I hope there are only 2 parts to this series! In this post I am writing about our pre-remediation situation (not to be confused with Mike the Situation).
I have learned more about mold over the past couple of months than I ever wanted to know. Mold can be sneaky! A family member of mine had black mold from an active water leak. The mold was obvious – it was black, and some of it was actually purple and pink!
But a lot of mold can be less obvious and more sneaky. It can hide out in places you can’t see; therefore, go undetected for a while. This isn’t to scare anyone, it’s more to open the conversations of mold and to document this portion of my healing adventures. If you have a bit of mold in your house, it is most likely not bothering you. There is a statistic that around 80% of houses have some sort of mold in them. And, in my opinion (although I am not a scientist), I would guess 78% of people living in those homes are unaffected. BUT I would also say – if you don’t feel good and have mysterious health things going on, it can’t hurt to check your house for mold.
People who are most affected by mold are people with chronic health conditions and people with Lyme specifically… yours truly! For whatever reason, there is a very strong connection between Lyme and Mold toxicity. In fact, when they tested me for Lyme they automatically tested me for Mold/mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are toxic compounds that are naturally produced by certain types of molds. Thankfully, we only found one type in my body and it wasn’t extravagantly high. The type we found in my body is called Asperigillus Ochraceus. It produces the toxin Ochratoxin A, one of the most abundant food-contaminating mycotoxins. This is why I stay away from moldy foods and why I buy from companies that screen for mold (especially when it comes to foods that are typically higher in mold, such as coffee, tea, etc).
The health industry is learning more and more about how mold can affect our health, so expect these conversations to continue to come up in the future.
Due to me having Lyme we decided to look at our home to ensure it is as safe of a healing environment as we can control.
I did quite a bit of research and instilled the help of professionals in the Lyme community. I was able to find an inspection company and remediation company that are fully aware of the impact mold has on health. In fact, the inspector had Lyme himself. I am so thankful for finding these folks as I didn’t need to explain myself.
We started out by doing an ERMI test. Going forward, I would recommend people finding another reliable test source, other than the ERMI test (this goes against what a lot of people in the health community advise). This test is very sensitive and not really intended to be used in the manner in which people are using it. We did this test and all it did was scare the shit out of me – I thought “we might as well just burn the damn house down”. When in reality that isn’t the case.
In the inspection they did find some areas of concern in the basement. We have a couple of spots on the stairs going down to the basement. There are some curious spots on the drywall near the crawl space area, and an area on the ceiling (which is under our upstairs bathroom). But the 2 main areas of concern are a rug we had on the untreated concrete floor in the basement and the insulation in the rim joist (which is apparently a really common area of concern in a lot of houses).
Now, if you remember, the type of mycotoxins in my body are commonly found in food. Again, I am not a scientist, but I bet that’s not what we have on our stairs, in the crawlspace or the rim joists. So the million dollar questions are…. “Is the current mold situation affecting me”, “Will I feel better after doing all of this?!?!?!”
Your guess is as good as mine. What I will say is that we will be able to sleep better knowing there isn’t mold in the house. When you have a chronic health condition you will try anything to feel normal and this is just one of the things we are trying. But the comfort in having a clean living environment will put our minds at ease in that aspect of our lives.
So, we have decided to remediate. And due to this we have to pull everything out of the basement. We had to make some difficult decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of. Everything we keep needs to be decontaminated. And certain types of items aren’t worth the decontamination process and some items we cannot decontaminate so they are deemed “compromised”. At this point we have hauled away 10+ yards of stuff.
I am trying to stay positive about this otherwise it could get overwhelming quickly. We do like to live a minimal life, so this guided us into a minimal storage/basement area as well.
I will be back to write about the post-remediation. Hopefully there aren’t any significant surprises!!
~Stay EZ~
Click here for Part 2…
