A Spreading Home Health
Hazard
NEW YORK, May 1, 2002
 (CBS) If you want to visit Cleo and Thomas Birrenbach's
luxury New York City apartment, proper attire - gloves, mask and an
anti-contamination suit - is required. Their once sparkling high-rise
home is now contaminated and deemed "uninhabitable."
The only thing currently living here is mold, reports CBS News
Correspondent Jim Axelrod. Toxic mold.
"There is Aspergillus versicolor, there is Stachybotrys - and
Stachybotrys is really the most dangerous one," said Cleo
Birrenbach. "Everything we have is here – everything, our
clothes. But they are all contaminated."
"It's like having a bad cold that
doesn't go away."
Dr. Dorr Dearborn, talking about exposure to
Stachybotrys mold.
Flooding from a drain pipe and a sewage pipe spawned the mold growth,
forcing the Birrenbachs to leave their home of 20 years. They claim
the mold not only ruined them financially, but also physically.
"My husband is constantly dealing with headaches, bleeding of the
nose, bleeding of the ear and we are getting ill" said Cleo
Birrenbach.
The Birrenbach's aren't alone. Hundreds of cases of mold are reported
a year.
"I probably get two calls a week on mold studies," said
industrial hygienist Ed Olmstead.
From New York's penthouses to the California hills, mold doesn't
discriminate. Hollywood celebrities including Erin Brockovich and Ed
McMahon have filed lawsuits claiming mold infiltrated their homes and
even made them sick.
Dr. Dorr Dearborn has been studying the toxic mold Stachybotrys and
mold-related symptoms since 1993. He says an infection with
Stachybotrys "is like having a bad cold that doesn't go
away."
Dearborn first recognized there might be a connection when a number of
infants with rare pulmonary hemorrhaging were admitted to his
Cleveland Hospital.
"There were young infants who, in the process of having trouble
breathing, were then coughing blood," he said.
All of these inner city children had one thing in common: their homes
all tested positive for Stachybotrys.
"The only thing we were seeing was a lot of water damage in the
homes,'' said Dr. Dearborn.
Of the 47 infants he studied, 16 died. Dearborn is confident a direct
link between Stachybotrys and the illness he found in Ohio exists. But
the Centers for Disease Control refused to back up his findings.
"There is a negative health impact of living in a mold
environment," Dearborn explained. "But the details as to
what the health effects are and how much mold it takes - that is what
we don't know."
Dr. Dearborn advises anyone living in a mold-infested environment to
make sure it is cleaned correctly. If not, you may have to do what one
California couple did: donate their house to the local fire department
for training.
"The only specific treatment is to stop the exposure and get
out," said Dearborn.
But despite the advice, the Birrenbach's will continue to fight to get
their apartment properly cleaned up. That cleanup began a year and a
half ago.
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