Isn't Allergy and Asthma Enough?

By Alan Wozniak, President/CEO, Pure Air Control Services
AWozniak@PureAirControls.com
(800) 422-7873

With the mold hysteria and mycotoxins at the apex of news and media today, we should not overlook the prevalent environmental problem facing us today.  Allergy and Asthma conditions should be our primary indoor environmental quality (IEQ) concern.  In addition, when dealing with indoor environmental issues one should use a "Reasonable Standard of Care" approach to identify and correct IEQ issues.  According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases:

• Asthma, a chronic lung disease, affects an estimated 17 million Americans.

• In 1994, asthma caused 451,000 hospitalizations. Children under 15 accounted for 169,000 of these.

• In 1995, asthma caused more than 1.8 million emergency room visits.

• Asthma cost the U.S. economy an estimated $10.7 billion in 1994, including a direct health care cost of $6.1 billion and indirect costs, such as lost work days, of $4.6 billion.

• Each year, nearly 500,000 Americans are hospitalized.

• More than 5,000 die from asthma.

• Allergic diseases are among the major causes of illness and disability in the United States, affecting as many as 40 to 50 million Americans.

Enough statistics?  When asthma strikes, airways in the lungs become inflamed and constricted, causing coughing, wheezing, and difficulty breathing. Why do lungs become inflamed?  They become inflamed because they have been inflicted within a foreign substance e.g. mold, dustmite (fecal matter), dust particulate, pollen, animal dander, etc..

Forget about the mycotoxin debate.  We need to address the real problem and not the perception of what Stachy might or might not do.  We may be able to wait for the medical community to decide if and when Stachybotrys chartarum is a true mycotoxin causing illness, but  we can't wait for our buildings and homes to continue to rot away. Environmentally, we are faced with the following epidemic proportion type of problems:

Deferred maintenance

Maintence, both HVAC and housekeeping has been one of the cutbacks in most buldings since the energy crisis dating back to the 80's.  e.g.mushrooms the size of softballs have been found in air handling units serving surgical suites, construction defects causing breaches allowing fore moisture intrusion causing mold proliferation, HVAC systems with enough pounds (we have found 100's of pounds of debris impacted in a single HVAC system) of dirt, debris, bugs and stuff to make a lab proud.

Tight Buildings

Commercial and residential environments have been built for energy conservancy since the 1970’s.  This does not allow our building and homes to breath as they once did creating internally generated allergen coups. 

Poor Housekeeping Practices

Though some of our buildings look immaculate they are not cleaned with attention to detail.  An example: "the 5' cleaning rule (height of the housekeeper)" should not be the rule.  Additionally, many vacuum cleaners utilized in commercial and residential homes are powerful but not efficient in picking up the small microscopic particulate e.g. true HEPA filters.

Poor Construction Practices

Poor construction practices, coupled with tight buildings result in an environment equivalent to a big petri dish.  Construction defects looks like the next great debate.

Poor Indoor Environmental Practitioners

The industry is made up of charlatans and shaman creating the media buzz.  The industry lacks quality organizations to identify indoor air quality deficiency, laboratories to provide quality lab analysis and organizations that know how to environmentally clean and treat buildings, not to mention the pyramid Ozone machine programs.

These are the issues that need to be dealt with today, not if stachy is making one sick or not.  Lets not get caught up in the great mold debate but deal with reality of the problem and not perception.  We got problems and its not stachy.

We are concerned about the public being allergic to their buildings. People should not be allergic to, or have their kid's asthma triggered by, their school, house or hospital?  In other words, forget for a moment about the mycotoxin debate, ISN'T ALLERGY AND ASTHMA ENOUGH of a reason to remediate in accordance with a "Reasonable Standard Of Care".  A good start would be to follow the NYC and now EPA guidelines. 

A facility manager of a large Florida county once eloquently stated concerning indoor environmental quality "don't do it because you might get sued, do it because its the right thing to do."