What causes mildew odours?

Mould and mildew can build up over time and can get a foothold in the tiniest of cracks. Mould sneaks into your home in the form of moisture. Often, the giveaway that your home has mould is the smell. If a home smells old, damp, or musky, it is likely that those odours are caused by mould or mildew. Mould and mildew can lurk in our homes both in obvious places, and places we can’t see. Both are types of fungus that grow in situations where there is prolonged exposure to moisture.

In the home, mildew is most often found on clothing, floors, ceilings, walls, and furniture in environments where humidity is not adequately controlled and regular cleaning doesn’t occur. Basements, leaky plumbing, and cracked foundation where groundwater seeps in are common areas where mildew can become a problem. Mildew is usually caused by too much moisture in the air combined with poor ventilation and warm temperatures. It needs an organic food source to grow. That is usually provided by organic materials used in construction like paper, wood, or dirt.

You can recognize mould by its fuzzy texture and blue or green color, and mildew by its flat texture and white or brown color. The strong musty odour of mildew is caused by the gasses released when it forms. Those gasses can quickly be absorbed by other materials in your home like carpet, clothing, and insulation. Therefore, even if you get to the source of mildew and stop it from further spreading, removing its lingering odours can be a challenge if the problem is not addressed early on.

Why would mould and mildew be an issue?

If you have found mould in your home, and with the thousands of strains of mould and mildew, you are more likely than not to encounter mould in your home. In recent studies, mould has been found in virtually every home in some capacity. The dangers of mould are certainly a concern. There is no way to tell from just sight if the mould in your home is the toxic strain. Regardless of toxicity, exposure to mould and mildew spores on a continual basis leads to health issues.

Are mildew odours really a danger to your health?

The symptoms that can present themselves when you’ve been exposed to mildew are obviously unpleasant, but can they lead to more serious health consequences? There are over 100,000 types of mould and mildew, and not all appear in the same types of conditions or cause the same symptoms. At its most extreme, a toxic mould called Stachybotrys has been known to cause death when ingested in large quantities directly.

Besides being directly linked to asthma and respiratory diseases, mildew odours in the home have been associated with higher likelihood of depression. In general, the cleaner the air is that we breathe, the less chance we have of suffering from symptoms that arise from too much mould, mildew, or other allergen or chemical exposure.

The danger of mould and mildew odours in your home

Mould and mildew can be found in different places in our home and even in our food, and some varieties are more toxic than others. Much of the problem with these fungi arise from the fact that they grow in the dark, hidden spaces, and we may not realize they are even making us ill until the damage has already been done. Also, even when we can see the source of mould and clean it up, millions of mould spores can be left airborne and can continue to exacerbate symptoms.

Moulds that are particularly dangerous are those that are classified as mycotoxins. When clusters of this type of mould build up, either in the air or on a surface in your home, they continuously release more spores into the air and create a dangerous environment for you and your family. If you can see the mould visible on a surface in your home, you know that the problem is already serious. Even without being able to see mould or mildew, you can still fall prey to ingesting too much of it if it is hiding in places you can’t see.

Mould and mildew in clothing

Have you ever woken up in the morning after a very long night and realized that you left your laundry in the washer overnight? This is a very common but smelly mistake that is just one of the main issue that can lead to musty and mildew smell in your clothes. Mildew smells are quite the chore to remove and to rewash them over and over seem just to make the matters worse. Here are some of the common causes for mildew smells and what you can do to remove the odours from your clothes on the first wash.

Any clothing can begin to smell musty due to damp storage, re-wearing, or even unclean laundry machines. We discovered some tips for people hoping to remove musty smells from clothing. Below is a summary of some of those tips:

1)Make sure your clothes washer itself is clean; if clothes smell musty right after washing make sure to clean the washer by running it through an empty cycle with hot water using OdorKlenz Laundry.

2)If the manufacturer’s cleaning instructions allow, wash your clothes in the hottest water possible to eliminate odours.

A commonly overlooked place for mould growth is on our clothing. The truth is that our clothing (especially those stored away in closets and attics) is the ideal place for mould growth. If you happen to find mould on an article of clothing – hopefully it’s been caught quickly – there are a few ways to go about removing it but keep in mind that the longer the mould has been located on the fabric, the worse it will smell, and the more time it has to eat away and ruin your clothing and linens.