Week of January 16, 2023
QUESTION: Is it necessary to purchase a HEPA air filter? What about a UV light? What about an ozone generator?
ANSWER: I am putting these three questions together because they all have to do with the same idea: removal of bioaerosols from an ongoing reservoir in indoor air. UV lights are useful if they can be directed for an extended period of time on a given area, such as by a humidification device in an air handler. I see no benefit for shining UV light on air that is moving rapidly as there is inadequate time for the UV light to kill living spores. Similarly ozone generators don’t do a good job if the air flow rate is high. More importantly the idea of killing spores is not one that is based on legitimate science. The problem is that for every living spore that you might find, there are going to be 499 particulates (most commonly 0.45-0.6 microns in size) that are not alive; they are simply fragments of mold organisms or chemicals that will set off inflammatory responses. They are dead but the body’s innate immune response to these bad-actors goes on overdrive if you breathe in these small particles. The reason I don’t encourage the expense of using ozone or UV is that you can’t kill what is already dead.
Here is where HEPA filtration comes in. A 0.3 micron pore size filter will remove these particulates over time. The problem is that researchers like Greg Weatherman have shown us that air flow within a room is subject to tremendous amount of variability due to boundary layers. In an effort to deal with the reduced rate of air flow at the corner of a room compared to the middle of a room I suggest that the HEPA filters that are purchased
be inexpensive and portable so that you can move the HEPA filter from location to location within a room every single day. As an aside, this reduced air flow of boundary layers is reason that whole house HEPA filters have limited benefit. As research proceeds in removal of particulates with droplet treatment of the air, our concepts of removing reservoirs of particulates may be changed in the near future. Stay tuned for further developments.
QUESTION: Please discuss use of essential oils to clean up water-damaged interior environment. I am sensitive to so many chemicals but not to essential oils.
I have seen essential oils be of benefit when used in people who had vigorous approaches to cleaning. What cleaning includes are multiple small portable HEPA filters with a 0.3 micron size pore that needs to be moved around from room to room and within a room every day as well as HEPA vacuuming of ceilings and walls in addition to floors. I still prefer use of quaternary ammonium cleaning compounds as they are effective and inexpensive as well as being readily available. Unfortunately, there are more then a few people who are affected by the chemical content of these commercially available sprays (Windex, Formula 409, Fantastic and of all things, Clorox spray). If you can’t use the cleaners because of chemical sensitivity then oils are worth a try.
QUESTION: Where is the normal range for MSH derived from (35-81 pg/ml). I have found a study online that shows healthy people below 35 and none above 35.
ANSWER: There are at least 10 separate proteomic assays where the normal range has been altered by LabCorp. Until 9/2006, LabCorp used 35-81 for the normal range for MSH. Those data were consisted with papers I published before 2006. LabCorp changed the normal from 0-45 and then 0-40 for unknown reasons in 9/2006. We published a paper in Health in 2013 with case/control data confirming the normal ranges.
QUESTION: Is there another test to be done (other than HLA) to start evaluating the presence of biotoxin illness?
ANSWER: No single test can answer all of the parameters that are involved in this complex inflammatory illness. The HLA-R testing is just one component of a CIRS diagnosis. Because CIRS symptoms are multiple and affect multiple body systems, The Shoemaker Protocol testing process relies on several specific lab test abnormalities.
First, the case definition for biotoxin illness begins with confirming the potential for exposure with ERMI/HERTSMI-2 Environmental Testing. The online VCS test is a next step in confirming that symptoms are potentially CIRS-related.
Third, the presence of multiple health symptoms from multiple body systems must be recorded by a physician. A specifically ordered NeuroQuant test is also part of the testing procedure.
A complete physician’s testing roster is available on the Surviving Mold site.
There must be presence of lab abnormalities similar to those seen in published literature. These labs also establish the basis for sequential interventions in the illness treatment.
