Monday, February 4, 2008

Preventing Mold In Your Home

Having mold in the house is a pretty nasty thought, but there are a lot of people who live with this problem every single day. There are a lot of things that you can do to prevent mold growth in your home and some of the best ones start with removing the mold spores from your indoor air supply.

Removing mold spores from your air supply serves a couple of purposes. The first one is that the spores do not have a chance to land anywhere in your home and start to form a colony, which will produce more spores. If you can stop the spores from producing colonies, then your mold problem is removed before it starts. The second reason you would want to do this is to be able to avoid breathing the spores in, since some species of mold can cause aspergilloma to develop in the body. These are essentially fungus balls that will grow in cavities such as where a person has had cancer or ulcers of some kind and can spread from one part of the body to another.

There are a couple of appliances that you can purchase that will help remove the majority of mold spores in your home’s air. These are a vacuum cleaner and an air purifier and both need to be equipped with HEPA filters.

HEPA filters remove about 99.7% of all particle debris in the air, including mold spores, down to a size of 0.03 microns. This is equal to about one third of the width of a human hair, so only about 0.3% of the air you breathe will have any particle debris in it. All of the things you were breathing previously, smoke particles, mold spores, pet dander, and etcetera are being captured by the filter. As long as you replace it as regularly as you are supposed to, this will work very well, especially for people that have respiratory conditions such as asthma, allergies, or emphysema.

Keep in mind that not all vacuum cleaners and air purification systems have HEPA filters in them, so be sure of what you are purchasing before you hand over the money. Read product reviews and find the best vacuum cleaner and purification system for you, since not all are created equal.

Any pre-existing mold problems in your home need to be taken care of, as well, as soon as possible to make the most out of your prevention methods. As long as mold colonies continue to exist in your home, you will continue to have mold spore problems.