Toxic Mold Basics: What You Need to Know

Learning about toxic mold isn’t exactly an easy, comfortable read before you doze off to sleep at night. I’ve spent countless hours Googling, reading, listening, and studying anything I can find to understand more about toxic mold, digging deep to find as accurate information as possible. I’ve learned a lot about toxic mold, certainly more than I ever wanted to, and intend to share it with those who need the information for free. I hope this page will not only serve as a starting point, but also a continual reference point throughout this exploration.

My hope is also that if you’re wondering if toxin mold is real, if you’re sick from it, or if you have toxic mold in your home or black mold, this can help you get some grounding in what’s going on and what to do, as well as provide you a little sliver of hope that there’s a way through this.

Let’s dive in to toxic mold basics!

Definitions

Toxic mold (toxigenic mold): Mold that is capable of producing and releasing mycotoxins and bacteria that can be hazardous to the health of people and animals. Here are some toxin mold:

• Stachybotrys (stack-ee-bot-rus)
• Chaetomium (kay-toe-me-um)
• Wallemia (wall-e-mia)
• Aspergillus (as-per-gill-us)
• Fusarium (foo-sar-e-um)

Mycotoxins: The toxic product created and distributed into the air by some types of mold, especially when threatened. If you’ve heard of mycotoxins, it’s likely in relation to food, as the FDA regulates the amount of acceptable mycotoxins found in grains, nuts, dried fruits, spices, coffee, cocoa beans, and other processed foods. Unfortunately, there aren’t any regulations for mycotoxins in our air, which is how the impact of mycotoxins are discussed in this blog.

Endotoxins: This is a type of toxins that often takes up residence in water damaged homes alongside mold. Endotoxins are released by bacteria, much like mold releases mycotoxins. Both endotoxins and mycotoxins can cause inflammation in the body. The difference between endotoxins and mycotoxins is that mold releases mycotoxins when it feels threatened, and bacteria can release endotoxins anytime the bacteria dies off.

Actinomyces: Actinomyces is another toxin that tends to play sidekick to toxic mold where water damage can be found. Actinomyces is a living bacteria that is known to cause respiratory issues especially.

Black mold: The news has started a public conversation about toxic mold, referring to it primarily as black mold. This is primarily in relation to Stachybotrys as it often appears to be black to the naked eye (it’s actually dark green under a microscope, apparently). Bottom line is that black mold isn’t the only toxic mold to be wary of. Read this post for more about black mold.

Grading: This refers to the slope of the ground away from the house. If the ground isn’t sloped away from the house, it’s leading water towards the house when it rains or snows, and that’s problematic.

ERMI (Environmental Relative Moldiness Index): The ERMI is a tool used to predict the relative “moldiness” of a home through the analysis of dust collected throughout the home on Swiffer cloths.

CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome): This is one name for the illness that can develop from long term exposure to mold, impacting several organ systems in the body and often being dismissed or missed diagnosed. This website was incredibly helpful for me when I was first wondering what on earth was going on with my body and brain. Other names include chronic fatigue and biotoxin illness, and differential diagnoses can be PANS/PANDAS, fibromyalgia, and Parkinson’s disease.

Facts

• Toxic mold needs three things to grow: food, oxygen, and moisture. Mold eats everything as food, and we have oxygen everywhere, so moisture is the factor we want to control as much as possible.
• Toxic mold grows within 24-48 hours of exposure to moisture. That means, if you’ve got a leak, FIX IT as soon as possible!
• All homes have mold (but all homes don’t have to have toxic mold).
• To effectively remediate, the source of moisture must be address, and the effected area with toxic mold must be removed.

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