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THE MOLD CONTROVERSY (cont'd)
The Importance Of Awareness
Some people are extremely sensitive to mold, and can become sick from exposure to not only spores but also spore fragments and byproducts of spores. Health problems caused by mold exposure and/or mycotoxicosis are expensive to treat. Ironically, if doctors were properly informed and trained, exposure is treatable in many ways. If contractors considered how their slipshod practices could cost them much more money than the profits they think they make because of their speed, they would not get sued so often. While the building industry complains about all the lawsuits, it is a pretty accurate statement that many of the lawsuits are brought on by a select few shoddy builders. Instead of circling the wagons around these disreputable contractors, the builders associations should purge their ranks of them.
How To Proceed If You Have A Mold Problem
Have the house tested.
If you discover mold in your house, you need to act quickly and take it seriously. You may be tempted, as some of my clients have been, to destroy the evidence. But what you should do is first protect your family from exposure (which may mean moving out of the house temporarily) and then have a mold expert perform an analysis. You need to think of this as gathering evidence. Do not use home mold testing kits. From an evidentiary standpoint, they are worthless. A jury wants to hear from a professional what is going on with your house, you have too much interest in the outcome of the case. Hire true professionals to diagnose and inspect the building. Do NOT skimp on experts. Hire someone thorough, not the cheapest mold investigator you can find. Hire someone that does not work for insurance companies as a large part of their business. Insurers like to pay as little as possible and often hire someone that knows that being thorough means it may be his last work from that insurer. There are many so-called professional mold testers willing to take your money to collect samples. But proficiency is the key. A sample taken in one stud bay may come back negative while one taken a few feet away may come back positive. And mold testing can be easily manipulated and interpreted. It is important to find an ethical and qualified industrial hygienist. Don't use one chosen by your builder, insurer or landlord, as they know which testers will skew results in their favor.
If you live in an apartment, you need to consider your exit strategy. You do not own the building so you do not need to stay and fight for its repair. But you do need to maintain control of the evidence before you vacate the premises. But once you have the evidence, its usually best to get out. Staying and fighting for your deposit may make your health deteriorate further. You can always fight over the deposit later.
Make an appointment with a knowledgeable mold doctor.
The most commonly acknowledged symptoms of mold allergy are respiratory and sinus related. However, as noted in the list above, there are much more serious, systemic clues to watch for. Unfortunately, it is rarely possible to go to your neighborhood doctor or allergist to have your concerns validated. That is usually not because they don't care, they just don't have the experience treating mold patients or the knowledge they need.
Allergists tend to think “allergy” instead of an infectious or toxic exposure. This skews their analysis slightly. The tests they use tend to look for a type 1 allergy and are prone to false negatives. They like to use their allergy skin tests because they invested in the apparatus of conducting those tests and can charge for doing them in house. Blood tests, (IgG tests) are more reliable, but most of the money goes to the lab interpreting the samples. There you have it. A doctor was once honest enough to explain this to me just this way.
In my experience, the better-qualified doctors in mold cases are immunologists and practitioners of occupational and environmental medicine. Even among them, many are not adequately informed about mold. Research mold advocates online to find referrals to the handful of doctors who acknowledge mold contamination on not just an allergic level but an infectious and toxic level as well. Most importantly, find someone with experience diagnosing and successfully treating mold exposure. Do not go to doctors that testify for defense attorneys. They are worthless as treating physicians because they deny the problem. There are objective tests to measure the amount of mold in your system. Take your results from the mold expert’s site investigation to your doctor. He will run blood work and see if the same molds are in your body.
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