Asthma and Mold in Children
Mold Affects Children’s Ability to Play and Have Fun
Mold can be dangerous to children with asthma or bronchial infection. While a mild asthma attack may not cause any permanent damage, having a severe episode is sometimes bad enough to inhibit breathing and physical functioning.
Considering that children usually spend most of their days at school, and are often involved in exercise and sports on the playground or after school, it is important to keep children’s respiratory systems as healthy as possible.
Symptoms of Mild, Moderate & Severe Asthma Attacks
Symptoms during a mild attack can include becoming out of breath during physical activity, feeding, or talking. In some cases, a child may take longer to eat because they need frequent interruptions for more air.
Moderate episodes caused increased breathlessness during talking and feeding, while severe asthma attacks can render a child breathless while simply sitting up or sleeping. This can lead to confusion, blackouts, and breathing cessation.
Prevention
While mold is not necessarily the number one asthma trigger for children, following some prevention methods, and eliminating mold the instant it is suspected, is extremely important in maintaining children’s respiratory health and function.
You could reduce the chances of your child developing asthma by half, which is a great incentive to know how to identify and treat mold in your home.
Further Recommended Reading :
Joslyn from the MoldBlogger Team
My three oldest children share a bedroom in which we just found mold where a mattress was pushed up against the wall during the winter. All three of the children spent the last seven weeks sick with many different cold, flus and ear, throat and respiratory infections. Is there a chance that their illnesses were affected by the mold problem? Will our cleanup of the mold, as you described, help our children become healthy again?
danielle on February 27th, 2008Danielle -
The symptoms you describe may definitely be related to mold exposure sickness.
For a list of more common symptoms read both of the following posts :
Impact of Mold on Thoughts, Emotion, and Personality
Symptoms of Mold Exposure and Who is at Risk
Seven weeks is most certainly a long period of time for children to be sick just with something “going around.” If their being sick IS related (as it appears to be), removing ALL of the mold (visible and non), and being sure to prevent regrowth, should clear up their symptoms and illnesses fairly quickly.
Something else to note, do they feel better being outside in fresh air, or worse if kept inside near the mold site?
In any case, remove all visible mold, make sure their is no mold growth in the mattress, or behind the wall where visible mold can be seen. Also, note how the mold originally began growing. Removing the symptoms (visible mold growth) and not the actual problem (perhaps an overabundance of moisture and warmth) will not solve anything as the mold will grow back.
I wish you all the best Danielle!
Joslyn from the MoldBlogger Team
Joslyn on February 27th, 2008