"We had 40 symptoms of mold poisoning, but the doctor told us we were fine."
When best friends Nicole Farage and Delaney Downey moved into their first apartment after graduation, they never dreamed their lives would be instantly turned upside down by catastrophic health problems.
Just a few weeks after moving into a new apartment in Los Angeles, these girls, both in their twenties, began having trouble breathing, tremors, severe migraines, insomnia, and severe fatigue.
"I felt like I was on drugs."
"I would manage to get about two hours of sleep in total over four days. It was unbearable," Delaney told the BBC, describing the unbearable brain fog.
At first, they blamed the symptoms on stress.
The girls had no idea that something was slowly poisoning them.
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Their apartment was a hotbed of mold growing under the plank floors and in the walls.
"Exposure to mold can be very damaging to the lungs," says Andy Whittamore, lead clinician at the charity Asthma & Lungs UK.
"It can cause respiratory infections, allergies or asthma," he added to the BBC.
Mold thrives in damp, poorly ventilated areas such as ceilings, walls, and under floors.
Toxins produced by certain molds cause serious long-term health problems such as acute poisoning, asthma, and in extreme cases even cancer, according to the World Health Organization.
If not removed from the home, mold can become deadly.
"Asthma still kills. If someone lives surrounded by damp and mold, they are more likely to have life-threatening asthma attacks," says Whitmore.
It was only when Nicole noticed a few drops of water appearing in the middle of her bedroom floor that the two of them investigated the space and discovered that mold was growing throughout their apartment.
"The spores were invisible to the naked eye, spreading throughout the apartment and wreaking havoc on our health," says Nicole.
What is mold?
Mold is like microscopic fungi that grow in moist environments.
It spreads via airborne spores, which are present almost everywhere.
Signs that mold is growing in a building include cloudy black, white, or green spots on the walls, and musty, musty air.
Dampness or mold in the home is present in up to 47 percent of homes, according to a 2013 study published in Clinical and Experimental Allergy, affecting up to 21 percent of homes in Europe and 47 percent of homes in the US.
While there is little research on countries in the tropics, one recent study found dampness in 710 households surveyed in southern India, while a study in northern Thailand found that water leaks affected 28,2 percent of homes.
Difficult to diagnose
The biggest health hazard, explains complementary medicine doctor Jill Krista, is that people can be exposed to mold in their own homes without even realizing it.
"Many won't even know they've been poisoned," says this American author of the book Break the mold..
She claims that mold is widely misunderstood and underdiagnosed.
It often grows in places hidden from view - behind walls and furniture and under floors, which means its effects can go unnoticed for months or even years.
For Nicole and Delaney, things got progressively worse.
It took them almost a year before they realized what was really happening to them.
"I remember talking on the phone at work once."
"Someone dictated a phone number to me to write down, and I couldn't connect what I was hearing with what I was writing down," Nicole said.
At that moment, she knew something was seriously wrong.
"It was terrifying and I ended up having to quit my job," she said.
Watch a video on the BBC YouTube channel about asthma and how to live with it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50pftkwklvA
Nicole and Delaney went to numerous doctors, but none of them were able to make an accurate diagnosis.
"I remember going to the emergency room at the hospital, and the doctor told me I was fine," Nicole says.
"It destroyed our faith in ourselves. We started to question whether what was happening to us was real," he adds.
Diagnosing toxic mold exposure is particularly difficult because many of its symptoms overlap with common problems such as the flu or allergies.
Researchers are just beginning to understand how it affects health and how to treat mold-related illnesses.
In 2024, the charity Asthma & Lungs UK surveyed 3.652 people with lung problems and found that a quarter of children and almost half of adults said that damp and mould triggered their asthma symptoms.
Children are particularly at risk, warned Dr. Vitamore.
"Children's lungs are still developing, so they are more susceptible to triggers like mold."
"They breathe faster, so they're more likely to inhale more mold spores than adults," he said.
How to prevent mold?
Tom Colgan is a director at AirFresh, a company specializing in mold treatment and prevention in apartments across the UK.
He says there are a few simple things people can do to minimize mold.
- Open all windows for 30 minutes every day, even in winter.
- Keep your home at a constant temperature of 18 degrees Celsius
- Make sure you have a fan in the bathroom and turn it on every time you take a long shower or bath.
- Buy a humidity reader - a device that measures humidity in your home. If levels exceed 60 percent, open the windows.
- Cooking causes a lot of moisture to build up in the air in your kitchen. Ventilation above the stove is often just there to remove odors, so open windows while cooking and use lids on pots and pans.
- Colgan says that when people discover mold in their homes, they often immediately spray it with chemicals. He strongly opposes this, as it can only make the problem worse.
"That's when the mold's survival instinct kicks in. It starts spreading spores and can find new areas to land on," he says.
Increasing health risk
As climate change causes increased rainfall and humidity, researchers say water damage to homes is likely to make mold diseases more prevalent.
Mold is a solvable housing problem, but people who live in poorly constructed buildings and have less money to repair mold damage are most at risk.
For Nicole and Delaney, recovery took six years.
"The degree of exposure to the mold was such that it caused a lot of damage," Nicole said.
Doctors told her that long-term exposure to mold had weakened her immune system, allowing various other health problems to develop.
While their friends were traveling abroad, going out and having fun, the two of them barely had the energy left to function normally.
"We had to mourn our twenties," Delaney said.
"They were taken away from us because of how sick we were."
"Having each other kept us pushing forward," Nicole adds.
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