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Pasadena doctor says the “science is there” on mold hazards
One Pasadena doctor says mold causes health effects similar to those linked with the worst chemical inhalants – and is just as dangerous.
By Amanda Price
BioNews
Dr. Kaye H. Kilburn hopes to organize a database of mold patients and their symptoms but says funding difficulties have made such efforts difficult.
Photo: Amanda Price
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A volunteer in New Orleans points to black mold that grew on the walls of a home during Hurricane Katrina flooding.
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Colleagues rejected John Snow’s theories on cholera until the scientist stopped the 1854 Broad Street outbreak in London by removing a contaminated water pump.
Dr. Kaye H. Kilburn, an environmental medical expert who founded Neuro-Test, Inc. in Pasadena, Calif., likes to remember this story when he hears doctors dispute the health hazards posed by mold. “It comes from it being a relatively new problem, and doctors do not easily accommodate new problems,” he said.
Mold: up-close and personal
Kilburn has treated nearly 300 mold patients, including Susan Brinchman, founder of the Center for School Mold Help, from virtually every state since 2000.
“We have seen mold as the factor in multiple sclerosis-like illnesses, in stroke-like illnesses in young people, in even choreoathetosis – movement disorders,” said Kilburn. “So if you have been open-minded and observe and believe your patients, all of which I do, there’s mold disorder.”
Kilburn has tested neural behavior functions, including balance, vision, color, blink reflex and reaction time, to measure the effects of mold exposures, which can vary in duration from a few days to years on end. As with other dangerous substances such as chlorine, ammonia and TCE, said Kilburn, mold can cause chemical brain damage.
“Many people, because they don’t recognize what it is, re-expose themselves at home day after day for a year or two,” said Kilburn. “Sue [Brinchman] presents a kind of special case because it’s schoolteachers, and they’re exposed in moldy classrooms.” Kilburn said it is important that American medicine recognizes mold as a serious problem. “What we have are a lot of casualties, and it’s a casualty to see a schoolteacher having to finally get social security – if he or she can get it – 20 years early; it’s a casualty if they come out of teaching,” he said.
Doctor debate: the other side
But large home insurers have been unwilling to confront the dangers of toxic mold, said Kilburn. “Mold people – meaning the insurance companies – have learned over time that the best way to defeat a new disorder that they will have to pay for is to attack the science and attack the scientists, and that’s what has been done very maliciously and very deliberately, paid for by insurance companies.”
Government science groups such as the Centers for Disease Control allege there is no evidence that mold exposure causes chronic health problems. “The CDC is used to fighting infectious disease,” said Kilburn. “To deal with chemical disease, which this is – mold is not producing infection. Mold is producing toxins that are inhaled. So it’s a chemical inhalant like I’ve been studying since the 1960s, so to me, it was just another example. But most people don’t have that background.”
Kilburn partnered with other doctors and scientists to release a symposium of 18 papers in the 2003 “Archives of Environmental Health,” a collection of research on mold, mycotoxins and stories of over 1,000 patients. He hopes scientists will produce a proper epidemiological study on mold but says lack of funding has stalled progress.
“The science is there,” said Kilburn, but the fight to legitimize the mold health threat is similar to the skepticism John Snow faced. “We’re fighting a battle against huge economic interests.”
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