Home And House

by Markus Skupeika

Molds are invisible organisms that reproduce by spreading spores. Molds, often called as mildew, are parts of environment and they play crucial role in maintaining the balance of ecosystem. Molds decompose organic materials to form simpler compounds and elements. They grow on dead leaves, trees, wood and collect their nutrition from these matters thus enabling recycling of nutrients around the ecosystem. Molds and mildews are the lowest level members of Food Pyramid.
Molds are practically everywhere inside and outside your home. Being microscopic organisms, molds are not visible to human eyes unless they colonize. Molds grow on almost any surface including uncovered food, dead organic matters etc. Water and humidity are necessary for molds to grow and amplify.
Lifecycle of Molds:
Spores get spread with air, dust particles, or any other container and start growing as soon as they get humid surface, food and right temperature. The Hyphae, a threadlike structure, secretes enzymes that decompose the contaminated organic material to obtain nutrition. Then the molds start growing mycelium - the main part of mold body.
Under suitable environmental conditions like light, air, water and nutrition black mold starts growing spores within the hyphael cells. The spores, after reaching maturity, are released in the air. Mold spores can remain inactive for years and wait for suitable environmental condition to grow.
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by Greg Ellingson

Carbon monoxide is a well-known household threat, as are lead paint and toxic household cleaners. But one lesser known killer can cause the deaths of over a hundred times more people than carbon monoxide poisoning can. This toxin is present in varying degrees in homes all across America, and can quietly slip through the cracks in your foundation and into your basement. Like most artful poisons, it has no odor, taste, or color, and causes no noticeable symptoms until it’s too late. You can get lung cancer from it at a rate that is second only to cigarette smoking. There are estimates that approximately 20,000 people die annually from this unknown threat, and what’s worse is the fact that it comes from a naturally occurring event that can’t be stopped. All homeowners can do is try to prevent and/or slow down its progress before it claims any more lives.
This harbinger of death is called radon. It is a radioactive gas that is created by the decay of uranium that exists in the ground below us. Soil, water, and rock formations are all sources of radon. It seeps quietly into your home, usually through cracks in the foundation, and if the area is not properly ventilated, the gas gets trapped indoors.
Radon becomes deadly when it is breathed in. Particles of the gas can attach to the inner lining of your lungs, slowly damaging the tissue, leading to cancerous tumors. If you are a smoker, your risk of getting lung cancer is increased ten-fold, as cigarettes themselves already contain Polonium-210, another source of cancer-causing radiation.
Because radon is naturally occurring, there is not much that one can do to stop it. However, there are steps that homeowners can take to prevent the gas from entering their homes.
Your first and best defense against radon poisoning is to test your home for its presence. While most of us have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in our homes, a large segment of the population has never heard of radon, or know the threat that it can pose. Homeowners can purchase a home testing kit that they can use themselves, or they can hire a qualified radon tester in their local area.
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