I’m not sure how publicized our suspected mold infestation was a few weeks back, so I figured that I’d recount the incident here to clear the air once and for all. Liz and I were sure that we had mold in our apartment. Her allergies had been really intense for the last few weeks. More intense than normal. (Jarrod, we’re talking nebulizer).
One day, as I was re-alphabetizing my CDs, I brushed against the exposed brick wall. Much to my surprise, little white flakes sprinkled to the surface of the bamboo flooring. Upon further inspection, I noticed that there seemed to be quite a bit of the fuzzy-textured fungus frolicking on the face of the brick wall. Judge for yourself.
Finally, it all made sense. Liz’s allergies had been acting up since May, which was when we moved into the new apartment. Not to mention that poor Tito had been sneezing his head off. Clearly this was all due to the mold infestation. I turned to a little Internets research to find a local mold expert and called him to have him come take a look. I was unpleasantly surprised to hear from his voicemail greeting that this expert was out of the office for a couple of weeks attending a mold convention. No, really. I couldn’t make this stuff up.
Defeated, I turned to Google and a bit more Internets research. I found pictures and articles discussing brick and mold and was assured that this was what going on in our apartment. I decided that I’d seek scientific confirmation with an at-home Mold Test Kit. Thank God for Ace Hardware!
The kit was a $9 modern marvel of technology. 1 tube of agar, 2 pieces of a petri dish and 3 hours later, we were set with samples from our soiled air. The incubation period was 48 hours. A nerve-wracking 48 hours. We paced. We checked. We slept. We checked. We ate. We checked. Life went on. But we kept checking. And around 60 hours later (12 hours bonus time, I mean just in case it was slow-growing mold) we had our answer.
What! No mold? How could this be? Had my junior-year high school microbiology skills faded away? You talk about a mad scientist. I was pissed! This disproved my hypothesis that our allergies were linked to this fungus from the brick. Apparently what we had growing was brick effloresence–which is also caused from moisture problems with the brick.
The allergies still haven’t gone away completely, and I’m not entirely convinced that the test kit yielded accurate results. Because that would only leave on other option: I was wrong from day one. And we all know better than that.
Um I love the wrestling point you did!
That moldy stuff looks ga-ross!
Left by Stacy on September 20th, 2007