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Sick buildings
The Environmental Protection Agency in the USA has set up several pages of excellent practical information for people who are worried about excessive mold growth in their houses.
View this information here
There is also new advice (also provided in Spanish) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (also in the USA) here
Ellen's articles
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Ellen McCrady is the editor of 'The Abbey Newsletter', a non-profit publication set up to encourage preservation of written or recorded information. These articles contain much useful and interesting background information dealing with problems with moulds in buildings and their effect on our health. Part 3 contains mainly anecdotal stories of the experiences of people with mouldy building and some relevant questions & answers taken from Email discussion lists.
Air quality research
Kim Harper, whose story was told in my third installment of my mold series, sent me an update on the CDC's effort to deny that there was anything to the experts' report of infants in Cincinnati getting sick from Stachybotrys in their homes after a flood. The experts who did the initial investigation defended their report in an admirably competent way, and I am looking into reprinting it from the May issue of the Chelsea Group's "Invironment Newsletter," which is at www.invironment.com. The Chelsea Group is a conservative group, oddly enough, apparently an alliance of companies that get involved in court cases having to do with indoor quality.
Ellen McCrady
This website contains a lot of information that seems quite well researched. I searched for 'Aspergillus' and got 22 articles on different aspects of the effect of Aspergillus on indoor and outdoor air quality. Particularly interesting was a study using a mock-up of an indoor ventilation system to look at how Aspergillus grows in such systems and to try to reproduce the levels of spore output found in some 'sick buildings' under controlled conditions. Spore output was minimal until the relative humidity dropped whereupon spore output increased quite a bit.
On the downside I did not see evidence of publication of these articles so I cannot vouch for how good the research is! Also you have to register on first use and answer a short questionaire but it is worth the effort.
Graham Atherton