you could say there are two types of
mold the good and the bad
penicillium notatum for example give
rise to the drug penicillin which by
some estimates has saved at least 200
million human lives while other molds
like Aspergillus flavus produce toxins
that can harm and even kill you but
whether or not you wanted around mold is
everywhere in fact you're likely
breeding it in right now and there's
pretty much nothing you can do to get
rid of it mold is a fungus like
mushrooms and it's made up of thousands
of thread like filaments called hyphy it
uses those filaments like roots to feed
- extend into your stale bread or rotten
tomato and start releasing digestive
enzymes which are actually similar to
the enzymes in our stomachs molds digest
their food just like we do except if you
were a mold it would be more like just
laying your face in your food and
soaking up the food through your skin
that's Kathy Hodge a mycologist and mold
maven at Cornell University
she says that by the time you actually
see that fuzzy mold hyphy are already
hard at work deep below the surface so
cutting out the moldy part does little
to harm the entire organism just like
ripping off leaves doesn't kill a plant
what's worse is that molds have an
incredibly broad diet yes they love
bread but some species also love dead
skin soap and even the paper covering
drywall that's according to Nicolas
money who has authored several books on
fungus there's a good food source for
these molds lying beneath the paint so
when not struck she gets wet
BAM they'll go for it but if there's one
thing that makes mold so difficult to
manage it's this spores spores are like
seeds which moulds use to reproduce
they'll produce these aerial structures
like little little stalks
all microscopic and then they'll form
spores at the tips of those stalks and
then in response to airflow though
spools will be carried that they'll get
up into the atmosphere a single mold can
make hundreds of thousands of spores so
it's no surprise that mold counts in
cities like Chicago can be as high as a
hundred and twenty-five thousand spores
per cubic meter you've got millions of
tons of these falls in the atmosphere
doesn't look like it right but yeah if
you could really if you could visualize
that it would be mind-blowing
absolutely and they're not just outside
there in your home they're everywhere
to show you what I mean I set up a
little experiment in my apartment all a
high school biology
these are petri dishes and they are
filled with what's called agar which is
essentially a growth medium for mold so
I'm very excited to place them around my
apartment and see what kinds of mold
will grow in them I put one by my bed
another by the window and one in my
bathroom and I left them open for about
an hour to collect spores a week later
they looked like this yeah
I'm not sure if it's beautiful or
absolutely disgusting the dish by the
window had the most diverse assemblage
about ten species most of which are just
common indoor molds according to
Professor Hodge and the one by my bed
you know where I sleep
wasn't exactly empty now this seems
terrifying but is it so at least one of
the molds I collected is likely
cladosporium and according to money a
fast propulsion of the human species is
actually reactive to clatter spore 'i'm
in other words if we get enough of the
spores of klaris for him in our lungs
that they'll create some kind of an
allergic reaction and high mold counts
can also trigger asthma he says but it
actually gets worse you see some molds
produce nasty chemicals called
mycotoxins such as stachybotrys or black
mold stachybotrys make airborne toxins
and they seem to also affect our health
even our cognitive abilities are
sometimes affected by high doses of mold
toxins and it's actually these
mycotoxins that make moldy food
potentially dangerous some cheese molds
are actually toxin
for example a particular one makes a
toxin called penetrance that is a
neurotoxin
so just eating lots of moldy things
without knowing what mold is growing on
them is probably not a great idea but
here's the thing for mold to actually
cause you harm there needs to be a lot
of it even if it's toxin producing so
most homes like mine are safe and there
are a lot of molds that we don't want to
live without I'm not just talking about
penicillin but molds like Tolley
palladium and fleadom which is used to
make an immunosuppressive drug called
cyclosporine and there's this one this
is aspergillus niger it's some people's
favorite mold because this mold can you
see it yeah it's adorable isn't it this
mold makes almost all the citric acid
that's produced in the world and citric
acid is a really common food
preservative and flavor additive so the
next time you're drinking soda or
fighting off an infection think of molds
they may be impossible to get rid of and
frankly just straight-up gross but we
definitely don't want all of them to die
I'm just assuming that things are gonna
be grosser in the bathroom near the but
near the toilet so cool