It impacts millions of the 21,000,000 asthma sufferers, 4,100,000 of them have been exposed to mold. It impacts people in the form of the body’s ongoing allergic reaction to spores that have been breathed.

Only few people die directly of its effects, however, it impacts the immune system, allowing other diseases like pneumonia to deal the death blow. Also, it causes Multiple Sclerosis. For instance, mycotoxin exposure causes inflammation, which sometimes leads to the hardening of myelin sheaths around nerves in the brain and spinal cord.

In 2014, the World Health Organization declared mold to be a contributing factor to a variety of health problems, such as the following.

• Cancer

• Pneumonia

• Asthma

• Miscarriages

• Allergies

Can impact via the skin.

Although most people suffer from breathing spores, contact with mold can result in dermatitis. If you scratch the surface of your skin and spores enter your system, you can be prone to skin infections that do not readily heal.

Although it does not kill people, it does weaken their immune system enough for more deadly diseases to set in, take hold, and finish the job. As such, they declared mold an official health hazard.

Painting cannot contain it.

Mold that exists in the walls of a water-damaged home runs deep through the drywall and into the wood. Painting over the mold does not kill it. Although painting a wall does provide a temporary barrier between people in the home and the spores, the mold will eventually penetrate the paint from within.

White vinegar successfully kills mold spores in porous surfaces, such as wood or drywall. All you have to do is mix the thee-to-one ratio of water to vinegar and spray liberally all the mold-covered surfaces you see. Vinegar penetrates into porous surfaces, so spores deep within wood are vulnerable. Bleach is also able to kill mold spores, but it cannot penetrate deep into porous surfaces. As such, it can only kill mold on surfaces.

Tiny enough to pass through air filters.

Surgical masks might protect a person’s respiratory system in an already sterile environment. However, the mesh in them is not tight enough to prevent spores from entering someone’s respiratory system. In fact, in order to prevent spores from entering your lungs, you will need a HEPA filter capable of filtering particles as small as .05 microns in size.

Although most molds grow, some can walk.

Well, walking mold might be an exaggeration, but in the forest, some molds take the form of slime. This slime moves and roils and has very real mobility powers.As these types of molds proliferate, they can sense their surroundings and alter their course as a result of chemotaxis, a type of chemical process that permits mobility and allows the mold to actually avoid harmful chemicals in the environment.

Some can even think.

If black mold represents the muscle of the mold world, Physarum polycephalum represents the brain. Although Physarum polycephalum does not actually have a nervous system capable of supporting an actual brain, their chemical processes are employed to solve problems and assist in the organism’s survival.

Chemotaxis is one process to help determine if a chemical is safe or hazardous. However, the chemical process of chemotaxis is not the only example of Physarum polycephalum’s intelligence. Researchers have found that various slime molds can train one another. For instance, if mold is placed in an unfriendly environment, it will grow and move until it finds a safe place for it to flourish.

This sounds natural, but the unnatural thing about this process is that if so-called experienced spores that have found their way out of a hazardous maze are presented to so-called inexperienced spores placed in the same maze, the inexperienced spores learn from the experienced ones and exit the maze significantly faster.

* Author: Nick Cagge, (tech25s.com)