By Carla Hill, RealtyTimes.com, February 23, 2012
 As we near the end of Winter (hopefully!) many areas of the nation are entering their rainiest season. What does this mean for the health of your home?It all comes down to moisture and condensation. Many homeowner's first instinct is to check windows and doors for leaks. Slightly askew installation can mean water accumulation, which will eventually turn to mold and rot.
"We often get calls from homeowners who are concerned that their windows are 'sweating' or leaking either inside or outside the home because they see moisture on the glass," says Gary Pember, vice president of marketing at Simonton Windows. "In reality, that's simply not the case. While condensation may collect on the interior or exterior of energy-efficient windows, the units are really doing their job by helping serve as a barrier in the home."
Pember points out that windows do not cause condensation --- they simply prevent the moisture in the home from escaping to the outside. "If the inside glass surface on double- or triple-glazed windows show excessive moisture, you can be reasonably sure that the moisture is also collecting on your walls and ceilings," says Pember. "This means you should take steps to reduce the humidity level in your home by using exhaust fans and dehumidifiers."
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Health, CarlukeGazette.com, March 19, 2012
 "Human resistance to antibiotics could bring ‘the end of modern medicine as we know it'," according to The Daily Telegraph. The newspaper says that we are facing an antibiotic crisis that could make routine operations impossible and a scratched knee potentially fatal. Similarly, the Daily Mail's headline stated that a sore throat could soon become fatal.
The alarming headlines follow a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO), which set out ways to fight the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR occurs when infectious organisms, such as bacteria and viruses, adapt to treatments and become resistant to them.
The publication specifically addressed the long-known problem of antibiotic resistance, where increasing use of antibiotics can lead to the formation of "superbugs" that resist many of the antibiotic types we currently have. It outlined a variety of measures that are vital for ensuring we can still fight infections in the future and described how other major infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, HIV, malaria and influenza, could one day become resistant to today's treatment options.
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By Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times, March 17, 2012
 If you inspect a hotel room for cleanliness as soon as you walk in, you are not alone.
About 90% of Americans surveyed last month said they examine their hotel rooms for cleanliness and 49% take it upon themselves to clean all or part of their rooms.
For good reason. The survey found that nearly 70% of travelers found "something gross" in their room, such as stains, mold, cockroaches or hair.
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Education, HumanResourcesJournal.com, March 19, 2012
 An elementary school teacher brought action against a school board in Virginia, alleging a deliberate exposure to excessive mold and bacteria in her classroom. She claimed a "harmful workplace environment," but the district court ruled against her. The case landed in the U.S. Court of Appeals.
The woman taught the fourth grade at Booker T. Washington Elementary School. Near the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year, she noticed an increased level of humidity inside the school. She blamed accumulated moisture for books and papers being "soggy" and "warped." Around the same time, dehumidifiers were placed throughout the school.
Days later, the teacher's eyes became irritated and "itchy." By the second week, she was experiencing symptoms similar to allergies and later thought she might have a cold or sinus infection. She alleged that some students were suffering from comparable symptoms.
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By Carla Hill, RealtyTimes.com, March 15, 2012
 Our bodies and homes are exposed to allergens at every turn. Each and every day our bodies fight an uphill battle to keep these invaders out. Give your body a break by taking a few precautionary steps.The Mayo-Clinic explains why allergies are such a serious issue. "The Mayo-Clinic gives some great tips for homeowners.Your immune system produces substances known as antibodies.
Some of these antibodies protect you from unwanted invaders that could make you sick or cause an infection. When you have allergies, your immune system makes antibodies that identify your particular allergen as something harmful, even though it isn't."
They continue, "When you come into contact with the allergen, your immune system's reaction inflames your skin, sinuses, airways or digestive system. The severity of allergies varies from person to person and can range from minor irritation to anaphylaxis - a potentially life-threatening emergency. While allergies can't be cured, a number of treatments can help relieve your allergy symptoms."
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By Mark Doughty, Doughty Environmental Hygiene Stockbridge, VT, Indoor Environment Connections, March 2012
 Water is a paradox: simply elegant and yet, one of the more complicated and problematic molecules nature has given us. Water is a requirement for life. So much so that scientists use the presence of water on distant moons and planets to assess the likelihood of life. Water provides for transportation and recreation. It quenches us when we are thirsty. It puts fires out. In great quantities it can destroy our roads, bridges, and homes. When we have too little of it we become emaciated and disease prone; our crops die, our fields become leached with salt. It can also be the bane of a building owner.
As a molecule, water expands when others condense. Most liquids condense as they get colder. Water condenses until about 4°C and then it expands. As it seeps into the tiniest of cracks, it expands as it gets colder, allowing it to break mountains into boulders, cobbles, pebbles, granules, sand, silt and clay. Left unchecked, it can reduce buildings to rot and rubble, all the while adversely affecting the occupants.
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By Tim Darragh, Of The Morning CallNationwide, February 27, 2012
 Nearly 100,000 patients died from infections they caught during treatment.
With all the training and technology hospitals employ to care for patients, the best practice, said Dr. Kara Mascitti, is one that health care workers learned as children.
Wash your hands.
Mascitti, the director of health care epidemiology and infection prevention at St. Luke's Hospital and Health Network, says controlling infections at hospitals is primarily a prevention-first practice.
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By Lynn Burkhart Founder & President Controlled Release Technologies Inc. Shelby, North Carolina, Indoor Environment Connections, March 2012
 Businesses continue to brace for hard times even though economic growth is slowly starting to occur. Belt-tightening by firms is not confined to purchasing and labor costs alone, but includes revisiting operational expenses and future projects. As such, most if not all businesses are wary of taking on debt without concrete returns on investment.
HVAC operations always seem to be one of the first areas of economic cutbacks. Perhaps that is because it is perceived as a low financial return on investment. However, cutbacks to bare-minimum maintenance levels in this area directly affect buildings' finances by increasing the costs to operate and sustain equipment.
Air quality in a building is also directly connected to these cutbacks. Air-handler hygiene and preventive maintenance techniques are of vast importance to maintain good IAQ. Sadly, each of these areas falls victim as a result of current economic conditions and a general lack in familiarity of their importance.
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By Dr. Harriet Burge Director of Aerobiology EMLab P&K San Bruno, CA, Indoor Environment Connections, March 2012
 Hyphal fragments are an inevitable part of both outdoor and indoor air. We count them on spore trap samples, and can list them on reports, but do not consider them when calculating the MoldScore. Why not? Are they important, and, if so, when?
By the way, this discussion will be restricted to “countable” fragments—those large enough to be visible on a microscope slide. Fungal particles smaller than 1um have been noted, but are not recovered on spore traps, and present different problems for both analysis and interpretation.
Early aerobiologists recorded hyphal fragments in outdoor air. Pady and Kramer studied larger hyphal fragments in Kansas in the fifties, noting that their size averaged 5-15um, but some were smaller and some larger. Larger in this case generally means longer. Many of the fragments were pieces of conidiophores, sometimes with spores attached. In their rural environment they recovered fragments in concentrations as high as 1800/m3 of outdoor air.
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By Tom Scarlett, Indoor Environment Connections, March 2012
 The Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) Educational Institute Standards Task Team announced that the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has recognized ACCA 12 QH-2011 Existing Homes Evaluation and Performance Improvement standard.
ACCA 12 QH-2011 was developed by ACCA in the cooperation with the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) and is the first, and only, industry-developed nationally-recognized standard that establishes how to audit, evaluate, develop a scope of work, perform the work approved by a home owner, and test completed work.
“ACCA is proud to offer the home performance community with the first standard for existing homes that is in line with our other ANSI recognized standards,” said Paul T. Stalknecht, ACCA president and CEO.
“This new standard provides clear guidelines for how to properly evaluate homes, provide homeowners with appropriate solutions, and then perform the work. And, by requiring third-party verification to ensure that the work was performed correctly, gives more credibility to the contractors who are following the standard and sets them apart.”
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By Tom Scarlett, Indoor Environment Connections, March 2012
 President Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2013 includes substantial cutbacks in areas that have been important to the indoor environment world.
The asthma and lead initiatives at the Centers for Disease Control would be merged into a combined “Healthy Homes and Community Environment” initiative. The president’s budget requests funding for this program at $27 million, but there is no delineation of funds between the asthma and lead programs.
Additionally, Obama’s proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency eliminates funding for the State Indoor Radon Grant (SIRG) program. The overall EPA budget for radon would drop to $2 million.
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By Bob Baker BBJ Environmental Riverview, Florida, Indoor Environment Connections, January 2012
 When most people think about using an antimicrobial product, they think in terms of, “How many bugs (germs, microorganisms...) can I kill?” In other words, how powerful or effective are the various product options that I am considering or how many different organisms are they effective against?
Unfortunately, this mindset often leads to the selection of an approach that may be higher risk than is needed and may not even be the best solution.
The tendency for users to seek the most effective (powerful) solution has been reinforced by the traditional approach to the science of infection control.
In healthcare settings, it is important that surfaces be totally or almost totally free of germs. Even one surviving organism can lead to a serious or even fatal infection. In like manner, the surfaces in food preparation areas must be very low in viable organisms in order to prevent the transmission of food borne illnesses. For those uses, it is important that the killing ability of a chemical be known and reliable and that has influenced most thinking about antimicrobial products; if it does not kill, it is no good.
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By Dr. Harriet Burge Director of Aerobiology EMLab P&K San Bruno, Calif., Indoor Environment Connections, January 2012
 Spore trapping is the most commonly used method for assessing airborne fungal spore concentrations. Although the data can be a challenge to interpret, here are a few tips that might make life a bit easier.
First, since you can never prove a negative case using spore trap sampling, don’t interpret low concentrations and/or absence of indicator spores as evidence for lack of growth. If you have found no growth on visual inspection, you can say that the spore trap data supports your visual observations, but is subject to greater uncertainty that the visual inspection process.
If your visual observations reveal no growth, and the spore trap samples indicate high levels or indicator spore types, first check the outdoor sample for the same types of spores. You might use the EMLab P&K MoldScore to help with this interpretation. If that doesn’t work, go back and look for hidden growth or for occupant activities that could have caused transient aerosols.
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By Diane Miskowski, MPH EMSL Analytical, Inc., Indoor Environment Connections, January 2012
 IAQ professionals are frequently asked to determine if pipe leaks, sewer line leaks, soil, carpets/flooring, flood water, and the water from backed up toilets is contaminated with fecal material or sewage.
Many IAQ professionals have used the traditional fecal indicator bacteria tests (FIB) that culture total coliforms, fecal coliforms, E. coli, or Enterococci for these applications. Even though it was widely recognized that these tests are neither specific nor sensitive enough to be considered good indicators of fecal contamination, they were the only tests available until recently.
With the commercialization of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing and additional research on using other indicator organisms, we now have more sensitive and specific tests for determining the presence of fecal or sewage contamination.
Feces contain an incredible amount of microorganisms: bacteria, viruses, protozoans, and helminthessome of which are pathogenic. However, it is not possible to culture every type of pathogenic organism that exists in feces. Because the traditional culture dependent tests for FIBs are easy and cheap, they have been used more than 60 years as indicators of the possible presence of pathogens in feces. Nonetheless, the scientific community has recognized for quite some time that serious limitations exist when these tests are used as strict indicators of fecal contamination.
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By Tom Scarlett, Indoor Environment Connections, January 2012
 Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R) has proposed the deregulation of mold inspectors and remediators in his state, as part of a larger initiative to eliminate unnecessary agencies in the state government.
“We have identified three professions that we believe are better served if no longer regulated by the state,” McDonnell said, the other two being interior designers and hair braiders.
McDonnell announced his government reform initiatives as part of a Government Reorganization Plan submitted to the state legislature. The proposals include eliminating two state agencies, merging seven state agencies into others, eliminating 19 boards and commissions, and merging 23 boards and commissions to form 11 boards and commissions.
The governor’s plan must be approved by the state legislature to become effective. It will be considered in the 2012 session of the General Assembly. Estimates by the state Department of Planning and Budget find that the submitted reforms will save at least $2 million per year.
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Indoor Environment Connections, January 2012
 The Minnesota Department of Health has awarded grants totaling $250,000 to seven local health agencies to develop and implement programs that address health hazards frequently found in homes; hazards such as lead, radon and other indoor air pollutants, including tobacco smoke and carbon monoxide, fire safety risks and others.
The grants will fund local efforts that are designed to encourage prevention activities, provide guidance and support to individuals exposed to lead, asthma triggers and other unhealthy conditions within their homes.
The grantees will be required to:
• Complete a strategic planning and needs assessment process.
• Pilot home assessments and education methods.
• Provide training to local health and housing organizations to
better identify health threats in housing.
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Every good buyer knows that once you are truly interested in a home you need to a have a thorough inspection done. This important step can keep you from making a big mistake or on the opposite hand give you some peace of mind about your purchase.Did you know there are things you can look for, even as a novice, before an inspection, though, that can clue you into the health of a house? It's true. Here are five things that all home buyers should be on the lookout for when viewing a home.
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