SMELL! The sound of the word itself brings a poor feeling out of most people. Granted, in some cultures [like France], smells evoke a hint of romance. To most cultures it evokes the need to clean out the refrigerator.
When doctors can’t seem to keep people well, they often call us to check the patient’s home for infectious materials like mold.
One thing is common to all these houses – smell. Sometimes we can follow our noses to the cause of these diseases.
When we go into schools, we tend to notice that the more the school smells, the more kids have ADHD.
In the Middle Ages, physicians believed diseases, like the plague, were caused by smells and gases. One treatment for the plague was roses. Remember the old rhyme, “Roses, Roses, We all fall down.”
http://www.kitchendoctor.com/articles/four_thieves.htmlhttp://www.midtermpapers.com/15040.htm
No smell doesn’t cause diseases. But things that stink can cause many diseases.
TRASH This, of course, is the most obvious. Flies and other bugs eat the trash and then bite us. Solution: Clean the trash can. Few families have enough trash to cause disease. But we have seen some. Some people never throw away anything. Stacks of newspapers in a moist environment can feed many infectious agents.
http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/janmar95/jan0395/trash.html
GAS No, not an upset stomach. We had one family that had a sick child. His bedroom door was beside the gas fireplace in the den. We walked into the house and immediately called the gas company because the gas fireplace had a leak. That was a simple case.
Some people close their garage door after parking the car. The hot car will give off gases for up to 20 minutes. The same thing will happen if you park a hot lawn mower in the crawlspace under the house.
MOISTURE This is the biggest cause of stinky homes AND sick kids.
We were invited to investigate a home where 2 kids were sick. Their immune systems were so compromised that their doctor pulled them out of school. She was afraid that they would pick up something from another child. In their compromised state they would be unable to fight off even a simple cold.
Their laundry room was stinky.
http://themoldlab.com/Mytcotoxins.htm
The mother saved every newspaper she had ever bought and she stored them in the laundry room. The mold that fed off the paper and moisture combination was killing her kid’s white blood cells.
We cleaned and dried the laundry and the kids’ health immediately bounced back.
Disease causing mold will also grow on sweaty shoes placed in a tight closet.
It will also grow:
- On wet towels on the bathroom floor
- Sweating A/C duct work
- And in wet basements
One sick stinky house we looked at had a pond in the crawlspace. It seems that the developer had one empty lot in the subdivision with a spring in the middle. He didn’t want to loose the money on an unsold lot. So he built a house over the spring.
Zoning regulations wouldn’t allow the homeowner to drain the water into the street. Any other draining would put the water in their downhill neighbors yard. That could get them sued.
If you have a moist house, the stink will get into your clothes. You will carry the stink on dates, to church and to work. If you go into another moist building, you could actually contaminate that building, too.
SOLUTIONS:
1> Mask the smell. Many people fill the air with aflowery smell to cover up the stink. Its job is to be more powerful than the unpleasant smell. Is this a solution? If all you worry about is the smell, yes. Is the part of the smell that causes disease still there? Of course.
2> Take away the ability of the nose to smell. Most of those little devices that eliminate smells actually numb the nose so we can’t smell anything. They use chemicals caused neurotoxins. These neurotoxins damage the nerves of smell if we use them long enough. By the way, the smell is still there.
https://www.rmbarry.com/pamphlets/toxin_checklist.html
3> Remove the cause of the smell a> Don’t leave wet towels laying around b> Periodically open the cabinet doors under the sink so there is no moisture buildup. c> Dry out the crawlspace and attic d> Use smell removers like Tea Tree Oil, and grapefruit seed extract. These are in cleaners and disinfectants found at most health food stores. These get rid of the smell by killing the smell makers. And they are totally safe.
So if your home stinks, you have several options. Hide it, ignore it, destroy your nose or eliminate the problem
