When Your Home Makes You Sick: Mold, Mycotoxins, & CIRS
- Tim S. Carroll
- 17 hours ago
- 7 min read
Aeris Environmental Inspection — Covington, LA | Serving Louisiana & Mississippi
There's a particular kind of medical story we hear often. It usually starts something like this: I've been to four doctors. My labs are normal. They keep telling me it's stress, or anxiety, or that I need to sleep more. But I don't feel like myself, and I haven't for a long time. Something is wrong, and nobody can tell me what it is.
If that sounds familiar, there's a possibility worth taking seriously. Not because we're trying to scare anyone. Because we've stood inside enough houses where the answer turned out to be in the walls.
We are not health experts and any diagnosis belongs to your physician. What we want to do is explain, plainly, the connection between water-damaged buildings, the mycotoxins they can produce, and a real medical condition called CIRS( Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome), so that if your symptoms fit, you know what questions to ask and where to look next..
Mold, Spores, and Mycotoxins: 3 Different Things
People use "mold" as a catch-all word, but in our work it pays to be precise.
Mold is a fungus. There are tens of thousands of species, and they exist almost everywhere on earth. Mold isn't inherently dangerous. It's part of how the natural world breaks down organic matter. The problem is when it grows in places it shouldn't, in concentrations that overwhelm the people living there.
Mold spores are how mold reproduces. They're microscopic, lightweight, and stay viable for long periods. We breathe in some level of spores every day without consequence. The EPA's mold guidance puts the principle simply: spores are everywhere, but they only become a problem when they land on a wet surface and start to grow.
Mycotoxins are the part most people haven't heard of. These are toxic chemical compounds produced usually when the mold is stresse or growing on water-damaged building materials like drywall, ceiling tile, or wood. Mycotoxins ride on spore fragments and on tiny pieces of the mold itself. They enter the body through inhalation, through skin contact, and through contaminated food. Once inside, the body launches an immune response, and if the toxins keep coming or the body can't clear them, that response doesn't shut off.
That's the bridge from a building problem to a health problem.
What Is CIRS?
CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome)is a multi-system illness triggered when the body cannot clear biotoxins, including mycotoxins from water-damaged indoor environments. The term and the diagnostic framework were developed by Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker, whose Surviving Mold site remains the foundational patient resource on this condition. CIRS is sometimes called "mold illness," or "biotoxin illness," though those last two terms cover broader territory.
The hallmark of CIRS is that it doesn't behave like an allergy. Allergies tend to flare on exposure and quiet down once you leave the trigger. CIRS doesn't and the inflammation persists because the underlying toxins persist. They're not efficiently removed by the immune system in the way a typical allergen would be. Symptoms accumulate, broaden, and start to affect systems that have nothing obvious to do with the lungs or the sinuses.
A useful primer for clinicians is the EPA's Guidance for Clinicians on the Recognition and Management of Health Effects Related to Mold Exposure and Moisture Indoors. It's a short document, and it's worth sharing with your physician if mold is on the table.
Why Some People Get Sick and Other Don't
This is the question that strains relationships: why am I the only one in the house who feels this way?
Roughly one in four people carries a genetic variant in the HLA-DR region of the immune system that makes it harder to recognize and clear certain biotoxins, including those produced by mold in water damaged buildings. In those individuals, exposure that another person shrugs off can set off the inflammatory cascade and once it starts, it tends not to resolve on its own, even after the person leaves the environment.
This isn't theoretical. It explains a clinical pattern we have seen repeadedly: one family member becomes progressively, mysteriously unwell while everyone else in the household reports nothing. The susceptible person isn't imagining it, and they're not weak. Their immune system is working & it's just stuck in a fight it can't finish
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The Surviving Mold "Quick Start" guide walks through the first three steps to determine whether mold may be affecting you. It includes a free online Visual Contrast Sensitivity (VCS) test, a screening tool, not a diagnosis, but a useful early signal.
The Symptom List Is Long
CIRS is sometimes called "the great masquerader" because it touches so many systems. Common symptoms include:
Cognitive: brain fog, difficulty with word recall, executive dysfunction, trouble concentrating
Neurological: headaches, light and sound sensitivity, vertigo, numbness or tingling, tremor
Musculoskeletal: unexplained joint pain, muscle aches, weakness, "ice-pick" pains
Respiratory: shortness of breath, chronic cough, sinus congestion, asthma-like symptoms
Gastrointestinal: abdominal pain, bloating, nausea, changes in appetite
Endocrine and metabolic: unexplained weight changes, excessive thirst, frequent urination, temperature regulation problems, fatigue out of proportion to activity
Immune: chronic sinus issues, frequent infections, new sensitivities to foods or chemicals
Mood and sleep: anxiety or depression, insomnia, vivid or disturbing dreams
Vision: blurred vision, light sensitivity, red or tearing eyes
Because the symptoms overlap with so many other conditions, CIRS is often misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, lupus, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety disorder, depression, ADHD, or "stress." Some patients receive several of those diagnoses in succession before anyone asks about the building.
A landmark scientific review, the World Health Organization's Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality: Dampness and Mould, concluded that occupants of damp or moldy buildings experience increased rates of respiratory symptoms and immunological disturbances. The biological mechanism is real, and the buildings driving it are common.
How Common Are Water Damaged Buildings?
More common than most people realize.
The WHO estimates that 10 to 50 percent of buildings in indoor environments worldwide have some form of moisture problem. In the United States, studies of housing stock suggest that 15 to 40 percent of homes show evidence of dampness or visible mold growth at some point. On the Gulf Coast, where Aeris operates, the number trends toward the high end of that range becuase of hot, humid summers, heavy rainfall, hurricane exposure, and an older houses combine to make moisture management one of the defining challenges of the region.
Common sources we find again and again:
Roof leaks (active or historical)
Plumbing leaks behind walls and under cabinets
HVAC condensate line failures and pan overflows
Improperly vented bathrooms and dryers
Window flashing failures and sliding-door pan failures
Foundation moisture wicking into wall cavities
Crawlspace humidity migrating upward into living space
Post-storm intrusion that was dried at the surface but not in the assembly
Spray foam attic conversions that trapped moisture against the deck
The EPA's guide for homeowners and the CDC/NIOSH mold guidance both emphasize the same point: visible mold is a symptom of a moisture problem, and the moisture problem is what has to be fixed. Bleach on the drywall doesn't solve anything.
What an Environmental Investigation Actually Looks At
If you suspect your home or workplace may be contributing to your symptoms, this is where firms like ours come in. We don't diagnose CIRS, but what we do is answer the building-side question: is your environment driving this?
A thorough indoor environmental investigation typically includes:
Moisture mapping with calibrated meters, identifying elevated readings in materials that should be dry
Infrared thermal imaging to find temperature differentials that indicate hidden water intrusion, missing insulation, or HVAC anomalies behind surfaces
HVAC and building envelope assessment — because the source of contamination is rarely where the symptoms started, and the air handler is often where biological growth amplifies and distributes
Air sampling with calibrated pumps, interpreted against indoor/outdoor comparison and current ACGIH and AIHA methodology
Surface and dust sampling to characterize what's actually settling onto the surfaces you contact every day
ERMI / HERTSMI-2 testing when DNA-based mold species quantification is the right tool for the question, these are the assays clinicians typically request to evaluate environmental safety for a CIRS patient
Plain-language reporting that a physician, attorney, or remediation contractor can actually use
Post-remediation verification so that when work is complete, you have documentation that the space is safe to reoccupy
A short note on testing alone: a mold report by itself is not a diagnosis, and a "clean" air sample is not proof that the building is safe. Sampling is one input among several. Visual inspection, moisture data, building history, and the occupant's symptom pattern all matter. Any inspector who hands you a one-page lab report and calls it a day has done a fraction of the work.
The Right Team
Recovering from CIRS is almost always a team effort. A typical recovery team includes:
A physician trained in environmental medicine. The Surviving Mold practitioner directory lists Shoemaker-certified clinicians. The International Society for Environmentally Acquired Illness (ISEAI) also maintains a searchable directory of physicians and indoor environmental professionals trained in this space.
An indoor environmental professional to identify and characterize the building conditions driving exposure.
A remediation contractor qualified to follow IICRC S520 standards and a written protocol, not a generic "mold removal" pitch.
Sometimes an attorney, particularly in rental, insurance, or construction-defect situations where the building condition has a responsible party.
ISEAI also publishes a free Mold Testing Guide and family resources that's worth downloading if you're early in this process and trying to make sense of options.
If You Suspect Your Home
A few honest things, from us to you:
Not every musty smell is CIRS, and not every symptom is mold. Many people who suspect mold turn out to have a different underlying issue, and good investigators will tell you that plainly. Our job is to give you accurate information about your building, not to confirm what you already fear.
But if it is mold, the building has to be addressed. Medical treatment without environmental remediation rarely holds. Re-exposure leads to re-triggerring. The order of operations is, find the source, remediate properly, verify, then focus on recovery.
The fastest way out is an honest assessment. A real walkthrough, real moisture and thermal data, targeted sampling where it's warranted, and a report you can hand to your doctor and your contractor. That's the standard we hold ourselves to on every job.
If you've read this far and something feels familiar, reach out for just a conversation about your building and what makes sense as a next step.
Quick Resource List
For convenience, here are the resources referenced above in one place.
Government & International Health Agencies
CIRS-Specific Patient and Clinician Resources
Aeris Environmental Inspection, LLC 985-466-7959 | ✉️ testing@aei-iaq.com |
Aeris is a licensed environmental consulting firm specializing in indoor air quality, mold and microbial assessment, water intrusion forensics, and post-remediation verification. We do not diagnose or treat medical conditions. We provide the environmental data your medical team needs to do their work.
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