Week of March 20, 2023
1/ Rigorous Spring Cleaning Q&A Focus
We receive numerous questions every year about remediation and cleaning upkeep specifics. So, with the help of the “Mold Illness: Surviving & Thriving” manual, we’ve put together a general maintenance inspection and deep cleaning project list for you below.
Living with CIRS means cleaning and maintenance efforts must be ongoing and up to CIRS-safe standards. Spring is a perfect time to do a thorough examination and cleaning of the entire home and create a schedule for the year ahead.
Roll up your sleeves, and prepare to become a rigorous cleaning expert. You can learn to approach the household upkeep with less stress and overwhelm and more efficiency and a can-do attitude. And when you’re finished, the results will look and feel amazing. The real reward of course is your continued good health – so here’s to it…!
RIGOROUS HOUSEHOLD CLEANING & MAINTENACE CHECKLIST
Depending on amount of activity in the home, we recommend doing a yearly or bi-yearly thorough clean and check, and also create an ongoing maintenance cleaning schedule as noted below.
Rigorous cleaning basic guidelines:
At least once a year, do a whole house cleaning and fogging. The rest of the year, you may be focused on safe spaces or potential higher problem areas, but at least once a year, give the entire home a thorough rigorous clean, including:
- HEPA vacuuming of floors and sofas
- Ceiling to floor, top to bottom, dusting of all surfaces with microfiber cloths
- Use Ammonia Compound cleaners in bathroom and kitchen surfaces (Fantastic or 409 are two examples). See Q&A on bleach below.
- Clean grout, tiling, sinks and showers thoroughly with ammonia compounds and use other effective kitchen/bathroom cleaning agents as necessary.
- Wet mop floors, and thoroughly dry them out
- Clean any area rugs (see Q&A on steam cleaning below)
- Clear out clutter
It helps to keep up a weekly vacuuming and dusting schedule, especially in safe spaces, and also keep the other areas on a cleaning rotation schedule.
MAINTENANCE CHECKLIST:
Plumbing Fixtures (check frequently): toilets, under all sinks, showers, clothes washer, dish washer, refrigerators, automatic icemakers, and hot water heaters. Any indication of leaks need to be addressed immediately.
Check grout and sealing around showers, tubs, sinks often.
Any fans installed to eliminate moisture need to be functioning properly.
Check furnace, AC units, attic and crawl space areas.
HVAC filters need to be changed regularly.
All windows and doors need to be inspected for problems with sealing or possible leaks.
Flooring needs to be inspected for moisture problems (bubbling, rippling, or buckling).
Periodic duct work inspection and cleaning needs to be scheduled.
Check all roof penetrations and general condition of roofing components (chimney flashing, roof to wall metal, plumbing vents, flashing, and skylights).
Make sure all penetrations are well sealed. Inspect fascia and roof overhang materials to ensure the materials are not degrading, cracked, or peeling.
2/ Remediation, steam cleaning
QUESTION: Is steam cleaning safe to use? It certainly is easier for the heavy cleaning that I need to finish.
Steam cleaning is satisfactory, especially for carpets provided the dry out will be
accomplished in several hours. Some people have used steam cleaning to a point that a clean rug stays wet for several days. This will only add to mold growth. Steam cleaning has not been needed for tile floors or hardwood floors in my experience.
We do advise eliminating carpeting, but in the case of large area rugs steam cleaning does the trick with a thorough drying out.
3/ Effectiveness of N95 masks
QUESTION: I am faced with a need to return into my moldy home to pack and prepare for sale. Should I use an N95 mask?
ANSWER: Use of respirator/inhalation protection is not as straight-forward as it might appear. The N95 mask will filter out 95% of particulates but about 5% go through.
The inflammatory response from 5% of the particles is essentially no different than the inflammatory response to 100% of particles so that any mask which might reduce the total amount of inhaled particulates still is an imperfect solution.
Even with careful attention to all the detail that is discussed in the 45-page manual for proper use of N95 mask set forth by OSHA, we still are looking at an imperfect solution to protection for all small particulates in air. The best approach then is to avoid re-exposure.
If you are faced with re-exposure I would have you go in with your N95 mask, fitted properly, but also with an exhaust fan (not just a simple window unit but a powerful unit) blowing air out of a room in which you are working. You can also add a powerful air filtration unit as another layer of defense.
It is not the best solution but may be the only thing you can do. This is a situation that says if you have the luxury of some extra time before re-entry to maximize your medical therapy, use of VIP for approximately a month or two will start to down-regulate your activity such that your subsequent re-exposures, small as they might be with the mask and exhaust fan, will become egregious activators of your innate immune response system.
When you’re in the recovery zone post Protocol treatment, use of VIP with strict controls as far as eligibility and follow up will reduce the rate at which illness symptoms recur with re-exposure. CSM may also be used proactively (See question below and/or the CSM learning module.)
For more information on VIP use, you may be interested in the VIP learning module available on Survivingmold.com.
4. Avoidance of re-exposure
QUESTION: How do I avoid re-exposure after treatment?
ANSWER: This question is tied to the basic theme of Surviving Mold. Once you have developed a CIRS (with or without genetic susceptibility of HLA haplotype), and invariably with presence of low MSH, you are at risk to suffer another harmful inflammatory response if you are exposed to the interior environment of water-damaged buildings for as little time
as 10 minutes.
Many patients will elect to use low dose cholestyramine or Welchol before venturing
forth from their safe “bubble” that is their residence. Obviously, where you live needs to have adequate fungal DNA testing. Don’t forget that ongoing rigorous cleaning needs to be taking place including use of HEPA air filtration.
You need to avoid bringing new possessions into your home that might be crossed contaminated from their prior location. Some patients are so sensitive to low dose exposures that even materials on clothes of children or loved ones can make them ill. If that is the case, and it rarely is, then some sort of changing room needs to be made available so people can enter the bubble without contaminating the safe environment. Fortunately, with use of drugs like VIP this extreme
reactivity has mostly become a thing of the past.
As far as exposure to environments outside of your home, a certain caution needs to be introduced to your day to day life. Places that are high risk for water-damage or growth of microbes, such as antique stores and old book stores are not even worth considering visiting. Restaurants, movie theaters, grocery stores and other commercial buildings must be assumed to be moldy until proven otherwise.
If you are going to have lunch in a new restaurant I would suggest that you have either cholestyramine or Welchol on board for at least two hours before you go into the new building.
When you enter, look around for evidence of water intrusion. Are their stained ceiling tiles? Does the floor show buckling, or does the wallpaper show wrinkling? If so, simply leave. If not, and you have no evidence of musty smells, simply sit at your table, order a glass of water (to avoid running up a bill), look at the menu and wait 10 minutes.
Look carefully at yourself for development of symptoms. If no symptoms appear after 10 minutes then I think it is safe to have lunch and enjoy the day. Continue on Welchol or cholestyramine for another 24 hours waiting to see if new symptoms appear. If not, then it is possible that the restaurant is safe for you.
If you do develop symptoms, and those symptoms will appear in a stereotyped manner, be sure to notice if you feel nauseated, have a headache, have shortness of breath or cough, feel “queasy” or have sore throat or just plain don’t feel well, write down those symptoms for future reference. If they appear, leave the restaurant and take cholestyramine and Welchol for a week monitoring changes in symptoms. If your symptoms are due to exposure, then the same group of symptoms will appear if you are exposed to another moldy environment in the future. This similar clustering of symptoms really is reproducibly reliable. You will recognize it quickly in the future. If you remain ill beyond one week of treatment then it is time to involve your physician and obtain labs to document where you are.
