Mold: A Real Fungi

 There's more lurking unseen on the surfaces of your home than just bacteria. There's also household mold.

Mold is a type of fungus, a single-celled organism which grows in colonies like the fuzzy, slimy growth you eventually see on neglected food. Spores are everywhere - on the surfaces around you, on your skin, floating on every breath you take.

That's not so bad; mold, like bacteria, is a part of the natural world and often has beneficial effects. Penicillin, of course, is the most widely known example, but there are many others. Mold and bacteria are responsible for cheese, for example, and you can't make bread without yeast. Candida albicans, a form of yeast, is an essential component of a well-balanced, healthy digestive system. The koji molds, part of the Aspergillus family, are used in Asian cooking to make soy sauce and soybean paste. Other molds are responsible for the creation of foods like quorn (Fusarium venenatum)and tempeh (Rhizopus oligosporus). Penicillium is also used to make cheese. Monascus purpureus, when grown on rice, creates Red Rice Yeast, which has recently been found, in combination with fish oil and other healthy life changes, to be as effective in lowering cholesterol as medication.

However, there's a much darker side to mold. Certain types excrete mycotoxins, which are highly toxic. Exposure to these mycotoxins, especially in areas with high moisture and poor air circulation, can cause a wide variety of symptoms, some of them dangerously severe. For example, a 1999 study by the Mayo Clinic found that nearly all chronic sinus infections - 37 million or more - are caused by molds.

A variety of common household molds, including Cladosporium, Penicillium, Mucor, Aspergillus, Rhizopus and Alternaria can become invasive. However, Stachybotrys chartarum and Stachybotrys atra are what we commonly refer to as black mold. According to environmentalhealthhazards.com, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) lists these maladies associated with exposure to Stachybotrys mold spores:

1) Respiratory problems, such as wheezing, and difficulty in breathing

2) Nasal and sinus congestion

3) Eyes-burning, watery, reddened, blurry vision, light sensitivity

4) Dry, hacking cough

5) Sore throat

6) Nose and throat irritation

7) Shortness of breath

8) Chronic fatigue

9) Skin irritation

10) Central nervous system problems (constant headaches, memory problems, and mood changes)

11) Aches and pains

12) Possible fever

13) Diarrhea

14) Possible hemosiderosis (an iron overload disorder)

15) Immune suppression

Luckily, Stachybotrys, which requires 55% relative humidity to thrive, doesn't grow on things like vinyl or ceramic tile. It's not the green mold on that peach in the vegetable drawer, and although the mold that builds up in your shower is black, relax: that's not it, either.

Keeping the surfaces of your home clean and dry is a good start, but a good, deep sanitizing from time to time is a good idea, too. Mold can build up underneath your carpet, between walls and in other hidden, moist areas of your home. If you find a large deposit somewhere, don't underestimate this icky enemy: make sure you arm yourself with information and take precautions, like gloves and a mask or respirator, before you tackle the problem. Better yet, call in cleaning professionals who deal with problems like that every day. Better safe than sorry.

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Salmonella: Not a Character on The Sopranos

Meet Sal. You've met before, maybe at a restaurant, but you might not have been properly introduced: Salmonella's the name (pronounce it with the 'l', even though its namesake is its discovering pathologist Daniel Elmer Salmon), and contaminating the food you eat is the game.

We associate this unpleasant, rod-shaped microbe, a close cousin to our friend Escherichia, or e. coli, with undercooked chicken and raw eggs, for the most part, but that's only a small part of the story. Salmonella is a genus of zoonotic bacteria (meaning various strains of it can be transmitted from animals to humans and/or vice versa) of which there are thousands of different species. Many species of salmonella aren't harmful to humans at all, though they may be dangerous to animals; the reverse is also true. According to the Surveillance Report from the Food Diseases Active Surveillance (FoodNet) for 2007, salmonella is the most-reported type of bacterial infection.

Though one strain is responsible for typhoid fever, we're most familiar with salmonellosis, or food-poisoning. According to the CDC, there are 1.4 million cases of salmonellosis each year, with around 400 deaths.

Unlike many other bacteria, sneaky Sal doesn't usually affect the taste of the food it's contaminated. This comes in handy for it, since it takes a high concentration, usually in a significant amount of food, to cause illness in a healthy adult. In the cases of those with weak or compromised immune systems, however, such as HIV or transplant patients, and especially with pregnant women, infants and very small children, that's not always the case. In fact, with infants, even breathing contaminated dust can be enough.

In most people the symptoms, which usually manifest 48 - 72 hours after ingestion, are very mild - diarrhea, vomiting, cramps and fever. Headache and chills are also common. The symptoms can last a few days, and in some cases can be managed without medical care, though that's never advisable. In children it can, very occasionally, infect outside the intestine, causing Salmonella meningitis, and in a very small number of cases salmonellitis can lead to Reiter's syndrome - a condition involving sore joints, eye irritation and painful urination - which can last several months and eventually lead to a particularly hard-to-treat form of chronic arthritis.

Since this zoonotic microbe makes its home in the digestive tract, people contract it by consuming food that has come into contact with animal feces. In the case of chickens, this obviously means eggs as well as meat. It's also strongly associated with reptiles, so it's best to wash your hands after handling your pet iguana - and maybe save kissing it on the lips for special occasions. However, it's very long-lived and hardy; living microbes have been found in hardened, 2 ½-year-old animal scat. It's very easy to cross-contaminate the meal you're preparing simply by cutting your salad vegetables on the same cutting board you used to slice your meat, or by using a wooden board rather than a plastic one for meat-preparation.

It goes to follow, then, that surfaces like your kitchen tiles and the grout between them might also be welcoming, friendly resort destinations. Frequent cleaning and regular visits by a professional carpet-and-tile cleaner can keep the number of toxic tourists in your home to a minimum.

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Hidden Invaders: Common Household Bacteria

They're all around us all the time. Most of the time we don't notice, but what we don't know can hurt us. Bacteria is everywhere, even in the cleanest household, waiting for opportunities to settle in and start multiplying; they lurk unseen around our home, waiting for an open cut or an unwashed hand rubbing our mouth or eyes. Usually our bodies can handle it if we're in good health; in fact, the bacteria we encounter every day helps our immune system to strengthen and adapt. It's very easy under the right circumstances, however, for the delicate balance of coexistence between bacteria and other living things to shift, especially when it encounters a weakened immune system, as with babies, the elderly, and those with diabetes, HIV or cancer - and when it does the consequences can be serious - even deadly.

The problem has become even more consuming over the last few decades: we thought we had it licked with the advent of antibiotics, but as bacteria has evolved and humanity has overused antibiotics, natural selection has helped to develop a gene for antibiotic resistance, making some cases more difficult to treat. It's now able to pass that gene to other bacteria, creating a generation of superbugs and a world of trouble for those who develop infections and the medical professionals who treat them.

Let's get to know the common offenders; today we'll meet Staphlycoccus:

Greek for 'bunch of grapes', this public enemy comes in several different varieties and can be identified under a microscope by the company it keeps, traveling in colonies that resemble clusters of grapes or berries. Antibiotic-resistant staphlycoccus aureus is known by another, Voldemort-like name: it's MRSA, the terrifying, difficult-to-treat infection often found in surgical wounds.

One in four healthy people are colonized, meaning that they carry but are not infected by, the resistant type of s. aureus, ensconced in their mucous membranes or on their skin - most commonly in the armpit, groin, or the inside of the nose. Both the standard and resistant forms of this insidious attacker can live on dry surfaces like clothing, bed linens, upholstery, carpet, countertops and light-switches, making it easier for it to find a place to wait for its opportunity to cause trouble for you or someone in your family.

Staph can cause anything from an annoying stye in your eye to boils, abscesses, impetigo, pneumonia, deep infections in the valves of your heart (endocarditis) or even your bones (osteomyelitis). It's also the bacteria implicated in Toxic Shock Syndrome. Bacterial infections can also cause peripheral conditions such as blood clots, which can lead to deep vein thrombosis, a leading cause of stroke. In the worst cases a rampant staph infection can turn to septicemia, a high level of bacteria in the bloodstream which becomes sepsis, a whole-body infection (systemic inflammatory response syndrome, or SIRS) that can ultimately result in organ failure, coma and death.

As always, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Medical professionals agree that the first line of defense is washing your hands; the next is keeping your house, including your carpets, as clean as possible.

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