Killing the mold isn't the problem. That's the easy part. Denaturing or removing the mycotoxins is the problem. The mold doesn't make you sick, it's the mycotoxins that some molds excrete that make you sick.
Look at this study that used gamma irradiation, detergent / bleach wash, and steam cleaning to test as ways to remove mold mycotoxins on paper, cloth, wood, and carpet. Unfortunately none of these techniques worked to inactivate mycotoxins, with two exceptions. A detergent / bleach wash worked to inactivate the mycotoxins on paper and cloth, but not on carpet or untreated wood. So porous surfaces must by physically removed and trashed to get rid of the mycotoxins. If you cannot physically remove it (like untreated wood that is a part of your houses' foundation), you must physically sand the mold off while using a HEPA vacuum to clean it all up.
Sealing works well if there is not visible mold growth on the item. So like think about sealing an art canvas in a home that had mold in it, but the art canvas was in the living room and the mold colony was in the bathroom under the shower. In that case, any sort of light sealant would trap any possible residual mycotoxins on the canvas so they will no longer float around the air in the home.
But if you have mold growing on unpainted wood joists, for example, because of a plumbing leak, you can't just paint over the mold colony on those joists with a sealant, because it may not penetrate deep enough into the wood, and you can't paint the backside of that joist where it touches the floor / ceiling, and so the mold often will just continue to grow and grow around your sealant. Many paints marketed as mold killers and sealers are totally ineffective at stopping the problem in scenarios like this.
HERTSMI-2 is the most accurate. Often houses will pass air spore tests but HERTSMI-2 will catch the problem. It isn't necessary to do an ERMI - that tests for ALL molds in your house. You only need to test for Mycotoxin producing molds, which the HERTSMI-2 does.
Only costs $130. Buy the Swiffer kit. Vacuum is not as accurate. Clean the whole house, then wait 2-4 weeks, then use the Swiffer kit to collect dust that has settled in the bedrooms and living room. Don't do kitchen or bathrooms.
Interpreting a HERTSMI-2:
0-8: Excellent
9-10: Good
11-15: Possibly dangerous. Deep clean the whole house, especially locations that are rarely cleaned and have settled dust like the tops of ceiling fans, door frames, blinds, etc. Wait 2-4 weeks and retest. If the score is still 11 or above, you have a significant mold problem that needs to be found and remediated by professionals.
16-50: Dangerous. You have a significant mold problem that needs to be found and remediated by professionals.
If anyone is reading this and you think you have mold illness, lyme disease, or fibromyalgia, read Toxic, by Neil Nathan MD. This doctor has been treating patients for decades, and it is the gold standard for how to diagnose and treat the complex health issues that arise from mold exposure.
I love the enthusiasm and DIY ingenuity here. That said, the post is tagged with COVID-19. The COVID virus particles are .1 to .5 microns in size, and these MERV-14 filters, while certainly better than nothing, are not going to capture a significant amount of these virus particles. A better approach is to not filter the particles, but actually rip them apart at a molecular level. This has the added benefit of destroying all sorts of other contaminents that even high grade HEPA filters will miss, such as mold mycotoxins. A system like the Molekule is a good example of this approach.
1) MERV14 will capture 75%-84% of particles in the 0.3-1μ range.
2) A filter which captures 70% of particles with an air flow of 100cfm will capture the same amount of virus as a filter which captures 100% of particles with an air flow of 70cfm. Both will clean the room just as fast. For air filters, lower filtration + higher airflow is usually a better design option. Going from 70% to 95% to 99.9% means you'll have a more expensive, power-hungry, and more noisy product over one which just has a little bit more air velocity [1].
3) The rating is for 0.3μ since that's the hardest size to capture. A filter will actually capture more particles below 0.3μ.
4) COVID19 virus particles are around 0.1-0.2μ, but that's beside the point. They're travelling on water molecules. Those are much bigger.
5) Even if there were a virus particle somehow floating around, a viral load of one virus is very unlikely to get you sick.
From an engineering standpoint, something around MERV14 is almost certainly the sweet spot for a COVID19 room air filter.
[1] High-filtrations makes sense in places like vacuums, face masks, and other places where the goal is to have clean air coming out. Vacuums shouldn't blow up dust. That's a different engineering design goal than a room air filter. If you'd like to see the impact of loading on a fan, put your hand behind one, and hear how much noise goes up. MERV14 has a much lower load than HEPA.
2) It will not clean the room just as fast, it will take longer to clean the room.
4) COVID-19 particles do travel on water molecules, but they are also airborne. The CDC has admitted this and there is a growing body of research proving this to be true as well.
You're making statements with no backing, logic, or argument behind them.
2) The percent of material removed by a filter per unit time is the product of (1) filter efficiency with (2) what percentage of a room's air passes per unit time.
4) "Airborne" is generally via microscopic droplets. The CDC's guidance changed from large droplet transmission (which is relatively short-distance and short-time) to airborne. This doesn't mean individual viruses are floating around without any H20.
5) No one credible believes 1 virus particle is likely to infect you, except by very bad luck. Most citations give claims in the 100-1000 particle range. Low initial infectious dose also /appears/ to correspond to less aggressive infections. This has not been rigorously proven (and it's hard to do), but has a strong theoretical basis:
- One virus particle is unlikely to make it past the mucous layer, unless you're super-unlucky.
- If it does, your innate immune system can usually handle minor infections before they escalate.
- If it can't, your adaptive immune system has more time to respond. You're looking at a few days before it kicks in. With a lower initial infectious dose, you'll still have that much less virus when it kicks in.
If you'd like to contradict any of this, please provide citations. I'll read them. I'm glad to be proven wrong. Perhaps I'll learn something.
> > A filter which captures 70% of particles with an air flow of 100cfm will capture the same amount of virus as a filter which captures 100% of particles with an air flow of 70cfm. Both will clean the room just as fast.
> It will not clean the room just as fast, it will take longer to clean the room.
Here are two different models:
A. Air moves sequentially. First you filter all of the air once, then you filter all of it another time etc. In this model, a filter with 100% efficacy will get everything in a single pass, and the CFM determines how long that pass takes, while a filter with lower efficacy will never get it all, but will get pretty close after a few passes. In this model you want high filtration.
B. Air moves randomly. At each minute, the purifier selects air from the room at random, filters it, and spits it back out. In this model, a filter with 100% efficacy at 70 CFM is exactly equivalent to a filter with 70% efficacy at 100 CFM, and you will often want to trade off efficacy for flow.
I think real rooms are generally much closer to (B) than (A), though of course somewhere in the middle?
Brownian motion affects how small particles move around at small scales [0]. This is why HEPA filters can be effective even against smaller particles (which bounce around and get caught).
Specifically about the Molekule - their claims seemed to be empirically false and the device performed worse than a standard HEPA filter (and they were resistant to allowing independent tests at all).
When the tests came out awful their responses were mostly bullshit. [1]
Is this legit? Their website feels kinda sketchy to me, with the huge and somewhat tacky CG pictures, sweeping claims, apparent SEM photography that just looks too good to be true (could there really be zero residue? and the background never change, presumably over time span of at least minutes!) This really reminds me of vaporware like WaterSeer, or one of the recent "turn kitchen garbage into dry dust" appliances that I've seen ads for
In the summer of 2019, we purchased a Molekule Air (the flagship model) and tested it. We bought an Air Mini that fall and tested it in February 2020. At the time we tested the Molekule Air, the company claimed that its “scientifically-proven nanotechnology outperforms HEPA filters in every category of pollutant.”
Our tests proved otherwise. And by mid-2020, that language had been withdrawn, after many of the company’s claims were ruled against in a case before the National Advertising Division and upheld in a later appeal before the National Advertising Review Board. The Molekule Air turned in the worst performance on particulates of any purifier, of any size, of any price, that we have tested in the eight years that we have been producing this guide. The Air Mini outperformed it, but that’s not saying much: It still produced the second-worst performance we’ve ever seen.
Guide author Tim Heffernan asked Molekule CEO Dilip Goswami why the language was removed. He answered, “The point about ‘in all categories’ is that we see a device that outperforms across all of the categories. Right? So we’re not trying to say that individually, on any particular metric, we would be number one. Right? What we’re saying is, when you look across all the categories, we outperform HEPA. Right? And that’s what we’re attempting to convey with that. And so—it’s fair to say that we needed to re-examine some of the language to make sure that it’s saying what we’re intending to say.”
And, I will say that they have numerous tests by independent labs. They did do some testing with their own lab and with a lab affiliated with them, but this is far from all the testing they have done. So to say that all their tests were tainted or affiliated with them is simply not true. See: https://molekule.com/papers
The had to off-center the trackpad to match the trackpoint in order to fit those keys by the left. I'm a very big fan of page up and down keys, but I absolutely hate off-center trackpads. What do you guys think?
My work one certainly does, and I've found that replacing the cap with an official ThinkPad one gets you about 50% of the way to "ThinkPad-quality TrackPoint". But it started out as "Is this purely decorative? Have you tried to use this?!" so even with the red cover it was "Well, I guess it works for minimal mousing inbetween typing."
These days I use an external ThinkPad keyboard on it, since I'm mostly docked at a desk anyway.
I had a similar problem with chronic stuffy nose, recurring sinus infections, and a deviated septum. But Buteyko breathing practice was a big part in me getting better. There were other things I did too, but paradoxically, breathing through the nose (and the uncomfortable "suffocating" feeling that happens when you do this while having a stuffy nose) causes the CO2 in the body to rise, and if you keep this up for a little while, it causes your nasal passageways to expand and the mucus to thin and drain, which actually allows you to keep breathing out of the nose. Breathing out of the mouth on the other hand, has the opposite effect, which perpetuates the vicious cycle.
So, you just have to stick with it and study the exercises and tape your mouth shut if necessary at night. Things will get better, it just takes practice.
If I were to tape my mouth closed at night, I'm confident I would die. Other comments are mentioning liability and not running your own CPAP, but this is exactly the kind of advice that should be put before a doctor before doing.
People with severe apnea die from it all the time. You'll wake up if you need to breathe...until you die of a heart attack or stroke from all the damage.
Suffocation is what causes the heart attacks and strokes. It's what killed Carrie Fisher. Granted, she had chronic underlying health problems and was apparently on a bunch of drugs, but the proximate cause was apnea.
I've seen Butekyo breathing mentioned on other sleep apnea forums. Could you recommend an website that teaching this breathing practice? Also, how long did it take for you to start sleeping better once doing these exercises?
You're absolutely right. 'Close Your Mouth' by Patrick McKeown was revolutionary for me. Buteyko breathing is the real deal, unfortunately it is largely unknown in the modern American medical community.
I don't seem to be able to simultaneously breathe through my mouth and grind my teeth. They could still happen during different parts of the sleep cycle, though. Perhaps grinding during light sleep and mouth breathing during deep sleep?
Sorry to hear about your peripheral neuropathy. Check out some of the treatments for dysautonomia. There are some cutting edge treatments that have been developed over the past few years, they just haven't become mainstream knowledge or trickled down to the medical schools yet.
Essentially you have got to get the brain producing the proper amount and type of brain waves again, and then once you have that, slowly work back into exercising while trying to avoid triggers and push / crash cycles.
Look at this study that used gamma irradiation, detergent / bleach wash, and steam cleaning to test as ways to remove mold mycotoxins on paper, cloth, wood, and carpet. Unfortunately none of these techniques worked to inactivate mycotoxins, with two exceptions. A detergent / bleach wash worked to inactivate the mycotoxins on paper and cloth, but not on carpet or untreated wood. So porous surfaces must by physically removed and trashed to get rid of the mycotoxins. If you cannot physically remove it (like untreated wood that is a part of your houses' foundation), you must physically sand the mold off while using a HEPA vacuum to clean it all up.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15238314/