The room is not completely sealed and the air from treated room is spilling through gaps into the rest of the apartment where we live while this work is done. The odors are quite strong and I am also worried about any mold spores that are disturbed and now potentially contaminating the air that we breathe. Is it safe to live in the rest of the apartment, while one room is being dehumidified by the method of blowing fans and heating up the air?
I'm not an expert in mold, but sometimes I have trouble understanding why there is so much concern over it.
Read through this web page from the Washington State Department of Health:
Got Mold? Frequently Asked Questions About Mold, Washington State Department of Health
It says:
Most molds do not harm healthy people. But people who have allergies or asthma may be more sensitive to molds. Sensitive people may experience skin rash, running nose, eye irritation, cough, nasal congestion, aggravation of asthma or difficulty breathing. People with an immune suppression or underlying lung disease, may be at increased risk for infections from molds.
A small number of molds produce toxins called mycotoxins. When people are exposed to high levels of mold mycotoxins they may suffer toxic effects, including fatigue, nausea, headaches, and irritation to the lungs and eyes. If you or your family members have health problems that you suspect are caused by exposure to mold, you should consult with your physician.
That is, it's only a small number of molds that produce these mycotoxins, and normal healthy people have to be exposed to a HIGH LEVEL of these mycotoxins before they suffer any health effects.
Most commonly, the more serious health effects caused by exposure to mycotoxins (mycotoxosis) is caused by eating fungi which produce these mycotoxins (such as certain mushrooms), not by inhalation of mycotoxin mold spores. Ingesting large quantities of mycotoxins could potentially cause your liver to stop functioning, and that would be deadly.
In one web page I read, it said that airborne mold spores are common both indoors and out, and that outdoors mold spores have been measured at levels of 200,000 per cubic meter of air. All of us breathe in mold spores all the time, especially when we go outside, but our bodies have a way of preventing them from growing or doing any harm if and when they get into our lungs.
Also, take a look at this web page from Ecometrex, which is an environmental consulting and restoration company in Minnesota:
Mycotoxins
It says that mycotoxins only exist on the surface of the spores. It also says that the notion that healthy people can get sick from inhaling the spores of mycotoxin producing molds is controversial because of the tiny quantity of mycotoxins ingested by inhaling aerosolized spores. That is, mycotoxins are not a virus that can reproduce in your body, they are poisons. However, the tiny amount that you ingest would be unlikely to cause health concerns. That web page, does however say:
Despite the growing evidence supporting a causal relationship between airborne mycotoxins and health effects, mycotoxicosis due to inhalation of indoor spores remains highly controversial.
This medical study compared the health of 53 people working in an office building that was known to have a chronic problem with mycotoxin producing molds in it, with that of a control group of 21 people who were not exposed to mycotoxin producing molds:
SpringerLink - Journal Article
Only the abstract of the study is available online. The study did find:
Strong associations with exposure indicators and significant differences between employees (n=53) and controls (n=21) were found for lower respiratory system symptoms, dermatological symptoms, eye symptoms, constitutional symptoms, chronic fatigue symptoms and several enumeration and function laboratory tests, mainly of the white blood cell system.
The study concluded:
It is concluded that prolonged and intense exposure to toxigenic S. chartarum and other atypical fungi was associated with reported disorders of the respiratory and central nervous systems, reported disorders of the mucous membranes and a few parameters pertaining to the cellular and humoral immune system, suggesting a possible immune competency dysfunction.
Those 53 people that were studied had worked in that "sick building" for an average of 3.1 years and had an average age of just under 35 years. So, at that age these people would normally be expected to be of generally good health. 3.1 years is a relatively long time to be exposed to something for about 8 hours per day, but the health effects were relatively minor as evidenced by the fact that they were all still going to work every day.
So, looking at everything, if you haven't suffered any health effects yet, you probably won't. Normal healthy people are not affected by the spores from most molds, and you have to be sensitive to the spores of most molds as a result of allergies or athsma to suffer relatively minor health problems as a result of exposure to them.
A small number of molds produce spores with poison on their surfaces. There's no reason to believe that the mold(s) growing in your house produce mycotoxins, and you need to have intense and prolonged exposure to the airborne spores of these molds before normal healthy people suffer health effects from them.
And, from what I read, the health effects typically only persist for as long as the exposure lasts, so your health returns to normal once you are no longer exposed to toxic molds. So, the bottom line here is that it's only a few molds that can cause health problems in normal healthy people, the exposure has to be intense and prolonged for there to be health problems, and the problems go away once the person is no longer exposed to the molds.
But, what the heck, I'd complain like he11 anyhow.