Friday, September 28, 2007

Info on Mold Allergies

There are people who have allergies all over the world and no matter what the allergy may be, anyone with one will tell you just how much of an inconvenience it tends to be. Symptoms usually show themselves the most often during the early spring through the late fall, whether it is an allergy to grass, pollen, or mold. Pet dander can be a problem with some individuals and this is one of the only allergies that is really only an inconvenience year round. Molds living in your home can also aggravate your allergies and even bring about new ones and are also one of the only allergies that are a threat the whole year, since molds that live indoors do not freeze like those outside.

A high mold spore level in your home can do a lot to aggravate your already existing allergies and can even cause an allergy to the specific kind of mold living in your home to develop. The symptoms from mold exposure can range from a common episode of sneezing or a runny nose all the way to a reaction that requires an ambulance. Children and elderly people in particular need to pay careful attention to the level of their allergen that they expose themselves to every day. Watch the news for each of the pollen, mold spore, and grass counts. If the counts are high for that day, consider not letting children or elderly people with allergies or respiratory conditions go out that day.

If you have mold allergies and think you are having symptoms, you should avoid eating foods that contain mold, such as cheeses that are made with it, bread, beer, and even other funguses like mushrooms. All of these can make your symptoms even worse.

Most types of mold in the world are not harmful to human beings and while there are a few different ones that can cause serious medical conditions, only a few tend to cause allergic reactions immediately. The most common molds that produce allergic reactions are those in the Penicillium, Alternaria, and Clasosporium genii.

If you are concerned about mold living in your home, you should do your best to reduce the humidity level in it. Keeping your home bone dry is not practical, since air that is too dry can also cause problems like nosebleeds, but keeping it at a healthy medium is best for all. A home that is too moist inside is a breeding ground for mold.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
water damage restoration companies and
Dallas Residential Water Damage Restoration Contractors.

Child Mold Exposure

When you have children, you realize that the most important thing to you at that point is making sure that they stay healthy and that if there is anything that you can do to improve the quality of their health, you make sure that you do that. No matter what happens, your foremost concern is their health and welfare.

Having mold growing in your home is a pretty heavy inconvenience for any homeowner, but for parents of small children, it can be a nightmare. The health of small children is very fragile at that point of their lives and most parents understand this, but do not tend to realize just how serious of a threat to their health can exist inside their own homes. We tend to be the most concerned with the threats that come from outside our homes, but one of the most serious threats can be growing almost anywhere.

The areas of our homes that are the most moist also tend to be the ones that we frequent the most, such as the bathroom and the kitchen, and unfortunately, these are the two areas of the home that are the most at risk for mold growth. The food that your children eat is not the only thing in your home that can become moldy. The ceilings, floors, and walls can become just as moldy as a stale loaf of bread, but you may not notice it until it is too late. Symptoms of mold exposure often show themselves in those members of our households that are the most sensitive to environmental changes, such as children, pets, and elderly people.

Symptoms of mold exposure are very similar to the symptoms of most allergies that involve pollen, grass, or pet dander and can include sneezing, runny noses, blocked noses, eye irritation, itchy skin, and etcetera. Infants are in the most danger and if you discover mold growing anywhere in the house, your baby needs to be taken to a clean environment quickly and needs to stay there until the contamination is removed. Infants are susceptible to developing hemorrhagic pneumonia from mold exposure among other conditions, so it should be taken very seriously. Even if the mold growth is old and dead, it can still cause allergy symptoms, reactions, and can aggravate any pre-existing respiratory conditions that may exist in your home.

To keep your children healthy, do not allow them to stay in a home that is contaminated with mold and any items in your home that are found to be molded, especially toys, should be thrown away. Porous items like stuffed animals and bedding need to be thrown away, since it is difficult to completely disinfect these items and small children often put these things in their mouths.

Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
South Carolina flood water damage restoration and other states such as
Connecticut water damage restoration companies across the united states.

Child Mold Exposure Symptoms

If your home contains almost any kind of mold, your children and pets are probably going to be the first ones that show symptoms, especially if they have any allergies or respiratory conditions like asthma or become sick easily. If you notice your child having any trouble with his or her respiratory system and cannot seem to find the cause, checking your household for mold growth might be a good idea.

The symptoms of mold exposure are typically very similar to allergy symptoms, so you may initially mistake them for the symptoms of the child’s allergies. Your child’s pediatrician may claim that it is just seasonal allergies, but in reality, it may be your home that has the issue. Persistent respiratory symptoms like sneezing, hoarseness, rhinitis, eye irritation, and blocked noses can occur as well as dry coughing, productive coughing, and sometimes wheezing. Skin symptoms such as itching and redness also tend to arise in certain uncovered areas of the body, which suggests that the child has touched the growth.

Other symptoms like fever, joint pain, headaches, and excessive tiredness have also been reported. Your child also may show an intolerance to certain foods like mushrooms, bread, and cheeses, while older members of your household may show intolerance to things like wine and beer. Children that are in high-exposure mold conditions such as where the toxic mold Stachybotrys are concerned can exhibit things such as hemoptysis and nose bleeds.

Children in homes containing mold may also show more intolerance to things like cigarette smoke or household chemicals that emit vapors into the air.

If your child does not have any known allergies and they are showing these symptoms with no readily apparent cause, have your home tested for mold by hiring a professional or performing a do it yourself test.

If your home does have mold growth, your child needs to be removed from the area as soon as possible and relocated until the growth is removed. You should realize that even dead mold growth can cause allergic reactions and that until it is removed, your child’s health is at significant risk.

Any items in your home that have become moldy, especially if it is children’s toys such as stuffed animals or bedding, will need to be thrown away. Do not allow children to play with items that have been exposed to flood waters or mold growth.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
north carolina flood water damage restoration and other states such as
New Jersey mold remediation companies across the united states.

Child Mold Allergy Problems

Allergies are an inconvenience for everyone who has them and there are billions of people in the world who suffer from them every day. Whether it is an allergy to pollen, grass, pet dander, or mold, the symptoms are usually about the same. They can be anything from a runny nose and a pair of itchy eyes all the way to swelling of the face and neck or even the entire body. Most allergy symptoms are only prevalent from the spring to fall, but allergies that are caused by things like pet dander and mold show themselves the whole year because they are not related to the outdoor growing season.

Mold living in your home does not freeze and lie dormant like it does in the outdoor environment and can pose a serious health risk for anyone, not just those members of your household that have allergies. People that have allergies, however, are more likely to feel the affects of mold exposure sooner than the rest of us. Mold exposure tends to aggravate allergies and respiratory conditions that already exist, like emphysema or asthma. You need to be particularly careful if you have an infant or a small child in your house when there is mold, since their immune systems are currently still very much in development. Disturbing this natural development process can damage the child’s immune system irreparably, so removing your child from this situation until the mold is removed is the best thing to do.

Infants exposed to mold have been known to develop a disease known as hemorrhagic pneumonia (bleeding in the lungs) and many times this ends in death.

Those who have allergies and are exposed to mold growth in the home or elsewhere will usually show an intolerance to certain foods that contain fungi, such as yeast, mushrooms, or mold. Cheeses such as blue cheese or Roquefort, bread, beer, mushrooms, and etcetera will typically make the normal allergy symptoms of the person even worse.

Note if the symptoms lessen or go away completely if you leave the home. This will be a sign that there is a problem in the home that is causing the symptoms to become worse and you may need to call a professional mold inspector if there is no visible mold issue.

Coming into direct skin contact with the mold will often leave rashes on even those who are not allergic. Take a good look around your house, especially in areas that are inherently moist like the bathroom, kitchen, basement, or laundry room. These are the areas that are most likely to harbor mold growth in your home.



Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Connecticut Mold Remediation services and other states such as
north carolina mold remediation companies across the united states.

Friday, September 14, 2007

The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Mold

If you are a new homeowner or even an old one that is just wanting to do a little studying on what this whole concern about mold is that you have been hearing about on the news and in magazines, then there are a few basic things that you need to know about mold

What causes mold to grow?

Well, mold requires a few different things to grow and these are nutrients, air, and moisture. Molds can grow in cooler temperatures down to around 40 degrees Fahrenheit and up to even around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. If it gets cooler than 40 F, most molds will become simply dormant and cease growing. They are hard to kill by change in temperature alone. Temperatures above 100 F have been reported to kill mold and its spores, but the exact temperatures that are needed to kill specific species of mold are uncertain.

How does mold get into your house?

The truth is that mold is always in your home, but it only grows there when conditions are favorable. Spilled water on carpet that is never cleaned up, condensation on windows or water pipes is a sign of high humidity that helps mold grow, as well, and even something as seemingly harmless as packing your clothes too tightly in the closet can cause mold problems.

Do harmful molds exist?

Yes! While there are only a few different kinds of mold that cause human health issues compared to the thousands of different varieties of mold there are in the world, mold growing in your home can be a serious health risk.

Does mold cause health issues in everyone? Are they always the same?

No, mold does not typically affect one person the same as another. One person might be allergic to the mold growing in the home and another may not. Some molds can cause infections that are serious enough to see a doctor for and some can cause brain damage, miscarriages, birth defects, and in some cases, even death.

What can I do to prevent mold growth in my house or business?

There are a lot of things that you can do to prevent mold from growing both on the constructed parts of your home and the items that you have inside it, such as furniture, clothes, and etcetera. There are numerous articles online to help you in preventing mold from growing, but the general consensus is to not have a high level of humidity in any area of your home, such as in a bathroom that does not have a vent to allow steam to exit the room while bathing. A similar vent should be installed in the kitchen near the stove.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
Mold Remediation and
water damage restoration> companies across the united states.

Mold Just May Be Your Fresh Fruits Greatest Enemy

Fruit rot in blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries are usually the result of one chief offender and that offender is known as gray mold. Gray mold is able to affect not only the fruit itself, but the petals, stems, and the flower stalk. Fruit are a popular breeding ground for mold, due to the juices in the fruit. A wet environment is the ideal place for mold to try and grow, and the juices contained in the fruit helped provide just the environment mold calls for. Gray mold is considered the most serious disease, especially during a warm and rainy growing season.

The kind of fruit with the least amount of protection against gray mold infection is young fruit blossoms. And when the infection becomes apparent in large clusters of fruit. The blossoms will show the infection as a soft, light brown and the spot will continue grow at a fast rate. The fruit will become powdery and gray if the fruit is left defenseless against the mold. This is where the name “gray mold” originated from.

The areas of the fruit that are most susceptible to infection are located near the middle of the plant where the branches and leaves cause high humidity and air circulation is lacking. If the fruit has been exposed to the ground where soil has captured water condensation the risk is higher, as that condensation will attract bacteria and will cause mold to grow. As the mold grows, the rot will begin to set in and any fruits nearby could be infected if not tended to in a timely manner.

And while mature fruits are less susceptible after they are picked, they are susceptible never the less. However, recently harvested green fruits will become just as infected, and the disease isn’t usually detected until the fruit is fully ready to be harvested. Bruising or breaking of the skin is a major cause of the infection in mature fruits. This is, once again, because of the juice on the inside of the fruit attracting bacteria. The mature fruit can be completely rotted in as short an amount of time as forty eight hours.

There are, however, ways to prevent gray mold from infesting your fruit. First, you should select where to plant a fruit where there is a decent amount of soil drainage and air circulation. They need to be exposed directly to sunlight. You should also make sure to keep the garden weeded, as it helps airflow.



Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of
Texas Water Damage Restoration and
Houston Water Damage Restoration Which are Certified IICRC Water damage and mold remediation contractors.

A Few Tips For Employers To Protect Employees And Business Against Mold

When we go to our daily work place, we usually like to believe it to be a very safe environment. However, one safety aspect that is often and sadly overlooked is that of mold infestation. We usually believe that mold is not a problem to have to deal with in the work place and that mold is a problem that is only dealt with in the home. However, any building is equally susceptible to mold infestation. If you are an employer, you are therefore responsible for the safety of every person who is inside the building. If you do not make sure that mold is not in the building, you could be liable for any medical expenses that one of your employees may have as a result of exposure to mold in the work place. If you suspect that there may be mold in your building, you must first conduct your own testing. If you do, indeed, find mold, it is your responsibility to send off the mold samples to a laboratory that specializes in mold identification. You should receive your results within a few weeks to a month.

The first thing you should do upon finding out that there is a mold infestation, and what kind of mold it is, is to inform your employs that there is a problem. You should inform them of what measures are to be taken. You should next call an inspector as to determine how extensive the contamination is and if the case is mild, and can be dealt with in a short amount of time, or if the case is serious and could take up to several weeks to remedy. If the case is extreme, you should notify your employees that they are being laid off for the duration of the remediation process. You should tell them when the process will begin, and give an approximation of when the process will end.

You should also ask your employees if they have been experience any kind of health problems since working for you. Specific health problems that you should look for are respiratory problems, skin rashes, and any other kinds of complications commonly associated with mold.

If your building is indeed contaminated, it should never be ignored, be it your home or work place. If you can afford to pay for the medical bills of others, you still do not want there to be health problems for yourself.

Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of
Texas Water Damage Restoration and
Houston Water Damage Restoration Which are Certified IICRC Water damage and mold remediation contractors.

Asian Food Is Highly Popular And Is Made With Mold

You can hardly find a person who does not like Asian food and anyone who enjoys soy sauce is not alone. In roughly two thousand years soy sauce has become one of the most popular and consumed condiments in history. Soy sauce originated in Asia, because in ancient times Asians had to package meat and fish tightly in salt in order to preserve the meat and excess liquid would be drained as a result. The liquid, which has soaked in the meat and salts flavor, would be used as a seasoning for other foods, like noodles or rice. However, when Buddhism began to rise in popularity, there was a shift from eating meat to eating vegetables and, therefore, the recipe for this seasoning also had to change. The recipe went to a salty paste of fermented grains. It was this recipe that became a prototype for soy sauce.

The recipe spread to Japan where it was modified and improved and a woman opened the world’s very first commercial brewery specializing in soy sauce. It was then that soy sauce’s popularity began to skyrocket.

Soy sauce, in the modern day, is made using mashed soy beans, wheat, salt, and a fermenting agent which is the very same kind as used in the production of sake, Aspergillus oryzae. Aspergillus oryzae is a popular alternative. This mold is the most important ingredient in the making of soy sauce. It is this mold that makes it true soy sauce.

The previously mentioned Aspergillus oryzae is used in other things as well, such as Japanese rice wine. The mold is used to ferment rice that has been steam and milled down to around 50 percent of its original mass and weight in order to remove amino acids, proteins, and fats that can make the smell of the wine less than pleasant.

Sake brewers take the cultivation of this mold at the utmost seriousness, because the mold is capable of absorbing surrounding odors. The same goes for flavors. For example, if the wood of the brewing wood is cedar, a slight cedar flavor will be absorbed. The mold is helpful for precisely these reasons. Sake and wine have a tendency to age in very different manners. Sake should be drunk almost as soon as it is purchased. While sake can, at times, taste better with age, it usually just tastes less than spectacular. Try some of these foods, You might find the you like them if you have not tried them.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of
Texas Water Damage Restoration and
Dallas Water Damage Restoration Which are Certified IICRC Water damage and mold remediation contractors.

Your Allergies May Be More Related To Mold Than You Think

With the teeming masses of people in the world that suffer from allergies, no matter the number of medications used, it is nearly impossible for them to find an escape from their allergens. The reasons for seasonal allergy symptoms are many. Most allergies are attributed to grasses, pollens, and various kinds of mold. Now, these three allergens are incapable of growing during the winter time. And while some molds can withstand colder temperatures than others, the majority of molds cannot continue to grow in these cold temperatures. Instead they manage to lie dormant for quite some time. They go into a kind of suspended animation when frozen, and if they thaw they will continue to live and they are equally as dangerous as before the time they were frozen.

However, in some areas of the world there is not a winter, and therefore, no freezing temperatures. And in these areas, people who live in apartment complexes and places of this nature are faced with considerable risk of infection, especially those who are highly allergic to these molds. The list of symptoms experience from an allergic reaction is long and varied, depending entirely on the specific allergy. The most prominent symptoms are runny noses and skin rashes. Perennial allergic rhinitis can be brought on by the presence of mold, as well. However, these allergic complications are usually only brought on by a high population of mold. The symptoms, however, can worsen if food that has been created using a type of fungus, such as mushrooms, bread, beer, and even yogurt. Blue cheese is also a chief offender.

While there are thousands of species of molds on the planet, the number of highly allergenic molds are fortunately only in the dozens. Cladosporium, Penicillium, and Alternaria are the three most well known kinds of mold to cause many allergic reactions. As a bit of trivia, Penicillum is the only genus with both a medicine as well as a disease named after it.

It is important that you stay on constant watch for grass, mold spores and pollen counts for each day on the news, if you have allergies. These daily reports are recommended, especially for the elderly or anyone who has a small child who may be allergic, and are planning an outing. This way, it will be apparent which areas to avoid. Severe allergic reactions are rare occurrences, but they happen never the less.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of
Texas Water Damage Restoration and
Dallas Water Damage Restoration Which are Certified IICRC Water damage and mold remediation contractors.