Mold and MCS

I’ve been fighting yet another mold battle for most of this year.  I’ve done this enough now that you’d think I’d be an expert with a lot of wisdom to share.  What I’ve learned, though, is that there’s very little agreement in the mold illness community about even the basics, like the best testing methods, remediation practices, or the nature of mycotoxins (poisons produced by certain molds).  So, I write this post with trepidation, knowing that whatever I say is likely to meet pushback from some corner of the mold illness world.  I don’t write as a mold expert, by any means, but I can share my experiences, both with fighting mold and with how it overlaps and intersects with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) or chemical toxicity in general.  I hope there’s something helpful in here somewhere.  Here are some of the things I’ve observed or experienced:

1.     Toxins are toxic, whether they’re biological or synthetic, and it’s not always easy to determine what’s affecting you.  I used to think I could tell.  There were a handful of symptoms that I identified as being my mold symptoms, but this time around, I didn’t have them, despite the fact that testing showed a very potent mold in the house and extremely high levels of a dangerous mycotoxin in my body.  Evidently, the mold exposure was adding to my toxic load and keeping my chemical sensitivity active, but not causing obviously different symptoms.

One possible explanation for this is that there are thousands of different types of mold (some say over 100,000, and some estimate there may be more than a million) and they can have very different properties and effects.  Molds can be allergenic, pathogenic, or toxigenic.  There have been times in the past when I’ve walked into a building with obvious mold issues (generally, I could smell it), but when I’ve mentioned it to others, I’ve been told that there couldn’t be mold, because the person I’m talking to has mold allergies and isn’t reacting.  Despite my frustration with that, I guess I basically did the same thing to myself by failing to recognize the mold in my house this time because I didn’t have my usual symptoms (and couldn’t smell or see anything problematic).

The overlap of symptoms that can be caused by mold (especially toxigenic types) and chemical toxins can be especially problematic for people focusing on avoiding one of the two.  My social media feed is often full of people who discovered mold in their home, escaped and moved to a new one (often a brand-new building, because they think the risk of mold is lower), and then found themselves just as sick as they were in their previous home.  They often first assume the new house has mold (which is certainly possible, since new houses aren’t always as mold-free as you would think), but then they gradually start suspecting that they’re reacting to the chemical offgassing of their new place.  They ask, “How do I know?” and there’s no good answer. 

I’ve sometimes seen this go the other direction, too.  Someone with chemical intolerance is unable to stay in their home, so they escape to an older building (or sometimes a travel trailer), where they fail to improve, because there’s hidden mold somewhere, which they later discover.  The bottom line is that in order to be healthy, we have to do our best to avoid toxins of both types – biological and synthetic.  There’s really no shortcut.

2.     Figuring out what’s in the air inside our homes and other buildings is easier said than done.  There are many different types of mold testing, and each type has its defenders and detractors.  I think it’s safe to say that none are perfect, and all can sometimes miss a problem. 

Testing for chemical contaminants has gotten better, but is also still imperfect.  The staggering number of synthetic chemicals that are produced is certainly part of the problem.  When I wrote my book, I said there were about 80,000 synthetic chemicals identified, which was the number generally agreed upon at the time.  Now, however, we know that there are over 350,000 synthetic chemicals registered for production and use.  The number of chemicals most commonly used is smaller, but still in the thousands, and commercially available testing isn’t able to recognize them all.  Also, testing for VOCs (volatile organic compounds) has improved, but there are many, many classes of problematic chemicals that aren’t VOCs, including some pesticides, heavy metals like lead, and endocrine disruptors like phthalates and parabens.   

There are pros and cons to all testing methods, and what seems best in one situation may not fit another.  My current personal approach is to focus on testing my body.  When people begin trying to avoid toxins, they often start with changing their food and personal care products, which are certainly important and logical places to start.  I’ve heard people say, though, that they’re focusing on what’s going into their body, and not on what’s around their body.  This is a false dichotomy, because if it’s around us, it will soon be in us.  Airborne contaminants can reach our bloodstream within minutes of being inhaled. Also, airborne particles can fall onto our food, and be consumed along with it.

3.     Air filters are important and helpful, for both mold and chemical issues, but not a solution in and of themselves.  There’s no substitute for source control (i.e. keeping the problematic substances out of the building). For mold, the source of the problem has to be found, and contaminated building materials have to be carefully (professionally, under containment) removed.  For chemical contamination, sometimes offgassing can be contained or addressed in other ways, such as baking off, but sometimes, like with mold, the source of the problem just needs to go away. 

4.      Source control is important, but generally not the end of the story.  Once the source of the problem is removed, contaminants may still remain. What I’ve been doing for a good part of this year is removing porous items in my home (things made of foam, fabric, paper, wood, etc.). The idea is that mycotoxins that were circulating in the air have now become embedded inside them.

The same problem exists with many synthetic chemicals.  Air fresheners come immediately to mind.  I recently took a trip and needed to stay overnight along the way.  I asked the managers of a campground on my route if they had any fragrance-free cabins.  They replied that they could remove the air freshener and open the windows for me.  I appreciated their offer, but didn’t think it would work.  Lacking any other options, though, I gave it a try.  As expected, the air freshener chemicals had permeated everything, and the room seemed almost as fragrant to me as if the fragrance chemicals were still actively being pumped into the room.

To understand this concept, it can be helpful to read about the effects of “third-hand” cigarette smoke.  This is the smoke residue that clings to walls, furniture, and other surfaces in an environment where cigarettes have been smoked, and which has been linked to serious health concerns.  The same principle applies to other chemical contaminants and to mold.  Residue can remain for a long time and continue to be a problem if it isn’t thoroughly removed.

5.     Even though neither mold illness nor chemical intolerance is an allergy, in the truest sense of the word, making a home or other building “allergy-friendly” can help with both.  Basically, this means controlling dust, which is composed of little bits of whatever is in the building.  Mold spores travel in dust, and the synthetic chemicals in your house can be found in the dust, as well.  Carpet is a major dust reservoir, and really not a good idea for a healthy house.  Hard, non-porous surfaces are the easiest to keep clean, and metal and glass furnishings tend to be inert and good for both avoiding mold and chemical contamination.  The fewer upholstered pieces, the better.  Furniture with removable, washable cushions (or at least cushion covers) is a step in the right direction.

6.     Controlling humidity is important.  Most people know that mold needs moisture to grow.  What is less well-known is that high humidity can accelerate the offgassing of VOCs and can also cause certain chemicals to react with each other and form new compounds.  Most experts recommend trying to keep the humidity inside a building between 40 and 60%, with some saying that aiming for under 50% is a good goal. 

7.     In addition to controlling dust, it’s important to address gases.  This means you need air filters with not only HEPA or similar filtration, but also carbon or another media that will trap gaseous pollutants.   It once seemed to be the common consensus that mycotoxins are gases, but the current understanding seems to be that they aren’t, and that they generally hitch a ride on small particles.  On the other hand, mold can produce VOCs (often called MVOCs), which are indeed gases and can have toxic properties themselves.  And, of course, many chemical contaminants are gases, which can only be trapped by the proper type of filtration.

8.     There are times when focusing on chemical safety can make the process of addressing mold more complicated. For example, the mold illness community often talks about the importance of replacing clothing and other porous items frequently.  This can be very challenging for people with chemical sensitivity, because we can often only tolerate certain fabrics, and even what we’ll eventually be able to tolerate often has to go through a long period of processing and offgassing before we can use it.  Once we make something MCS-safe, we aren’t particularly inclined to get rid of it.

Plastic is a special problem.  People addressing mold are often advised to store things in plastic totes.  In many ways, this makes sense.  It’s good to contain items to keep them from becoming dusty and contaminated, and plastic is less porous and likely to be affected by mold than cardboard, for example.  On the other hand, more than 16,000 chemicals are associated with plastic production, with many thousands of them being designated as “chemicals of concern” because of their potential health risks. Some of the most well-known of these chemicals, including phthalates and BPA, are primarily detoxified through the glucuronidation detoxification pathway.  This is also one of the primary pathways the body uses to process mold.  In other words, if your body is already working hard to eliminate mold from your body, it may have fewer resources than normal to deal with all the chemicals in your new plastic totes.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this issue.  Hard plastic (like acrylic) is less problematic than soft.  Metal storage solutions exist, and I’m actually finding them to be cheaper and more available than they used to be.  Also, the most direct answer to the storage issue is to simply let go of more worldly goods and store less stuff (which, of course, leads back to the problem of wanting to hold onto items once they’re MCS-safe, because they aren’t easy and quick to replace).

If all of this seems overwhelming, I get it.  Trust me, I do.  I’ll just tell you what I tell myself: We can only do our best, every step forward matters, and, most importantly, avoiding toxins can make enough of a difference to our health and wellbeing that it’s well worth doing. 

How Much Plastic Did You Have for Breakfast?

Plastic is everywhere, isn’t it?  It’s helpful, harmful, and so ubiquitous that it’s hardly noticed. I’ve made efforts through the years to reduce my use, but it seems to keep creeping back into my life. I’ve been reading things lately, though, which have motivated me to tackle the issue again.

One of the key problems with conventional plastic is that it doesn’t biodegrade.  It does, however, break off into ever smaller pieces.  As one report notes, “They may be too small to see, but they are still there, worming their way into every nook and cranny of the environment – including our bodies.”

These tiny plastic particles (known as microplastics) enter our body in a number of ways.

We eat them.  Every day we consume millions of microplastic particles.  A recent article notes that we consume 5 grams weekly, which is about the amount in a credit card or plastic bottle cap.  Some of the plastic in our food is there because of bio-accumulation in the food chain and some comes from plastic-containing dust in the air.

We drink them.  They can enter the water supply or leach into drinks bottled in plastic.  They can also enter our beverages in a more direct way.  Until recently, I was unaware that most tea bags are sealed with plastic.  A New Scientist article reports that studies have found that a single tea bag can put 11.6 billion microplastic particles into a cup of tea.  This is many times greater than the amounts found in other foods which have traditionally been considered to be high in plastic contamination.

We breathe them in.  An article titled “Microplastics are Raining Down on Cities” notes that researchers tested the air in four cities and found microplastics (up to 15 different types) in all of them.  Even low-population areas once considered pristine have been affected.  The BBC reports that “even in the Arctic, microscopic particles of plastic are falling out of the sky with snow.”

How these microplastics are affecting our health isn’t completely known, because the issue hasn’t been extensively studied.  However, a Washington Post article notes that “It’s likely that ingesting microplastics could further expose us to chemicals . . . known to be harmful.”  The chemicals include bisphenols (the most well known of which is Bisphenol A, or BPA), phthalates, styrene, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).  These have been linked to cancer, immune system effects, hormone disruption, damage to the nervous system, and more.  There is evidence that microplastics can cross the blood-brain barrier and they may pass from mothers to their developing children in utero.  A physics professor writes that “microplastics, like the microfibers from our clothing, can also absorb harmful chemicals—like the flame retardants we put on that same clothing—and release them later, perhaps after they’ve wound up in our gut.” 

The obvious solution to the problem is to reduce our use of plastic, but that takes some focus, in part because plastic is so much a part of our lives that we may not always even recognize and notice it.  The Washington Post notes that plastic “lines soup cans, leaches out of storage containers, hides in household dust, and is found inside of toys, electronics, shampoo, cosmetics and countless other products.” Synthetic fabrics, such as polyester, acrylic, and nylon are also easily overlooked forms of plastic.

Experts have recommended various strategies to reduce microplastic exposure, including the following:

• Avoid storing food in plastic.  Plastic with recycling codes of 3, 6, and 7 may be especially problematic.  I once heard a speaker talk about the fact that we think of plastic as non-porous, but that to understand how porous it actually is, we can remember how easily a plastic container can be stained with tomato sauce.  The food can get into the plastic, and the plastic can get into the food. Eating fresh food is wise for many reasons, including the fact that food cans, wrappers, take-out containers and other packaging are often sources of microplastic contamination.

• Don’t heat plastic.  Avoid using plastic containers in the microwave.  Don’t put plastic in your dishwasher.  To combat the issue of plastic in tea bags, look for brands that are compostable, or use loose leaf tea.  Getting rid of as much plastic in the kitchen as possible is wise, but especially consider replacing things like plastic spatulas or colanders that are often used with hot food.

• Stay away from bottled water.  A test of tap water in the United States found microplastic in 94% of the samples, but bottled water has about double the amount. Tap water can have other contaminants too, of course, so a good filter is highly recommended.

• Wear clothing made of natural fabrics like cotton, linen, and wool.  Synthetic fabrics can shed tiny particles into the air, and are also widely implicated in contaminating the water supply.  When we wash our synthetic clothes, plastic particles make their way from our washing machines into the environment.  Some of them reach the ocean, are ingested by marine animals, and become part of the food chain.

• Dust regularly and try to reduce the amount of plastic likely to be found in it. Household dust comes from everything in the home, so reducing the amount of plastic in the home environment will keep the dust from containing as many microplastic particles. High quality air filters are a good idea. Carpet collects dust and is best avoided when possible.

  Microplastic contamination is a big issue, but there are steps each of us can take to reduce our exposures, and what we do to protect ourselves may protect others as well. Lowering our toxic load is a journey, and all journeys are taken one step at a time. 

The Chemicals in Commerce Act

I've previously written about the woefully inadequate Toxic Substances Control Act, in effect since the 1970s, and about efforts to update it. Last year, the Safe Chemicals Act was introduced in the Senate, but failed to gain bipartisan support. A bipartisan bill known as the Chemical Safety Improvement Act was then proposed. Public health and environmental groups have been divided in their opinion of whether the bill is strong enough in its current form to promote.

Now a bill has been introduced in the House. It's known as the Chemicals in Commerce Act (CICA) and many groups are characterizing it as a step backwards rather than forward. Noted problems include those related to setting health standards, prioritizing problematic chemicals, and enforcing deadlines and minimum requirements for action. Opposition is coming not only from health and environmental groups, but also from a coalition of states that oppose the bill because current state authority to regulate chemicals would be undermined and largely eliminated.

The regulation of chemicals is often framed as a fight between health and economic interests. As a recent Huffington Post article reports, however, problems associated with toxic exposures have an associated financial cost. The article notes that a 2011 study found that toxic chemicals and air pollutants cost $76.6 billion in lost working hours, reduced IQ points, and children’s health care. The study included only a fraction of possible concerns. It didn’t, for example, look at childhood obesity related to exposure to bisphenol A, which is estimated to cost the economy $1.49 billion.

If you'd like to add your voice to those calling for meaningful reform and expressing disappointment in the Chemicals in Commerce Act, the Center for Environmental Health has provided a way for people to easily contact their representatives about the issue. There's also an online petition that can be signed on the website of the organization Safer Chemicals: Healthy Families.

It would be nice if regulations were in place that required manufacturers to prove products safe before putting them on the market and making it easy to remove them once problems surfaced. Since that doesn’t exist, each of us must continue to do our homework and to purchase products with the health of ourselves, our families, and our fellow human beings in mind.

Our Sensitive Sons

The common belief within the toxic illness community seems to be that women are more likely than men to develop the condition. This belief is reinforced by the fact that online support groups appear to have a greater percentage of female than male participants. I was somewhat surprised, then, to read an article this week that detailed ways in which boys may be more vulnerable to environmental pollutants than their female counterparts are.

The article, published in Environmental Health News, makes the following points:

• There’s a stronger link between air pollution and autism in boys.

• The insecticide chlorpyrifos, found in Dursban and other products, seems to reduce the IQs of boys more than girls.

• Boys are more susceptible to damage from low-level lead exposure.

• Phthalates, found in vinyl and many other products, have been linked to larger behavioral changes, primarily aggression and attention disorders, in boys.

• A study found that high in-utero exposure to Bisphenol A (BPA), another ubiquitous chemical, caused hyperactivity, aggression, and anxiety in boys, but not girls. The boys were also born with lower thyroid hormones, while female levels were normal.

The author explains the findings by noting that the pre-birth development of a female is simpler than that of a male. It takes a greater number of cell divisions to make a male, and with each division comes a greater vulnerability to toxic exposures.

After birth, these vulnerabilities continue. In females, the XX chromosome offers a bit of back-up protection, with a healthy X able to take over for one with a genetic defect. Males, with their XY makeup, have no such backup system. The article also notes that X chromosomes carry more genetic information, so the XY combination may mean a loss of brain development proteins or repair mechanisms.

In addition, estrogen protects the brain. Their lower estrogen levels mean that male brains are more fragile and prone to injury. Hormone imbalances may contribute to a wide range of chemical-related health effects, because many chemicals are endocrine disruptors which suppress or mimic hormones.

If it’s true that the common belief is that women are more vulnerable to chemical illness and the truth is the opposite, why is that? Perhaps it’s because we still have a lot to learn as a culture about all the possible symptoms that toxic exposures can cause. There will always be differences between boys and girls, but maybe some of the “natural boy” traits we’ve assigned to the gender, such as aggression, hyperactivity, and lack of focus, aren’t entirely natural after all.

Chemicals and Conception

Celebrating Mother's Day yesterday reminded me again of what a blessing it is to be the mother of two amazing young men. As I ponder the gift of motherhood, I can't help but think of a number of people I know who would very much like to be parents, but have found that goal difficult to achieve. There are many possible reasons for infertility, but a factor that may be overlooked, and that can be controlled to an extent, is exposure to chemical toxins. (How did you know I was going to say that?)

Earlier this year, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives published a study that examined "persistent pollutants" and the time to pregnancy of couples wishing to conceive. The study and a report of it published in E Magazine noted the following:

• Couples exposed to toxins known as persistent organic pollutants took longer to become pregnant.

• Men’s chemical exposures were more important to the equation than their partners'.

• The concentration of chemicals found to delay conception was lower than the average found in the U.S. population.

An online article entitled "Toxins and Fertility" notes that only about 5 percent of the almost 80,000 chemicals used in the US today have been tested for their reproductive effects. Despite that, we do know that certain chemicals may cause problems for couples wishing to become parents. The article and a fact sheet produced by Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families list the following chemicals that may affect reproduction:

• Phthalates, which are widely used and may be found in nail polish, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, antiperspirant, sunscreen, gum, candy, medications, and many other places

• Parabens, added to a wide range of household products, including bath products and cosmetics

• Bisphenol A (BPA), which can be found in polycarbonate plastic and some food and beverage can linings

• Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), commonly used in stain-proof and non-stick products

• Cadmium, a metal used in pigments, metal coatings, plastics, and batteries

• Fluoride, added to many municipal water supplies

• Common pesticides and fungicides, including Vinclozolinis, Kepone, DBCP, ethylene dibromide, and Methoxychlor (MCX)

• Triclosan (Microban),found in anti-bacterial soaps, dental products, cosmetics, deodorant, first aid products, kitchenware, appliances, toys, and more

The chemicals listed are linked to a wide range of other health effects as well. Avoiding them benefits us all.