A new report says that while most children’s bedrooms are clean, there are some areas of the home where the mold is a problem.
“We know that the mold that’s in our children’s homes is very persistent,” said Dr. Amy Johnson, the medical director for the Minnesota Department of Health.
“And in many of the homes we work with, the children’s beds, the toys and the furniture, we also have mold.
We don’t want to have children with a disease that’s so prevalent.”
Mold is a fungus that can cause breathing problems, skin problems and even heart problems.
It can also cause breathing difficulties for kids, and if left untreated, it can be deadly.
“It can be a very debilitating disease,” Johnson said.
Johnson says children with the fungus are at greater risk of respiratory illness because they’re at greater levels of exposure to mold.
“What’s more concerning is the fact that children with mold are at higher risk for death because of the high rates of morbidity and mortality associated with the disease,” she said.
“And we know that in our own community, it is very prevalent, so we don’t see this as a new issue that we haven’t seen before.”
Johnson says the CDC is looking at ways to combat the problem, and she says she’s hopeful that new vaccines can prevent children from developing mold.
She also wants to know more about how many children in her area are getting mold.
She says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been collecting data on children in their homes and the data shows a big increase in the numbers of children with symptoms.
“The data suggests that children that live in homes where there are mold problems are at increased risk of the disease that we have seen in other parts of the country,” Johnson added.