Key Points

A recent study evaluated the contribution of building issues to mold proliferation in dwellings. The study investigated 503 homes of patients suffering from respiratory diseases and found that building defects were the leading cause of mold growth, with water infiltration through leaks in roofs or walls as the top contributor. These results highlight the importance of health professionals being able to request home inspections and for city health authorities to address building issues in order to prevent mold proliferation.

Introduction

• In the United States and Europe, 20% of homes have been found to have mould growth. Both immediate and long-term health effects are significant.
• Globally, a number of governmental and nongovernmental groups have produced recommendations regarding the dangers of indoor mould to human health. Mold-infested building home examinations have uncovered a wide range of danger signs.
• Practically speaking, the specialist...

INTRODUCTION

Recent research published in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research reports on the relationship between household exposure to various factors and respiratory symptoms. The focus is on Malaysia, a tropical country with three ethnic groups having varying asthma prevalence. In previous research, 3-10 per cent of Malaysian schoolchildren were diagnosed with asthma and 5-8% had current wheeze.

The presence of fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) is a well-known marker of TH2 airway inflammation in allergic asthma and rhinitis. In children, FeNO is elevated if it exceeds 20 ppb. FeNO can be linked to height, male gender, and immediate-type allergies.

There are only a few studies on how household air pollution (HAP) affects FeNO. Microbial growth and chemical degradation of building materials can be caused by dampness, water leakage, and mould. FeNO levels have been linked to lower exposure to endotoxin and dogs. We have published findings on the role of...

Introduction

Fungi are understudied but important commensals/opportunistic infections that shape host immunity. Individual tumour types were found to have fungi, which contribute to esophageal and pancreatic cancer carcinogenesis. Their presence, identity, location, and effects in the majority of cancer types are unknown. Fungi and bacteria have symbiotic and antagonistic relationships (Frey-Klett et al., 2011; Peleg et al., 2010; Shiao et al., 2021), which further motivates research into their interactions in tumours. Combining their data results in synergistic colorectal cancer diagnosis.

Here are the key points of this research:

Results

• Many human cancers contain fungus nucleic acids. In two large cohorts of cancer samples the research team previously examined for bacteria, we profiled fungal DNA. Internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) amplicon sequencing was used to check for fungal presence in all samples.
• The second cohort included data from The Cancer Genome Atlas that...

Hello, and welcome to The Mould Show. My name's Dr. Cameron Jones. I'm an environmental microbiologist. And this week I have a fascinating topic, again, on the implications of living in a water damaged building. And we're going to be going over some of the extreme symptoms, which are not that extreme. 

Have you ever felt tired or lethargic after spending time indoors? What happens if that experience of tiredness and fatigue never lets up? Well for a range of people who are exposed to water damaged buildings, that's exactly the types of symptoms that they tend to experience. And this is called ME or chronic fatigue syndrome and it has a specific name, and that's what we're going to be focusing on today. This concept of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). What is the connection with fungal mycotoxins? And I know there has been a lot of research literature appearing that is focusing on the connection between the experience of water-damaged building...

Hello and welcome to The Mould Show. My name is Dr. Cameron Jones, and this week we are focusing on a neuroinflammatory disease called multiple sclerosis. We're going to be looking at whether or not there is a microbiological basis to this condition and, importantly, whether there are some fungal microorganisms that are linked to this particular illness and, importantly, whether or not we can use the identification of these microorganisms as a predictor of risk.

Also, we're going to be looking at some of the emerging literature showing that there is a connection with the gut microbiome, and specifically the gut microflora, the fungal microorganisms.

So what we're going to be doing is focusing on multiple sclerosis and fungi. Is there a link? To do this, I'm going to be going through two of the main publications that have come out in the last two years focusing on this specific topic.

Again, all of these references are going to be available in the show notes description to the...

Hello, and welcome to The Mould Show. My name's Dr. Cameron Jones, your host, and today we're going to be focusing on water-damaged buildings, but specifically, we're going to be looking at how you go about measuring the impact of that water damage, that mould exposure and whether or not that is leading to obviously a range of adverse health symptoms that many people experience when they spend time indoors with mould. But how does this affect your immune system? Is there a way of firstly measuring the impact that the water-damaged building and the toxic components that are present in these environments? How do they affect your immune system? That is the topic of today's show, and that is can toxic indoor air cause immunosuppression?

What I'm going to be doing is that I'm going to be focusing on this piece of research that we're going to be drilling into in quite some depth and it's a really important piece of research. It came out at the beginning of 2022 and the topic focus of...

Hello, and welcome to the Mould Show. My name's Dr Cameron Jones. I'm an environmental microbiologist. And today we're going to be talking about mould, of course. But specifically how you deal with water damage or mould contaminated textiles. That's right. Clothing. How do we wash these? What is the best way of washing clothes to get rid of mould? 

And the reason for this is not a week goes by without someone ringing me up to ask me this exact question, what is the best way of getting mould out of textiles and of our personal property? And again, the reason I wanted to do this show on a Sunday is that tomorrow I am spending the next couple of days as an expert witness working on a case for a solicitor. And all of their questions revolve around the answer to this. Can we get mould out of textiles and clothing?

And if so, how? And how successful is it? In doing some preparation for that legal case, I wanted to present you with some of the more recent research evidence straight...

Hello, and welcome to the Mould Show. My name's Dr. Cameron Jones. I'm an environmental microbiologist, and for any of my listeners and viewers here in Australia, you are probably all aware of the catastrophic weather conditions that are affecting Queensland and New South Wales. And for many people, they have suffered devastating impacts caused by this floodwater. And for all the people who watch my show, you know that I'm particularly concerned about the impact of water damage on personal property and the potential for mould and mould exposure to not only damage your assets but cause unexpected or hidden health risks and consequences. So, today we're going to be focusing on what you do if your precious documents, your paper-based documents become water damaged. What are you going to do? Are you going to get out the hairdryer? Are you going to attempt to move them obviously to a dryer location?

 But what happens if you come back to your property, or your residence, or...

Hello, and welcome to The Mould Show. In this week's episode, we're going to be talking about something called building-related illness. Now, how does this differ from sick building syndrome? Well, watch on or listen, and I will explain what the differences are.

How I'm going to be approaching this episode is to drill in and make a deep dive into a recent publication which has connected the dots between an occupational hygiene survey, that is a mould assessment inside a home, and then the medical findings. This is for a family of five who lived in a water-damaged building for six years. I'm going to be describing a lot of the issues and problems and reasons for not only the building becoming wet, but how the medical practitioners were able to deal and assess with this particular family. I hope that this episode will be valuable for other people who might find themselves in similar situations where it's unavoidable that they continue living in a water-damaged building. This might...

Hello, and thanks for joining me for the first The Mould Show for 2022, and I thought with many of us still on school holidays or certainly here in Australasia, many of us are probably wondering about the impact of indoor air quality and potentially water damage on the health of our children. So today, we're going to be talking about some of the key pieces of research, which explore how water damage, and mould, and mycotoxins can affect your children.

Without further ado, we'll get straight into this. So does mould harm children's health? That's the topic that we need to be talking up about today because it is a serious topic. We cover at length in these live streams and podcasts all the range of adverse health symptoms and problems that can occur to adults, but what about children because most of us have families? In many cases, the built environment is a perfect reservoir for not only mould spores, but a buildup of toxic allergens, chemicals, and mycotoxins. What are these? What's...