CONTAMINATION RESOURCE CENTER

The AuntieGen Contamination Resource Center was created to help you understand how mold and other indoor environmental contaminants can affect your health, your home or workplace, and the people you care about. Environmental problems are not always obvious. Sometimes there is visible mold, known water damage, an unusual odor, a contamination event, or another clear reason to investigate. Other times, the first indication that something may be wrong is simply that someone living or working in the building no longer feels like themselves.

When that happens, the questions can quickly become overwhelming. You may wonder whether your home or workplace could be affecting you, why one person seems to be struggling while everyone else feels fine, where contamination may be coming from, or whether something that began in one part of a building can reach other rooms. If a problem is confirmed, entirely different questions arise about what happens next, what can be saved, what may need to be cleaned or removed, and how a family continues living its life while all of this is happening.

The Resource Center was built around those questions.

Each section addresses a different part of the experience. What Is Happening to Me? looks at the person and the often confusing physical, cognitive, emotional, and personal changes that can accompany an environmental health concern. Is My Home or Building Affecting Me? turns the attention toward the environment and the clues that may suggest a building deserves closer investigation. How Contamination Moves Through a Building explains why a problem does not necessarily remain where it began and explores the role that air movement, HVAC systems, pressure, moisture, and the building itself can play.

From there, What Do I Do Now? addresses the questions that arise after you realize there may actually be a problem. What Happens to My Home and Everything I Own? looks more closely at the concerns surrounding the building, furniture, clothing, personal possessions, and the things that may carry tremendous financial or sentimental value. Living Through a Contaminated Building recognizes something that technical discussions often overlook: discovering an environmental problem can affect far more than the structure itself. It can disrupt routines, finances, work, relationships, and the sense of security people once had in their own home.

These resource pages are intentionally designed to provide a clear foundation without trying to answer every possible question in one place. At the end of each section, you’ll find links to in-depth articles related specifically to that subject. Those articles allow us to explore individual issues more deeply, discuss situations families and building occupants actually encounter, and examine questions that deserve more than a short explanation.

You don’t have to read the Resource Center from beginning to end. If you’re worried about how you’re feeling, start there. If you’ve discovered a problem in your home and don’t know what happens next, begin with that question. If you’re concerned about your belongings or trying to understand how contamination could have reached another part of your building, go directly to the information that applies to you.

The purpose of the AuntieGen Contamination Resource Center isn’t to diagnose a person or assume that every symptom or building problem has an environmental cause. It’s to help you ask better questions and understand the relationship between people, buildings, contamination, exposure, and the decisions that may follow when something isn’t right.

Sometimes understanding what you can’t see begins with knowing what questions to ask.

That’s what this Resource Center is here to help you do.