Sometimes we look into the backs of our closets while we are cleaning them out and we discover an old article of clothing with a fuzzy substance all over it. If you find something like this in the back of your closet, the best thing to do is drop it immediately and go wash your hands. What you were handling was a piece of clothing that has been contaminated with mold and it has been advised to not touch mold spores with your bare hands. This can possibly cause an allergic reaction or just some skin rashes, but either way, there will probably be consequences to deal with.
Most items of clothing that are contaminated with mold can be cleaned and the mold done away with, but most of the time the mold ends up leaving stains. Using bleach to remove the stains can be effective if you are dealing with mold on white clothing, but this is not always the case and chlorine bleach is not effective in killing molds on porous surfaces. You can use a brush to remove the majority of the mold and put a pre-wash spray on it; allow this to soak for about 45 minutes and put it through the washing machine. After this, allow them to dry outside naturally in the sun. Using an artificial source of heat to dry the clothes can set the stain deeper into the fabric and if you are dealing with white clothing, the sun can actually help to bleach the fabric further.
If you are looking to remove the mold and mold stains from something that was made with real leather, you are probably not going to have any luck. Items made out of leather become discolored very easily and mold does a good job of this. They cannot usually be restored after coming into contact with mold.
You can clean off upholstery or curtains that have come into contact with mold using the same method described above and one of the best purchases you can make to keep your home mold free is a vacuum that has a HEPA filter in it. Use this vacuum and its brush attachment to suck up all the mold and its spores; the filter will make sure that the spores are not re-released into the air in your home after being collected.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Mold In Your Refrigerator And The Damage it Can Cause
If there is one thing that most people cannot stand, it is when you open the refrigerator and find that a jar of something you need at that moment such as mayonnaise or jelly has become contaminated with mold. Sometimes it is green or white and it grows either on the food itself or on the inside of the jar’s lid and you do not notice it is there until you are already scooping it out and putting it onto your bread. Yuck! A whole jar has just been wasted because of mold.
What about the other food near that jar? You should check to see if any other food in your refrigerator is contaminated with mold and throw it away immediately, especially if it is something that does not come in a jar. Leftovers, fruit, or vegetables that we often end up shoving into the back of the fridge and forgetting about are common mold hotspots in our refrigerators. Maybe you made too much food one night and you just have not had a taste for the leftovers or maybe you just have not gotten around to throwing it away.
Cleaning out your refrigerator of old and outdated items is one of the best ways to prevent mold from starting to grow inside your refrigerator. Wasting food is a bad thing to do no matter where you are and if you have any leftovers that have not been eaten up to around 48 hours after you originally prepared it, it is probably a good idea to get some Ziploc bags or Tupperware dishes and put this excess food in the freezer to eat at a later date.
Do not leave the vegetables or fruit in the plastic bags that you put them in when you pick them up from the produce section at your grocery store. This traps moisture inside the bag and it will cause your food to rot and eventually become moldy.
Any cracked eggs in the carton need to be removed. You should not buy a carton of eggs if any of the eggs appear to be cracked open; bacteria on the outside of the egg can get inside and begin to multiply.
Cheese is also a favorite food of mold in the refrigerator and if you see mold growing on a block of cheese (do not try to save individually wrapped slices), take a knife and cut an inch around the moldy spot and throw it away. Do not touch the mold with the knife and wash it immediately after.
What about the other food near that jar? You should check to see if any other food in your refrigerator is contaminated with mold and throw it away immediately, especially if it is something that does not come in a jar. Leftovers, fruit, or vegetables that we often end up shoving into the back of the fridge and forgetting about are common mold hotspots in our refrigerators. Maybe you made too much food one night and you just have not had a taste for the leftovers or maybe you just have not gotten around to throwing it away.
Cleaning out your refrigerator of old and outdated items is one of the best ways to prevent mold from starting to grow inside your refrigerator. Wasting food is a bad thing to do no matter where you are and if you have any leftovers that have not been eaten up to around 48 hours after you originally prepared it, it is probably a good idea to get some Ziploc bags or Tupperware dishes and put this excess food in the freezer to eat at a later date.
Do not leave the vegetables or fruit in the plastic bags that you put them in when you pick them up from the produce section at your grocery store. This traps moisture inside the bag and it will cause your food to rot and eventually become moldy.
Any cracked eggs in the carton need to be removed. You should not buy a carton of eggs if any of the eggs appear to be cracked open; bacteria on the outside of the egg can get inside and begin to multiply.
Cheese is also a favorite food of mold in the refrigerator and if you see mold growing on a block of cheese (do not try to save individually wrapped slices), take a knife and cut an inch around the moldy spot and throw it away. Do not touch the mold with the knife and wash it immediately after.
From Todays Insurance Adjusters to Moses of the Bible, Mold Has Great Part Of History
If your insurance adjuster claims that mold has been around for many years longer than we have and that it does not to the damage that the media and health community say that it does, then perhaps something you should have them read up on is a verse that comes straight out of the Bible and blatantly talks about homes that are diseased.
It is called a “leprous plague” in the scripture Leviticus 14:34; it appears growing on the walls and if a family went to the priest and said “my house is diseased”, it was ordered that the people leave the house so the priest could go in and examine it. If it was determined to be diseased, then the stones of the house were to be removed and taken to a place that was away from town and from where people resided so that others would be safe from the plague. Stones were brought in to replace the ones that were removed and it was watched to see if the mold returned; if it did return, the entire house was torn down and all the debris was taken to where the first stones were dumped.
Mold was serious business in Biblical times just as it is today, but back then there were no formal antibiotics or fungicides to help get rid of the mold either in the body or on a person’s property, so most of the time it simply had to be torn down and replaced. Even the deaths of the firstborns of Egypt are sometimes attributed by scholars to the presence of mold on the food that was stored underground after the locusts came. If the food was contaminated with almost any mold, especially Stachybotrys atra, it is speculated that it would have been what killed all the firstborn children in Egypt at the time because during that period, it was customary for the eldest Egyptian child in a family to receive a second portion of food. Food that has been stored underground, especially if it was stored directly on top of the soil, would have been a perfect food also for mold. The Jews alive at the time would not have suffered from this plague because they ate herbs, lamb, and unleavened bread, which should have been safe from any mold contamination.
So, do not let your insurance adjuster fool you by trying to downplay the seriousness of mold. It was serious over 2,000 years ago and it is just as serious today.
It is called a “leprous plague” in the scripture Leviticus 14:34; it appears growing on the walls and if a family went to the priest and said “my house is diseased”, it was ordered that the people leave the house so the priest could go in and examine it. If it was determined to be diseased, then the stones of the house were to be removed and taken to a place that was away from town and from where people resided so that others would be safe from the plague. Stones were brought in to replace the ones that were removed and it was watched to see if the mold returned; if it did return, the entire house was torn down and all the debris was taken to where the first stones were dumped.
Mold was serious business in Biblical times just as it is today, but back then there were no formal antibiotics or fungicides to help get rid of the mold either in the body or on a person’s property, so most of the time it simply had to be torn down and replaced. Even the deaths of the firstborns of Egypt are sometimes attributed by scholars to the presence of mold on the food that was stored underground after the locusts came. If the food was contaminated with almost any mold, especially Stachybotrys atra, it is speculated that it would have been what killed all the firstborn children in Egypt at the time because during that period, it was customary for the eldest Egyptian child in a family to receive a second portion of food. Food that has been stored underground, especially if it was stored directly on top of the soil, would have been a perfect food also for mold. The Jews alive at the time would not have suffered from this plague because they ate herbs, lamb, and unleavened bread, which should have been safe from any mold contamination.
So, do not let your insurance adjuster fool you by trying to downplay the seriousness of mold. It was serious over 2,000 years ago and it is just as serious today.
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