Crying, Losing Your Mind, Family All Sick - What's Wrong?

Let me tell you the (ongoing) story of Mary (not her real name).

Mary initially rang me to discuss a mould issue in her rented house - she said she had mould growing through the paint on the walls and the ceiling. The carpet smelled horrible, and the room where the baby slept was almost furry.

She was in tears throughout our phone call, she couldn't think straight, she felt like she was right at the edge of her limit (and rapidly falling over it, she said) and had no idea what to do, and who to turn to. Her six year old son was sick all the time and having issues at school. Her husband was getting headaches and having trouble sleeping, she was depressed and developing asthma, according to the doctors, and she'd attended hospital a few times with rashes, dizziness and shortness of breath. That wasn't the worst of it, either, her baby was also sick, coughing, respiratory illnesses and had been in hospital for most of his under two years.

Mary was frantic... nobody believed her, the real estate agency had basically told her to "suck it up and clean up the mould" and the landlord wasn't interested. In fact, when told about the leaking windows on one side of the house, rather than fix the leak, the landlord put up a board between the window and the room... creating a ten centimetre gap where the rain would come in, but the water wouldn't get in... but the mould had a perfect little home in which to grow. And it did. And from that area, it had a base from which to infest the house.

Mould is such a small organism that by the time enough of it is in one place to make it big enough for a human to see it with the naked eye, that mould has travelled seventeen (yes, 17!) kilometres. That's each strand. That's a lot of mould.

Mould can affect you, your health, and the health of your family. It can cause depression and anxiety, and if not treated, the despair and depression can be lethal. It's not well-known - and it's sometimes hard for someone who hasn't been in the situation to take it seriously. There's a HUGE difference between the small amount of mould in the average bathroom (even those ones they use on the ads for products which seem to give amazing results) and the house that's infested.

Others tend to want to give advice like "just wipe it off with a bit of bleach" (which doesn't work) and look at you as if you're dirty. That's not the case. Another thing to remember is that yes, you do need to stop the ingress of moisture, but if your roof has been leaking for six months and there's mould in the ceiling cavity, simply fixing the leak won't get rid of the mould. You have to do both.

I do have an ebook which can help if you have issues, and I also have a sympathetic ear if you need one. I've been there, I've seen that, and no, I don't have a mouldy t-shirt. :-)

But seriously though, if you need some help, please don't think it's you. If it's getting on top of you and you don't think you can cope, ask someone for help. It's not you, it's the mould.

Pauline Ferguson is a Building Biologist in Queensland who really hates mould!
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