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Toxic Mold Hysteria.

By Chris Rangel MD ⋅ June 6, 2002 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Mold Hysteria - My take on the real issue.
Students and teachers at McKinley Elementary School in Fairfield, Conn. have been sticken by the new disease syndrome known (to me) as “mold hysteria”. The syndrome works in one of two ways. People in a house or other building begin noticing odd smells and a mold infestation is found in an area of the building that has become chronically moist (air conditioning ducts, around leaking plumbing, etc.). Or maybe the mold infestation was found accidentally by maintenance without there being any outward signs. At this point the building is diagnosed as having “black mold” and only then do the occupants begin reporting symptoms. People begin making connections with that nagging cough or headache that they have had for a month.

The other possibility is that a group of people who live or work in the same building begin reporting a “wide variety of symptoms” and then someone goes specifically looking for mold. Guess what? They find mold, either an infestation that previously went unnoticed (for who knows how long) or via laboratory testing (plating Petri dishes with environmental samples). Of course the wide variety of symptoms are immediately blamed on this “new” mold problem.

Is this a new “serious public issue” as one of the teachers in the above story was quoted as saying? First off, there is no such single species known as “black mold”. According to a great Q&A article from the CDC-National Center for Environmental Health website, the most common indoor mold species are Cladosporium, Penicillium, Aspergillus, and Alternaria. These tend to form black pigmented growths. A less common (but by no means rare) black mold is Stachybotrys chartarum. This is the one that seems to cause the most hysteria because it is known to produce a “mycotoxin”. According to an article by the California Department of Health Services, Stachybotrys growing in large amounts in hay and grains on farms caused burning sensations in the mouth, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain when consumed by humans. However, the incidence of symptoms was low and no fatal cases resulted.

In contrast, Stachybotrys always makes up a very small part of the total population of “black mold” species found in buildings and so the amounts of airborne toxin produced is known to be very small. The initial hysteria about the toxic effects of indoor Stachybotrys comes from an outbreak of pulmonary hemorrhage (bleeding in the lungs) in 45 infants over 7 years in Cleveland, Ohio in the early to mid 1990s. A CDC lead investigation found high levels of mold including Stachybotrys in the houses of the infants and concluded that this may have been a factor but there was no direct scientific evidence linking the mold toxin to the disease. The media called it a cause and the black mold hysteria began. Since then several studies have tried to evaluate the relationship between exposure to airborne indoor Stachybotrys toxin and human disease but to date there is no concrete data to prove that this type of exposure causes health problems in humans. Mycologist Berlin D. Nelson writes in his article on Stachybotrys, “There is considerable controversy, however, about the role of S. chartarum in pulmonary hemorrhage in the Cleveland incident and in human health in the indoor environment . . . . in 2000 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta published two reports critical of the study conducted in Cleveland and concluded that the association between S. chartarum and acute pulmonary hemorrhage/hemosiderosis was not proven. One of the most important areas where we lack information is the relationship between exposure to bioaerosols of S. chartartum (both in time and amount of the fungus) and effects on human health.”

This is not to say that mold does not cause human disease. Common molds and aspergillus in particular can aggravate allergies and worsen asthmatic symptoms. The groups of patients at specific risk of being affected by high concentrations of indoor mold are those with allergic reactions to mold and asthmatics, patients with chronic pulmonary obstructive disease (often from smoking) or other serious pre-existing pulmonary problem, and patients who are immunosupressed as the result of medications, cancer, or HIV infection (molds can become opportunistic pathogens in these patients). However, in none of these patient populations is the mold blamed for causing the disease, only for aggravating it. Mold doesn’t cause asthma in children but it does cause exacerbations of the asthma just as air pollution, second hand smoke, and other common household allergens such as cockroaches cause symptoms in asthmatic children. For these groups of patients, yes, mold is a problem but is it a cause for hysteria?

The variety of symptoms in these “outbreaks” often goes beyond what is recognized as being attributable to mold (allergic symptoms and pulmonary problems including the rare pulmonary hemorrhage). In the first article cited above, one of the teachers noted, “the respiratory symptoms, the neurological, the sensory disturbances that I have been suffering for years were totally consistent with exposure to high levels of mold”. What? Consistent with what study? In another outbreak in Portland Or. “students and teachers at Whitaker Middle School started complaining of fatigue, head aches and flu-like symptoms” and a teacher was quoted as saying. “I felt like something was standing on my chest. My skin was crawling. I had hives and my face was puffed up like a pink.” Wha-wha-what?! I suppose that if I was convinced that I had been exposed to some horrible toxin producing fungus of death I would get chest pains and my skin would crawl too (by-the-way, stress can cause hives as well).

The other symptoms of fatigue, head aches and flu-like symptoms are so vague as to be due to nearly anything. As I recall, I had these same symptoms in middle school. I think this was due to being in school rather than mold. Not surprisingly these vague and diffuse symptoms are very similar to those experienced in “Gulf War Syndrome (GWS)” another example of hysteria. Could it be that sufferers of GWS are actually suffering from mold exposure and those middle school students and teachers are suffering the effects of too many TV specials on the Gulf War? Nawww. The middle east is too dry for mold and I would think that another season of “Survivor” is much more damaging then anything on the history channel.

Other than those brought to hysterical concerns about their health, who else gets hurt in this boondoggle? Well, there are the lawyers for one, looking to find someone liable for theoretical health problems. Even the real Erin Brockovich has gotten into the act (there’s a real bastion of legal justice . . . . or is it legal hysteria?). Whenever lawyers get into the act you know that greed and injustice are taking advantage of hysteria and ignorance and in the end we all loose. Case in point; The number of insurance claims by homeowners for black mold combined with multimillion dollar judgments against insurers has driven premiums up as much as 200%! In June 2002 a Dripping springs family won a suit against Farmers Insurance Group for $32 MILLION for mishandled their claim for black mold damage. Anyone want to take a guess that their house was not worth anywhere near $32,000,000.00 dollars? As a result, most major insurance companies are not even taking new homeowner policies (at least here in Texas). For a potential 1st time home owner this really gets me steamed. I don’t care. I’ll live with the black mold of death and I’ll enjoy it! Just get me an insurance rate that doesn’t make me vomit.

Hysteria is a disease that has an endless variety of symptoms and tends to spread like wildfire within groups of people. It’s only human nature for people to try and make a connection between their health and environmental factors and it’s in the apparent nature of the media and lawyers to feed the fire of hysteria for the sake of ratings and personal gain.