Breathing Well At Work

Sometimes working in a cube can be difficult.  There isn’t much privacy and if your neighbor has a cold then you are likely to catch it as well.  The saying goes “familiarity breeds contempt,” and in this care familiarity can breed mold. 

It typically starts like this: Friday comes around and you feel awful.  You’re tired, you head might hurt and you’re a bit sluggish.  Since, it’s Friday you don’t really think about and you chalk it up to working too hard or needing a vacation.  Once at work it just gets worse.  You can’t breathe, your throat is all scratchy and you might even start to sound like you’re going hoarse.  “Great I’m getting a cold,” you think.  And right before the weekend!  You down some Tylenol, maybe even Dayquil and keep on trucking through your day.

Day is over and the weekend is here.  You go home, go to bed and wake up a little groggy, with a headache, but today instead of getting worse you get better! You drink your coffee and things start looking up.  By Sunday you have completely forgotten about feeling awful on Friday.  Monday rolls around but this time you start feeling bad again, about lunch time.  “What is wrong with me?!”

Well, the good news is you aren’t getting a cold!  The bad news is it’s in the air…at work that is.  That’s right, you probably have mold growing in your office, or maybe the ceiling if you work in a cube.  Mold can cause people to experience allergy like reactions or even flu like symptoms!  Mold is serious stuff, and should be remedied immediately.

Mold is caused by moisture and warm environment mixing over a period of48-72 hours.  It doesn’t take long for mold spores to start growing and once they start, it can be difficult to stop them.  Typically in the early stages of mold you cannot see it, sometimes you can smell it but not always.  If you can’t see it and you can’t smell it, then how do you know it’s there?  You have to test for it.  Often when employees are ill at work but then go home and feel better that is a classic sign of possible mold.

If that sounds like you then it is recommended that you speak with your supervisor.  They will talk to the building manager and have a professional come and look at the building.  The building manager will typically hire an industrial hygienist to come out and run some tests.  The hygienist will take some air samples and maybe even a surface sample or core sample of the wall to be certain that all possible areas for mold have been tested.  If you need to have the air quality of your building tested then click hereto find an industrial hygienist in your area.