A Spreading Home Health Hazard

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/01/eveningnews/main507779.shtml

A Spreading Home Health Hazard

NEW YORK, May 1, 2002

If you want to visit Cleo and Birrenbach's luxury New York City

apartment, proper attire - gloves, mask and an anti-contamination suit - is

required. Their once sparkling high-rise home is now contaminated and deemed

" uninhabitable. "

The only thing currently living here is mold, reports CBS News Correspondent

Jim Axelrod. Toxic mold.

" There is Aspergillus versicolor, there is Stachybotrys - and Stachybotrys

is really the most dangerous one, " said Cleo Birrenbach. " Everything we have

is here - everything, our clothes. But they are all contaminated. "

Flooding from a drain pipe and a sewage pipe spawned the mold growth,

forcing the Birrenbachs to leave their home of 20 years. They claim the mold

not only ruined them financially, but also physically.

" My husband is constantly dealing with headaches, bleeding of the nose,

bleeding of the ear and we are getting ill " said Cleo Birrenbach.

The Birrenbach's aren't alone. Hundreds of cases of mold are reported a

year.

" I probably get two calls a week on mold studies, " said industrial hygienist

Ed Olmstead.

From New York's penthouses to the California hills, mold doesn't

discriminate. Hollywood celebrities including Brockovich and Ed McMahon

have filed lawsuits claiming mold infiltrated their homes and even made them

sick.

Dr. Dorr Dearborn has been studying the toxic mold Stachybotrys and

mold-related symptoms since 1993. He says an infection with Stachybotrys " is

like having a bad cold that doesn't go away. "

Dearborn first recognized there might be a connection when a number of

infants with rare pulmonary hemorrhaging were admitted to his Cleveland

Hospital.

" There were young infants who, in the process of having trouble breathing,

were then coughing blood, " he said.

All of these inner city children had one thing in common: their homes all

tested positive for Stachybotrys.

" The only thing we were seeing was a lot of water damage in the homes,''

said Dr. Dearborn.

Of the 47 infants he studied, 16 died. Dearborn is confident a direct link

between Stachybotrys and the illness he found in Ohio exists. But the

Centers for Disease Control refused to back up his findings.

" There is a negative health impact of living in a mold environment, "

Dearborn explained. " But the details as to what the health effects are and

how much mold it takes - that is what we don't know. "

Dr. Dearborn advises anyone living in a mold-infested environment to make

sure it is cleaned correctly. If not, you may have to do what one California

couple did: donate their house to the local fire department for training.

" The only specific treatment is to stop the exposure and get out, " said

Dearborn.

But despite the advice, the Birrenbach's will continue to fight to get their

apartment properly cleaned up. That cleanup began a year and a half ago.

(see links at site)