June 16th, 2013 10:38 PM by Dan Howard
Everything you need to know about mold, you learned in Junior High. Picture that it is 3 days after gym class. The rolled up gym suit and towel are still in your locker. You knew you should have taken it home, you were told to take it home, and yet it is still there. You open the door and realize that something is growing in that wad of sweaty cloth.
Every day there are people getting sick in, and from their homes, schools and workplaces, but they may not know it. They are going to their medical practitioners, having CAT scans, x-rays, and a host of other tests. Nothing is wrong, except they know they are sick or exhausted. It could instead be that they have a child with asthma. A generation ago, not very many youth with asthma, but now, everyone knows someone with asthma.
The answer to the health issues is in the changes we have made in buildings in the last generation. We have high efficient furnaces, better windows and doors, caulking, foam insulation, and more people packed tighter in the schools, daycare centers and workplaces. We took what was an “air exchange” an hour and reduced it in our buildings to an air exchange a day. We have made our buildings into that roll of gym cloths.
There are solutions to the indoor air problem other than moving into a tent. A building can be tested for mold, allergens and other biological agents that can affect your health. It is more important to have an “assessment” or inspection to determine the cause of the problems being in the building in the first place. If the cause of the problem is not resolved, cleaning or “remediating” the problem is no better than cleaning the locker out and them putting the gym cloths in the locker the next gym day. Sometimes the issue is something as simple as a faulty air conditioner installation that contaminates an entire building. Legionnaire’s disease is the classic example of this problem.
There are methods, coatings and procedures that can make a building less conducive to the containments that can make you, your family, students, and coworkers sick