PRIME Engineering & Environmental Building ServicesAdditional Mold Resources

The National Institutes of Health (NIH)
It is the mission of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to discover how the environment affects people in order to promote healthier lives.  The vision of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is to provide global leadership for innovative research that improves public health by preventing disease and disability.

The first key area of focus by the NIH is fundamental research to investigate the basic biological processes of how our bodies function, and the pathways and systems susceptible to the effects of environmental stressors.  This research addresses all levels of biological organization – molecular, biochemical pathway, cellular, tissue, organ, model organism, human, and population – and builds on the knowledge from new tools and techniques that allow us to ask more in-depth questions about the effects of our environment on biological systems.  These new research questions arise from our expanding knowledge of the genome, epigenome, and regulation of gene expression, and appreciation of direct effects of stressors on cells that do not involve genomic targets.  They call for systems and computational approaches, and recognition of the importance of changes in sensitivity to environmental approaches, and recognition of the importance of changes in sensitivity to environmental stressors at different life stages, e.g., prenatal, pregnancy, old age.

The second key area of focus is the study of environmental exposures themselves – internal and external – not just chemical environmental pollutants, but also exposures arising from a variety of sources, such as the micro biome, infectious agents, nutritional sources, and stress.  Key research needs include technology development for exposure measurement, including better biological markers, new sensor and detector tools, remote detection of exposures, more sensitive analytical methods, high-throughput predictive pharmacokinetic modes, and informatics tools to improve quantization of information on exposure from large datasets.  This area of focus intersects with the first key area of focus, since new metrics of exposure include biological effects on key pathway involved in disease pathogenesis. 

New system-based approaches to exposure science are now emerging that utilize omics technologies.  This approach recognizes that environmentally related health and disease are the result of the totality of a person’s environmental exposures, from all sources and routes, across the life span.   A segment of our strategic focus will be to engage the scientific community in the effort to clearly define the life-span of exposure and to create research opportunities to explore it.   

According to the NIH and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, residents can do any of the following to prevent and/or get rid of mold inside their homes:

  1. Avoid using carpeting in areas that may become wet such as kitchens, basements, and bathrooms.
  2. Maintain indoor humidity below 55%
  3. Clean and dry your living space
  4. Keep your home well ventilated and use exterior exhaust fans in kitchens and bathrooms.
  5. Fix any and all water leaks and problems within 48 hours.

You  can connect to the NIH with this link:
  http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/mold/

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Vero Beach, FL 32960
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