Is Your Apartment Killing You? - Frequently Asked Questions

Is Your Apartment Killing You?	Frequently Asked Questions
Introduction Timeline Discovery From Bad, to Worse Why Should I Be worried? Can Mold Cause Cancer? Summary FAQ Appendices	I have tried to answer some of the most common questions I have gotten. If you have a question not addressed here, feel free to send me an email. Send to: aptguy2@apthorrors.com If the sewer kept backing up, why didn't you move out? I had no idea how much of a health risk it was. Drucker and Falk certainly didn't warn me. They treated it as if it were a minor problem and I believed them. The backups would always happen at the worst possible time. The backups were either right before my qualifier, or finals, or a conference where I had to present, etc. I also had roommates who were not too keen on moving. Each time Drucker and Falk promised that the problem had been corrected and would never happen again. Did anyone else living in the apartment get sick? My ex-fiancée lived with me for two years and she did get sick (she has asked me not to discuss her medical problems). She started having health problems about the same time as I did. Her health problems miraculously disappeared within weeks of moving out of Sumter Square. I had 2 roommates after she left, both only stayed one year. The first was from the mountains and liked to leave his windows open. The air duct to his room was actually shut. He was out a lot and pretty much came home to sleep. The second roommate spent most of his time at his girlfriend's place. Apparently, neither one was in the apartment long enough to develop problems. Why didn't you tell your doctors about the sewage backups? Do you tell your doctor about a leaking sink? Drucker and Falk told me that "It'll be dry in a day or two and everything will be OK." I was naive enough to believe them. I knew sewage had bacteria and could make you sick, but I didn't know anything about the greatest risk, which was (according to the health department) the mold that grows afterward. I never had any symptoms right after the sewage backup (except for the infection I got after breathing the dust in the airbox). Everything would be fine for a couple weeks and then, in a matter of days, my lymph nodes would swell dramatically. I would rack my brain trying to think of what I had done around the time they started swelling, but I never thought of what happened 2 weeks ago. The 10-14 day period between the backup and the symptoms is just about right for mold. According to the health department, mold will start growing within hours and have "luxuriant growth" within a week.
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