At the mold seminar I attended earlier this month, the use of chlorine as an anti-mold chemical was not only debunked, but the opinion was proffered that chlorine irritates mold and tends to make it grow more vigorously once recovered from the initial assault.

Besides finding the odor of chlorine obnoxious, the vapor is dangerous and the impact on our ecological systems is devastating. The hosts of the seminar stated that plain old ordinary borax is a better fungicide than chlorine.  I have to confess I haven't tried it yet, but I have tried a 100% natural product that seems hugely promising:  TKO Orange with cinnamon essential oil added.

Cinnamon Bark Essential Oil, 5 ml.

Since I am only writing from personal experience, I would like to relate another story.  I bought a few bottles of this product at a conference in Seattle last year.  The woman who cleans my house had been using it for general cleaning purposes but after the mold seminar, I decided to mix up something for spraying on carpeting and walls.  The spray bottle baffled my cleaning lady so I dumped the contents into the washing machine, yes the same infamous machine that first caused the damage to the house.  I washed all my bedding, three loads:  lamb's wool bed pad, sheets, and blankets.  For the first time in nearly five years, I slept peacefully the entire night:  no coughing, no itchy eyes, no pressure in my head.

I mentioned this to my attorney who said, "but it only worked one night."  I was dumbfounded.  She was, unfortunately, absolutely right.  The second night was not so good, the third was less comfortable yet, and by the fourth, I felt we were back to square one.

I had mixed essential oil of cinnamon with the TKO Orange.  Obviously, it worked on my bedding, but since the underlying problem is not solved, all progress is short-lived.  Mold thrives on dust.  This is another thing I learned at the seminar:  80% of mold grows on dust. 

I had Mary go after all dust, starting in the room with my cockatoos.  We mixed up some more stuff and she wiped down the ceilings and walls in the bird room as well as the area just around my bed.  Once again, I got through one night without itchy eyes, but it didn't last.  Obviously, my nightmares are not over, but I feel that each of the measures has reduced the burden and restored some quality to my life.

In a study done at the University of Manchester, pillows, even relatively new pillows, were found to be contaminated with Aspergillus fumigatus, one of the more toxic molds, and the one implicated in the deaths of patients suffering from leukemia, AIDS, and complications stemming from bone marrow transplants. Each pillow had 4-16 different types of mold and a million spores per pillow, the worst being synthetic pillows. As noted in the account of my own ordeal with mold, dust mites eat fungi, but the researchers in Manchester speculated that the mold may, in turn, live on the waste products of mites as well as scales from the skin.

Something I found in my blood.  I believe it is a mite. Tulsi Ear Oil

 

Additional Tips

On the classical radio station, there is an advertisement by Dux Bed in which it is recommended that sheets be washed at least once a week and that the bed pad be included in this weekly ritual.  The reason is that the skin is the body's largest organ of elimination and much of what we process through our skins ends up in the place we spend one-third of our lives.

Mac, the Mold Dog, checking my pillow.  No aspergillus! For more on mold dogs, click here!

After posting this, I washed my pillows.  One feather pillow survived the ordeal.  The other had a hole.  The little Tempur-Pedic is now a wreck.  I don't feel so bad because the study said synthetic pillows are worse than others (like someone had to tell us what we already know.)  I just ordered replacements on overstock.com which is so affordable that one can justify the folly of throwing things into the washer that clearly said "dry clean only."

Ingrid Naiman
27 October 2005
Updated 3 October 2006

More Tips, Filtration

Click here for discounts on bamboo linens and apparel, mention the words "green sleep" for your bonus items, $20 worth of gifts for every order of sheets and pillow cases or $10 of gifts on other purchases.

 

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2005

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