Did you Buy New Furniture?

Martha’s story:

One of our clients, a lady in her 60’s (we’ll call her Martha) was experiencing headaches at night as well as eye, nose and throat issues. She swore up and down that she had a mould problem. She hired someone to come in with a thermal imaging camera to look for mould. They highlighted a cold spot in the outer bedroom wall and advised that there might be mould there.

After the expert tore the wall out, all they found was a cold spot missing some insulation. Martha then had MouldMedic® come out and perform an air quality test, which resulted in absolutely clean results.

Her son insisted that she was just imagining things and that she must be crazy. Martha’s headaches continued. We asked her if there was anything else that had changed in the home recently. She replied that she had all the windows replaced, so “it must be the caulking that they used”.

What we found

We asked Marth to do one thing for us: sleep in another room for a couple of nights. Lo and behold, the headaches went away, so the window caulking was not an issue. We asked Martha again  if there was anything that had changed in the bedroom. Martha thought for a bit, and after some hessitation she said, “well I did buy this new furniture”.

Martha bought her furniture from a vendor she found in a flea market. The vendor advertised custom-built furniture. The material that he used was MDF and he covered it with a plastic laminate. Unfortunately he did not seal the MDF drawers and framework of the furniture.

The furniture was off-gassing formaldehyde gasses, which were building up at night and giving her headaches. Once the MDF was sealed, her headaches went away, and the exposure to potential Cancer causing components of her house were reduced.