What Do I Do Now?

By the time you reach this page, you may already have spent weeks, months, or even years trying to understand what is happening.

Maybe you feel different when you are inside your home or workplace and better when you leave. Maybe a doctor has found something that raised questions about an environmental exposure. Maybe you have discovered water damage, mold, unusual odors, chemical contamination, or something about the history of the building that you never knew before.

Or maybe you still don’t know.

You simply know that something isn’t right.

So what do you do now?

The answer usually isn’t one test, one doctor, or one phone call. It is about beginning an investigation, and in many situations, that investigation needs to look at both you and the environment around you.

Start With What You Know

Before assuming the worst, start putting together what you actually know.

When did you first begin noticing a problem? Did anything change in the building around that time? Was there a leak, flood, renovation, new flooring, new paint, new furniture, an HVAC problem, a sewage event, a fire, or another incident?

Do you feel differently when you leave for several hours? What about after a weekend away or a vacation? Does anyone else who spends time in the building experience something similar?

Those observations aren’t a diagnosis, and they don’t prove that your building is responsible. But they can provide important clues about where to begin looking.

Sometimes the history of the building provides clues as well. A home, apartment, office, school, commercial building, or industrial facility can have an environmental history that isn’t obvious when you walk through the door. Moisture, mold, chemicals, biological contamination, previous drug activity, neighboring units, ventilation problems, and other environmental conditions may all require very different types of investigation.

That is why the first question shouldn’t always be, “Can someone test my house for mold?”

A better question may be, “What should we be looking for?”

Testing Should Help Answer a Question

There are many ways to investigate an indoor environment, and no single test answers every question.

Depending on the circumstances, an investigation might include a visual inspection, moisture investigation, thermal imaging, indoor air quality testing, air or surface sampling, ERMI or HERTSMI-2 testing, chemical or VOC testing, methamphetamine testing, HVAC evaluation, or other specialized testing.

The appropriate investigation depends upon what happened, what is suspected, the building itself, and what you are trying to learn.

A laboratory report filled with numbers can be useful, but numbers without context can also leave you with more questions than answers. Where was the sample collected? Why was that location chosen? What was happening in the building at the time? Is there a source? Could the HVAC system or pressure differences be moving contamination somewhere else?

Testing should be part of understanding the building, not a substitute for understanding it.

Your Health Deserves Its Own Investigation

At the same time, if you aren’t feeling well, the building shouldn’t be the only thing being investigated.

Talk with an appropriate healthcare professional about what you are experiencing and why you are concerned about an environmental exposure. For some people, that conversation begins with their family doctor. Others may work with a functional or integrative medicine practitioner, an occupational or environmental medicine physician, an allergist, pulmonologist, toxicologist, or another specialist.

Sometimes one practitioner is enough. Sometimes the situation is complicated enough that several healthcare professionals need to be involved.

The important thing is that you don’t have to force every question through one doorway.

Your healthcare providers are looking at what is happening in your body. The people investigating your home or building are looking at what is happening in your environment. When appropriate, information from one side can help inform the other.

If environmental testing identifies something significant, share those results with the healthcare professionals helping you. If medical testing raises concerns about a particular exposure, that information may help determine what should be investigated in the building.

Those two investigations don’t have to exist in separate worlds.

Keep Your Information Together

As you move through this process, keep copies of your reports, laboratory results, photographs, medical testing, environmental testing, and other relevant information.

You may also find it helpful to keep a simple record of what you notice. When do you feel different? Where were you? Were you home all day? At work? Away for the weekend? Did something change after the HVAC system began running or after spending time in a particular part of the building?

You don’t need to turn your life into an investigation. The purpose is simply to preserve information that might otherwise be forgotten.

And if you receive laboratory results you don’t understand, ask questions. Ask the person who ordered the testing to explain what was tested, what the results mean, and what they do not mean. When appropriate, the laboratory itself may also be able to explain what its test measures, its terminology, and the reference information included with the report.

You deserve to understand the information being used to make decisions about your health and your environment.

You Don’t Have to Make Every Decision Today

One of the hardest parts of discovering a possible environmental problem is the feeling that suddenly everything has to happen at once.

It doesn’t.

Before making major decisions, try to understand what you are dealing with. Identify the problem as clearly as possible. Look for the source. Understand how far it may have traveled. Get appropriate medical guidance if your health is being affected. Then determine what the next step should be.

At AuntieGen, we have spent years working in environments involving mold, biological contamination, clandestine drug contamination, indoor air quality problems, HVAC contamination, and other situations where what you cannot easily see can become the biggest concern.

We also understand that there is a person on the other side of every test result.

Sometimes people contact us knowing exactly what happened. Others call because they have test results they don’t understand. Some simply tell us their story and ask, “Where do I even start?”

That’s okay.

You don’t need to have all of the answers before you ask for help.

The goal at this stage isn’t to frighten you into remediation or convince you that every unexplained symptom is coming from your building. It is to help you begin asking the right questions, gathering useful information, and finding the right people to help you understand what is happening.

Once you know what you’re dealing with, the next question is often much more personal:

What happens to my home and everything I own?