Just got our mold Ermi report/Any help?

Emailed to me today. We had already decided to move from here (we rent a house) very soon, within a month or two because of my gut instincts. If anyone has their report to compare it with and can generally make sense of ours until I can set up a consult with Mycometrics, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

location N/A
Spore E./mg
Fungal ID \ Sample ID C36031/EC-LR, KIT, 2 BAS
Aspergillus flavus/oryzae 1
Aspergillus fumigatus* 4
Aspergillus niger* 98
Aspergillus ochraceus* 1
Aspergillus penicillioides 200
Aspergillus restrictus* 38
Aspergillus sclerotiorum ND
Aspergillus sydowii 61
Aspergillus unguis 24
Aspergillus versicolor 11000
Aureobasidium pullulans 230
Chaetomium globosum 53
Cladosporium sphaerospermum 230
Eurotium (Asp.) amstelodami* 300
Paecilomyces variotii 2
Penicillium brevicompactum* 14
Penicillium corylophilum 63
Penicillium crustosum* 67
Penicillium purpurogenum <1
Penicillium spinulosum* <1
Penicillium variabile 43
Scopulariopsis brevicaulis/fusca 1
Scopulariopsis chartarum 3
Stachybotrys chartarum 3300
Trichoderma viride* 6
Wallemia sebi 9600
Sum of the Logs (Group I): 38.07
Acremonium strictum 3
Alternaria alternata 77
Aspergillus ustus 900
Cladosporium cladosporioides 1 720
Cladosporium cladosporioides 2 200
Cladosporium herbarum 590
Epicoccum nigrum 410
Mucor amphibiorum* 28
Penicillium chrysogenum 1100
Rhizopus stolonifer ND
Sum of the Logs (Group II): 20.35
ERMI (Group I - Group II): 17.72
The sample(s) in this report was/were received in acceptab

Post Edited (JH44) : 4/22/2021 3:06:50 PM (GMT-6)

Your HERTSMI score is a whopping 42! That house is seriously contaminated. I'm very glad that you are already in the process of getting out of there. Stachybotrys (3300!) is the "toxic black mold" that scares even healthy people. There's an excellent chance that this house is the source of many of your issues. One the one hand, bummer! But on the other hand, good to know!

Ohhh, wait!!! You have to be informed about cross contamination of possessions when moving. Please look at this and be very careful about what you do with your stuff and even your automobiles.

The toxins get on everything and can be very difficult to impossible to remove. They are also invisible, so many people who are not extremely sensitized and able to detect their presence won’t even believe in their existence or danger. Some toxins like those from Stachybotrus can persist for years and are nearly impossible to destroy.

https://paradigmchange.me/wp/stuff/

I guess the good news is that when we leave, assuming we can get into a relatively mold free house, I should start to get better with the proper treatment, assuming that mold and mycotoxins have been the root cause for my health breakdown over the past 4 months. It's very interesting that I got sick neurologically not long after we had to seal up the house for winter and start using the electric baseboard heat. Maybe the underlying Lyme and Bart was able to start up again because the mycotoxins helped break down my immune system. Maybe the majority of my head and body-wide neuro pain, heart pain and head pressure/ache symptoms are from mycotoxin toxicity?? Also as soon as I leave the house, I start to feel much less symptoms. When I get back here they start up. Same with the car to a lesser extent. Does that seem like a clue to you both?

Post Edited (JH44) : 4/22/2021 6:31:43 PM (GMT-6)

Well there are some practical things for us to consider. We don't have much money at the moment, so we can't just throw away everything we own and start again. We own an older car with too many miles too trade it in so we have to keep it till we can buy another one. Yes we take this situation very seriously indeed but we still need to live and survive. I think the main thing right now is I have already started looking at houses to rent and saw one yesterday and passed it by because it was 100 years old with an ancient basement that may have been moldy, but I need to get more well versed at detecting mold issues in rental houses. The way these houses turn over within a day or two up here there is no way to reasonably ask the owner to wait and let me do a mold test on it. We'll have to figure something out!

I live in MA, too. The coastal area has constant air movement from the ocean, so it's relatively dry compared with where I am now - a valley, with frequent foggy mornings. (Obviously the ocean air provides some humidity, but much less than here, and no stagnation.)

In terms of detecting mold in prospective houses, look for dry basements. Due to the stack effect, basement air rises, so a moldy attic is barely an issue, but a moldy basement is inescapable, even on higher floors of the house. Finished basements are even worse than moist unfinished basements because the types of mold that grow on below-grade human-made materials (the hidden backs of the drywall and flooring) are more toxic than the molds that grow on natural materials (wood, soil, stone). Also look for a home with no water damage (look at ceilings and around windows, under sinks, near laundry, near bathtub). Don't rent anywhere with carpet or that smells musty.

Throwing things away is hard financially, practically, and emotionally. And wasteful! I would not recommend it if it were not necessary. If there are porous items (including papers and books and wall art) that you cannot part with, then store them in airtight (gasketed) plastic bins, and only open them outdoors, until you can get everything scanned (phone apps do this easily), photocopied, or replaced. No cardboard should come into the new house, and no upholstered items, mattresses, pillows, comforters, or rugs. If you have to keep a mattress, then encase it in a six-sided waterproof mattress cover, ditto for pillows. Clean your non-porous furniture (finished solid wood, plastic, metal) with damp rags that you throw away afterward and don't reuse. Unfinished wood and particleboard can be sealed with AFM Safecoat products to make them safe. Every piece of clothing should be washed and dried in machines outside of your home before being packed in trash bags, so they will not be re-contaminated. Use borax or one of the anti-mold formulas for this. Any clothes that smell like mold need to be discarded. (Some sources say to throw away all clothes....) Wipe down everything with vinegar before packing it, and again, discard the rags. Putting things in the sun can help with killing mold as well. Wear an N95 mask while packing, or have someone else do it. A random free sofa from Craigslist statistically would be much safer for you than any upholstered furniture you have currently. Use a HEPA filter vacuum.

Finally, electronics are a painful one; technically, anything with a motor (laptop, fan, clock, microwave, blender, TV, etc.) should be replaced because spores and mycotoxins are inside the motor and cannot be cleaned out, so they will spew out and contaminate the new space as soon as you turn on the item. A lot of people cheat on this one by keeping those items stored in gasketed plastic bins and just using them outdoors, or they sell their electronics on Craigslist and buy new ones.

Dehumidify your new place with the strongest dehumidifier you can afford. A low enough moisture level will make it impossible for the mold spores on your belongings to grow, so even if you contaminate the new place, it will not get as bad. To be honest, I kept my old laptop when I did a massive decontamination move and remediation, but my new house has an industrial dehumidifier in the basement with sensors in most rooms, so I know that with a humidity level of 30% in the house, any spores still inside of it won't grow. (Plus, the mold species growing in my old house were prolific but relatively low-toxicity, and were all "outdoor" molds that people can't totally avoid anyway.)

I believe there are little air purifiers for cars. Wearing an N95 mask in the car and keeping the windows down could help until you get a new one. Don't store anything in the car, and don't bring anything inside that's been in the car if you can help it. Use non-porous (vinyl) seat covers to protect clothes and cargo (like groceries).

I know this all sounds insane. It feels insane when you are doing it, too, and your partner and anyone else in your life who isn't disabled by mycotoxins is going to think you're nuts. But I've done it, and others here have done it, because there's just no value in keeping your old stuff if it means that you're sick, especially from mycotoxins that are neurotoxic, carcinogenic, etc. You may be the canary in the coal mine because you have symptoms, but no human is safe around those mycotoxins. (It may be a good idea to alert your landlord, by the way, so that a future tenant doesn't sue if they become ill with stachybotrys specifically; such cases have occurred in MA.)

Air Doctor air purifiers can filter out particles small enough to include mycotoxins (most air purifiers catch mold spores but not mycotoxins, which are much smaller) and you can find coupon codes online to get them for 50% off. (A few other air purifiers are good enough for mycotoxins, but much more expensive.)

So in summary: get rid of porous things, dehumidify, purify, mattress protectors, mask, clean, HEPA, find a house with a dry basement with no water damage. You will get through this!

You could look into fogging your home with a product such as EC3 until you can move.

The website for EC3, www.microbalancehealthproducts.com is very helpful, they sell laundry detergent, etc... which could be helpful in the immediate time period.

what is the best and most effective mold tester?
is possible that we have excess moisture in walls
curious if this is exacerbating our lyme and M-pneumoniae symptoms

have used vitaloxide to treat with fogger but need to get full accounting detail of what we are dealing with now that a very "heavy snow" winter is over