Ritchie C. Shoemaker / MD Surviving Mold

Life in th Era of Dangerous Buildings
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60984-960-3
Verlag: Otter Bay Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 784 Seiten

Microbes, especially molds and bacteria, growing in water-damaged buildings make people sick. Powerfully written, Surviving Mold follows Mold Warriors (published in 2005) as the definitive source of information on 'mold' illness, its basis in inflammation, its physiology and its links to politics, lawsuits and science. Written by America's most widely published mold-treating physician, Surviving Mold has true stories, cutting edge science and a wide open expose of the shenanigans in medicine, governmental agencies and courtrooms regarding this increasingly common problem in the US and around the world. If you have an ill-defined chronic illness, or know someone who does, your first step to return to health might be to ask if there is the possibility of exposure to musty basements, wet bathrooms, leaking roofs, flat-roofed schools, offices buildings with recirculated air or buildings with construction defects. If you already know that you could be sickened by water-damaged buildings, Su

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ritchie C. Shoemaker, MD

MD,

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Preface
Surviving Mold tells the stories of people who've been made ill after they were exposed to WDB (water-damaged buildings). These illnesses reflect a growing societal problem: dangerous buildings. There are many ways buildings become home to a toxic mix of microbes, fragments of microbes and harmful chemicals. Buildings can host fungi, bacteria, mycobacteria and actinomycetes as a result of construction defects like inappropriate ventilation and HVAC systems; faulty construction of crawl spaces or inadequate building design; using failed technologies like flat roofs or fake stucco cladding without adequate caulking; incomplete basements exposed to saturated ground water conditions; or not correcting water intrusion; or remediation that doesn't clean as its final requirement. It's no wonder that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) tells us that more than a quarter of U.S. buildings are water-damaged. And if you've got water-damaged buildings, you've got patients with mold illness. After the illness is identified and corrected, and sadly, that doesn't happen often in the United States, the goal for patients is to stay well. And that doesn't happen often in the U.S. either. If you have an illness acquired following exposure to the interior environment of a WDB, an illness I will call “mold illness,” then Surviving Mold mandates a change in your life style since the mold illness has changed your immune responses and your life. For a minute, imagine you're Lindsay Mather. Ever since you moved into the cute cottage at the bottom of the hill, you're ill all the time. The basement leaks after it rains, it smells musty and you just found out that the flexible fiberglass ducts-the source and delivery method of heated and cooled air to every room in the house - are filled with mold. Apparently, someone didn't seal the ductwork very well, as if any taping job could ever be airtight forever. Air from the basement leaks into the ductwork each time the HVAC system blows air past the failed tape jobs, so now the microbes that were growing only in the basement are found in every room of your house. Your homeowner's policy most likely excludes correcting mold problems. The mold company you hired to look at the biological stew that inhabits your new home charges you more than $50,000 to fix the problem, but will not guarantee your safety when they're finished. You can't work as a computer company supervisor any more, because you can't stay focused. Your last performance review was so terrible, you agreed to take an unpaid leave of absence until you felt better. The disability policy the company provided will carry you through until you return to work. Sounds bad, right? But you're lucky compared to many others. Your physician knows more than his peers about mold, human health and exposure to WDBs. He told you to move out right away, before it was too late. But where can you go? How do you know the next place won't be moldy, too? You looked, but just walking into some of those apartments made you immediately more ill. His medications aren't much help, although the sleeping pills and breathing meds get you through the week. Once again, you read over the registered letter that arrived today from the disability insurance company. More bad news: your short-term disability ran out last month and your application for long-term disability was denied after the doctor who “reviewed” your chart for the insurance company said you didn't have any significant lung impairment, that your cognitive impairments were stress-related, and the aches and pains are just fibromyalgia that is pre-existing because your medical record plainly shows an automobile accident twelve years ago. He never even examined you, yet he has the power to give or withhold the measly amount of disability insurance you paid for, month after month, thinking it would guarantee you help if you ever needed it. Oh, his opinion is called “independent.” What is independent about some physician with never-disclosed credentials siding with an insurance company so he will get a check from his employer, the middle man company the insurance company paid? No opinion, no check. And since the insurance company itself didn't pay the doctor for the opinion, somehow the words become unbiased? Yes, such appearance of independence is a sham, with deniability all around. Try applying for long term disability if you think the contracted independent opinion won't work against you. It is a simple prescription for outrage against truth. And it gets worse. When the “independent” doc is an Occupational Medicine (OccMed) practitioner, I can essentially guarantee you he won't know anything about mold illness and will cite idiotic opinions from the ancient and fallacious ACOEM report (contrived and published in 2002) to back up his malarkey. More on the politics of deception for hire from the ACOEM statement about human illness will follow in these pages. Whatever made you think a system that stays in business by more often denying disability would actually agree you were disabled? Saying that you needed psychiatric care, and the independent doc used that masterful ploy as they all usually try to, was the cruelest stab of all. Imagine an adminstrative judge reading the opinion that you are a wacko; will his opinion of you as a person be enhanced? You want to confront this “independent” person, accuse him of - What? Negligence? Ignorance? - yet he is surrounded by the reputation of his esteemed institution and all that entails. You learn that you could hire a lawyer to fight for you, but you'd have to pay roughly $15,000 to get on his case list, $500 per hour for his time and then pay 25% of your first five years of disability income to him for his work. Even then, you have no idea if he knows anything about mold illness. Without a lawyer, though, you don't have much chance of getting disability. But with a lawyer, the disability company bleeds you dry financially with legal fees, making one motion after another and postponing again and again. Justice postponed is justice that's more expensive to achieve, if ever, and their lawyers know that people filing disability cases have little money to spare after months or years of illness and financial difficulties. OK, now imagine you're a physician. If Lindsay called you for help, how would you answer her questions? Where can she go that might be safer? Of all the things she owns, what can she take with her, or is it all contaminated? How can she know if her new residence will make her ill? Where will she find the money to start over again? All she has left to her name is the damaged home and its mortgage. She's too tired to even look up this information for herself. Now imagine the same case, but our example patient has two children who aren't doing well in school. This family rents instead of owns their home and the husband is tired of his wife being sick. She just isn't the same person he married ten years ago, he complains to you. His doctor said mold doesn't hurt anyone (his opinion has nothing to back it up, but the physician's opinion isn't questioned). His wife tells you that her husband said he was working late last night at the office, but when she called there, he didn't answer the phone. What can she do, she asks crying? Where can she go? Now our example patient is a famous TV personality whose melodious voice has sounded like a chorus frog with laryngitis ever since she moved into the fancy condo down the street from the White House. If she can't be the voice that America trusts, she's out but her big mortgage won't stop. She's convinced that she's ill from the mold that's growing all over the condo, and so are scores of her fellow condo-owners. They've demanded the company that built the condos remediate the mold problem, and the condo's attorneys are fighting them tooth and nail. Their strategy includes hiring an experienced professional witness (another “independent,” we might note, who, as expected, hasn't even seen a patient in the practice of medicine for more than twenty five years) to say under oath that mold couldn't hurt a flea. You heard the insurance company has already paid this witness more than $500,000 and you haven't even been to court yet. If you sue and lose, and the case would be heard in the most conservative court in the United States, you might be forced to pay the defense consultant's fees, even though he never saw or examined you. Imagine going bankrupt because a witness didn't tell the truth under oath. Does it happen in the U.S.? Of course it does and not just in mold cases. Makes you wonder about the legal system, doesn't it? All it would take would be for one judge to stand up and tell a professional witness that he is a liar, as they usually are and cite him for perjury. Doesn't happen. And how about the ridiculous items the defense bar makes up in motions of one kind or another: usually just outright lies. Isn't it time to get out the “sanction sticker gun,” labeling their brief cases with official “liar” stickers all the way off the bar? That behavior certainly appears to be accepted as standard and expected behavior. Just tell the truth, for once, will you? Now imagine you're a wealthy Florida entrepreneur who owns homes in many locations. Your high-rise view of the Fort Lauderdale beach has been ruined by the wrecking crew taking down the other wing of your building because it's full of mold. You have to vacate, but the condo association is balking at your demands to give you the replacement value of your Oriental rugs and ancient...