Friday Fungus: Is work making you ill? Blame it on the wallpaper

Killer wallpaper

We've know for a long time that wallpaper can be dangerous:

Scheele's Green was a colouring pigment that had been used in fabrics and wallpapers from around 1770. It was named after the Swedish chemist Scheele who invented it. The pigment was easy to make, and was a bright green colour. But Scheele's Green was copper arsenite. And under certain circumstances it could be deadly. Gosio discovered that if wallpaper containing Scheele's Green became damp, and then became mouldy (this was in the days of animal glues) the mould could carry out a neat chemical trick to get rid of the copper arsenite. It converted it to a vapour form of arsenic. Normally a mixture of arsine, dimethyl and trimethyl arsine. This vapour was very poisonous indeed. Breathe in enough of the vapour, and you would go down with a nasty case of arsenic poisoning.

This, some say, was what killed Napoleon.

Anyway - and you'll note the role of mould in making this nasty wallpaper effect happen - to bring the story up to date:

In laboratory tests, "we demonstrated that mycotoxins could be transferred from a mouldy material to air, under conditions that may be encountered in buildings," said study corresponding author Dr Jean-Denis Bailly.

"Thus, mycotoxins can be inhaled and should be investigated as parameters of indoor air quality, especially in homes with visible fungal contamination," added Bailly, a professor of food hygiene at the National Veterinary School of Toulouse, France.

'Sick building syndrome' has been blamed on lots of things but it does seem there's some mileage in blaming the wallpaper (or indeed any mouldy material knocking about). More worrying is the associated evidence that our enthusiasm for energy-efficiency and hermetically sealed environments makes matters worse;

The study was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Creating an increasingly energy-efficient home may aggravate the problem, Bailly and his colleagues said.

Such homes "are strongly isolated from the outside to save energy", but various water-using appliances such as coffee makers "could lead to favourable conditions for fungal growth", Bailly explained in a society news release.

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The Friday Fungus - Ergot!

When I set out to talk about my fascination with mushrooms I didn't envisage straying into the wider reaches of the myco-world. But talking about good food without talking about moulds (or molds) is to miss out on some of the magic that fungi bring to our lives! Without moulds and yeasts we wouldn't have Stilton or Roquefort, we wouldn't have risen bread or beer and we'd be dropping dead from diseases we currently treat with fungus-derived anti-biotics.

Until a few day ago I know little beyond the fact that moulds and yeasts existed and were very important parts of the overall ecosystem.

In "Importance and Significance of Molds and Yeast The Basic Features, Habits, and Characteristics of Mold and Yeast", Prof. Donald Reinhart observes that...

"...fungi have happy lives in dark or light places as they digest simple organic foods like paper, cardboard, glues and starch. They are helpful when they digest logs, twigs and leaves, produce antibiotics or help make cheeses."

So moulds are a good thing? Well yes and no - as well as the good guys helping us with getting drunk, turning milk into cheese and treating our ailments, there are also bad guys. These problem moulds include ergot, mildew, athlete's foot and the carcinogenic Aspergilla moulds.

Ergot (Claviceps purpurea) is especially interesting since it illustrates both the good and the bad of fungal moulds - it is the cause of lethal (and madness-inducing) ergotism, the source for LSD and a valuable resource for pharmaceutical research. Plus many ergot derived drugs have a profound sexuality-enhancing effect - not a surprise since ergot was (rather riskily) used as a sexual drug from ancient times. The fungus was also used to promote miscarriage - in effect for abortion.

Ergot is also suggested as a factor behind episodes of mass hallucination such as the Salem Witch trials as well as underlying the origins of revolutionary actions (e.g. The Great Fear in France).

So there you are - ergot, one little mould that infects rye, millet and sorghum has had a really profound impact on human history, health and questionable song lyrics!