Hi, there, and welcome to this week's episode of The Mould Show. Today we're going to be talking about the issue of humidity in the built environment. We're broadcasting from Australia. This is in Southeast Asia, and many cities in Australia are plagued with humidity problems, especially towns like Darwin. But, what about other areas of South and Southeast Asia like Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia or Jakarta in Indonesia? Or what about in your hometown?

We are going to be talking about this issue of humidity, and I'm going to be reviewing some of the research literature on humidity and what building scientists and engineers have worked out as some of the sustainable practices for reducing the levels of mould. And this couldn't be a more important topic because there have been changes to the residential tenancy laws, certainly in Victoria and in Australia, making the onus of responsibility for having a mould free living environment more of a responsibility for the landlord.

But also, if the...

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of The Mould Show, and today I'm going to be talking to you about something called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome.

Now you might not have heard of this before. Certainly, I was not that familiar with this topic or syndrome as well, and therefore I decided to put together this live stream to tell you all about Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. Why it's important and how it is related to environmental toxicity. And to set the stage for this, what we're going to be talking about today is how to avoid the top seven Mast Cell Activation Syndrome triggers. But as I said, you're probably wondering, how does this relate to me? What is it? Could I have it? And how is this related to water damage and mould? And as always, I like to use real-world examples.

So last week, a clinician referred a patient of hers to me in order to do a comprehensive indoor air quality and mould assessment of her apartment. And the reason for this was that she had been seeing...

Hello and welcome to season three of The Mould Show. My name's Dr. Cameron Jones, and I'm an environmental microbiologist. And to kick off this year, I want to talk about allergy, and I want to talk about specifically allergens in the environment. And the reason for this is some of my clinician friends have referred some of their patients to me in the last couple of months for exposure to unwanted environmental toxins. And the reason for their referrals for home inspections is because those patients were experiencing unwanted seizure activity.

Yes, you heard me right. Not just allergic rhinitis or a running nose or contact dermatitis or an itch, but seizures. And therefore, what I've done is I've gone into the research literature, I found some key papers, and I'm going to be reviewing some of the case studies that the medical doctors have written up about patients who have been exposed to water-damaged building interiors and gone on to suffer seizures and a whole host of unwanted...

As we race towards Christmas and into the New Year and with springtime firmly in the rear view mirror, many of us potentially with itchy eyes, find ourselves still reaching for the tissue. You might be responding to all the pollen in the air and so for this week at Christmas last show for 2020, I wanted to talk about the topic of allergens because it's not just pollen allergens, that people will respond to. Any of you who've been following the news about the introduction of Pfizer's new COVID-19 vaccine, have possibly been alerted to some of the alarming news reports saying that many people have been getting an allergic reaction to the vaccine. I want to talk about the scientific underpinnings of this. What is an allergen? How do you come into contact with allergens? How does this affect how we think about vaccines and what you should know over the holiday season?

Firstly, I want to define what an allergen is. Essentially this is any substance, usually a protein which can elicit an...

COVID this year, like no other year, has really shone a spotlight on how we maintain our homes and offices and what steps we use to protect ourselves. And I thought this week that I would be focusing on something that I see all the time when we do indoor air quality and mould and water damage inspections. And that is the incredible amount of dust that is often found settled in your home and even my home. And I just want to put up a typical example of what we see in what extensively looks like really clean properties. And under the microscope dust is a really complicated and complex material. And it's quite unattractive, all of us would agree about that. And so, this week, like other weeks we're going to be focusing on some practical tips that you can follow to reduce sneezing and dominate dust in your home.

Here's an example of a tape lift under the microscope at x100 times magnification.  The tape lift was taken from the bookshelf in the hallway of a home where one of the...

Over the next five minutes, we're going to be talking about bath toys. That's right. This is The Mould Show. And each week we focus on another aspect of public health. And earlier this week, I appeared on The Morning Show on Channel Seven, talking about the risks from bath toys.

Now, the reason for this was that there had been a number of new stories linking bath time and very serious infections. And one that was brought to my attention was a mother of a little boy who was playing with one of these typical bath toys and he squinted himself in the eye. And that's half the fun of bath toys and face it bath time is supposed to be fun apart from getting clean. So in the next five minutes, we're going to be going quite quickly through some of the reasons why bath time plus plastic bath toys might be cause for reconsideration for a lot of parents and grandparents. And especially as we approach Christmas and you're considering potential stocking fillers, you might want to think twice about...

This week I was speaking to a client and she said to me that she was so relieved that the COVID-19 restrictions were lifting and that things could get back to normal. And she went on to say that, especially with COVID-19, really this was just a once in a hundred-year problem and that she couldn't wait until life went back to normal. And I started thinking to myself, is what she's thinking and saying actually true? And I know that through history, diseases and infections have been periodic and have caused massive problems. And so this week I wanted to focus on a range of different pathogens, bacterial, viral, and also yeast and fungal pathogens as well.

And so today, we're going to be talking about what you should know about pathogens for 2021. And I think that this is particularly important because certainly this year, like no other, it is firmly focused, and for all of us, we've all been affected by SARS-CoV-2 and the impact that this virus is having across the planet. And we've...

In the next five minutes or so, I'm going to answer a fundamental question, which I'm asked about all the time and that is after an unexpected water damage event at your property, what's the probability that you're going to end up with a mould problem? I'm going to cut straight to the answer here. You need to answer three questions. That is, how much water was present? Was it a little bit, or was it a lot? How long was the water present inside your property? Was it minutes, hours or was it some days? And there's a really important question because so many of my clients are going through insurance-related water damage claims, and often the time from the initial wetting event to when someone comes to assist the property, or importantly when someone comes to do make safe works is often a lot longer than hours or even a few days.

So that's something you all need to be aware of. And then the third question I need all of you to consider is, what type of water caused the wetting event? And...

Like many of you, I look forward to my daily cup of coffee and so do a lot of other people too. In fact, the statistics suggest that 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed every day. But apart from the health benefits of coffee, as well as the simple pleasure and the social issues as well about coffee consumption, climate change poses a very real threat. And that's what I want to talk to you about on this episode of The Mould Show, because a recent paper came out in October, 2020, focusing on some of the risks to the coffee crop and the number of cups that we have available to us. And climate change is predicted by 2050 to reduce the available land suitable for coffee growing by up to 50%. And so that is what I want to focus on in today's live stream. 

Why climate change could cost you your cappuccino. And to orient you, what I'm going to be doing today is going through some of the key facts and figures surrounding coffee. Then we're going to be looking at some of the new...

This week, I want to talk about a recent water damage and mould inspection that I was called out to do. And the reason that I was at that particular property was that the occupant had recently done something called an aspergillus serology test with her doctor and she'd gotten back some pretty scary lab results. And they showed that she had a really strong reaction to a particular fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus. That was the catalyst for why she called us in to inspect her property, to work out whether or not there was any realistic basis for her concern about being exposed to mould.

Now, what's really interesting about this case is that that's not an atypical reason for us. We're commonly called out to do water damage and mould inspections because people do have a legitimate cause for concern, and often it's these types of lab reports that clinicians use to connect the dots, as it were. But what's really interesting about this particular situation is that she said to me, a...