Water-damaged buildings pose a significant threat to public health. I have developed chronic health issues as a result of long-term exposure to mycotoxins; my story should serve as a warning to all.
When I was just starting elementary school I developed several health complications resulting from exposure to toxic mold. My family moved into a new house and within months my health began deteriorating then my family also began experiencing their own health complications later. I experienced chronic headaches, intense heat flashes, brain fog, peeing blood, chronic stomach pain, chronic fatigue, and insomnia among other things. It took years of us all getting worse and worse while searching for the cause before my mother discovered our house was infested with some of the most dangerous molds around including a Black mold called Stachybotrys. The molds were hidden in the wall cavities and attic spaces with minimal signs visible of its growth from the livable part of the house. The reason mold grew so prolifically was that the house was water damaged due to a leak in the roof. Water damaged buildings provide a great breeding ground for molds and some types of molds can cause illness, either themselves or through the toxins they create. Here is a great article about the ways mold and mold toxins can cause illness;
“Although respiratory symptoms are common from exposure to water-damaged indoor environments, it is important to note that a typical patient presents with multiple symptoms which are often debilitating, including fatigue, neurocognitive symptoms, myalgia, arthralgia, headache, insomnia, dizziness, anxiety, depression, irritability, gastrointestinal problems, tremors, balance disturbance, palpitations, vasculitis, angioedema, and autonomic nervous system dysfunction…
Types of disorders that can be seen resulting from water-damaged environments, mold, mycotoxins and bacteria include, infections and mycoses, chronic and fungal rhinosinusitis, IgE-mediated sensitivity and asthma, other hypersensitivity reactions, pulmonary inflammatory disease, immune suppression and modulation, autoimmune disorders, mitochondrial toxicity, carcinogenicity, renal toxicity, neurotoxicity, and DNA adducts to nuclear and mitochondrial DNA causing mutations…” (NIH).
Mold-caused illness like mine is a widely debated topic with many believing that molds cannot make people sick. They are wrong and their ignorance hurts people. People like me receive worse healthcare from uninformed doctors who haven’t learned about mold illness. In combination with the lack of training medical professionals receive on mold-derived illness, the medical system was designed to give me a new drug for every symptom rather than investigating the root cause of my illness. My doctors continued writing me prescription after prescription without adequately questioning why I was getting so sick so often. They prolonged my exposure by neglecting to consider the safety of the buildings I was spending my time inside of. Not only did I experience a tremendous amount of medical gaslighting and bad healthcare, my mycotoxin-derived illness set off a years-long legal nightmare. My family sued the home builder, the home inspector, and our home insurance; lawsuits which were highly dependent on the Daubert Standard. Essentially, that means even if we had expert witnesses testifying to the mold-derived illness we experienced, but an opposing expert witness testified that mold-derived illness isn’t the scientific consensus, then our expert witness testimony would be thrown out. Coverage of mold-derived illness would have enormous legal consequences especially for the insurance industry which they don’t want and they have doctors on their payroll spreading their misinformation; so my family failed to find a single lawyer in our state willing to argue in court that mold and mycotoxins caused our illnesses.
I realize mold-illness is a greatly understudied area of medicine, so I think my story can serve as a case study to those interested in the topic from a medical standpoint; patients like me could really use more medical professionals looking into this and giving it the respectability it deserves. Everyone would get sick through exposure to enough mycotoxins, but some of us are genetically predisposed to mold illness;
“The HLA-DR/DQ isotype alleles are linked to mycotoxins susceptibility due to the lack of proper immune response; individuals with these alleles are poor eliminators of mycotoxins from their system.” -NIH
About 25% of the population is especially susceptible to mold illness and in an EPA survey of buildings they found that “Eighty-five percent of the buildings experienced water damage” so this is also a major public health issue. After my home-induced illness in elementary school, I was able to recover until my middle school re-exposed me and reignited my illness. After recovering from that, I began college in good health only to drop out one semester short of graduating with daily debilitating headaches because I was once again exposed to water damaged buildings. Not only have the schools I attended been water-damaged, there are stores, restaurants, and many public buildings which have also triggered my illness. So I think it is crazy that;
“Currently, there are no EPA regulations or standards for airborne mold contaminants.” -EPA
“there are no set standards for what is and what is not an acceptable quantity of different kinds of mold in a home.” -CDC
I hope that changes in the near future; public buildings should be utilizing tools like an Environmental Relative Mold Index, ERMI test to determine if it is a genuinely safe space. I hope my story can serve as a tool to spread awareness of mold illness and the health threat that water-damaged buildings pose. I’ve dealt with a tremendous amount of pain, seclusion, medical gaslighting, a legal nightmare, and have spent years learning to cope with chronic health issues. I don’t want anyone to have to go through what I went through and increasing awareness of it could help prevent it. More than that, I missed a lot of experiences with people in my life I care about and I want to tell the story of what happened to me. I want my son to know what I went through and how it shaped my perspective on life. I’ve been writing a book about my life story because I think it is interesting and important. But in addition to that, my options for work have been severely limited by my health and getting my story out there could be a way for me to support my family despite my limitations. So below for my paid subscribers is an overview of my life story and what my book will be about.
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