Home Sick or Sick Home?
By Caelyn Marshall
There are a lot of different things that can make you sick. You can get strep throat, the stomach flu, or a common cold. These are all illnesses that you can get anywhere you go. They are also very treatable, and don’t stick around for very long. Just a few days to stay at home and you will start to feel better! But sometimes, staying at home doesn’t make you feel better. In fact, it can actually make you feel worse. Your sore throat and runny nose can be a result of homesickness, or actual disease hiding in your home.
There are many different types of illnesses that can be hiding in your home. Sometimes, they are just beneath the surface.
I recently asked 20 high school students if they knew anything about disease in their home, and how to get rid of it. I provided them with various examples, including the ones that will be talked about later in this blog. I asked four people from every grade level. Two of the four seniors I asked knew information about getting rid of different disease factors in your home. One junior, and one sophomore knew, and none of the freshmen had any idea of what to do. So in total, four out of the twenty students I interviewed knew what to do, leaving sixteen completely clueless. After reading this link, Is Your House Making You Sick?, I gained a ton of new insight.
There are many different types of illnesses that can be hiding in your home. Sometimes, they are just beneath the surface.
Lead Poisoning
An example of disease in the home is lead poisoning, which is the build up of lead in your body over a certain amount of time. This sickness can make you vomit, have weight loss, hearing loss, and more. The cause is innocent, just lead paint in the walls of older homes. According to the Mayo Clinic website, homes that have lead-based paint or dust containing lead are often leading causes of lead poisoning. Lead-based paint was banned in 1978 many older homes never had the paint removed properly. Click on Lead Poisoning for more information.
To fix this problem, have your home tested for lead. You can do this on your own by purchasing a home test kit! Once you locate the lead, you can remove it by stripping the paint from your walls, or if the lead is in other places like your carpet or even in dust, you can get rid of it by deep cleaning your carpet and using an air filter. For more information, click How To Make Your Home Lead Safe.
Radon
Radon a the silent killer. It’s an odorless and invisible gas that naturally rises from the ground. When the gas hits high levels, it becomes dangerous. It is a huge risk for lung cancer. Now, if you don’t think it’s important to test your home for radon, just think about this. Radon can easily cause lung cancer and is actually the second leading cause of it.
So Your Home Has High Radon Levels. Now What? gave me the step-by-step process. First you need to buy an indoor air quality product to test for levels of radon. You will have to do this at least twice, in order to tell if you actually have an issue.
Next, you can DIY a fix by sealing cracks in your foundation, improving your home’s ventilation system, or using fans to create pressurization. Or, call in a professional, depending on how bad the situation is. These pros are called radon mitigation contractors. The only case where you would have to have a contractor come to your home is if your home requires a radon mitigation system installed in order to get rid of the radon.
After this process is done you will want to retest your home consistently for a little while, just to make sure that there are no issues.
Mold
Mold is one of the most common problems that you will encounter in your home, partly because it’s the easiest to create. Mold grows when there are damp and wet surfaces that don’t get cleaned or dried fast enough. For example the article Dealing With Mold In Your Home mentioned common places for mold were bathroom walls (caused by those long hot showers you take) or in your kitchen, maybe from cooking with open pots and letting the steam out with no vent on.
I decided to interview two Mossyrock locals, Cindy Jones and Doug Clyde, concerning their experience with mold. Mr. Clyde used to live in Eatonville, and dealt with black mold in the crawl space of his home. His new home, which was built in 2006, has not been affected with mold in any way.
Mrs. Jones lived in Lewis county for about 13 years, and early on dealt with black mold down in the basement of the home she was living in at the time. The mold was caused by a leaking hose from their back deck. Moist conditions tend to cause this problem.
Both Mr. Clyde and Mrs. Jones repeatedly cleaned the area with bleach. Mr. Clyde said that the mold didn’t affect his family too harshly, just a stuffy nose or itchy eyes. Even with these small symptoms, they can be easily fixed by carefully checking your nooks and crannies for mold!
There can be a lot of different things in your house that are making you feel sick. By understanding your symptoms, and learning about these different factors that can affect your health, it’s really easy to get rid of the sickness in your home! It takes a little bit of time and patience, but is worth it in the end. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for the loved ones who live in your home.
For further reading:
How To Make Your Home Lead Safe
Is Your House Making You Sick?
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