Hey Ho! Mould GO!

Its time to get the guns out and wage a bit o’ menace on your mould.  Yes, I know. Delightful stuff, gurgling away to itself on your bathroom walls and windows, saying heaven knows what to itself, just the thing you want to be talking about – NOT, and try as you might, it’s a pretty hard thing to get excited about.  But, guys, you have to.  Get excited, I mean.  You have to get excited about the evil presence of mould from the perspective of being determined to GET. RID. OF. IT.  Why?  Because you ignore it at real risk to your health and well-being.  Mould’s not just tiresome black stuff that makes the bedroom or bathroom look and smell a bit weird.  It’s, well, um ... TOXIC.  Some folks will tell you that not all black mould is toxic, it depends on the type, yarda yarda, but hey!  Even if they are right, do you have the time or the inclination to scrape it off the surfaces, send it to a scientist for analysis to see if it is in fact something you can live with, and wait for a response before that fuzzy little foe starts doing you real damage?  Nah.  Not really.  For the sake of your health you have to assume the worst, like many people haven’t, some of who have ended up with respiratory failure or diseased lungs, to name but two of a seriously scary raft of nasty symptoms from inhaling this little beastie.  The last thing anyone needs is a poignant epitaph!

“Old Stachy” (statchybotrys chartarum) is the household companion we definitely need to live without, but it has some pretty definite ideas of its own when it comes to taking up residence and growing on a stunning variety of different surfaces in your house!  Eeee by gum, it’s determined stuff, is mould...  It grows on ya – but not in a good way.

The seriously unpleasant truth is that people living in homes with toxic black mould are routinely breathing in toxic spores: mycotoxins which create irritation and a burning feeling in the nasal cavity, mouth and throat, and can become lodged in mucus membranes, sinuses and lungs.  It’s a very short leap from there to breathing problems and lung bleeding. The mycotoxins can also be ingested, or absorbed through the eyes (causing inflammation and injury) and skin (causing a variety of complaints such as itchiness, inflammation, rashes and blisters).  Eventually the spores can end up in the bloodstream, and it’s an equally short leap from there to heart damage, problems with blood clotting and internal or external haemorrhaging.  

People with compromised immune systems are particularly at risk, as black mould can cause severe illness and infections in those whose natural immunity is not sufficient to protect them.  Mycotoxins are teratogenic too, which means they can cause fetal problems during pregnancy which then leads to birth defects. Toxic black mold mycotoxins are also cytoxotic and mutagenic (cause cell mutations) and they inhibit protein synthesis including DNA and RNA. Symptoms such as infertility and miscarriage are also very real risks.

Toxic black mold can trigger the immune system to release a sedative called Chloral Hydrate as the body’s internal defense to try to slow down its toxic effects. The problem with that is the fact that Chloral Hydrate has been known to cause chronic fatigue.

Muscles and joints don’t escape this horrible little resident evil either.  Joint and muscle pain is a common symptom of over-exposure to black mould.

If that’s not enough to convince you that “Statch” is not your friend in the bedroom taking care of you while you sleep, I don’t know what is.

In reality, the black mould we’re thinking about here is largely the result of festering condensation, and you can combat it by ensuring you have adequate ventilation in wet areas, wiping down walls, window, sills and shower/bath tiles and corner areas after steam has penetrated, doing a quick morning wipe-down in bedrooms after a night’s breathing has accumulated on the windows, and ensuring that other living areas don’t suffer from prolonged condensation build-up that can lead to the proliferation of our little black foe.
  

At Darlings Who Do, we use a fantastic product on mould.  It’s a natural cleaning fluid, with our secret and specific blend of essential oils added to it, designed to bust mould from your house and keep it well away.  You can do it yourself too, and one of the best ingredients you can use against mould is in fact the humble little bottle of tea tree oil.  This miniature warrior doesn't just clear mould away.  It actively deters it from returning. A little on a toothbrush goes a long way (but do make sure it’s not one you will later want to use for your peggies – black mould is not a good look stuck in the teeth, darling!)

Revolting thought???  Yeah, course it is!  Are you shuddering?

Seriously - the best thing you can do for yourself and your loved ones at home is stop Statch right NOW.  Sending it packing for once and for all will take a bit of work (unless you get a Darling to come and avenge it on your behalf and, trust us, we’d be happy to!), but your immune system will thank you for it.  So will all your lovely internal organs, who really just want to be, and stay, nicely in the pink!  And consider the pets you may have, who put their noses against the glass while seeking to view the outside world.  Condensation from their breath may generate black mould, or if the mould is already there they may be directly inhaling it.  Not good... and they can't tell you what their symptoms are if they get sick.  They just have to rely on you to notice.

The great news is that you really can clear this toxic menace from your house in ways that won’t compromise your health and safety on a different level, such as inhaling fumes or burning your skin from equally toxic chemicals designed to clear the mould.  Essential oils are an absolute winner; they act as grease busters as well as bacteria busters, and you won’t go far wrong with that lovely little bottle of heroism – your tea tree oil.  If you really absolutely definitely do have to take the chemical route please, PLEASE (!) do ensure that you have adequate ventilation when mounting the attack, wear good quality, non-permeable rubber gloves, and ensure you rinse all affected and treated surfaces really well, to clear any of that toxic chemical residue.  

Spring is here, so wage a bit o' menace on your mould!  Put on your best shoe, take aim, and give a hefty kick to this toxic little horror and get it out of your home.  Hey Ho!  Mould GO!  
     

Its NOT Just Dust, Darling!

Earlier this week I wrote a short facebook post about what’s really in those delightful little “dust bunnies” we all have accumulating in different corners of our houses, and it has prompted me to expand this desperately boring but important subject out a bit, to explain why the substance of dust is such a significant threat to human health, why we need to take more notice of it, and why - while tedious and tiresome - maintaining a dust-free environment is really important to our well being.

Dust is something that most of us generally do notice but don’t really want to think too much about.  That light, talcum-powdery coating we find on the furniture, nestling in nooks and crannies, and lurking on the architraves simply translates to work, and most of us would rather use the time we’d typically spend getting rid of it in a far more enjoyable way.  Perfectly understandable - after all, it’s not too difficult to ignore what we think of as a minor irritant, in preference to foregoing a meeting for coffee with a friend, spending time with the kids, or getting on with that blog we have to write!

But dust is not quite as benign or innocuous as we’d like to think.   As the subject of significant and intense scientific research and analysis, general household dust has been found to contain a worrying accumulation of deeply unpleasant ingredients, and while specific composition does vary by location, the overall analysis suggests that wherever it happens to be, it is in fact a significant threat to human health. Dust mites, for example, produce allergens that are well-documented “triggers” for people suffering from asthma and their presence can be enough to start the disease in those who haven’t previously had it.

The specific dust mix in any household varies with the climate, the age of the house, the number of people who live in it and the types of pets they have, along with their cleaning, cooking, personal hygiene and smoking habits. Commonly, the average dust combination contains dead human skin, animal fur, dried mould spores, the decomposing faeces and bodies of insects, ash, food debris, lint and organic fibres from clothes, bedding and other fabrics (such as wool), tracked-in soil, soot, particles from smoking and cooking, and, rather worryingly, chemical and metal particles such as lead (e.g. from vehicle exhaust fumes), arsenic (e.g. from nicotine, airborne volcanic dust and dust from mining and burning coal) and ingredients used in crop sprays and garden fertilizers.  Dust in the home can be absorbed into carpets, curtains and rugs and can remain there for long periods of time, as can powdered forms of residue from the chemicals present from home cleaning, DIY activity, and smoking.

Would we voluntarily snort any of that?  Erm... nope.

But here’s the thing – that’s exactly what we’re doing!  We are actually breathing in these airborne particles BEFORE they settle on the surfaces in our homes.  Whenever we open a window to invite the fresh air in, we also unwittingly invite in all these things that make their presence felt in the form of the dust we try to ignore, and since the ingredients all have different effects on different people they pose different risks to health.  Children are particularly at risk of compromised health from dust and its ingredients, as they often play on the floor where it tends to accumulate, and they routinely transfer any bacteria on their hands directly to their mouths. 

As our lives tend to get busier and there is less and less time available to meet our obligations, housework often tends to slide as we seek to enjoy the quality time that gives us the much-needed balance between work and play.  It’s a hard enough balance to strive for at the best of times. Outsourcing your domestic cleaning is a sensible option to ensure that a healthy home environment can be maintained in a way that doesn't stretch you to the absolute limit of your own capability and time.  It’s easy to put a price on having your house cleaned, but a lot harder to quantify the cost of compromised health or lost quality time.  One of my customers put it in a nutshell when she first hired Darlings Who Do.  She said that she is incredibly busy running a business, her house needs cleaning, and her beautiful little boy was growing up and she and her partner didn't want to miss a moment of the time they could have with him.  The logical compromise in her busy life was outsourcing the domestic cleaning.  It made more sense to her than anything else. Now, having domestic support is simply a part of her weekly housekeeping costs.

There’s absolutely no need to be unduly paranoid about dust in the home. It is, after all, part of everyday life, and our homes can never really be entirely free of it. But there are ways to reduce it and minimize its accumulation.  Regularly cleaning it from floors and other surfaces in your home (or car or office) will enhance the environment you live in and will significantly reduce the risks it poses to your own and your family’s health, especially if its done the way WE do it - without the use of harsh, unnecessary chemicals that raise important questions about whether clean is always healthy!  Outsourcing this most mundane of tasks also gives you back your quality time – and that’s something you can’t put any kind of price on.

Big Blog, Big Issue - The Abundance of Waste

A tall, thin man in a white apron and a chef’s hat is teetering on a chair behind the big metal door that leads out from the back of a truly massive staff canteen.  He is staring into an open skip and as I watch him, he starts to shovel the contents of a 3’ by 2’ catering tray of what appears to be an untouched lasagne into the skip.  He follows that up with another one, and then two similar sized trays of what looks like fresh cottage pie, then a full tray of bread and butter pudding.  He then upends a big cardboard box over the lot, and a cascade of still-wrapped sandwiches, cakes and cookies crowns the heap.  He isn’t finished.  He wanders inside, comes out with another box, climbs back onto his chair, and empties at least a dozen unopened cartons of orange juice into the skip. 

It’s 1989.  I’m the big-permed, killer-heeled, shoulder-padded PA to a Director of one of the UK’s biggest corporate giants, at one of their top security manufacturing plants which employs six thousand people, and I've just tottered across from the office with a list of catering requirements for a management meeting scheduled for the following day.   I find myself standing transfixed and totally gobsmacked by what I've just seen.  The guy doesn't see me.  He wipes his hands on his apron, grabs his chair, wanders back inside and slams the metal door.

By the time I get to the front of the building and make my way to the counter, I’m furious.  I ask to speak to the canteen manager, who turns out to be the very same man I've just seen throwing away a truly staggering amount of perfectly good food.  I ask him if what he’s just done is a daily occurrence, and he confirms that he throws away between three and seven trays of untouched fresh food every day.

When I ask him if the food couldn't be produced in smaller quantities, or whether what was left over could be redirected to people who need it, he tells me his directive is to produce certain quantities, and that it’s not feasible to consider distributing what’s not needed in such a way. Not feasible.  He agrees wholeheartedly with my outrage, that while this multi-billion pound industry certainly can afford to have a van stop by outside the security gates each afternoon, and pay staff an extra fifteen minutes’ wages to haul it all up to the gate to have it taken away to the local mission for distribution to the needy, they just choose not to find a way to make it feasible.  He gives me a “what can ya do” shrug, and turns away.

So I go back to my boss and I tell him what's transpired.  He makes a few phone calls to try and see if we can somehow fight our way through the “unfeasibility” of redirecting our unwanted food to the city’s homeless and hungry, but nobody higher up the organisational chain – not one active decision maker - wants to help.  They all have better things to do than concern themselves with yet another dysfunctional element of their operation.  The fact that what is thrown away each day could comfortably feed the city’s homeless or support families in poverty across the county is, apparently, irrelevant.  

Part of me was itching to blow the whistle on the waste of food, but I didn't.  I went home seething but leaving it at that and I guess, looking back, that made me just as guilty and ignorant as everybody else.  It stayed with me though, that encounter, and to this day I still struggle to accept that something couldn't have been done to avoid all that obscene waste, but then, I’m the woman who will see a homeless person sitting hunched outside McDonalds, and go in to buy them a burger and a coffee.  Some people care more than others I suppose, but the issue is not even just about that.

“All to do with Health and Safety”, someone’s mumbling in my ear, and they’d probably be right.  Most of us are well aware of the degree to which Health and Safety legislation has crippled much of what people can do to help themselves or others, despite their best intentions, with certain laws put in place to protect the public being so often underpinned by a monumental abandonment of common sense. It all comes down to forward thinking and adaptable planning, and there never seems to be much of that hanging around when policymakers are drafting decisions about what’s going to help instead of hinder.  I’m certain that most of the hungry and homeless would take a chance on not being poisoned by food pronounced as a “potential risk to health and safety” that had been offered for sale just hours before to paying customers!  It would be nice for them to at least be offered the choice.  Does food really go off that fast?  I don’t think so. 

In our progressive, civilized society, in the 21^st century where technology has literally revolutionized the planet beyond the recognition of generations past, it seems that one of the hardest things for the modern-day mind still to grapple with and find a solution for is the monumental global waste of food.  The United States reportedly wastes almost half of everything it produces, and here in the UK we're not far behind.  Collectively, as householders, we throw away a staggering 4 million tonnes (!) of food and drink per year.  That equates, more or less, to setting £60 on fire per household per month.  That’s more than £700 per year - the price of a fairly decent holiday, a few home improvements, or any number of other things on most people’s wish lists – and well within our grasp if we could just be a bit more careful about how much food we buy that we consistently throw away.  The craziest thing about the whole scenario is that according to research most uneaten food goes straight from the fridge to the bin, and more than half of it could legitimately have been safely eaten.  A food item being past its “use by” date merely means that its quality has started to diminish, NOT that it’s no longer edible or has no nutritional value.  Most of it would still be absolutely fine for consumption, but until the labels make that clear, people will continue to simply bin it, a fact that suits the supermarkets very nicely. 

The worldwide imbalance of food distribution has been a well known fact for many a long decade and although around 4 billion tons of food is produced globally every year, i.e. enough to comfortably feed the entire world, the latest World Food report informs us that an incomprehensible 1.3 billion tons - more than a third of all food globally produced – is either lost or wasted, largely thanks to micro and macro human inefficiency.  While the average consumer undeniably has a lot to answer for, external factors such as inefficient planning for the creation of food, for control over its growth, and for management of its distribution remain central to the issue, along with wildly differing and inconsistent global farming practices that compromise food manufacture, quality, and worldwide availability.

Setting aside the chronic global mismanagement of food, a general, more home-centred lack of education and understanding about our own relationships with it enables us to feel ok about our overflowing supermarket shelves and groaning dinner tables, while people in certain pockets of the world are continuing to die from starvation. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 870 million people of the world’s population (one in eight), are suffering from chronic undernourishment.  It beggars belief that 870 million people don’t have sufficient food, with 16 million classified as officially undernourished, including those in developing counties.  With much of the world being currently entrenched in the misery of hunger, malnourishment, malnutrition and outright famine, and given the scale of the task being faced by global policy makers, it all might feel too huge and too far outside of our control as individuals, for anything we do to have any significant impact. Well, I don’t agree.  I think there is much that we can do, as individuals and families, to influence their decisions going forward.

For a start, let’s consider how we respond to the behaviour of commercial retailers – supermarkets in particular - who charge disproportionately for smaller packets of everything (a nightmare for people who live alone), and who engage in high profile advertising to offer bulk deals and heavy discounts, encouraging people to buy more than what they really need.  They buy in bulk themselves, to get the prices they want, and they then shift those goods by offering deals to consumers. It’s great when it comes to stocking up on non-perishables, but how many of us have bought more fresh produce or other perishables than we needed because it was cheap, then ended up throwing away what couldn't be frozen for later use, or used up before it went bad in the fridge?  Not so much of a bargain in the end, then!  I’m as guilty as the next person, incidentally, having recently bought three packs of yoghurts on a buy-two-and-get-three deal.  I didn't even pause to consider whether I would even be capable of eating them all before they went bad.  I just thought “I eat this yoghurt!  I will take advantage of this deal”.  Two weeks later I threw the untouched third pack out, because I didn't get to it in time.  It’s not the first time I've done something like that, but I’m hoping it will be one of the last, because I’m starting to appreciate that getting something “free” isn't really a bargain if I can’t use it. 

What if we simply bought what we knew we could manage, or at least found a way to preserve the rest (e.g. freezing) for later use?  What if we stopped ourselves from being heavily seduced by a promise of saving money that turns out to be false if we end up throwing away £60 worth of food per month on average?   

Form most of us, reining in the amount of food we routinely waste means changing our relationship with it.  It’s a process that starts with recognizing, at the point of purchase, what is realistic for us to consume and sticking to it.  I've made a start by planning my family’s meals, simply by making lists of what fresh ingredients I realistically need, and sticking to it. If we only need one pack of yoghurts, I resist the temptation to buy two, in order to get three.  I have to say that this is proving to be a REALLY tough habit to break, because like many people I have been conditioned to saving money wherever I can.  But on reading the food waste statistics (which are rampant on the internet for anyone who wants to look), the penny is starting to drop.  Can I use £700 a year more effectively than tossing it into the bin?  Hell yes!  Show me one person who couldn't!

Changing our relationship with food also means thinking beyond the quantities we buy, to how much we actually consume, and this can also be a very tough habit to break, because a lot of what we think about food goes right back to how we were conditioned within our family of origin.  I grew up under constant threat of punishment if I didn't eat everything dished up on my plate.  “Think of the starving millions”, was the swift and snappy rejoinder if I ever dared to declare that I wasn't hungry enough to finish what was on my plate and woe betide me if I left even half a spoonful of over-boiled cabbage on my plate!  Too many of us grew up with that ethic.  You ate what you were given, whether you liked it or not, whether there was too much of it or not, and whether you complained or not.  It was enforced with the best of intentions, since my generation of children was dealing with the aftermath of our parents’ own childhood experiences of food deprivation during war-time rationing, where the waste of food was, quite rightly, an abomination.  Old habits are hard to break, and the ticking time-bomb of obesity is as much about the quantity we've been conditioned to think we need, as the actual nutritional value of what we eat.  Most of us can actually get by on a lot less, as long as it’s healthy, nutritional food.

 

But here’s the thing:  The waste of food is STILL an abomination, it is out of control, and if the United Nations’ prediction is true, that by 2075 there will be another 3 billion mouths to feed world-wide, it’s pretty clear that the human race has to get a lot more sensible a lot more quickly about effective food production, distribution and consumption.  Many of us won’t be around by 2075, having shuffled off our mortal coils thanks to various illnesses, many of which will be directly or indirectly related to how and what we've eaten throughout our lives.  It’s the current generation of children that will be faced with the problem of how to feed the burgeoning hungry.  They are going to need a lot of help, and it needs to start NOW, with US. 

Adequate food should be a basic human right, not a matter of luck, location or happenstance and while food banks all over the country are feeling an ever-increasing burden to provide for struggling people, the routine nationwide wastage of enough food to feed them twice over is a situation that should not be allowed to continue, no matter who’s doing it, or “why”.  

Blanket policy changes are what’s really needed, for people to be far more positively supported to either have enough food, or to offer what they don’t need to those who do, but until that happens, we have to be content with making a commitment to doing what we can within our own orbits to help influence the necessary global change.  Recognizing deceptive deals and refusing to be seduced by them and being more realistic about how much food we really need will not just reduce the amount we send to landfill or compost.  They are important kick-start behaviours to a process that will ultimately force suppliers to change the habits that influence the producers even further up a food chain that simply isn't working, in its current state. 

As consumers, we are part of a chain of dominoes.  We have more power than we might first think we have, to force a more sustainable and humanely distributed food chain.  For the sake of current health and welfare, and for that of future generations, we need to start using that power.