Huffington Post Articles on Toxic Mold
The Huffington Post recently ran two good articles dealing with the topic of toxic mold.
In Catching the Killer in Our House (published on June 3, 2016), Karri-Leigh P. Mastrangelo discussed how she wished that she had found the mold problem in her home before three years of exposure harmed the health of her family.
“I let my daughters live with a monster,” she wrote. “This experience has taught me way more than I ever needed or cared to know about homeownership, tenant law and even fungus, but that’s worth nothing compared to what it taught me about myself. Our maternal (and paternal) instinct is an infallible as we are as parents. But in the end, it is all we ever have or require.”
In A Brief History of Mold (published on April 13, 2016), Jason Earle discussed some reasons why mold is so much more problematic now than it was in the past.
He wrote: “The housing boom that followed the war, and which continues today, has created a nationwide opportunity for mold problems to exist, especially in light of fact that the quality of construction has also suffered as the volume has increased, allowing for water problems to happen more frequently. Back in the days of plaster, brick and stone construction, we didn’t have mold problems like we do now. This is in part because mold doesn’t grow on those materials very easily, if at all. Drywall, on the other hand, is like a Petri dish. What’s worse is that drywall is an ideal growth medium for Stachybotrys, the black toxic mold referenced above, because of its high cellulose content. Nearly every mold will grow on drywall given the right moisture levels, but Stachybotrys has a field day with it.”
Links on this page are in orange (no underlining).