Household Mold Making People Sick

WebMD Feature

Reviewed by Charlotte E. Grayson Mathis, MD

Household Mold Making People Sick

The attack of the spores usually starts so subtly you almost don't notice. "A few years ago," says Cheryl, a special education assistant in Vancouver, British Columbia, "our son said the carpet next to his bed was wet. He had a suite in the basement and we went down and checked around." The water heater was broken; they fixed it.

However, around that same time, her son, then about 18, started throwing up each morning. He was in a rock band that toured and one day he mentioned that he never threw up on tour.

Cheryl and her husband looked at each other and headed for the basement. Their son had a waterbed flush with the floor -- they emptied and lifted it. Underneath, she says, was a solid carpet of black slime with a fluorescent green cast. "The smell was unbelievable!"

Kathy, a friend of Cheryl's, had a similar experience with her 8-year-old son. He was missing a day of school every two weeks for nausea, coughing, and other upper respiratory symptoms. "It seemed like colds, sort of," Kathy remembers. Cheryl suggested it might be mold. Sure enough, behind the toilet was a thick black coating of the stuff. They attacked it with a bleach solution and her son has not been sick since.

Which Molds Are Worst

"It's pretty hard to prove cause and effect with mold," says Jay Portnoy, MD, a physician at Children of Mercy Hospital in Kansas City and a representative of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. "There seems to be a relationship between mold and illness, but it's hard to prove. We can't blow mold in people's faces to see what happens. That wouldn't be ethical."

Nevertheless, Portnoy says, there is a growing body of evidence that the molds penicillium and aspergillus, which are usually found indoors and smell bad, and cladosporium, present in outdoor air and less odorous, are not good to have around.

Another strain, stachybotrys, has gotten a lot of press for attacking the houses of high-profile victims such as crusader Erin Brockovich, resulting in crushing lawsuits that have resulted in higher insurance rates and sent homeowners insurance companies into a tizzy. However, stachybotrys accounts for only 20% of cases, according to Portnoy.

Portnoy says his interest was prompted by escalating numbers of asthma patients coming into his hospital. They sent inspectors to the homes of some kids with stubborn cases and found mold in a significant percentage. Sometimes the symptoms mimic asthma -- difficulty breathing and sneezing. Or existing asthma can be exacerbated, sometimes to a fatal level.

Other symptoms include fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and strange rashes. In one famous instance, in the mid-1990s, a cluster of 45 cases of lung bleeding in infants, 16 of whom died, was attributed to stachybotrys.

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