Is My Home or Building Affecting Me?

Maybe mold was found in the basement, but you sleep upstairs. Maybe you work in a large office building and contamination was discovered several floors away from where you spend your day. Maybe you learned that methamphetamine had once been used or manufactured in a home you have been living in. Or perhaps a biological contamination event occurred somewhere in a building where you lived, worked, visited, or spent considerable time.

Then something happened that made the location of that contamination suddenly very important to you.

Maybe you became ill. Maybe someone in your family did. Maybe testing uncovered something you weren’t expecting. Maybe you notice that you feel different when you leave the building and worse when you return. Or maybe you simply learned about the contamination and started asking questions.

One of the first questions is often a very reasonable one:

If it was over there, how could it have reached me over here?

To begin answering that, we have to look at your home or building a little differently.

The Boundaries We Set

We divide buildings into spaces because that’s how we live and work in them. This is the basement. That’s the bedroom. This is my office. That’s the mechanical room. One department works on the second floor while another works on the fifth.

Those boundaries make perfect sense to us, but a building does not necessarily function according to the boundaries we set.

Behind the walls, above the ceilings and beneath the floors are connections most of us rarely think about. Heating and cooling systems may serve multiple areas. Plumbing, electrical wiring and mechanical systems pass through walls and floors. People move from one space to another. Doors open and close. Water finds pathways that aren’t always obvious. Air travels through spaces we may never see.

This is why AuntieGen investigators are taught to look at a building as a complete environmental system rather than simply focusing on the room where someone discovered a problem. A stain on a bedroom ceiling may begin in the attic. A damp basement may be influenced by drainage outside. A musty odor may originate inside an HVAC system. A problem discovered several floors away from where you spend your time may require looking beyond that location to understand what has actually been happening inside the building.

Your Building Is Constantly Changing

There is another part of this that is easy to overlook. A building doesn’t behave exactly the same way throughout the day.

People enter and leave. Doors open and close. Heating, cooling and ventilation systems cycle. Outdoor temperatures rise and fall. Humidity changes. Equipment operates. People themselves produce heat and moisture. All of these things can influence airflow, pressure relationships, temperature and moisture conditions within a building.

When everyone goes home, the building doesn’t stop functioning. Mechanical schedules may change. Doors that opened hundreds of times during the day may remain closed for hours. Outdoor conditions continue to change, and the environment inside the building continues to respond.

The building you occupied at two o’clock in the afternoon may not be behaving exactly the same way at two o’clock in the morning.

That matters when contamination is present, particularly when nobody knows it is there yet.

What Happened Before Anyone Found It?

Contamination is rarely discovered the instant it enters or develops within a building. Sometimes days pass. Sometimes months or years pass.

During that time, life continues.

People walk through the building. Furniture and belongings are moved. Cleaning takes place. Heating and cooling systems operate. Repairs may be performed. Renovations may begin. Materials can be disturbed before anyone realizes there is a reason to be careful with them.

That doesn’t mean contamination found in one location automatically spread throughout the building. It would be irresponsible to make that assumption.

But the opposite can also be an assumption.

If mold was discovered in the basement, the fact that it was found there doesn’t by itself tell us what happened elsewhere. If contamination was discovered in one office, its location alone doesn’t establish what occurred throughout the rest of the building.

Different contaminants behave differently. Buildings are different. Circumstances are different.

What matters is the evidence and understanding what happened between the time the problem began and the time somebody finally discovered it.

Our Field Guide teaches investigators to consider airflow, moisture movement, pressure relationships, temperature, humidity, mechanical systems, construction, occupancy, weather and the sequence of events that occurred before they arrived. Visible contamination can be only one point in a much longer journey.

If you’ve experienced an exposure, finding the original source may answer an important question. But it may also create another one:

What was happening inside that building while the contamination was there?

If you’ve been asking whether your home, workplace or another building could be affecting you, that question deserves more than an assumption based simply on where contamination was found. Understanding the building, the contaminant, the conditions and what happened over time can help begin putting the pieces together.

What About the Contents of My Home? Could They Be Affecting Me Too?

The building itself is only part of the indoor environment. Everything we bring into that building becomes part of that environment as well.

For someone who is particularly sensitive to mold, chemicals or other environmental exposures, everyday items and activities that most people never think twice about may deserve a closer look. This does not mean that everything inside your home is a problem, nor should we assume that something is affecting you simply because it is present. It means that when we are trying to understand an indoor environment, we should consider not only the building itself, but also what we put inside it and how we live in it.

Houseplants are a good example. The plant itself may not be the primary concern, but the flowerpot can contain damp organic growing media, fertilizers, soil amendments and microorganisms. Some plants require their growing media to remain consistently moist, and some products intentionally introduce fungi or other microorganisms into the soil. For someone who is particularly sensitive to mold, that raises questions that deserve a closer look.

But houseplants are only one example.

Furniture, mattresses and bedding, stored belongings, cleaning products, fragrances, humidifiers and other things we bring into or use inside our homes may also influence the indoor environment in different ways. Some may introduce or retain moisture. Some may accumulate particles or microorganisms. Others may introduce chemical exposures. Whether any of these things are actually important to a particular individual depends on the item, how it is used or maintained, the conditions inside the home and the sensitivity of the person living there.

As we continue building the Contamination Resource Center, we will examine these potential sources individually rather than assuming that something is either harmless or harmful simply because it is commonly found inside a home. We will look at the available evidence, explain what we know and what we do not know, and help you ask better questions about the environment you live in.

We begin with something found in millions of homes:

Are You a Mold-Sensitive Individual Who Loves Houseplants?

Read: Are You a Mold-Sensitive Individual Who Loves Houseplants?

And sometimes, understanding how it could have reached you is an important part of finally understanding what happened.

Want to Understand What May Be Happening Inside Your Building?

Our in-depth article takes this conversation further, looking at the invisible forces that can connect one part of a building to another and the ways contaminants may move through the environments where we live and work.

Read: AuntieGen Explains: How Contaminants Move Through a Building & How They Affect You