Household mold threatens health in waterlogged South

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Sept. 28, 2005, 1:03AM

Household mold threatens health in waterlogged South

Homeowners are warned about worthless remedies

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/health/3372641

By JULIA SILVERMAN and MARILYNN MARCHIONE

Associated Press

RESOURCES

TAKE STEPS

NEW ORLEANS - Wearing goggles, gloves, galoshes and a mask,

Randazzo lasted only 10 minutes inside her home in St. Bernard

Parish. Her eyes burned, her mouth filled with a salty taste, and

she felt nauseated.

Her 26-year-old daughter, , also covered in gear, came out

coughing.

" That mold, " she said. " It smells like death. "

It's a problem that any homeowner who has ever had a flooded

basement or a leaky roof has faced. But the magnitude of this

problem in the soggy South leaves many storm victims prey to

unscrupulous or incompetent remediators. Home test kits for mold,

for example, are worthless, experts say.

Don't expect help from insurance companies, either. Most policies

were revised in the last decade to exclude mold damage. Although

mold's danger to those with asthma or allergies is real, there's

little or no science behind other claims.

" We went through a period when people were really irrational about

the threat posed by the mere sight of mold in their homes, " said

Money, a mold expert from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio,

and author of Carpet Monsters and Killer Spores, a book about mold.

" If you give me 10 minutes in anybody's home, I'll find mold growth

somewhere, " he said.

Most people have no problem living with this ubiquitous fungus. It

reproduces by making spores, which travel unseen through the air and

grow on any moist surface.

Mold can't be eliminated but can be controlled by limiting moisture,

which is exactly what couldn't be done after Hurricane Katrina.

Standing water created ideal growth conditions and allowed mold to

penetrate so deep that experts fear that even studs of many homes

are saturated and unsalvageable.

Molds produce irritants that can provoke coughing, and some make

spores that contain toxins, which further irritate airways.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is

no firm evidence linking mold to lung problems, memory loss or other

alleged woes beyond asthma and allergy.

However, the sheer amount of it in the South could trigger problems

for some people who haven't had them before, medical experts said.