DIY Mold Removal Gone Wrong: The Hidden Dangers You Need to Know!

Hey, Dr. Diane, your mold expert here, talking today about diying home remediation product projects around mold and finding mold in your house. One of the first things I would like you to understand is this is something that should really only be completed in a DIY by somebody who's experienced or has done enough research to make this go well. So many times when people DIY mold project, they actually make the situation worse. And here's why. A lot of times people will think, oh, I'll just put bleach on it, or I'll just get a gallon of vinegar and put that on it. Mold, like other organisms in nature, wants to survive. So what happens when we pour these agents that are like supposed to be killing the mold is the colonies will actually do this last ditch effort and blow their spores into the air, thereby splash, spreading their babies around the room. So sometimes what can happen is you might clear out that initial source of mold by doing this job improperly and you'll spread it around the room so it might seem better until you get a humid day and then you have mold in one area, mold in another, and mold in a third. And what a lot of people do not even realize is how sick mold is making them. Because oftentimes if people see mold, many people are just thinking like, well, I don't have allergies, I don't have lung problems, so I don't think this mold affecting me. But I, it's like ugly and gross, so I'm going to get it out of here, right? So that's what how a lot of times people think. But the problem is we actually see that mold can cause a lot of neurological damage and a lot of different symptoms. In my last video, I walked through some of the symptoms caused by mold illness. So make sure you go back to last week's video and watch that top five signs that you may have mold in your house. Make sure you watch that so you understand the potential of illness. Because if you are actually, if you have mold related symptoms, symptoms from mold, and so many people do and don't know them, and you start this DIY project, you might make yourself worse and inflamed in a way that that's more difficult to recover from, it's really important then to understand that when mold remediators come, the ones that are good, the ones that do a really good job and prevent the spread, they will contain the room, they will put up a vapor barrier, they would put antifungicide around the barrier. They will use negative pressure to make sure that air is contained in that room. In addition, another thing that they'll do is they'll remove the active source of the mold. They'll properly contain it within very, very sealed bags. But they remove it from that vapor sealed room and then they typically fog, use more anti fungicide and then wipe ceilings, floors, everything in that room with cloths that are kind of had like adhesive, like a dry Swiffer type of cloth. And what they're doing is they're removing those little remaining spore fragments. Because sometimes we can kill mold, but if we are reactive to mold and we leave some of the fragments behind, our immune system responds to those fragments for many people in very, very similar ways as active mold. So we absolutely want to consider all of these things that if you're not going to do this 100% right, there's concerns that doing it partially right could actually spread the could make you sick and could cause other more financially exhausting problems and medically exhausting problems in the future. So definitely look at working with a good inspector who can at least guide you on this process. We do help people recover from mold related illnesses at my client in my clinic. You're welcome to look in the show notes below if you or somebody you love needs the help. I'm Dr. Diane. Please do subscribe to this channel for more information like this and we'll see you in another video.