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Mould: The Health Risk Growing on Your Wall
原文原文 / Original TextSylvester Ojenagbon
Walk into almost any home after a heavy rain, and you will encounter it somewhere. It could be a dark patch behind the wardrobe, a grey bloom along the bathroom ceiling, or a musty smell that never quite clears. Mould is so ordinary that most people stop noticing it, and that is precisely the problem. What appears to be a cosmetic nuisance is one of the more overlooked public health issues of our time, and it is worsening as cities grow denser and damper.
Now, mould thrives wherever there is moisture, warmth, and something organic to feed on, and in a house, that could be wood, paper, dust or the glue behind wallpaper. It reproduces by releasing spores into the air, and those spores are everywhere, all the time, harmless in small amounts. Problems begin when moisture lets it grow in large colonies. That is when spore counts rise sharply, along with the volatile compounds it releases as it grows.
The health effects are quite common. They are the sort of thing doctors see every week without always tracing them back to a damp wall: coughing, wheezing, a blocked nose, itchy eyes, and skin rashes. For people with asthma, mould exposure can trigger attacks. Children are particularly vulnerable because their lungs are still developing, and research links early exposure to damp, mouldy housing with later childhood asthma. People with weakened immune systems face an additional risk because certa
The World Health Organization has been blunt about this for years. It finds that occupants of damp or mouldy buildings face up to a 75% greater risk of respiratory symptoms and asthma. It calls for the issue to be considered a public health priority rather than a private inconvenience to sort out alone. Studies from Europe and North America found that between a fifth and a third of homes have damp or mould problems, which are serious enough to be considered a health risk. The true figure is almo
Bring this down to Africa, and the picture becomes more urgent rather than less. The continent has the ingredients for mould growth in abundance. High humidity across West, Central, and East Africa; a long rainy season in many regions; and a housing stock that often lacks proper damp proofing or ventilation. That does not remove the part each household plays. Climate sets the conditions. However, it is usually daily habits, such as how quickly a leak is reported, whether wet clothes are dried in
Nigeria illustrates this well. Lagos alone experiences rainfall of around 1,600 to 1,800 millimetres a year. This arrives in intense bursts that overwhelm drainage. That water seeps into buildings through roofs and walls that were never built to withstand it. In Port Harcourt, Calabar, and parts of the southeast, the humidity barely lets up even outside the rainy season. A large portion of Nigeria’s urban population lives in rented rooms or family compounds. And it is easy, though only partly fa
This calls for attention because Nigeria already carries a heavy burden of respiratory illness. Pneumonia remains one of the leading causes of death in children under five in the country. Mould is far from the only factor at play, but indoor air quality is one of the more modifiable pieces of that puzzle. Unlike outdoor air pollution, which requires a policy change on a scale that takes years, damp and mould in a home can often be eliminated with a roof repair, better ventilation, or properly dr
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来源：Daily Trust Nigeria (https://dailytrust.com/)
原文链接：https://dailytrust.com/mould-the-health-risk-growing-on-your-wall/
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发表于 2026-10-6 07:04:25