Stachybotrys

So you cannot see, um, most mould.

So black mould is Stachybotrys species, which is probably what people are generally talking about with that.

Um, yeah, that is a problem.

But you can have the exact same species of mould in the same room of a house and it's different colors.

Okay.

Because in and of itself, okay, we don't really want Stachybotrys, which everybody probably knows about.

That's black mold, but there's a whole bunch of other molds that can be bad as well, and it really just depends on their amount and where they're growing and what they're doing.

My house-buying adventure over the last many years w- consisted of me testing and sending Kellan the report [laughs] and Kellan saying, "You can't buy that house."

Which, like, you gotta burn the house down.

You kind of do.

Um, Stachybotrys, so that is your classic black mold, um, and it is heavy.

So on air testing-

So, we use it in conjunction with our traditional testing methodologies.

A lot of times, most of our clients have done an ERMI-based evaluation, but I, I, and I think it's, it's a really imperative test because, again, it can really lead you down the road of understanding which species are the most harmful in your environment, and understanding, you know, these, the ones that are on that ERMI test, it's 36 of some of the worst offenders on, in the mold space, like Stachybotrys chartarum, perfect example of an extremely toxigenic, neurotoxic mycotoxin-producing.

And, on the mycotoxin front, too, um, it's really interesting how they develop.

They're a secondary metabolite of mold itself.

We think we are sick from mold because it's growing in our house." So I had to go back to the library, start researching all over again, and, um, found that there's a whole world out there regarding mold.

Starting back a long time ago, the first problem with Stachybotrys growing on wallpaper was published by a doctor in Prague, Czechoslovakia in the late 1800s.

So it's not new.

Um, and it's mentioned in, uh, Leviticus chapter 14 in the Bible.

I, you know, the inspector in the townhome took a sample from the wall where there had been a leak, an active leak, and all of this stocky botches came back from this sample.

I mean, it was overloaded and, and, and, you know, Chetomium and Aspergillus and the air sample he took from my son's playpen, which was like 10 feet away, had over close to 2000 spores of Stachybotrys in the air sample, which it's hard to even see one or two spores of Stachy.

And like the same with Chetomium, because those are watermarker moles.

Those rarely ever show up in air samples.

The Garber family has been living in a fifth wheel, even though from the outside their house appears fine.

This is an Alberta family who was told, "You need to stay out of your house for safety." What was going on? Well, Kelsey Garber says their whole world fell apart after the house tested positive for black mold.

The family is the fourth generation to be living in the house near Foremost, Alberta.

Kelsey could not have predicted the devastating effects of black mold.

Throughout the year, her family had symptoms, but none of them seemed to line up.

Here's what her entire family said that they were suffering from: fatigue and red eyes.

They're, they're, they're like, "You're..." It's not safe for them to be in there, period.

Yeah.

...

Chaetomium, Stachybotrys or your black mold.

But a lot of times it's the Aspergillus species that's still produced.

Mm.

After dinner, Dr. Etzel rushed to the library to read all she could about mycotoxins.

When she cross-referenced the words mycotoxin with the word hemorrhage, the computer led to an article about a mold called Stachybotrys atra.

The article described how Stachybotrys atra, found in some grain in Europe over 40 years earlier, caused livestock to bleed internally and die.

Stachybotrys is a dark green, almost black, slimy mold.

It often grows on cellulose-based items like straw and paper after coming into contact with water.

When Sorenson analyzed the culture plates, he noticed that many contained a dark green, almost black mold.

Under a microscope, Sorenson noticed that the samples from the Cleveland homes were structurally similar to the mold which killed the livestock in Europe.

It was, in fact, Stachybotrys atra.

Mm.

Um, some of these molds, and you can look it up online, but things like Stachybotrys or Penicillium, these molds can create very serious, harmful conditions.

And, and I will tell you, too, um, one of the facts, uh, about childhood asthma is that childhood asthma is actually the leading cause of s- of school absence in children.

Gotcha.