Good morning, Harborlady:
Comment:
Caoimhin, in defense of your mould, would you live in a mould infested home for a few years?
Response:
Yes. Over the years, many people have publically challenged me to live in their supposedly “toxic mould” homes. I publically accepted every single challenge. Today, not a single challenger has ever followed through and then allowed me to live in their home.
Comment:
Would you raise your children there?
Response:
Yes, of course. EVERY home, EVERY home, without exception contains mould. There is not a single home on the planet earth that does not contain mould. Consider this - I am sitting in my office right now. My office is in an extremely dry part of the country and at an altitude of 9,000 feet and has NEVER had any kind of moisture problem or mould problem ever. In my office (24’ x 20’), where I am this morning, writing to you, is a carpet. If I collected, say, four (4 inch by 4 inch) samples of the carpet, the lab report would range from about 25,000 colony forming units of mould (CFU) per gram to about 100,000 CFU/g depending on where the sample is collected. Therefore, the carpet alone in my clean (although messy) office contains somewhere between 1.2 million and 4.8 million culturable spores of various normal, ordinary everyday “toxic moulds” – Let’s say the spores in my area have a viability factor of about 50% (that is about half of the spores will be viable and grow under good growth conditions,) that means that for every culturable spore, there is also an unculturable spore that has gone undetected by the lab. Therefore, the nice clean, dry carpet in my small office contains somewhere between 2 million and 10 million spores of normal, ordinary everyday “toxic moulds” -and that is pretty normal for Colorado’s dry high country.
Since the ceiling in my office is 8 feet, that means that the volume of air in my office is about 109 cubic meters. At the moment, outside it is bloody freezing (10 °F) and the outdoor spore count is about 20 to 200 mould spores per cubic meter of air (in the summer time, in my dry climate, it is about 5,000 to 15,000 spores per cubic meter of air). Normal, clean, dry, healthy houses in my area, during this time of year have an average spore concentration of about 450 spores per cubic meter of air. Therefore, the air in my small office this morning contains about 49,000 mould spores (I have a sedentary breathing rate of about 0.85 cubic meters of air per minute)- so I am inhaling about 382 “toxic” mould spores each hour (about the time it will take me to complete my response to you).
Now, the walls of my office are ordinary painted drywall. So there is about 200 to 12,000 viable mould spores locked into the paper matrix of the drywall, per square inch of drywall (CFU/in2) (let’s just call it 500 CFUs/in2 to make the calculations easy).
Now, if I subtract out the doors and windows, that means there is about 148,900 square inches of drywall, equating to about 74 million spores locked into the drywall matrix, (just waiting for water).
OK – let’s see where we are: About 5 million spores in the carpet, 50 thousand spores in the air and 74 million mould spores in the walls.
And that is just my normal, healthy, clean office environment (thank goodness it’s not summertime, because I keep my windows open because I like fresh air which contains several thousands of spores per cubic meter, which means that in the summer, in my office, I breath about 100 spores of “toxic mould” every MINUTE). ALL houses have mould; ALL construction timber contains mould and ALL basements have mould. Every building in the country has mould. Every building in the nation has tens of thousands to billions of the so-called “toxic mould” spores. We also know that in virtually every house that is constructed, timbers and composite materials will be installed with mould already on those surfaces (sometimes actively growing colonies covering many square feet), and we know that as the exposed wood is subjected to the elements as the house is constructed, more will grow on those surfaces.
Therefore, every parent you know raises their children in homes that contain moulds. Every child that has ever been raised in an home has been raised in an home that contains mould.
Take a look at the following photo:
http://forensic-applications.com/mou...Stachyetal.jpg
Most of the mould in that photo is the notorious “toxic black mould” Stachybotrys atra. This photo is an example of an apartment I was asked to assess. This wall, in the bathroom, was indicative of the walls throughout the apartment. In this home were five small children ages infancy to six years old. The family had lived there, under these (awful) conditions since the birth of the oldest. It may surprise you that the entire family, including the children were very healthy
Comment:
How safe is your $100k equity?
Response:
I have no idea to what you are referring.
Comment:
Willing to set up a surgical suite there when you need a procedure?
Response:
To date, EVERY emergency room, and EVERY operating theater that I have assessed for moulds, has contained tens of thousands to millions of mould spores. I would turn the question around and challenge you to find a single hospital room, ER or operating theater that is devoid of mould.
Comment:
Previous post, you claimed mold survivor was a hazard to your health.
Response:
I have never made any such statement. You have simply made that up.
Comment:
You're not a victim if you've made the personal attack on her.
Response:
I have made no personal attacks on anyone. Again, you are mistaken.
Comment:
No doubt you're intelligent, but fair or innocent isn't how I'd characterize your demeanor.
Response:
It is precisely because I am fair that some people don’t like my comments. Many people, especially, “mould survivors” don’t like the truth.
Comment:
Personal attacks don't contribute to the facts you've presented.
Response:
I’m glad that you now acknowledge that I don’t make personal attacks.
Comment:
Wholesale ignoring the % population who do experience problems negates your point, and feeds the same mob mentality you identify as irrational hypocritically in your favor.
Response:
I agree, and that is why I would never do such a thing – never have done such a thing, and I’m not likely to ever in the future.
Comment:
You cannot help people you hold in contempt, and your intention aren't to help.
Response:
I hold no-one in contempt, and the rest of your comment is a personal attack; it is foundationless, and you are quite arrogant and presumptuous to claim to know my intentions.
Comment:
Since self awareness was already suggested, at this point what motive is left beyond manipulating people for the sake of appearing to win an argument with five dollar words? You can't apologize so you continue to compensate with more fixations about another?
Response:
Your statement is rhetoric and hyperbole without any facts to support it. How could it be answered?
Comment:
Truth stands on it's own merits.
Response:
I agree. That is why my posts are valuable information. Since I present the facts, and the posts stand on their own merit.
Comment:
Links-
Response:
By referencing links to documents without context; documents that you may or may never have read, is just silly.
Comment:
The CDC is saying they don't know yet.
Response:
Simply not true. As I referenced elsewhere, here is what the CDC says:
Both groups of reviewers concluded that the available evidence does not substantiate the [earlier] reported epidemiologic associations—between household water damage and AIPH or between household fungi and AIPH —or any inferences regarding causality.
I also have other things the CDC says, if you are interested. Perhaps you should read some of their stuff sometime.
Comment:
I don't know why you can't admit your limitations.
Response:
I don’t know why you hold that opinion in the absence of any evidence. Similarly, I don't know why you can't admit your limitations. You attempt to argue points of epidemiology when clearly you have no expertise in the matter; you attempt to argue toxicology when clearly you have no expertise in the matter; you attempt to argue mycology when clearly you have no expertise in the matter; and you even attempt to know the minds of other people when clearly you have no knowledge of that either. Perhaps you are projecting, since you seem to commit most of your personal criticisms against others.
I would challenge you to support you comment by pointing to just one incidence that supports your opinion.
You seem to make a lot of statements that just simply are not true.
Comment:
Once upon a time science couldn't prove the world was round, until the day it could. Cartesian thought would keep this world intellectually flat forever.
Response:
Again – simply not true. You statement indicates you either fail to understand science or fail to understand history.
Comment:
The whole body of evidence you've presented concludes one thing: myopically fixating on a specific strain of mold has yielded no results that explain why people DO get sick in moldy environments.
Response:
Again, simply not true. Rather the opposite – your fixation on ignoring facts prevents you from accepting factual conclusions. Throughout your own post, you fabricate vacuous foundations and then try to build an house of cards upon that foundation.
In fact, you cannot provide me with any studies, NOT ONE, devoid of confounders, wherein the study has shown that generally people get sick in mouldy environments. You cannot do it – because it simply isn’t true, and therefore, it cannot be demonstrated. Again, you seem to just make up things as you go along, with disregard for facts.
Comment:
Time to widen the scope, and alternately focus more closely on people like mold survivor who do exhibit quantifiable medical symptoms vs healthy populations.
Response:
I seriously doubt that you have any knowledge of “mold survivor’s” medical history, and (again) you have simply made up a foundationless fact. I do not see where “mold survivor” has provide ANY quantifiable medical symptoms. (Ignoring the fact that symptoms are not generally quantifiable at all - you are confusing symptoms with signs).
Again, you make up a “fact” that isn’t a fact at all, and then try to build an argument on it. Based on your post, you seem to make an habit of this, since you have repeated this same habit several times in your post.
Comment:
Unfortunate fact of human evolution is some of us wind up being the canary in a coal mine to serve as evidence for what is unhealthy. How many non smokers had to die before radon was identified as the second leading cause of lung cancer?
Response:
As epidemiologists, we have little other options but to study what is before us - diseased states included. What else would you suggest? And your comment also contains fallacious argument. You seem to like to believe in popular myths. In fact, there is no evidence to support your argument that radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer. I would be happy to explore this with you on a new thread.
Comment:
Hopefully, science can be completed without bias or contempt for them, otherwise it stops being science.
Response:
Based on your post, I don’t think you have a very good notion of what is or is not science.
I’m glad for the opportunity to clarify these points for you.
Cheers!
Caoimhín P. Connell
Forensic Industrial Hygienist
(The opinions expressed here are exclusively my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect my professional opinion, opinion of my employer, agency, peers, or professional affiliates. The above post is for information only and does not reflect professional advice and is not intended to supercede the professional advice of others.)
AMDG
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