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Stachybotrys is a slow growing mold and requires high levels of water in it’s substrate. This inspector commonly finds it growing in wet, dark, hidden areas. It loves areas where a slow hidden leak can continue unnoticed and uncorrected for a few weeks or months such as inside wall cavities.

According to literature and according to this inspectors experience it grows almost exclusively on very wet cellouse containing materials including paper, carpets, ceiling tile, and especially on drywall. It loves drywall because of the cellulose paper on the front and back surfaces of drywall. Wood contains cellulose, and yes stachybotrys will grow on wood but it is not found growing on wet wood as often as one would think. The cellulose food in wood is protected to some degree by wood’s lignan. In water damaged buildings the wood surfaces are more likely to be colonized by Chaetomium and pen asp.

Toxic black mold or stachybotrys is found by certified mold inspectors about 6% of the time in indoor air samples and about 1% of the time in outdoor samples.

It is the most feared of all molds, due to the numerous news To Read More Click Here

Ok the title is a bit over the top but in a round about way it is true. Many swimming molds live in and swim through the thin film of water on wet plant leaves and ruin many important crops during extra wet growing seasons. These molds often have a very negative effect on agriculture and are directly responsible for the deadly Irish Potato Famien.

Some make their homes in moist frog skin and cause a deadly disease that has been decimating frog populations around the world for several decades now. While others cause a common fuzzy white growth of mold on tropical fish.

These molds in at least some stages of their complex life cycles propel themselves through water with the aid of tiny whip like structures called flagella. Flagella are those long whip like structures that are found on some cells such as sperm cells and are one celled plant like Eugenia protozoans which push themselves through water.

In his book The Fifth Kingdom Dean Kendrick noted mycologist (mold biologist) discusses three phylum (large groupings) of swimming molds.

1) PHYLUM CHYTRIDIOMYCOTA

The first group is known as To Read More Click Here

Carbon Monoxide is a poisonous gas that is 250 times better at binding with hemoglobin in blood cells than is oxygen. If inhaled carbon monoxide will cause adverse health effects starting with dizziness, light headiness, shortness of breath, and nausea, exposure may also lead to sleepiness coma and death all depending on dosage and exposure time. Carbon dioxide is a very serious indoor air quality concern that causes more accidental poisoning death each year in America than any other poison.

Carbon Dioxide on the other hand carbon dioxide does not typically build up to levels in the ambient indoor air that can result in serious negative health effects. Carbon dioxide itself is not a serious concern in most indoor environments but is tested as part of an indoor air quality investigation because elevated levels of carbon dioxide indicates poor building ventilation, and this same poor ventilation not only results in the build up of typically harmless carbon dioxide, but also causes the build up of various air born irritants such as body odor, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and bio-allergens. Indoor levels of carbon To Read More Click Here