Monster Mold Threatens Health in the South

[lovuian]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050928/ap_on_re_us/monster_mold_hk2

Monster Mold Threatens Health in the South By JULIA SILVERMAN and MARILYNN MARCHIONE, Associated Press Writers
2 hours, 56 minutes ago



NEW ORLEANS - Wearing goggles, gloves, galoshes and a mask, Veronica 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 nauseous. Her 26-year-old daughter, Alicia, also covered in gear, came out coughing.


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

Mold now forms an interior version of kudzu in the soggy South, posing health dangers that will make many homes tear-downs and will force schools and hospitals to do expensive repairs.

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 leaves many storm victims prey to unscrupulous or incompetent remediators. Home test kits for mold, for example, are worthless, experts say

more...

Bad Bad Stuff!!!

[KingFlorez]

1. I hate mold

I used to live in low lying Santa Barbara, CA and we had it all the time. It wasn't anything near as bad as this though.

[Radio_Lady]

30. Lived in South Florida for 28 years. I couldn't stand a wet towel that

sat on the floor overnight, or clothes that were not moved from washer to drier quickly.

I still can't. I test every piece of clothing for that moldy smell. Gawd, what awful things these hurricanes were... So grateful it wasn't me...

[MarsThe Cat]

2. did anyone ever doubt that the homes that sat in that water for that long-

would have to be bulldozed?

and they ought to seriously consider LOTS and LOTS of landfill...it worked for streatorville in chicago.

[NYC]

9. Tell me about Streatorville in Chicago, please.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to DU. :hi:

[MarsThe Cat]

15. streator was a steamboat captain/owner...

I was surprised by the dearth of information available by googling streatorville and chicago history, so i hope i'm recalling this correctly- his boat got hopelessly stuck in the marshy lakefront, so he christened it 'streatorville', opened a bar of course, and invited people to dump landfill, and then the fire happened, and the city used the lakefront area to dump the waste/wreckage and more landfill.
the area where the John Hancock building stands used to be in the lake.

[NYC]

18. Thanks. That's very interesting.

:hi:

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

23. That's cuz you gotta spell it Streeter

It's Streeterville, and it's pricey property.

:hi:

[MarsThe Cat]

25. in that case...here's the actual scoop-

i guess i was confusing it with Streator IL...and i should have known better- when i first moved into the city, i lived on East Division, just north of there- Marilyn Miglin was my landlady.

http://www.thelocaltourist.com/articles/streeterville.htm

George Wellington “Cap” Streeter hailed from Flint, Michigan . At various times he was a lumberjack, a circus performer, an ice cutter, a soldier, a logger, and a miner. His wife was fed up with his lack of direction and left him, taking his money, so he left Michigan and came to Chicago .

Cap wasn't one to stay single for long. In 1886, he and his second wife Maria “Ma” Mullholland decided to make their fortunes as gun runners in Honduras . They purchased and repaired a boat and christened it the “Reutan.” In typical Cap Streeter fashion this was a misspelling. Supposedly they wanted to name it after an island off the Honduras coast called Roatan, but potential gun runners can't be expected to let a little thing like spelling slow them down. Gale force winds, however, put a brake on their plans. Cap and Ma chose to test their boat on Lake Michigan when a storm took over. These intrepid weather-be-damned entrepreneurs ended up on a sandbar about 450 feet east of Michigan Avenue. Instead of digging out and continuing their expedition they chose to make the sandbar their new home and lived aboard the Reutan.

This was the perfect opportunity for Cap to make his mark. Fifteen years after the Chicago Fire, the city was in a building frenzy. Cap invited the contractors to use his sandbar as a dump (for a fee) and it eventually extended the shoreline to include 186 acres of new land. You can't blame the contractors. It was convenient and Cap, of course, underbid legitimate dumps. Not that Cap thought his province was illegitimate. He'd done his research, and according to an 1821 government survey the boundaries of Chicago and Illinois ended at the original shoreline. His landfill was therefore independent of both and he designated it the “District of Lake Michigan,” answerable only to the federal government. And, as a Civil War veteran, he claimed he was homesteading and this was by all rights his to keep.

As the self-proclaimed governor of his newly created district, Cap began selling parcels of land and a shantytown sprang up from the landfill. By this time Cap and Ma had erected a two story home to replace the Reutan as their headquarters. They lived on the second floor, complete with a retractable ladder, and the first floor was their “war room.”...

[NYC]

27. Quite enterprising, weren't they?

An odd story.

[chicagiana]

13. I have been talking about the "Chicago Solution" ...

Chicago was built on a swamp. It wasn't planned that way, it just happened. Chicago is a located at the gateway to two waterways, the Mississipi basin and the Great Lakes corridor.

Eventually they realized that the area sucked. Their solution??? Jack up the buildings and fill everything in.

Rather than hauling all that trash out of New Orleans, they should probably excavate a huge pit and dump it all in. Than bring in lots of clean fill and just cover up the low lying areas along with the residuals of all that toxic muck.

New Orleans is the gateway between the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans EXISTS because of this. Nothing will change this. It has to be rebuilt. And Hopefully, they will do it right.

BTW, the homehowners should retain ownership rights of the newly raised land.

[Ilsa]

3. I'm in south Texas near the coast. We didn't get Rita, but I swear,

Rita has circulated a bunch a junk to over here. Last night I had to get up and wash the allergy junk out of my eyes twice in the middle of the night and then it was caked on again when I got up this morning. Only mold does that to me.

[lovuian]

4. Wow Ilsa I think you maybe on to something here!!!

I have to agree there is a haze in Texas here after Rita flew by!!!

[mike_c]

5. it's beginning to sporulate....

This might very well turn into another major health catastrophe. Mold is very bad stuff.

[jobycom]

7. I've had allergies even up in Austin that I don't usually get until

much later in the year. I was sneezing up a fit today, and the days Rita was on shore I had the worst sinus headaches. And this isn't normal for me.

[celestia671]

10. My allergies...

have been horrible since the first storm. I can't go outside without getting watery eyes and a runny nose!

[Feron]

17. I developed an allergy cough after the debris pile..

in front of my house was removed by the parish. I went in my backyard to finish raking yesterday and I noticed mold growing on the pine tree that fell. Mystery of why I am coughing solved. :)

Thankfully I didn't get any water in my house. I feel for those people who lost their homes because I don't know if I could keep it together if that had happened to me. Just looking at those pictures makes me emotionally sick.

[Lisa]

19. I'll bet you're right

We already know that mold spores can travel long distances, on the wind. I think they've even found them in Antarctica, thousands of miles from the nearest land. And there have been studies linking allergy and asthma outbreaks to windborne pollutants.

You might find Watson's book "Heaven's Breath" interesting -- it discusses these and other examples.

[Gregorian]

6. Someone posted personal pictures of this, here, a week ago.

This horrible slime mold.

[LifeDuringWartime]

8. do you have a link to the thread?

n/t

[Lars39]

11. I think this might be the thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4808015#4808068

[Gregorian]

12. Yep. Thar be the one.

Very weird stuff. Like snail tracks.

[NYC]

14. Photograph of mold:

Kristen Cassagne in her mold-covered St. Bernard Parish home.

[Sgent]

16. Something tells me

she doesn't need a home test kit.

[superconnected]

20. Will vinegar and water help?

It takes the mold off my windows and ends my seasonal allergies.

Okay, via the article it can't be stopped. It gets in everything and keeps coming back. Yuck. These poor people.

[Megahurtz]

21. But the mold gets

inside the wall. Not much you can do about that.:(

[pitohui]

22. no you use chlorine

of course water is what promotes the growth of mold in the first place, you knew that, you just mis-typed

vinegar is ok if you don't really have a mold prob. just the odd spot of mildew

for the problems shown in the picture, the lady will have to have the sheetrock removed and replaced, if the mold was just superficial, chlorine bleach would do, followed up by using Killz as a primer before you repaint

however in st. bernard parish the houses were underwater for days or weeks so they are most likely going to need new sheetrock or the majority of them it is already known that they will have to be bulldozed

[NYC]

24. Vinegar.

I once had mold/mildew in the shower caulk, and vinegar seemed to make it worse, or at least not help.

That made me think that maybe using food (vinegar & wine come from grapes, and grapes can be moldy) is not the answer.

I would think chlorine bleach would be better, but who could breathe using enough to clean a whole wall.

I suspect this mold is well beneath the surface, and will keep rising. The walls were permeated with water. Also, New Orleans is a very humid place. How is anything to dry out?

[iamjoy]

26. When My Pipes Leaked (Florida)

and I had a minor flood in my home, a restoration company came in with big fans to dry things out. We were able to save the carpet, but sections of dry wall had to be replaced.

Mind you, in my case, the water only saturated the carpet (and padding) and the drywall. It only sat for a couple of days. AND, we were able to run our a.c. to help suck moisture out of the air.

Nah, these people will need to replace their walls, if not the whole house. But of course, if they don't have flood insurance, they are screwed. Even if they have flood insurance, with such a large number of claims, you can bet the insurance companies are going to be trying to wiggle out of any major repairs.

[freethought]

28. When mold gets THAT bad

your options are few and far between. The mold is not only on the walls, it is inside the walls, under the floors, everywhere. These homes are infested with it and add the heat and humidity down in that area. For alot of people I fear that their only option is to burn the place to the ground and build again.

[WatchWhatISay]

29. Interstitial lung disease

Years ago some a co-workers two story home flooded. The first floor was submerged, but not the second. They repaired it themselves while they lived on the second floor.

Within two years her husband died of interstitial lung disease caused by breathing all that mold.

That stuff is dangerous and people need to be told so.