Mould Uncovered: How to Protect Yourself From Mould in Your Food and Home

CIRS is generally associated with water-damaged buildings but can emerge without water.  

Below is a list of biotoxins to be aware of:  

• Fungi with Mycotoxins 
• Bacteria with secondary endotoxins 
• Actinomycetes  
• Mycobacteria  
• Beta Glucans  
• Hemolysins  
• Microbial Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) 
• Cell wall fragments  
• Protozoa  
• VOCs from building materials  

Certain fungi, like mushrooms or yeast, are a delightful addition to your plate. Mould, on the other hand, is not. While it’s true that yeast, mushrooms, and mould thrive in a moist environment, moulds damage the material on which they live, impair structural integrity and wreak havoc on our health. Plus, mould doesn’t just grow in our homes, but also in our food. While there are health implications of consuming mould, fortunately, there are some great ways to protect yourself from this sneaky intruder as well. 

Mould in Your Home 

Moulds are produced by spores, which can be carried by air currents because they are tiny and lightweight. Fungi are necessary to the food chain as decomposers, but when moulds develop inside your house, they can cause a myriad of problems.  

For significant mould growth to happen, there needs to be a source of dampness, a source of food, and a substrate capable of sustaining growth. Building supplies, including carpets, plywood, sheetrock, and other porous materials, are ideal places for moulds to live and grow.  

Cellulose thermal insulators are made from recycled paper and are one of mould’s favourite materials. A single incident of water damage can encourage mould to live inside a wall, later to be resurrected from near dormancy by high humidity. Therefore, identifying the source of moisture is an essential step in resolution. Even the steam from a stovetop or the shower, the watering of houseplants, or the use of a central humidifier can exacerbate—or even initiate—a mould problem. 

Mould can hide under carpets, behind damp drywall, or on your shower curtain. Indoor mould is ugly, smelly, and known to cause infections, allergies, and even sick building syndrome (as seen in office spaces with mould exposure). So important is the control of indoor mould that a classification system exists for it. Class A moulds require immediate attention and are deemed highly hazardous to health and should not exist in places habituated by humans. Class B includes those that may incite allergic reactions if encountered over a long period. Class C fungi are not known to be a health hazard but maybe an economic or cosmetic burden. Their strains number in the hundreds.  

Types of Mould Typically Found in Homes + Their Health Effects 

The most harmful moulds found in homes fall into these categories: Chaetomium, Penicillium, Fusarium, Aspergillus, and Stachybotrys.  

• Chaetomium is common in homes with water damage and thrives hidden in walls and under carpets. Symptoms of Chaetomium exposure can range from water eyes to trouble breathing, to autoimmune diseases ⁽¹⁾.  
• Penicillium mould can be especially dangerous as it requires low moisture and can spread quickly, including from soil and building materials ⁽²⁾. If it becomes widespread in a home, Penicillium can cause bronchitis and other respiratory problems.  
• Fusarium is most commonly found in plant debris and soil and in rare instances, can lead to severe eye infections ⁽¹⁾.  
• Aspergillus is all around us in the air we breathe but can cause allergic reactions and lung problems in people with compromised immune systems ⁽¹⁾.  
• Last, but certainly not least, Stachybotrys, aka black mould is one of the most dangerous and can lead to flu-like symptoms, memory loss, and respiratory damage, especially severe in children ⁽¹⁾. 

How to Combat and Remove Mould From Your Home 

As the saying goes, the best offence is a good defence. The best place to start is by dehumidifying your home to decrease moisture. Additionally, it’s essential to dry wet areas immediately and ensure that your home has proper ventilation. 

Simple steps to remedy a small occurrence include ample sunshine to create dry conditions, improved ventilation, additional insulation in the walls, and dehumidification. But these do not get rid of what’s already present, but only make it non-viable.  

One important thing to remember is that merely killing mould is not enough. It has to be fully removed because the chemicals and proteins that evoke a reaction are still present in dead mould. Using bleach will only make it lighter in colour and fail to kill the roots. Why? Because bleach is mostly water, which is what mould needs to thrive. The active ingredient in store-bought bleach — often sodium hypochlorite — is weakened. A stronger product than what we get from a store is dangerous. Further, bleach will only work on non-porous surfaces, like tubs and tiles. It does not penetrate porous materials, even concrete, so it can’t get to the roots, causing the mould to return.  

What Solutions Kill Mould? 

There are a few ways to remove mould from your home entirely. First, borax and straight white vinegar are safe and strong enough to kill mould but take time to work. Next, a more expensive, but still very effective option, is tea tree oil. Tea tree oil is both antifungal and antibacterial, and in turn, is one of the best mould slayers. Use a teaspoon per cup of water in a spray bottle. Further, any residue left on a surface will prevent the recurrence of mould.  

A novel product in the fight against mould is grapefruit seed extract, commonly used to fight bacterial, yeast and viral infections. The citric acid seems to be the active component. Ten drops of this go into a cup of water in a spray bottle. It’ll kill the mould down to its roots.  

If a mould problem is severe, get a professional to take a look and offer guidance on next steps.  

Mould in Our Food 

Mould was first described in the mid-1800s by Czech physician and mycologist August Carl Joseph Corda. Corda named mould as the culprit behind livestock decimation in Eastern Europe, where the animals were dying of blood and nervous system disorders. Stachybotrys (black mould) was discovered to be the culprit, due to its growth in wet hay and animal feed.  

Since then, moulds associated with the food supply are implicated in conditions including liver disease, kidney cancer, neural tube defects, and hormone-sensitive cancers. Ingestible mycotoxins produced by mould have been found in many food products with the highest levels in boxed cereals and processed grains. 

Common Food Mould to Watch Out For 

You may be surprised to find out which of your favourite foods may be infected with moulds. Here are some of the most common: 

• Ochratoxin A (OTA) has the worst reputation, having been found in more than half of breakfast cereals sampled in one study (Nguyen, 2014). Stricter than the FDA, the European Commission allows only 3ng/g of OTA in cereals and cereal-based products, a regulation not yet practiced in the U.S. The tested cereals in the U.S. were contaminated with as much as 7.43ng of OTA/g. Nuts, dried fruits, and infant foods may also be infected with OTA. For cereals, the contamination, in descending order, was highest in oats (84%), followed by wheat (56%), rice (44%), and lastly corn (14%). It is possible, though, that cereal accoutrements, such as honey, chocolate and dried fruits could have embellished the levels. 
• Fumonisin is a common contaminant of most corn and corn products, along with grains, these fungi pose health hazards on humans and animals who consume them. The toxins are linked with several health issues including cancer of the oesophagus, suppression of the immune systems, neural-tube defects and other ailments ⁽³⁾.  
• Deoxynivalenol (DON) frequently infects corn, wheat, oats, barley, rice, and other grains in fields or during storage. DON has been detected in buckwheat, popcorn, sorghum, triticale, flour, bread, noodles, beer, and even infant foods ⁽⁴⁾. Health effects of DON may include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, headache, dizziness, fever and possibly even reproductive problems.  
• Zearalenone is a nonsteroidal oestrogenic mycotoxin produced by several species of Fusarium fungi. These fungi tend to grow on grains being stored in high moisture. Health effects of Zearalenone can include major effects on female reproduction by creating hyperestrogenism leading to infertility, libido and potentially stillbirth ⁽⁵⁾. 
• Aflatoxins are widely spread in nature and have severely contaminated food supplies of humans and animals, resulting in many health problems and even death. These fungi usually infect cereal crops including wheat, walnut, corn, cotton, and tree nuts (Jelinek et al., 1989; Severns et al., 2003), but are especially prevalent in peanuts. Aflatoxins specifically target the liver and can lead to toxicity of the liver in rare cases, and more commonly reduce the efficiency of immunisation in children, and immune suppression in adults, leading to a greater risk of infections ⁽⁶⁾.  

Foods to Avoid When Dealing with Mould Toxicity  

Mycotoxins are natural contaminants in foods of biological origin and are toxic secondary metabolites of fungi. Despite efforts to control fungal contamination, toxigenic fungi are ubiquitous in nature and occur regularly in worldwide food supplies due to mould infestation of susceptible agricultural products, especially cereal grains. Corn, products made from it and animals that consume it may all be sources contaminated with Fumonisin B1, which on contact breaks apart phospholipid phosphatidylcholine (PC) in the surfactant in the lungs, mucus membranes and the gut mucosa. As a result, corn in all forms should be avoided – chips, tortillas, polenta, popcorn, flour, cereal, grits and fermented corn.  

Many companies today know the effects of mould toxicity and test their products for mould as well as pesticides like glyphosate. Check with the specific brand to see if they can provide evidence of mould testing.  

Foods to avoid, especially when dealing with mould toxicity, include: 

• Oatmeal – a soft grain often contaminated with OTA 
• Mushrooms 
• Cereals and grains: corn, wheat, oat, barley, rye, all grains 
• Wine, champagne, beer 
• Coffee: use organic only, buy whole beans and keep frozen before grinding fresh 
• Tea: even organic is often contaminated with mould. Pique Tea is a company that BodyBio recommend for high-quality, mould-free teas 
• Fermented soya as tempeh 

• Kombucha  
• Cheese: eat only feta (imported, in water) or fresh mozzarella (in water) 
• Sprouts 
• Herbs and herbal formulas as supplements, unless tested for mould 
• Peanuts 
• Corn -fed meat and poultry, industrialized meat products  
• Dried fruit, fruit juices, cider 
• Collagen, gummy bears, gelatine – can be made from the mouldy hides of animals 
• Nuts 

How Does Mould Impact the Body?  

Mycotoxins are unwittingly inhaled and ingested, wreaking havoc with the protective mucus layers that line body channels from the mouth to the colon, decimating the surfactants that lubricate and reduce surface tension in the lungs and compromising the stability of the colon’s shield against infection and inflammation. The ochratoxins in oats and the fumonisins in corn can readily undermine this safeguard, more than 70% of which is composed PC. 

How to Protect Yourself From Food Mould 

While removing mould from the home is a matter of using common elements like hydrogen peroxide, bleach, tea tree oil, and borax, removal from foods is much more difficult. Therefore, we rely on farmers to harvest their crops when the time is right and store them in dry conditions. We also rely on food makers to decontaminate grains prior to, or during, processing and refining. 

When mould and its mycotoxins make their way into our food, the best we can do is build up our immune system. One way to keep potential damage from mycotoxin exposure at bay is by incorporating a butyrate supplement, into your routine. This short-chain fatty acid is produced by the bacterial fermentation (Bacillus subtills) of resistant starch, something you’re unlikely to consume enough of organically in order to reap its benefits (Zhao, 2014). Sodium butyrate, particularly, has shown strong inhibition of fungi in a dose-dependent manner, resulting in a significant reduction of filamentous mycotoxin strains.  

Perhaps equally important is the simultaneous impediment of biofilm formation and the enhancement of macrophage discouragement of mycotoxin manufacture ⁽⁷⁾. For all its celebrity, butyrate, regardless of its specific type is known to inhibit the growth of tumours, to support healthy bacteria in the gut and respiratory system and generally aid in digestion. 

Additionally, mycotoxins alter phospholipid integrity, leaving cell membranes structurally, and functionally vulnerable to damage. Some fungi reduce PC content of the membrane by as much as half, thereby reducing lung surfactant ⁽⁸⁾, debasing gastric and other mucus and allowing lipid degradation. These enemies of the cell stiffen a membrane that is naturally flexible, resilient and permeable. Restoration of the membrane to its original glory demands attention and the administration of nutrients that can satisfy the need. Here, a PC supplement may be supportive⁽⁹⁾. PC might support the clearance of toxins from nuclear and mitochondrial genes, thereby possibly supporting gene expression and supporting the operation of all organs and body systems. 

It isn’t only the mould on your walls or the spores that dwell in the air that we have to worry about. Those fungi that defile the food supply are equally contemptible, though less apparent – considering this, having the right supplements on hand for possible exposure attacks is a useful tool for mitigating the potential effects of these exposures.