Killing Mold

A mycotoxin is a toxic chemical produced by mode fungus, including mushrooms, molds, and yeasts. The term ‘mycotoxin’ is usually reserved for the relatively small amount of toxic chemical products formed as secondary metabolites by fungi that readily colonize crops in the field or after harvest. Most fungi use oxygen and are found almost everywhere in extremely small quantities due to the minute size of their spores. They consume organic matter wherever humidity and temperature are sufficient. One mold species may produce many different mycotoxins and/or the same mycotoxin as another species.

Where conditions are right, fungi proliferate into colonies and mycotoxin levels become high. The reason for the production of mycotoxins is most likely to be part of the molds defense mechanism and is dependent on the surrounding environment. The toxins vary greatly in their toxicity, depending on the organism infected and its susceptibility, metabolism, and defense mechanisms. Some of the health effects found in animals and humans include death, identifiable diseases or health problems, weakened immune systems without specificity to a toxin, and as allergens or irritants. Some mycotoxins are harmful to other micro-organisms such as other fungi or even bacteria; penicillin is one example.

Mycotoxins can appear in the food chain as a result of fungal infection of crops, either by being eaten directly by humans, or by being used as livestock feed. Mycotoxins resist decomposition or being broken down in digestion, so they remain in the food chain in meat and dairy products. Even temperature treatments, such as cooking and freezing, do not destroy most mycotoxins.

Although various wild mushrooms contain an assortment of poisons that are definitely fungal metabolites causing noteworthy health problems for humans, they are rather arbitrarily excluded from discussions of mycotoxicology. In such cases the distinction is based on the size of the producing fungus and human intention. Mycotoxin exposure is almost always accidental, however, improper identification and ingestion of toxic mushrooms will cause mushroom poisoning. Ingestion of misidentified mushrooms containing mycotoxins may result in hallucinations. The cyclopeptide-produced Amanita phalloide is well known for its toxic potential and is responsible for approximately 90% of all mushroom fatalities. The other primary mycotoxin groups found in mushrooms include: orellanine, monomethylhydrazine, disulfiram-like, hallucinogenic indoles, muscarinic, isoxazole, and gastrointestinal specific irritants.

Even after careful and through mold remediation that removes the fungus and spores, the Mycotoxins remain and should be dealt with separately. Most of the time, wiping a formerly mold infested area with water, detergent and ammonia does the job of Mycotoxins though not always.

I visited a very nice house today in a very nice neighborhood that was owned by a family that has fallen on hard financial times.  They are loosing their house in a foreclosure action by the bank. The family has abandoned the house and are waiting for the foreclosure to be resolved by the court or the short sale my partner is negotiating with the bank.

Because the electric and water bills had not been paid in several months both were turned off. The mold you see in the pictures here is a direct result of the electric being turned off and the sump pit overflowing to the tune of 2 or 3 inches of water in the basement which was carpeted.

The drywall now has over 4 feet of mold actively growing. Since the owner was loosing the house to the bank and had no money to pay the electric and the bank did not have the forethought to protect their investment by keeping the electric on, the value of this house has dropped sharply to a value that is less than 50% of the comparable houses in the neighborhood if the bank can sell it at all.

With this much mold growing on the dry wall the chances that there is mold growing on the back of the drywall is very good. The result is that all of the drywall in the basement will have to be removed and carried out for disposal. Fortunately, the door to the basement is only 4 feet from the door to the garage. Practicing just a little restraint in removing the drywall and  carrying the drywall out will limit the amount of mold left in the rest of the house as a result of the drywall removal effort.

In this house’s present condition, FHA will not approve a loan on the house for any amount of money.  Does this mean that this is an investor only house?  I think not. The investment in the time and protective gear to safely remove the drywall and clean up the mess will make it eligible for standard and FHA financing while improving the value of the house.

There is always a point at which removal of the contaminated materials is absolutely necessary regardless of how good your chemical treatment might be.  This certainly appears to be one of those cases.

After the dry wall in the basement has been taken down and removed, the basement and the rest of the house will need to be treated to kill the remaining mold and spores. Using the OdorXit CLO2 product to do this task will avoid even more damage and labor costs while killing the remaining mold and spores. A final wipe down on the entire house and basement will remove the residue of the dead mold, spores and mycotoxins.

If you have mold fungus growing in one or more of your living spaces (home, office, car, factory, boat, garage, yard, etc. ) there are a relative small number of alternatives available to you in terms of remediation and relief.

1. Doing a full tilt commercial mold remediation is  very likely to be the most expensive, running into the thousands of dollars, and forever taint your property as being mold infected. This is because there are a relative few products that are actually capable of killing mold and more importantly mold spores without being excessively toxic. Because these products are liquid there is a good chance that there be additional water damage and a poisonous powder residue. Finally most commercial mold remediation companies insist that you dispose of most of the paper and fabric materials in your home. If the mold problem is anyplace but your property this is not a real alternative.
2. Believe it or not, chlorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite (NaClO)) or even pool shock are not amongst the chemicals that will kill mold (though under the proper conditions they can make you pretty sick because it is poison). Even the oxygen cleaners like Oxiclean (sodium percarbonate (C₂H₆Na₄O₁₂)) does not kill mold fungus or spores. Both will wash away the current growth but will not kill the roots or spores that are left behind to bloom later.
3. There are many other chemicals that will kill mold fungus but most are not very friendly and some are down right bad and should not be used by home owners or professionals.
4. SporiClean enzyme cleaner is a very effective product. Careful reading of the application instructions indicate that it is very effective, however it is a liquid and the problems associated with liquids apply.  Used to remove mold from exterior surfaces is very save, fast and effective however, when used inside a building very much care should be exercised. When using the recommended foggier full HAZMAT garb is required to protect you form the product. Again this is not an alternative outside your property.
5. OdorXit CLO2 chlorine dioxide gas fungicide and odor eliminator. Careful reading of the application instructions indicate that it is extremely effective in enclosed spaces.  Using the proper sized product for the space being treated is essential to safe and effective mold, and mold spore removal without further damaging the the material the mold is growing on. Care must be taken to remove the dead mold powder because it is very often more toxic than the mold and spores were. Carefully wiping the dust away with a rag dampened with a mixture of water, liquid dish washing detergent and ammonia is all that is necessary. This can be used anywhere safely.
6. Ozone Generators are not new but they produce small and sometimes large quantities of ozone gas (O3) that is a very strong oxidizer (probably the strongest).  It will oxidize anything that will react with oxygen including mold, spores and many odors, plastics, carpeting, paint, skin, and other body parts. Aside from the fact that the US EPA has decided that there is no safe level of exposure to this very toxic gas, using ozone in a residential application is taking a considerable risk of damaging you house and impairing your health.  The Canadian Health authority has also spoken on ozone.

There are a few more obscure and/or dangerous  methods, but the main choises available are listed above. Now the hard part is choosing between them.

If  your mold problem is on someone elses turn (work) you are really limited to what you can use to decontaminate your personal area.  Boats and cars are another place the commercial people have serious problems fixing.

Standing book in a tub in preperation for treating with CLO2 gas

Treating hard cover books that have mold and/or smoke odors is pretty easy if you don’t have too many books. Using a tub available at Walmart, K-mart, and many dry good stores will do just fine.  The main things you need to look for is that they are tall enough to accommodate your tallest book and that they have a relatively flat bottom so that you can put cake racks in the bottom to set the books on. This is so that they have an air space under the book.

Having a lid that seals tightly is less important than a lid that is easy to put on and take off without knocking over the books in the tub.

If you have a large number of books you may want to install the plastic coated steel wire shelving used to organize closets available at Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, K-Mart, and other similar stores.

Example of adjustable wire closet shelving for book recovery

This is an example of the strip mounted wire  shelve closet shelving system. There are others of equal and lesser quality and cost. This one is mounted on 24 inch centers. The actual shelving is available in 8 or 10 foot lengths  and can be cut to a length that will fit in your closet with a hacksaw.  The clothes hanger bas can be left off or better utilization of vertical space. Shelves over 3 feet in length will require at least 1 additional support rail mounted near the middle of the shelf to support the weight.

Because of the direction of the wire, the books will have to be placed so that they span the bars and not fall in between them.

If the shelves are deep enough magazines, comic books and other documents can be hung over the wires of the shelf for treatment. Generally using every other wire will give enough space between the documents.

You can install as many of these shelves on a set of vertical rails as is appropriate for the height requirement of the books or documents you are treating. But be aware, the more documents you treating the longer it will take to eliminate the mold. When a molecule of  CLO2 lands on a mold fungus or spore, it decomposes into CLO and O1 and is done for ever. The O1 is the part does the job in the mold and spores.  So, the more books, or magazines, or mold you have the more CLO2 it will take to eliminate the mold. Since the production of CLO2 is relatively constant, the time to treat the documents get longer or the CLO2 packet size can to be increased to shorten the treatment time.

If the mold has encroached deeply into the pages of the documents or books, reducing the treatment time is not in your best interest.  It does take a finite amount of time for the CLO2 under the best circulation conditions to penetrate deeply into the documents pages. More CLO2 will help but time and circulation are you best friends.

Finding and screwing the rails into the studs in the wall and not just the plaster board is extremely important. Shelving loaded with books gets very heavy and will pull the screws right out of the wall board even if you use the plastic mollies.

Mount the CLO2 packet high in the closet and put a small fan in the bottom of the closet directed in such a way as to make the air circle upward in the closet. Remember, CLO2 is heavier that air and tends to collect on the floor. The fan will prevent that from happening.

There is more information on the OdorXit website or you can email or call the toll free help line during business hours EST.

Very Serious Mold Infestation

The picture depicts a very serious mold infestation that did not have to be a multi-thousand dollar mold remediation job with HAZMAT suites and dangerous chemicals. Early treatment including stopping the water and treating the interior with OdorXit CLO2 could have avoided this mess all together. Unfortunately, at this point, removing the infected drywall and treating the what is left with conventional remediation procedures is the next step for this house.

Sure you’ve heard the claims before: kill mold and spores with no effort and no Tyvek suit required. The mold in the picture  will hurt your lungs. Removing the drywall will get about 99.9% of the mold and spores, but that is not enough!

Using OdorXit CLO2 is an alternative that is capable of that last .1%. That’s right OdorXit CLO2 is safe enough to stay in the room and still kill as much or more mold than the other commercial products!

All you do is open, peel and stick and go on with your life. After 5 days the mold is usually dead and after 20 to 30 days, the packet is finished. It also kills the mold and mold spores in the air you breath, on the clothes hanging in your closets and in your drawers.

OdorXit's CLO2 products

Too good to be true: Stop wondering if it really works. Bypass the thousands of dollars required for even a simple remediation job. With our guarantee, you have nothing to lose but the mold and spores!

How it works: open the outside packet. Place the inside pack in the included self-adhesive pouch. The moisture in the air (minimum 40+%) activates the packet and an invisible gas circulates in the air spurred on by a small fan or ceiling fan, kills the mold.

This product kills mold odor by killing the mold fungus and spores that grow into mold fungus. It does not require a HAZMAT suit or for you to evacuate your home to do the job.  However, there are mold conditions like that pictured above that you should not be living in anyway. Let OdorXit CLO2 get you back into your house safely and quickly.

OdorXit® CLO2 risk-free guarantee: If it doesn’t do what we say, we’ll refund 100% of your money.

Lots more information on ClO₂

In 1976 I was working in northern New Jersey and living in a tiny house with lots of steps in Ringwood NJ.  For several years my wife and I had been looking for a house that we could afford, but even in 1976 houses in New Jersey were nearly twice the price of the houses we had looked at in the Midwest.

As luck would have it, we did find a 1000 sqft house with no steps in an old lake side community on Greenwood Lake. It was  just 3 mile from the New York state border and 20 miles from where I was working for an incredible $40000.

There were a few warning signs like the inch deep pile of real estate agents cards laying on the kitchen counter and the musty smell throughout the house.

It turns out that the owners had been transferred out of state and had hired a couple of the local teens to clean out the house, paint the walls and ceiling and arrange for the carpet to be cleaned to prepare the house for sale. The clean out was through, the paint job was OK, the carpet cleaning was done professional but the carpet was left wet and the house closed up.

There were wet moldy ashes in the fire place that smelled pretty bad, but the real problem was the partially completed cellar where there was an indoor/outdoor carpet on the floor. It was still wet from the sump pit overflowing into the cellar because the old style sump pump has fallen over and obstructed the motion of the float ball that controlled the power to the pump.  The mold smell was overwhelming! Why the listing agent had not removed the carpet is still a mystery.

I offered $35000 and it was accepted.  The first thing I did was cut up the remove the wet carpet in the cellar.

A few months later I finally got around to cleaning up the cellar. Mostly throwing out a few boxes of junk and sweeping up. Probably 2 hours work.  By that evening I was feeling pretty bad and by 9 PM I was sporting a 105 degree fever including uncontrollable chills, sweating, shaking, and mussel cramps. Aspirin did nothing to help the situation at all.  However, by midnight the fever broke and I was able to sleep.

The next day I was so worn out I couldn’t go to work so I stayed in bed most of the day resting and preparing for the work the next day.

Two months later, I finally got around to finishing the cleanup in the cellar and that evening the very same situation occurred again! Being a pretty quick study I connected the activity in the cellar with the fever and took corrective action. (Spending a minimal amount of time in the cellar.)

Sometime later I mentioned the 2 episodes to my doctor during a normal check up and he told me that I had a mold allergy. Now I was one of those people who was not allergic to anything up until then and I was not at all happy with the thought.  The Doctor say that I probably had what he called a step function mold allergy which means that nothing happens until I exceed some level of exposure at which point I will get a sever reaction in a few hours for a few hours… Pretty heady stuff for a doctor to be handing out without a perspiration for some drug.

Turns out the doctor  was quite right and the step seemed to be at 30 minutes in a moldy smelling area. Armed with the the third event I have had only one additional mold reaction that I should have predicted! Now I use a respirator anytime I am in a moldy house.