Have you been sniffing out some mold in and around your home or building? You might not be wrong because a small leak in windows, roofs, pipes, or a recently flooded area are some of the best thriving grounds for mold. If you have a pile of cardboard, paper products, ceiling tiles, paints, dust, drywall, insulation, fabric, carpet, upholstery, or wooden items lying around, you risk having mold.
You might notice mold outside commercial or residential buildings as well. Just like it can creep in through open doorways, vents, windows, air conditioning, or heating systems, moldy particulates in the air can also attach themselves on shoes, clothing, and pets, and in the process, get carried back home. If mold spores drop on humid and moist areas like leakage-affected places, they begin to grow.
Now, we know how mold grows and how it is everywhere around us, but should we be concerned? Surely it cannot be detrimental? Well, that’s where most of us go wrong. Mold can have physical and psychological impacts that often pose fatal threats. Below, we have outlined a few ill effects of staying around mold.
Ill Effects of Mold
Some people are more sensitive to the negative impact of mold than others, but it is surely not food for anyone. Exposure to mold can cause wheezing, stuffy nose, itchy or red eyes. If you have an allergy to mold or if you have asthma, exposure to mold can lead to more intense reactions. Workers exposed to large amounts of mold in occupational settings might experience severe reactions. Farmers working in or around moldy hay can be party to shortness of breath.
As per the findings of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2004, there is sufficient evidence to link exposure to mold indoors with upper respiratory tract-centric issues, wheezes, and coughs in those who were otherwise recorded to be healthy. Those with asthma or hypersensitivity pneumonitis are comparatively more susceptible to immune-mediated conditions exacerbated by mold. Potential links between early exposure to mold and development of asthma in children, especially those genetically susceptible to asthma development, have long been drawn. Selected interventions to improve housing conditions have been touted as a viable way to bring down asthma and respiratory tract related allergy-related morbidity.
A study of the link between acute idiopathic pulmonary hemorrhage in infants, lethargy, memory loss, and molds, is still underway. The hardest part is that there is no blood test for mold. You can get an allergy testing done for detecting possible allergies to mold, but there are no clinically proven tests to pinpoint when and where a particular mold exposure could have taken place.
If you suffer from immune suppression or any underlying lung disease, you can be more susceptible to fungal infections as well. As for those with chronic respiratory disease such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and asthma, they might experience difficulty breathing. They will also be at an increased risk for infection stemming from molds.
How To Keep Mold At Bay
There are a few ways you can help your mold situation, but they are mostly preventive. Keep inspecting buildings for signs of water damage or visible mold as a part of your routine maintenance checking. Cases of condensation, water leaks, flooding, and infiltration can cause mold growth, so always be on the lookout for those signs.
Control humidity levels at home, promptly repair leaky windows, roofs, or pipes, clean and dry flooded areas rapidly, and ventilate laundry, shower, and cooking areas. But if you still notice signs of mold, let mold removal professionals take care of the problem. After all, you do not want to risk contamination. Regardless of the kind of mold present around you, the best and only way out is to remove it by following the recommended safety guidelines.
The impact mold has on people varies greatly, be it for the type of mold or the amount, but we cannot rely on culturing or sampling the specimens to gauge their risks to our health. So, the best way out is to be preventive rather than wait for mold to grow and then figure out which mold removal professional near you can rid your house of it. But when worse comes to worst, do not hesitate to call in a mold removal professional.