Archive for October 2006
Be bold in fighting household mold
October 29, 2006, 6:48 pmHere’s an encouraging piece from South Carolina’s TheState.com. They certainly have the right attitude towards mold remediation and prevention. To quote:
When Billy Seymour moved into a rental home in Lexington this summer, he started having sinus and congestion problems and felt lethargic and unmotivated.
He started to suspect mold, because he knew other people who had had problems with it and had similar symptoms.
When his landlord had the house treated, Seymour noticed a change.
“It did improve almost immediately,” he says.
Mold “is certainly something that you want to remedy if you have a problem in your home,” says Laura Niles, spokesperson for the Environmental Protection Agency’s southeastern region. “It can cause health issues.”
Mold can affect people differently. Some might not even know it’s there if the mold is out of sight. Others could have mild to severe respiratory issues, such as aggravated allergies and asthma that already exist and the development of those problems for others — especially children with immune systems that are not fully developed.
In recent years, Niles says, more attention has been called to the mold problem because of health issues that have been linked to it.
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(posted in the Resources, News category)
Many homes infested with mold after recent floods
October 7, 2006, 9:40 pmSome recent floods in Kentucky has brought in it’s wake the nasty spectre of mold. The Lexington Herald-Leader has an interesting article on the subject. To quote:
Floodwaters from Vaughn’s Branch poured across Will Isaac’s back yard two weeks ago and into his house on Pine Meadow Road, filling the basement with 22 inches of water.
Right away, Isaac called a company to come out, clean the basement and dry it out.
But more than a week after Lexington was hit with a deluge that dumped more than 6 inches of rain, the musty smell had not gone away. In fact, it was getting worse. A couple of days ago, he pulled paneling off part of the basement wall, revealing the problem: mold.
There were black spots all over the underlying drywall up to the level where the water had been.
“It was not very pretty,” Isaac said.
Many Central Kentucky residents are now discovering that after the flood comes the mold.
The Fayette County Neighborhood Council said it has received numerous complaints from homeowners about mold caused by the flooding in basements and low-lying areas. In the nearly two weeks since flooding struck, the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department’s environmental division also has received 19 requests for information about getting rid of mold.
Because water stayed in basements and crawl spaces for several days and the temperature in these areas was cool with high humidity, the mold has grown rapidly, said Emma Tibbs, government affairs director for the neighborhood council. Mold is also showing up on walls above the basement level in some houses.
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(posted in the News category)