Ah-ah-ah-allergen Report

Contaminants:

There is fecal coliform and E. coli bacteria in the canals. This is being tested about every two to four weeks and it rises and falls. How much does this matter? I don’t know. The EPA isn’t identifying the specific type of E. coli that has been found, and there are hundreds. Only a handful of types are life-threatening. The others are just different from your own, friendly, E. coli, which happily help you digest the food in your intestine. Foreign E. coli can cause your friendly kind to die, giving you what most people consider food poisoning. You probably have foreign E. coli on your keyboard right now.

Right after the flood, there was a lot of testing for chemicals, petro- and otherwise, in the standing floodwaters and sediment in New Orleans. In the last month, not much testing has been done. Most of the stuff found early on was below what the EPA considers dangerous, but there were some areas with some contaminants above those levels. It appears that most of the danger from heavy metals and petrochemicals occurred during and just after the flood and the cleanup of sediment has reduced, and will further reduce, the danger. I don’t think this is a real issue for us, barring some new information.

Mold:

I don’t know. You heard me right – I don’t know. How can this be, you may wonder, when every night you watch the television news for your city - or the nearest one, anyway - and you hear what the pollen and mold counts are, right?

The official source for this information is the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Allergy labs and clinics around the country volunteer to measure the number of mold spores and/or pollen particles in their areas and report them to the Academy. Your news station gets this information and puts it in the weather report. Since approximately May 2005, the only reporting clinic in Louisiana was in Baton Rouge, and that clinic doesn’t even measure mold counts, so there’s no reasonable way for us to know the answer to the mold question.

Outdoor molds aren’t really that big of an issue, anyway, and that’s the only kind of mold for which the AAAAI gathers information. The mold that makes you really sick grows in buildings. The only testing done for that kind of mold is paid for by private business owners, and we’d have to know exactly which buildings we will be in and somehow induce the owners to give us the information. I’m guessing that most business owners haven’t even done such testing.

Mold was originally the expressed concern and I would like to re-address that issue for myself. At the time we first discussed it, mold was not a big concern of mine. It’s not the most important thing to me now, but lately I have begun to have some problems related to my nose surgery, and I’ve become a bit more worried about the prospect of staying in a place that may have a larger-than-usual amount of mold spores and that may, if the latest reports are correct, simply smell bad.

When I complete a long run, my nose swells and I have a 24- to 48-hour-long recovery period during which my nose is extremely sensitive. I can smell the fabric softener in another person’s clothing from about ten feet away. I can smell people’s feet inside their shoes. I can smell the shampoo residue, or the oil, in others’ hair.

Irritants are everywhere and they make me sneeze uncontrollably. My nose runs. This is considerably more uncomfortable than anything I go through on the run itself. My doctor doesn’t know how long this will last, but he believes I have at least another three months before my swelling completely subsides. Running seems to be slowing that process, because I have at least a little swelling each time I run. The long runs are the worst. My nose was actually purple yesterday when I finished, and today I am experiencing a most unpleasant sensitivity. I count myself lucky that no one at the office has worn perfume.

The prospect of trying to sleep in a place with additional irritants and strong odors is very unappealing to me as I write this.

Okay, tribe – that’s all I’ve got. Your turn.