You're listening to Well Now,

You're listening to Well Now,

Slate's podcast on Health and Wellness.

I'm Maya Feller.

And I'm Kavita Patel. We all understand that air pollution and bad air quality outside can have a negative impact on health and wellness, but many of us are still unaware of the potential threats of poor air quality inside.

Now Americans spend most of their time indoors almost 90% according to the National

Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

And for all of our time, the EPA estimates that our indoor air may actually be more polluted than our outdoor air.

One of the pollutants that we don't talk about enough is mold.

Mold inside a home can really hurt your health both immediately and in the long term.

It can spark asthma attacks, serious infections for those who have chronic lung disease or are immunocompromised according to the CDC.

Even for otherwise healthy people, the EPA warns that mold can irritate your eyes, your skin,

your nose, your throat, and lungs.

It's pretty incredible when you think about it.

Kavita, tell me about your experience around mold and indoor air quality.

I haven't worked on any specific initiatives directly related but I've had to deal with

patients whom it took years to figure out that mold and potentially

air quality could be the result of one area which was called Sick Building Syndrome which is a well-known syndrome that's been established over the years for poor indoor air quality, especially in the office setting and then several patients where when we kind of kept doing test after

test and everything from like losing hair to fatigue to you name the symptoms even

just not feeling like their memory was as sharp as it was even the week before.

One of the things that kind of came up in doing just a more kind of occupational inventory

was just their household conditions and asking about mold.

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