Re: Hey barb /LIVE SIMPLY

[Guest guest]

Live Simply, If I see visible mold, I send a swab

since they can culture it, not a tape lift. A

swab will tell them more. They can look at it

under microscope AND can culture it to be sure

they have identified it properly. A culture of

mold is easily to identify correctly than a tape

lift. You can send swab samples to Pro Lab too,

but now I will send them to Dallas or elsewhere.

I do culture plates ONLY when there is no visible

mold certainly. Why try to catch them in culture

plates when you can see it grow and just take

some. No, I do not do culture plate if there is

visible mold. I MIGHT do both.

You all can be down on culture plates. I don't

care. I use them and they help me. I've learned

alot from them and they did identify area of

house that needed remediation. Dr Rae when I

went to Dallas wanted to know had I done culture

plates and he wants to see results so experts in

the field are interested in them too. I know I

had toxic mold in house BECAUSE I have the toxins

in my body and I have been diagnosed with toxic

illness, now two doctors, Dr Shoe and Dr Rae, so

I need no more proof.

I don't care if its aspergillus or penisillum.

Why are you all so caught up in the names of the

molds anyway?? Who care what their names are? I

think it is the number of spores in air that

count. If you have a high number of the SAME

TYPE of mold, that shows it is growing in the

house. If you have high number of mold, you have

a moisture or leak problem that has to be cleaned

up regardless of what the name of mold is. I

think you all are silly about this. What matters

to me is QUANTITY only. If it's high, expert

doctors have told me ANY mold, regardless of what

you call it, can make you sick, any mold if it is

in high quantity. How do you know the QUANTITY,

by mold plates, if done correctly. I'm not going

to pay thousands of dollars for someone to give

me a count when I can take it myself.

ProLab gave me count for each room but in each

case said count was within normal levels, except

for count on porch and count in attic.

Professional testors thought I had no problem in

house, counts were not high, but they said attic

was a problem but not bad problem but needed to

be dealt with. They didn't think porch was bad

but was higher than should be. They said

probably due to indoor material, like wall board

being used in screened in porch. Wrong

materials. Now what more did I need to do?????

You guys use the tape lifts if you like but I can

recommend what has worked perfectly fine for me.

It also is recommended by Dr Rae of Dallas

Environmental Clinic. It also is recommended by

the sinuitis expert who has been referred to a

couple times who suggests you clean up your home

until count in a culture dish is less than 4 in

an hour.

You all have some sort of phobia about culture

plates, so do the tape lifts, and send them to

P & K but that doesn't give anyone with no visible

mold anyway to detect anything at all.

Most mold that will grow on wet building

materials, will grow in a culture dish and the

number tells you how bad a mold problem house has

SINCE any moisture problem OR water leaks is

going to grow LOTS OF STUFF, a great variety of

molds, not just one type, so all you want to find

out if their is moisture problem or leak and

great quantity of ANY kind of mold will tell you

that. You can look for WHERE it is coming from

later if it's your house.

How else would you look at apartments and tell if

there is a problem. Before you sign a lease, I

would ask to look at basement and attic, but you

won't always be able to crawl up in some attic

and it could be dangerous to do so if there is a

problem. The mold plates tells you what is

floating around in the air at the time that you

are breathing in. I want to know that.

It would be nice if these Quicktox work but

something tells me that they will be undependable

since you might test right where someone has just

cleaned but if they are priced inexpensively then

they can be used.

Don't knock something you don't have a BETTER

solution to. If people are looking at apartments

like me, if I see VISIBLE mold, I'm not going to

take a swab of it. I'm going to leave and look

elsewhere.

--- LiveSimply <quackadillian@...> wrote:

> The problem with mold culture plates is that

> they will grow spores

> that fall on them but the spores that grow

> won't necessarily be what

> would grow on wet building materials..

>

>

[Guest guest]

>I do culture plates ONLY when there is no visible

>mold certainly. Why try to catch them in culture

>plates when you can see it grow and just take

>some. No, I do not do culture plate if there is

>visible mold. I MIGHT do both.

Barb,

I have some objects and areas that are very contaminated but there's

no visible mold growth on them. It would be great if you knew a lab

that could identify what types of molds are on them. I could use that

information as a proof and and good starting point in my little war

here, to persuade the doctors and other ignoramuses that these objects

do have toxic molds, not only the " old good innocuous mold that never

harmed anyone " . (So in my case the exact type of mold is important).

Can you recommend me a lab in USA that would be willing to perform

identification of molds on culture plates (I could send the samples by

post)? I asked one member on this list, she recommended emlab.com, but

when I told her that I don't have visible mold she said she doubted

that such samples can be cultured...

[Guest guest]

> bbw <barb1283@...> wrote: Live

I will retest when those are clean, if still too moldy, I have to

hunt for area but I'm pretty sure I know where the

problems are. Was just basement until summer hit

and brought down attic air,now I see attic air

shows a problem by MY OWN REACTIONS TO IT, kind

of like using his own body to tell him when

there is a problem. Old symptoms came back and I

started looking for where they would be coming

from. Okay, please realize that people may be

doing things differently due to their

circumstances. I don't need proof to anyone that

house has toxins in it, tests of my body is

proof.

Yes! Exactly.

My major sources of exposure weren't in the house at all, sometimes

coming from such unexpected places as a moldy thermal as I was Hang

Gliding over an area deforested by fire north of Mt Hull.

And as s I told Dr Cheney the day he asked me to be a prototype for

that new " Chronic Fatigue Syndrome " thing that Kaplan and Holmes of

the CDC were working on: " I have an inexorably increasing

reactivity to mold that grows progressively worse NO MATTER WHERE I

LIVE or how well I take care of myself " .

And that's what I saw in others around me, like the cluster of

teachers at Truckee High School.

All it took was a few hours in the wrong room when the spore plumes

were acting up - and that was it.

Testing that is conducted just a few feet away doesn't show it, and

testing done at home because you feel so bad CERTAINLY doesn't tell

you anything about these other exposures.

I guess that testing isn't " worthless " if it confirms an exposure,

but for the most part, I find it such an unrealistic guide to action

that it is nothing I would rely upon.

It wasn't until I learned to rely solely upon my perceptions of

exposure that I finally managed to take control of this problem.

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