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 Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2003 10:41 am Post subject: YES Dampness in buildings makes people sick! |
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Dampness in buildings and health
We were pleased to find this excellent abstract of 2001, Dampness in buildings and health, which describes a list of health symptoms associated with wetness.
This abstract may explain why health officials in Canada and the U.S. are reluctant to come out once and for all with a statement that wet buildings make people sick, although according to the study, even if it is a great challenge to science to explain the associations, the practical advice is avoid dampness in buildings.
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| Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 1:42 pm Post subject: |
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Health Canada establishing link between mold and illness
We were pleased to find the following July, 2003 report at Health Canada's website. Click on Contamination of Indoor Air for a description of symptoms potentially induced by mold plus URLs for all the most recent publications. For even more, click on our search string here.
It appears that the link between certain physical conditions and mold is becoming clearer to health officials, who now advise:
| Quote: | | If you have severe humidity or contamination problems, ask your provincial or regional health department for advice. Talk to your doctor if you think your family suffers from health problems caused by poor air quality. |
We'll try to find out what the local health authority advises as well as any new tests doctors may be able to perform to confirm illnesses caused by mold. Please check back for updates.
The report states further that:
| Quote: | | Health Canada and CMHC are now working on a joint research project on air quality in homes. They are looking at how the chemicals and toxins produced by mold, bacteria and other contaminants can affect your health. Health Canada has also set up a Task Group on Indoor Air Quality in cooperation with the provinces and territories. |
We look forward to the results of that study, which we'll post here when they become available.
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| Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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Our e-mail to Health Canada:
| Quote: | From: editor@bcdisabilities.com
To: air@hc-sc.gc.ca
Cc: editor@bccondos.ca
Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004 12:49 PM
Subject: Causality btwn toxic mold and human illness
Hello Health Canada,
We've examined a number of your studies and attempted to refine our search. Could you tell us please which is your most recent study of the causality between indoor toxic mold and human illness. Now that we see various complex protocols for the detection and removal of fungal contamination, it seems pretty clear that such contamination does indeed make people sick.
We're a consumer/advocacy website from Vancouver at http://www.bccondos.caand we run a Toxic Mold forum devoted to research, case studies and judgments that refer to the issue. Which of your studies best describes the relationship between fungal contamination or toxic mold and human illness?
Thanks in advance for your kind consideration.
Editor@bccondos.ca |
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| Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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Health Canada replies:
| Quote: | From: "Nicolas Gilbert" <Nicolas_Gilbert@hc-sc.gc.ca>
To: <editor@bccondos.ca>
Cc: "Ninon Lyrette" <Ninon_Lyrette@hc-sc.gc.ca>;
<rose_dugandzic@hc-sc.gc.ca>; "David M Bolger" <David_Bolger@hc-sc.gc.ca>; "Ginette Henrie-Viau" <Ginette_Henrie-Viau@hc-sc.gc.ca>
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 10:33 AM
Subject: Causality btwn toxic mold and human illness
Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for your e-mail of June 25 regarding health effects of indoor molds.
To get a sense of the current state of knowledge on such an issue, critical reviews are far more informative than individual studies. The US Institute of Medicine published very recently a comprehensive report on this issue, entitled Damp Indoor Spaces and Health (ISBN 0-309-09246-9). It is available on the NAP website (http://www.nap.edu).
In addition, a Health Canada report entitled Fungal Contamination in Public Buildings: Health Effects and Investigation Methods is currently in press; it will be released by the end of the summer. Upon release, it willbe posted on our website (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/air). The second chapter of this report consists of a critical review of the evidence linking exposure to indoor molds to adverse health outcomes.
I hpoe this information is useful.
Yours sincerely,
Nicolas Gilbert |
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Guest
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| Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 3:21 pm Post subject: |
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A note of thanks:
| Quote: | From: <editor@bccondos.ca>
To: "Nicolas Gilbert" <Nicolas_Gilbert@hc-sc.gc.ca>
Cc: <editor@bccondos.ca>
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 2:59 PM
Subject: Causality btwn toxic mold and human illness
Excellent! Very helpful indeed. Thanks so much. We'll post the URLs immediately.
Editor@bccondos.ca |
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Guest
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| Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2004 12:53 pm Post subject: |
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So much for the good doctor and his commitment to environment ...
Our *fruitless effort to enlist support from the apparently deaf and blind Suzuki Foundation:
| Quote: | From: editor@bccondos.ca
To: solutions@davidsuzuki.org
Cc: editor@bccondos.ca
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 5:12 PM
Subject: Leaky condos and the asthma pandemic
Hello Suzuki Foundation,
After battling B.C.'s leaky condo debacle online for more than a year - especially the real estate industry's 'hot market' spin, which has so far successfully prevented any meaningful legislative change, I received the following missive Friday afternoon from Health Canada. At long last, there seems to be evidence of a provable causal connection btwn the type of mold found in leaky condos and respiratory illness: (See message above from Nicolas Gilbert at Health Canada).
...It was.
I posted the msg immediately at our Toxic Mold forum, where we've been tracking the latest information on the awful black stuff frequently found in thick patches at leaky condo and co-op complexes. We're optimistic that release of these new publications could halt or seriously curtail the profliferation of cramped, moldy, high-density, high-maintenance, fly-by-night housing littering the provincial landscape in what may prove to be Canada's greatest ecological disaster.
We hope the material will at least put an immediate cap on the sale of leaky, uninhabitable homes intended to be rental investment properties, a practice designed to exploit an underclass of poor and unwary tenants. Ultimately, however, we hope the risk of liability to all potential defendants - including a wilfully blind provincial govt - for negligently and foreseeably exposing B.C. citizens to respiratory illness, will lead to the following changes:
1. proper public tracking of the leaky housing problem, including detailed accounts of the performance of all major leak repairs and maintenance plans, by professional building associations, such as the Architectural Institute of B.C., (AIBC);
2. proper mgmt of these self-governed building professions, including public disciplinary procedures for members who fail to meet the required standards of care; and
3. a proper legislative scheme to provide at least some measure of consumer protection, particularly during this crisis.
B.C. has not yet faced the fact that despite the production of various industry best practice guides, we simply have neither the construction expertise nor an appropriate legal framework to support densely populated, multi-unit condominium developments, which come with unexpectedly onerous maintenance and shared ownership responsibilities.
More than 20 years after the crisis was first reported, for goodness sake, there is still nothing in the governing statute to guide owners through major repair procedures.
In the meantime, the doctrine of caveat emptor (buyer beware) continues to overtake not only our wallets, including a disproportionate share of the public purse, but probably our lungs, especially those of our children.
The B.C. Home Builders' Association, representing real estate developers, designers and contractors, has so far managed to convince at least two provincial govts to sell out consumers, but the province might be disinclined to risk a class action lawsuit for personal injury once the connection btwn leaky condos and childhood asthma becomes alarmingly clear.
I am currently at work on a letter to UBC's board of governors in an effort to block at least two devpment applications on the Endowment Lands, both of which seek to replace dry, comfortable, somewhat affordable rental units that include kid-friendly communal yards front and back, with more multi-plex rabbit hutches, no doubt ensuring a successive wave of short-term profit and long-term despair. (Please go to Watchodg Forum to read our letters to UBC's board of governors).
So far, establishing causation btwn substandard bldg and human illness has rarely, if ever, been done in Canada, but the two publications listed in our Health Canada e-mail will could very likely change that.
When we heard the doc on CBC Radio One a few Saturdays ago discussing the childhood asthma pandemic, it occurred to us that [url]http://www.bccondos.ca [/url]and the Suzuki Foundation may be on the same team. If you think so, what would you do if you were me? Aside from our site, letters to govt and a case by case approach to dvpt applications, we're not sure how to proceed.
You've been in the environmental advocacy business for awhile now and have struck more than a few good blows. Do you have any ideas for us? Any strategies, advice or help of any kind would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks. We look forward to hearing from you.
Editor@bccondos.ca |
| Quote: | | *Note: Coincidentally, the maverick Gamble Green campaign at sister site, PokerPulse.com, to benefit the Suzuki Foundation has also yielded disappointing results. By Nov. 11/08, not one of the site's visitors had taken up the challenge! |
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| Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2004 12:53 pm Post subject: |
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Our e-mail alerting the Premier to new mold info from Health Canada:
| Quote: | From: editor@bccondos.ca
To: premier@gov.bc.ca
Cc: editor@bccondos.ca
Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2004 4:29 PM
Subject: Health consequences of leaky condos - Health Canada establishes the link
Hello Premier Campbell:
FYI: Here's the missive we just sent UBC's board of governors regarding two dvpmnt applications in which the developer is seeking to replace dry affordable rental units with more high-priced, multi-plex, temporary-style condos. The Health Canada stuff is something of a scoop - it's not actually out yet. We hoped to give you a headstart mulling over the implications of it. There's certainly enough in the online precis of the US study to make the housing industry mighty nervous.
Cups up,
Editor@bccondos.ca
http://www.bccondos.ca
Enclosures: (See e-mail from Health Canada above and Watchdog Forum to read our correspondence with UBC's board of governors regarding the replacement of dry, comfortable rental units with high-density multi-plex condos). |
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editor
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Posts: 878
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| Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2006 2:21 pm Post subject: |
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Universal Design Handbook with CD ROM
Hardcover
Edited by Wolfgang Preiser and
Elaine Ostroff
We were delighted to find this excellent text at the UBC Library recently. Here is an excerpt from the excellent Introduction by senior editor Ostroff:
| Quote: | | In addition to the nondiscrimoinatory accommodations for people with disabilities and the attention to the aging demographics that were the initial influences for universal design, there is an increasing awareness of conditions that have not traditionally been thought of as universal design issues. Attention to these issues is expanding the scope of universal design to encompass a broad range of environmental concerns. They include the prevalence of "sick buildings" and their concomitant health problems related to poor indoor air quality that have been a major source of disablement for growing numbers of people. Diseases of the respiratory system are the highest cause of disability in children under age 18, with asthma the most common disabling condition. (emphasis added) The U.S. Access Board is directing a quarter of its research money, beginning in 2000, for work on indoor environmental air quality. (Footnotes omitted) (From 1.2 International Influences Leading to Universal Design at p. 1.4) |
Embarrassingly, Chapter 36 of the text, Progressive Housing Design and Home Technologies in Canada, offers kudos to B.C. designers of various complexes on the Lower Mainland that have turned out to be - that's right! - leakers.
More on Vancouver's 278 leaky co-ops.
Visit Ostroff's fabulous Adaptive Environments website.
| Quote: | | Note: Unfortunately, when we last tried to check out the book from UBC's Irving Barber Learning Centre Nov. 16/06, we were advised that it's now a reference text only. We will do our best to joggle MdGraw Hill to get this critical information to the masses by posting it on the Web. We'll let you know if we succeed. Please check back for updates. |
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Last edited by editor on Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:39 am; edited 2 times in total |
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editor
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Posts: 878
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| Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 6:18 pm Post subject: |
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Damp Indoor Spaces and Health
Hardcover
Institute of Medicine of the
National Academies
Committee on Damp Indoor Spaces
and Health
Board on Health Promotion and
Disease Prevention
www.nap.edu
| Quote: | Studies reviewed in this report indicate that:
. Dampness is prevalent in residential housing in a wide array of climates (Chapter 2);
. Sufficient evidence of an association exists between signs of dampness and upper respiratory tract symptoms, cough, wheeze, and asthma symptoms in sensitized persons (Chapter 5);
. Sufficient evidence of an association exists between signs of mold and upper respiratory tract symptoms, cough, wheeze, asthma symptoms in sensitized persons and hypersensitivity pneumonitis in susceptbile persons (Chapter 5).
The committee concludes, on the basis of this information and other findings presented in Chapters 2 through 6, that excessive indoor dampness is a public health hazard.
...Given the costs of *maintaining a clean, dry, well-heated, and properly-ventilated home, it should not be surprising that low-income families are more likely to have substandard housing and to live in the kind of damp interiors that may be associated with health problems. Children in such families may bear an additional burden because they are more likely to be in school buildings that have environmental problems: poor plumbing, inadequate heating, and poor indoor air quality. Reviewing data accumulated in the second National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES II) and the Harvard Six Cities Study concluded that ethnicity, poverty, and residence combined to influence asthma prevalence in inner-city children in ways that could not be easily disentangled.
Economic factors may encourage poor building practices. Combinations of pressure to build quickly and cheaply can result in poorly constructed buildings that are more likely to have water leaks. Under ordinary circumstances, the market works to sift out builders that produce shoddy construction. However, in low-income neighborhoods - where options are limited because there is a shortage of affordable housing - and in other circumstances in which demand outstrips supply, the market may not penalize poor workmanship effectively.
Poverty combined with the lack of affordable housing may also create incentives to forgo or limit investment in maintenance that might help to prevent moisture problems. Landlords have little incentive to spend money on repair when there is a surplus of people ready to accept any kind of low-rent shelter. As already noted, those pressures also result in overcrowding, which can lead to excessive indoor moisture and condensatiuon problems, which in turn promote mold and bacterial growth.
...The committee recommends (Chapter 2) that the determinants of dampness problems in buildings be studied to ascertain where to focus intervention efforts and health-effects research. The present state of the science, however, is insufficient to support a general assessment and monitoring effort for mold or other dampness-related agents for public-health policy purposes. (Footnotes omitted) (From Chapter 7, The Public Health Response,at pgs. 311-317) |
A 2004 publication. We'll continue monitoring the website for updates. Please check back for new information.
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editor
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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BC Business
Magazine Subscription
Annus horribilus
Where do you turn after your doctor tells you you'll never walk again following a catastrophic accident? What happens when you lose the most terrific job you've ever had and nobody in town will hire you? What's next when your business is bleeding to death and everything you do to try to fix it only makes things worse?.
Three B.C. figures share their stories of the worst year of their lives - and how they made it through the dark times.
By Myles Murchison
April, 2008
| Quote: | ... “Look at this guy,” says Diane Farris, 65, proprietor of Vancouver’s Diane Farris Gallery, the woman whose imprimatur has launched a thousand canvases, the chatelaine of Gallery Row clacking at the keyboard, “He hated me.”
On the monitor, the guy in the hardhat is caught turning, glowering.
“I’d follow him,” Farris says gleefully. “He’d say, ‘Stop that. You can’t take my picture.’ I’d say, ‘Yes, I can. Would you please get your men to stop parking in front of my gallery!’ Guys across the street on the balcony would give me the finger. My staff would ask me to go home. It was a nightmare.”
The worst year of Farris’s life began in the spring of 2000, when an upscale seniors’ condominium started construction on West Seventh Avenue across the street from her gallery.
... From the outset, Farris understood the construction on West Seventh would be disruptive, but it quickly got out of hand. The agreement was that there would be no construction on Saturdays, but the company simply broke the law, paid the fine, and the crew parked in all the available spots on the avenue. When the construction hit bedrock, they brought in the hydraulic impact hammers. Because of the telephone poles in the back lane, cranes blocked the street for months. “It would have cost a hundred thousand dollars to bury them,” Farris learned later about the poles. “Hell, I would have paid for it. I lost more than twice that.” (emphasis added)
For a year, West Seventh was either closed, partially closed or its sidewalk was restricted, with potential customers warned off by “No Parking” signs.
... West Seventh wasn’t her only problem. Five blocks away, her gracious suite across from Granville Island and the sailboats harboured at False Creek had its skylight ripped out and replaced with plywood. The condo was leaking, and her renovators had found black mold in the walls which, as Farris says, “started to explain why I was having these hideous pneumonia sessions.” (emphasis added)
She started living with friends. She stayed in a friend’s computer room at UBC for seven months. Farris has a dog. Her friend had two cats. The animals did not cohabitate well. She lived in another friend’s bedroom for a month. She house-sat another friend’s home.
... On the day of the funeral, Farris went home to her apartment. Where the skylight once was, a workman’s leg hung down through the ceiling. Farris said to him, “I’m sorry. I have to get dressed for my mother’s funeral. All my black clothes are here. Look the other way. I don’t have time to hide.”
... Meanwhile the gallery was bleeding money. Farris lived on the telephone and the Internet. “That’s where the sales came from,” she says. To scrape by, she had to crack into her RRSPs and sell art she had personally collected. And her landlord would not let her out of her lease or “give me any consideration whatsoever.”
It was friends who came to her rescue. Several invited her to dinner regularly just as others had offered places to live. They gave her opportunities to debrief, and one friend changed everything.
Farris bumped into Martin Zlotnik and his wife, Penny, at a party. Zlotnik is a lawyer, former Vancouver park commissioner, former high-profile commercial real estate agent and now an associate at ZLC Financial Group.
Making party small talk, Zlotnik casually asked Farris how she was doing. “Hanging in by the skin of my teeth,” she answered. When he asked what was wrong, Farris burst into tears. “I’m trapped,” she cried. “I just don’t know what to do.”
... After Zlotnik terminated the lease, it was his idea that she relocate her gallery across the street into the main-floor commercial space of the new building that had caused all the trouble to begin with. Who says the age of irony is dead? ... Zlotnik negotiated a new lease and a line of credit to maintain it. An architect friend fast-tracked the new gallery’s interior design and construction. More friends helped Farris physically move from her former 6,800-square-foot concrete bunker across the street to her airy, but smaller, 1,200-square-foot galerie intime[/b][/i][/color]. ... (-- pgs. 83-85) |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 5:28 pm Post subject: |
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What can you tell me about the dangers of excessive insulation and the risk of ingesting carcinogenic radon?
The New Quantum Universe
Papberback
By Tony Hey and Patrick Walters
| Quote: | | Almost everything around us is slightly radioactive. The air we breathe, the soil in our gardens, most building materials, and even our own bodies, all contain radioactive elements. Much of this radioactivity originates from naturally occurring uranium and thorium. The Earth's crust has, on average, within one foot of th who has worked in the e surface, 8 tons of uranium and 12 tons of thorium per square mile. Both uranium and thorium form one end of complicated decay chains of radioactive elements that eventually end up with stable isotopes of lead. These chains produce radioactive gases that are isotopes of radon and, ingested into the lungs, can be very dangerous and cause cancer. It is said 'that every miner who has worked in the Joachimstal uranium mines in Czechoslovakia for more than ten years has died of lung cancer.' Modern mines now have powerful ventilation systems to flush away these gases. This is one reason not to make our houses too draught-proof! (-- p. 103) |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 2:27 pm Post subject: |
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The Future of Disability in America
Hardcover
Committee on Disability in America
Board on Health Sciences Policy
Institute of Medicine of the National Academies
Edited by Marilyn J. Field and Alan M. Jette
| Quote: | Shifts in Conditions Potentially Contributing to Disability
Over the last few decades, the rise in the rates of potentially disabling childhood conditions—in particular, asthma—along with increases in the rates of preterm births, deserves special consideration in the analysis of activity limitation trends in children. During the early 1970s, when the rates of severe limitations grew from 2.7 to 3.7 percent, Newacheck and colleagues (1984, 1986) found increasing rates of several health conditions, especially mental health conditions, asthma, orthopedic conditions, and hearing loss. Unfortunately, changes in the questions as part of the redesign of the National Health Interview Survey in 1997 make comparisons over the entire time period inappropriate.8 Instead, the committee focused its review on the role of changes in the prevalence of a few potentially disabling health conditions.
Approximately 12 percent of children have at some time been diagnosed with asthma—the single most prevalent condition associated with childhood disability—and 8 percent currently have asthma (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2005). In 2000, an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the prevalence of asthma among children increased by approximately 5 percent per year during the period from 1980 to 1995 but dropped by 17 percent in 1996 (CDC, 2000a). For the period from 1969–1970 to 1994–1995, Newacheck and Halfon (2000) documented the contribution of asthma to the rise in the overall prevalence of disabilities among children. They reported that the prevalence of disability related to asthma (based on data from the National Health Interview Survey) increased 232 percent over this time span, whereas the prevalence of disability related to all other chronic childhood conditions increased by 113 percent over the same period. (From Chapter Three, Disability Trends, p. 77) |
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