determine If I Have Been Exposed To Mold
Some physicians have recommended testing for mold-specific antibodies. Thepresence of antibodies only indicates that you have been exposed to a substanceat some time. It does not tell you when you were exposed, where the exposuretook place, or how much of the mold you were exposed to. Having a positive testfor mold-specific antibodies alone is generally considered insufficient toprove that health effects reported by individuals in moisture-damaged buildingsare caused by exposure to mold.
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What Does Mold Do To Your Skin
Do you know how acne is typically treated?
In conventional medical settings, antibiotics, like tetracycline, are the first line of treatment.
Why would you use something that affects your gut like antibiotics to treat your skin?
The gut-skin connection, thats why. The health of your skin is strongly connected to the health of your gut.
In the early 90s and 00s, a medication known as Accutane was commonly prescribed for moderate to severe acne. And boy did it work well at clearing up acne. But it had an intense side-effect Accutane was strongly associated with causing inflammatory bowel disease .
Other connections between your gut and your skin can be seen through the lens of a leaking gut. One study showed that patients with acne had elevated levels of something called lipopolysaccharides . LPS is a common marker used to determine if you have a leaky gut.
Celiac disease can manifest as a condition known as dermatitis herpetiformis . More than 10% of celiac disease manifests this way. In DH, patients will often have zero symptoms commonly associated with celiac disease bloating, diarrhea, abdominal pain, etc. Instead, the most common symptom is an incredibly itchy rash on your skin.
Instead, skin rashes from mold will often result from an internal infection. The majority of the time, you wont even know youve been exposed to mold. Youll just experience a skin rash and be unsure where it came from.
A Qualified Environmental Lab Took Samples Of The Mold In My Home And Gave Me The Results Can Cdc Interpret These Results
Standards for judging what is an acceptable, tolerable or normal quantity of mold have not been established. Sampling for mold can be expensive, and standards for judging what is and what is not an acceptable quantity of mold have not been set. The best practice is to remove the mold and work to prevent future growth. If you do decide to pay for environmental sampling for molds, before the work starts, you should ask the consultants who will do the work to establish criteria for interpreting the test results. They should tell you in advance what they will do or what recommendations they will make based on the sampling results. The results of samples taken in your unique situation cannot be interpreted without physical inspection of the contaminated area or without considering the buildings characteristics and the factors that led to the present condition.
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What Are Pathogenic Reactions To Mold
Pathogenic reactions to mold exposure are divided into three categories:
Complications From A Skin Rash Caused By Mold
As mentioned earlier, a rash from mold can be very itchy and its hard not to scratch. Excessive scratching often breaks the skin and then infection can set in. Signs of infection include redness, swelling, and warmth to the touch in the affected area, increasing levels of pain, discharge from wound , and a fever. Usually some oral antibiotics will clear up an infection of this sort but in some cases, the infection is too severe or doesnt respond to the oral antibiotics, and then more intensive treatment, such as hospitalization and intravenous antibiotics, is required. See your doctor as soon as possible if you develop signs of infection after scratching a rash.
Someone recovering from a severe infection of a rash from mold should absolutely recover in a mold-free environment. Exposure to mold during the recovery process will only cause more rash and itching, and with your immune system depressed from dealing with the infection, youll be less able to fight off the harmful effects of mold.
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Toxic Mold Exposure: What Would Happen If Someone Kept Getting Their Skin Exposed To Mold
The dangers of toxic mold exposure when it comes to the respiratory system are, at this point, fairly well-known and well-established. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , toxic mold exposure can cause symptoms such as nasal stuffiness, eye irritation, wheezing, and skin irritation. People with serious allergies to molds may have more severe reactions including fever and shortness of breath and those with chronic lung illnesses, like obstructive lung disease, may even develop mold infections in their lungs.
But what else can be a result of toxic mold exposure? Can toxic mold exposure cause a skin rash?
Can Mold Exposure Cause A Skin Rash
Is it possible that you have mold in your home? Have you been aware of a lingering, musty smell? Damp air? Leaking walls or ceilings? Have your residents or guests been complaining of allergy symptoms when in your house? If so, it is likely that have mold colonizing in your home.
What symptoms are caused by mold?Mold is known to cause allergies in humans ranging from sneezing and coughing to chronic headaches and to serious neurological conditions such as dementia. Reactions to mold depend on the individual exposed to the spores and what type of spores are present.
Can mold cause rashes?Rashes from mold exposure are one of the most common symptoms experienced. Skin irritation from mold happens when the immune system of the person exposed to the mold reacts to the spores in or on the bodies.
How can mold cause a skin rash?As mold spores land on the person or enter through breathing cavities, the immune system detects a foreign invasion. While some mold can be seriously dangerous, skin rashes are often a symptom of immune system overreaction.
The immune system sets up to defend the body against the mold, triggering the person to sneeze, cough or develop rashes in an effort to get rid of the foreign bodies. The more antibodies the immune system produced, the more inflammation occurs in the body and the worse the symptoms become.
What does a rash caused by mold feel like?Most rashes caused by mold are red, composed of small bumps and extremely itchy.
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Why Mold Causes Problems
Molds alone dont usually cause many health problems. Its when they land on damp surfaces and reproduce that you feel their nasty health effects.
Mold spores produce allergens substances that can cause you to have allergic reactions resulting in hay-fever-like symptoms: itchy, red eyes, runny nose and asthma. If these persist, you can develop respiratory infections. Its rare, but exposure to mold spores can eventually cause organ damage, cognitive difficulties and even death.
Whats more, mold spores can irritate your lungs even if youre not allergic to mold. When introduced to your body, spores irritate your airways in your nose, mouth and throat, Dr. Ibrahim says. They can also cause burning and bleeding if they become lodged in your mucus membranes, such as in your sinuses and lungs.
Hire A Professional To Clean Your Carpet
A dirty carpet does not just look ugly and smell disgusting, but it also threatens your health due to dust, pet hairs, mold, bacteria and other microscopic organisms that are trapped within its fibres.If your carpet is not yet too old or worn enough for replacement, doing a deep clean is a great idea.A professional carpet cleaner will not only remove stains, odours and dirt, but also provide specific solutions to minimize the cause of allergens and pathogens in your carpeted flooring.Take care of your carpet like you would your body because ultimately your carpet affects your health. Call now for more information about our carpet cleaning services.
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