To get an idea of the restoration work needed so the Bowery redevelopment project in downtown Akron meets a critical deadline, look up at the large, ornate plaster ceiling over the ground floor of the long-neglected Landmark Building, which was built in 1923.
Paint is peeling and flaking away. The plaster itself, a design incorporating flower-like rosettes and larger pieces with eagles bearing shields, is chipped, cracked or bulging in places. Some pieces are missing in whole or in part.
It all has to be repaired and restored by Nov. 29, along with myriad other restorations and repairs inside and outside the six buildings that front along South Main Street next to the Akron Civic Theatre. Miss the November deadline and the $42 million project doesn’t qualify for historic tax credits that are an important part of its financing package.
Meet Larry Hutson and Anthony Mendoza, two journeyman plasterers with contractor A.C. Plastering Inc. in Cleveland. For the past couple of months, they have methodically worked their way along the Landmark ceiling.
The ceiling, which is securely suspended using wires and hemp-infused plaster from an intricate metal lattice, is in no danger of falling down, said Hutson, 55, a Canton resident.
“We don’t have to take it down and redo it,” Hutson said. “They want us to give them a paintable surface, so we’ll get all the loose paint off we can, get this bonded good.”
The peeling paint and damaged plaster is largely caused by exposure to water, Hutson said. “With plaster [damage], it all comes down to moisture, moisture or movement. One of the two.”
Hutson and Mendoza have been making rubber molds of the rosettes, eagle and shield, and other pieces, so they can pour plaster replacements for sections that can’t be repaired. One rubber mold allows them to make as many new pieces as needed.
Mendoza, 36, from Rocky River, spent part of his time this day coating wax over a large plaster eagle and shield section, which he called a medallion, as he prepared to make a mold of the piece.
“When we put the rubber mold over it, we will be able to peel it off without the rubber sticking to the plaster,” he said. “It will allow us to make casts of the medallion here.”
Mendoza said he is enjoying the work but said he felt overwhelmed when he walked into the Landmark Building for the first time and saw the scope of the project.
“It’s a lot of work, a lot of restoration,” he said. “Some stuff looks like it might be OK but as you go and scrape the paint off, a piece might fall off.”
When the restored ceiling is painted, no one will ever know it was repaired, Hutson said.
“It’s beautiful. Did you notice there are 13 stars on the [eagle] shield?” Hutson said. “13 colonies. I’ve got to figure that’s it. 13 stars. That’s pretty awesome.”
Plaster can last a long, long time under the right circumstances, Hutson said. He pointed to a damaged area.
“As you can see, there’s places where water just ruins this,” he said. “Keep the water away from it, plaster will sit there for almost, well, we’ve got pyramids with plaster in them.”
Because the Landmark ceiling plaster is combined with hemp or a burlap-type weave binder, that makes it extremely durable, Hutson said.
“That is amazingly strong,” he said. “That whole ceiling is bound and tight.”
Hutson and Mendoza figure they have maybe two months to go before their work in the Landmark Building and other parts of the Bowery is finished, meaning they will meet their deadline.
The effects of flooding can last throughout silage feedout. Crops damaged by any weather event — from flooding to hail or drought — are more prone to mold infestation and subsequent toxin production.
Once producers see mold growth, much of the crop’s digestible nutrients have already been used by yeasts, which grow first and cause heating. In some cases, mold may produce mycotoxins, which can bring down production, affect herd health and fertility and even be a food safety hazard.
Mycotoxins are produced by specific molds and can cause serious problems in cattle ranging from reduced feed intake to a suppressed immune response. It’s virtually impossible to completely avoid mycotoxin exposure, as the toxins can be produced both in the field on the growing crop and during storage. In high-risk situations, when the crop has been damaged or stressed, the potential for mold infestation increases significantly.
Unfortunately, producers can’t control what happens to the crop in the field. To help minimize spoilage in the silage, producers can use forage inoculants and focus on good management practices.
Silage inoculated with Lactobacillus buchneri 40788 will be more resistant to heating and spoilage. This inoculant reduces yeast levels, the initiators of spoilage. L. buchneri 40788 applied at 400,000 CFU per gram of silage or 600,000 CFU per gram of high-moisture corn (HMC), has been uniquely reviewed by the FDA and allowed to claim improved aerobic stability.
Covering or sealing silage can help reduce oxygen exposure and further reduce the opportunity for spoilage.
During feedout, discard visibly moldy silage. Feeding even small amounts of spoiled silage has been shown to damage the rumen mat1 — where fiber degradation in cattle occurs. When rumen function is impaired, cattle aren’t able to absorb nutrients from any feed sources well.
Moving is stressful enough without having to deal with the loss of irreplaceable family treasures. But that’s what happened to Sid Barrett and his family when they moved from Atlanta to Taos, New Mexico last year.
Barrett said that after charging him “a fortune” to store his pod full of musical instruments, a fifty-year collection of vinyl records and CDs, and all his family memorabilia, the storage company returned the pod to him “full of water, mold, live insects, and completely ruined property.” Instead of packing, he said, the family had to hire a junk removal service to get rid of the mess.
Barrett was particularly saddened by the loss of his beloved Moog synthesizer, which had accompanied him on countless music gigs around the South. In a mock obituary for “Minimoog Model D Serial No. 6217 (1974-2018)” published on Facebook, Barrett wrote that No. 6217 “was found unconscious three weeks ago after being subjected to months of high temperatures and mold, even though its owner paid extra for climate-controlled storage. It never regained consciousness. Its brother, Kurzweil KX1000, died in the same storage pod.”
To top off what Barrett calls the “Move from Hell,” he and his exhausted family finally made it to their new home only to find the local moving company said it had no record of him reserving a crew to unload a truck – which Barrett says he did.
In this case, the self-storage company may be in for a surprise: Barrett has had a long career in law, including 12 years as head of consumer protection for the Georgia Attorney General’s office. He has filed a claim with the company and is prepared to pursue legal action if necessary.
A rise in claims
Barrett’s case may be unusual, but it is not unheard-of. There were 2,741 complaints against storage companies logged by the Better Business Bureau (BBB)in 2012 (in the combined categories of moving and storage companies, portable storage and storage units, and storage referrals). Claims against storage operators have also risen in recent years, due in part to aging buildings and deferred maintenance during the recession, according to Inside Self Storage, an industry publication.
Of course, the number of BBB complaints is not unusually high compared to the number of customers – 12.2 million, according to a 2017 demand study provided to me by the Self Storage Association. According to this insider profile, the average storage unit renter is on the young side (28% are Millennials), married and college-educated, with most saying they’re storing things they don’t have room for at their house.
Other reasons for renting a storage unit include inheriting property after a death (9%), storing a relative’s property whose housing situation was disrupted (11%), and being in a natural disaster (3%). Curiously, 15% reported they were storing property “they no longer wanted or needed.”
Most important to customers – a third of whom plan to keep their stuff in storage from 1 to 2 years — was “anytime access,” with the top 15 wish list including electronic gates, closeness to home, drive-up parking, pest control, and humidity control all. Besides electronic gates, renters were most willing to pay extra for pest control.
A look at BBB complaints suggests why: A number of renters were indignant to find their belongings contaminated by rodent droppings or damage from water or mold. Other BBB complaints typically center on unexpected charges or difficulty getting in touch with a storage operator.
One unanswered BBB complaint a couple filed against a self-storage unit in Lanham, Maryland, talks about their frustration after visiting says the storage unit after five months. When they went to retrieve their winter clothes, the complaint said, “We open the box with our daughters’ shoes [and] there was white mold. We spot white mold on the walls of the unit, furniture, dresser, mattresses, & boxes…Our kids are depressed and disturbed by the lost [sic] of everything.”
Newly opened self-storage place
Vizual Studios/Shutterstock
Another family that moved from Virginia to Florida was incensed by the loss of their nearly $4,000 Oushak rug and other valuables, which was damaged during the move. They charged that the moving ad storage company’s containers were “faulty,” with broken seals. “Would not use this company again or recommend anyone who cares about their furnishings getting wet, moldy and ruined,” they wrote in an April 25, 2019 BBB complaint.
The Self Storage Association declined to be interviewed for this article. However, a review of commentary by Inside Self Storage – a separate organization — suggests that a number of owners are taking complaints seriously — investing in new roofing, better security, unit door seals, and pallets that keep customers’ belongings a few inches off the floor in case water seeps in.
“A devastating loss”
Since the self-storage industry is largely unregulated on a federal and state level, the advice that many consumer advocates tend to give is simple: Do not leave anything that’s irreplaceable in a storage unit.
One family learned this the hard way in their dealings with 1-800-PACKRAT. They wrote in a July 3, 2019 complaint to the BBB that their family had put all their belongings in storage after a “horrific” car accident led to their mother’s death and left them homeless. Then, two weeks after the storage company processed their check for $1230, they were aghast to find the company had mistakenly auctioned off all their belongings.
“I cried for three days straight,” the customer wrote, adding the loss of all the family’s precious family photos left him so despondent he contemplated suicide. “This has been so devastating that it affects my emotional well-being every day and likely for the rest of my life…so unfathomable. I still have days that I don’t believe that it happened. That every cherished memory of family members [is] now gone forever.” At the storage unit, the customer spotted his cat tree and an empty chest that had contained his parents’ wedding photos: ‘I just lost it…[I was] crying nonstop at the storage yard.” The company refunded the $1230 check with an apology, but it claimed on the BBB website the payment was made after the auction – something the customer disputes.
As lead counsel for consumer protection in the Georgia AG’s office, Barrett prosecuted several storage and moving companies over the years. But though scams are common in the moving industry, Barrett says, he found fraud relatively rare in the self-storage industry.
“In fairness to the storage companies, they deal with a lot of people who stop paying for their units, and eventually the company ends up having to pay someone to take it to the dump. They deal with a lot of that, and it eats into their profit margin. There are just so many tiny mom-and-pop companies that don’t have the financial wherewithal to make you whole.”
Not surprisingly, Barrett says, many of them “have contracts that disclaim liability six ways to Sunday.” The contracts — which tend to be long “and written in dense legalese” — often cap payment for losses at $5,000 or less. The contracts also typically include categories of belongings the company disclaims responsibility (such as jewelry, vehicles and musical instruments) and exemptions for damage from events such as floods and hurricanes.
What consumers can do
Get everything in writing. Make sure the contract stipulates payment terms, insurance (if any) that you bought through the company; options such as climate-control, access; and rules about termination.
Check that your homeowners insurance covers your belongings in storage. One of the most crucial protections is getting your own insurance coverage for any property you have in storage, Barrett says – even if you already have “full coverage” through an affiliate of the self-storage company. Coverage for stored items is found in the “off-premises» personal property coverage in a homeowners policy (check with your insurance carrier to make sure you have it, and if not, ask to add that coverage).
Get renters insurance that covers your property in a storage unit. Renters insurance often – but not always – pays for property in a storage unit. And it may be cheaper than you think — the industry average is about $15 a month, according to the Insurance Information Institute, and at least one basic policy is only $5 a month. (You can pay more to cover your “off premises” property.)
Pay for additional insurance coverage if necessary. Both home and renters insurance often limits coverage of property in self-storage units to 10 percent of your total personal property coverage, but you can boost your coverage by opting to pay more or by purchasing a “rider” that offers extra coverage for jewelry and other valuables. In many cases, you can also buy a separate policy just for storage units.
Make an inventory of your belongings. Along with the list, take photos of your possessions, especially your valuables. Include serial numbers, the date of purchase, and other relevant information.
Be aware of exclusions. Even homeowners policies that cover self-storage typically exclude many common self-storage perils, including flooding, mold and mildew, and vermin, according to the Insurance Information Institute. However, you’ll generally be covered in case of fire, theft, tornadoes and other perils listed in your policy.
The very best way to protect precious family photos and heirlooms? Keep them somewhere else. As Barrett concludes wryly, “I had my experience with the [storage] Pod of Death…If you can’t afford to lose it, don’t put it in storage.”
By way of full disclosure, I worked on the same high school alternative newspaper in Atlanta as Sid Barrett some decades ago.
Having just launched its Mold Removal Restoration and Disaster Campaign Alameda, California-based Home Services USA, a leader in the mold restoration industry, seeks to raise awareness of how harmful mold is to homes, businesses and the health of building occupants.
Alameda, California-based Home Services USA, a leader in the restoration industry, has launched its Mold Removal Restoration and Disaster Campaign. With trained specialists nationwide, Home Service USA professionals are faster to respond to any-sized disaster with a 24-hour, 7 day a week service.
Recently launched, the Home Services USA Mold Removal Restoration and Disaster Campaign aims to raise awareness about the health concerns associated with mold. Plus, the campaign spreads the word about how a professional service devoted to the eradication of mold can effectively eliminate mold from any property anywhere in the nation.
The Alameda County, mold removal service, offered by Home Services USA finds the root of the problem, usually moisture, and eliminates this, before working on the mold restoration of a property. This process, done in seven steps, destroys mold spores, which are an airborne fungus linked to health issues such as respiratory conditions and other allergies, so all mold must be removed to ensure the wellbeing of occupants.
Specializing in mold removal Fremont, mold removal Oakland, mold removal Berkeley, mold removal Pleasanton, mold removal Livermore, mold remediation San Leandro, and mold remediation Union City, Home Services USA can remove all forms of mold, including black mold using state-of-the-art equipment designed specifically for the process. This mold removal and remediation strategy prevents cross contamination and ensures that property occupants, whether a home or business, are kept safe and healthy during the process.
Home Services USA are local licensed and insured professionals, with crews in all areas across the nation. All crews are highly trained professionals, many with years of mold removal and remediation experience. Offering a 24-hour emergency service, and a 30-minute rapid response to limit damage, Home Service USA is always available to assist.
When asked about the Mold Removal Restoration and Disaster Campaign, a company representative said, “Short-term mold looks unsightly. But if left it grows and contaminates porous surfaces such as walls, wood and underlay, and this can cause odor. Long-term mold causes structural damage — crumbles drywall, deteriorates wood, and consumes building materials. Then there are the health risks, asthma, allergies and respiratory issues such as lung infections and autoimmune deficiencies that are linked to mold, all of which, can be avoided with timely professional treatment.”
To find out more about Home Services USA, call 877 677 5320 or click on the link above. Site visitors can find out more about the mold removal and mold remediation and restoration services Home Services USA offer, as well as explore the water damage restoration process.
SAN ANTONIO — Attempting to show it is in control of the burgeoning mold problem at area military bases, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland opened its doors to …
In Amityville, Pennsylvania, 10 acres of grapevines sprawl across the family-owned Manatawny Creek Winery. Owner Darvin Levengood is no stranger to vineyard pests. But he was met with calamity in the fall of 2017 when grape pickers were bombarded by swarms of a new invasive insect, the Spotted Lanternfly. Winery guests couldn’t drink on the open porch without finding the bug, and its “honeydew,” in their glass.
“It’s a misnomer,” Levengood said of the sweet-sounding residue. “Honeydew is a perfectly good fruit. This is nothing more than poop.”
Since the bug was first identified in 2014, it has been devastating vineyards and orchards in the Northeast. Lycorma delicatula, named for the lantern-shaped body of the adult that appears to glow under its dull wings, is used in traditional medicine in China, its native land. In the US, it was quickly considered one of the most destructive invasive species in 150 years.
The Spotted Lanternfly is unlike other invasive species in its voraciousness and indiscriminate palate, with a diet that includes at least 70 plants, said Heather Leach, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University—the mothership of lanternfly research.
Apple, nectarine, almond, and cherry trees are among its choice snacks, along with other fruit-bearers like plum and apricot. Other woody favorites include pine, oak, walnut, and poplar trees. But the lanternfly is a vinophile, and prefers grapes above all else. The effects have been devastating for the Pennsylvania wine industry, where some growers have reported a 90 percent grape loss due to lanternfly damage.
Bastiaan Slabbers/Getty Images
Pennsylvania is an agricultural mecca and the country’s top hardwood producer. The grape, tree-fruit, hardwood, and nursery industries collectively contribute nearly $18 billion to the state’s economy. According to the US Department of Agriculture, pretty much all those industries are in danger as a result of the spread of the lanternfly. Despite heavy quarantines across 14 Pennsylvania counties, the insect is on the move, hitchhiking on vehicles and luggage, and parasailing by swarm on breezes, sometimes showing up in vineyards by the thousands. It has been spotted in Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, sprawling 6,900 square miles from its original US landing spot.
Invasive species have been a problem since the first ships began moving plants and animals to the Americas, where native flora and fauna had no protection against them. In the early 20th century, Dutch elm disease, a fungus from Asia that is spread by elm bark beetles, killed 75 percent of native elms. Walnut twig beetles from the Southwest started an outbreak of “thousand canker disease” in 2010, causing the long, slow death of black walnut trees all over the US. The emerald ash borer, native to Asia, has been devouring ash trees from the Midwest to Pennsylvania since 2002, and the brown marmorated stink bug, also from Asia, has eaten its way through orchards in 43 states to date.
The list goes on, but the difference between now and centuries ago is the frequency and celerity with which materials move between continents and the increasing intensity of climate change.
Growers ranging from the Finger Lakes region to California’s Napa Valley are keeping a close eye on the bug as it works its way across the states. The California Department of Agriculture is very concerned, said Kyle Beucke, the state’s primary entomologist. “[The Spotted Lanternfly] poses a significant threat to the state’s agriculture, especially to vineyards,” he said.
Bastiaan Slabbers/Getty Images
There are multiple factors that make the lanternfly especially concerning in the US. For a planthopper, a species of winged insect that hop more than they fly, the Spotted Lanternfly is large. And like most invasive species, it has no predators in its newly acquired territories.
“Not even chickens will eat them, and chickens are dumb,” said Dana Roberts, a lab technician and biologist with the Penn State extension project.
But it is this planthopper’s mouthpart that’s mostly to be feared, said Roberts. Its straw-like mouth can pierce through the hardest bark to reach the sugary sap inside. Unlike its relatives in the Hemiptera family, the insect lacks the ability to suck, preferring to munch on high-pressure plants that allow the sap to flow, like a siphon, through its mouth and into its stomach. The fly will tap its forelegs, like a builder looking for studs in a wall—seeking the tree’s “hot spot” before piercing the living plant tissue and drinking its life essence, leaving behind a gaping wound.
The sap passes quickly through the bugs as they dine, meaning they simultaneously squirt waste—politely called “honeydew” by entomologists—from the other end as they eat. The poop draws gnats and stinging insects, and leads to reduced photosynthesis and plant vigor. Not only that, but the honeydew mixes with the sap that pours out of the plant’s wound, concocting a perfect breeding ground for sooty mold, a black fungal accumulation that smells like vinegar, and, researchers believe, may also be an invasive species. In quarantined areas, you can trace the path of a Spotted Lanternfly invasion by looking for homes and yards blackened, as if by fire, from the honeydew-seeded mold left in the swarms’ wake. Researchers often wear raincoats when working in quarantined areas to protect their clothes from the sticky mess.
Yet on those same dying and mold-covered plants, the insects’ eggs remain mysteriously untouched, like the eye of a hurricane. That’s because while laying her eggs in tidy rows, the mother lanternfly sprays them with a thick, protective covering, the texture of which is reminiscent of mascarpone cheese. Researchers are unsure of the exact composition of the putty cocoon, but it seems to have antibacterial qualities.
Before coming to the US, the Spotted Lanternfly invaded Korea, quickly establishing itself and wreaking havoc on its agriculture. Its successful colonization there has been attributed to global warming, as its eggs have been able to survive increasingly warmer winter temperatures.
In America, the bug is still too new to say for sure that it’s able to thrive because of climate change. However in the Northeast, some states’ winters have warmed 5 degrees F since 1970, and in most of the US, winter is warming faster than the other seasons. The trend with invasive insects from warmer climates indicates that bugs and plants that would typically die off during the coldest winter months, setting a limit on northern expansion limits, are surviving.
“There’s going to be a flood of things like the southern pine beetle, ticks, chiggers—they’ll expand north. We can hardly imagine what all the changes are going to be,” said Matthew Ayres, professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth.
Yet, what is a normal or native ecosystem at this point? We’ve grown accustomed to our native topography, but humans have been destroying and creating new landscapes since the Holocene era, which began roughly 12,000 years ago. Land use, pollution, fire history—all factor into ecology.
“We’ve toyed with basically everything,” said Yolanda Chen, associate professor of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont. Our land is so manipulated, there’s really no such thing as a native ecosystem at this point, she said.
In Pennsylvania, the spotted terror’s progression appears nearly intractable, though neither the government nor residents have given up the fight. The USDA announced it will hire about 100 people this summer and spend nearly $18 million in the state to stop the bug’s spread. And in the town of Reading, where the bug has become a social phenomenon, a local minor league baseball team announced plans to give away 2,000 “Fightin the Spotted Lanternfly” T-shirts as part of their Agriculture Appreciation Night.
Last year, the Penn State University research team planted two test plots with live lanternflies on chardonnay vines at Levengood’s winery for monitoring and experimentation. The vines are between rows 50 and 52, so they refer to it as “Area 51.” The extraterrestrial parallels are easy to come by.
But this alien has already landed, and according to Ayres, the more realistic goal is to try to keep out the next Spotted Lanternfly.
At least compared with the uphill battle of the climate crisis, keeping the next invasive insect out is actually pretty easy. Invasive insect species that lay eggs almost exclusively travel via wooden pallets and live plant trade. We don’t have to use wooden pallets, said Ayres, there are many cheap alternatives like particle wood or plastic. We also need to be vigilant about asking where our plants come from when landscaping, he said, and avoid buying non-native ornamental plants.
“Ash trees are almost gone,” Ayres said, “and there’s nothing we can do. But there are thousands more damaging insects out there, knocking on our door, so to speak.”
Growing up in Washington Heights, I could see firsthand the impact New York City Housing Authority had on hundreds of thousands of families. NYCHA provided so many with a foothold to a brighter future.
It promised quality housing for working-class New Yorkers who would form the backbone of New York — seniors, immigrants and young families striving to make it. For poor New Yorkers or those who had suddenly fallen into money troubles, NYCHA was a lifeline out of homelessness.
That was the idea behind NYCHA back when Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia started building public housing in the 1930s — it was aspirational housing for the poor and working class. Nowadays, NYCHA has turned aspirational homes into a horror for too many of New York’s most vulnerable residents.
From busted boilers to leaky roofs to dangerous children’s playgrounds to years’-long maintenance backlogs to vacant apartments to non-working elevators, NYCHA apartments simply don’t work for too many of the people inhabiting them.
The list goes on: damaged doors, runaway contracts, lack of storm preparedness. Mold. Mice. Lead. All horrific.
Our 15 audits and investigations of NYCHA are a true catalogue of horrors that must be a roadmap to real, permanent solutions for the 400,000 New Yorkers who call NYCHA home. In fact, our newest audit of NYCHA’s roof dysfunction shows how the mismanagement causes a cascade of harm — lighting millions of dollars on fire and leaving toxic living conditions for residents.
In our office’s review of public housing in the five boroughs, we found deficient conditions on 88 percent of the NYCHA roofs we sampled — sagging roofs, pools of standing water, open seams, debris and blistered and cracked surfaces.
Damage on just 19 roofs alone could cost New Yorkers $24.6 million to repair later on. But it’s not just future costs. NYCHA has already burned through $4 million at one development by forgoing a 20-year warranty and replacing eight roofs just halfway through the term — instead of getting the roof repaired at no taxpayer expense, under the still-valid warranty.
It’s abundantly clear: City Hall must step up and put an end to the dysfunction. Because we are now past the point where leadership is called for — it’s already overdue.
We are either in the business of providing public housing, or we’re not — there’s no middle ground. We can’t fix NYCHA with a part-time focus. The massive challenges that exist — leaky roofs, lead paint, dangerous playgrounds, busted boilers — aren’t part-time at all, they’re persistent. They threaten the health and lives of children. This situation is no joke. It should sear and agonize consciences at City Hall.
Right now, with a new federal monitor and an incoming NYCHA chairman, we have an opportunity for change — to make the story of aspiration at NYCHA recognizable for those who grew up only knowing that story.
That can only happen with an engaged City Hall and a NYCHA chairman who jumps in with both feet to tackle the task of reform — 24/7. The same is true for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Because when leaders are away, NYCHA residents are here confronting the crumbling conditions of their homes. The ceiling won’t fix itself. The mismanagement won’t just fade. And systemic problems won’t get fixed if we only point the finger and pass the buck.
It’s time to return NYCHA to its original and noble mission — a place where striving, working-class New Yorkers could find dignity in a decent home.
That means City Hall must look at all the issues we’ve raised, the issues raised by the Department of Investigation, the issues raised by the US attorney and most importantly, those raised by NYCHA tenants each and every day — and finally take some accountability and action. That’s all we are calling for.
SAN ANTONIO — Attempting to show it is in control of the burgeoning mold problem at area military bases, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland opened its doors to …
LOUISVILLE, Ky (WDRB) — Summer heat and backyard parties can create damage and a lot dirt on your deck or patio.
Jim Lehrer from Brownsboro Paint and Hardware offers these tips for keeping your wood or stone, brick, and concrete patios looking clean:
Be careful with power washers. Power washers can damage brick and mortar.
Use bleach to clean up mold and mildew, but be careful with bleach around your garden because it can be toxic to plants.
«Wet & Forget» is a great alternative to bleach. The liquid product takes care of mold and mildew. Soak down the patio with it. You will some changes instantly but by four or five days, it should be completely clean.
If there is damage to the patio joints, repair them with mortar.
If you have a wood deck in your backyard, consider these tips when comes to staining and cleaning:
Test to see if a deck is ready to stain by tossing a little bit of water on it. If the water beads up immediately, the deck is not ready to stain. That usually lasts a few weeks or months on brand new decks.
Sun and UV rays can cause wood decks to crack. There are products available that can smooth it all out.
If you’re looking to re-stain a deck, you must know whether the current stain is latex or oil. Stick with whichever is currently on the deck. Do not switch from oil to latex or latex to oil.
Look at the forecast before staining your deck. A nice dry day and low humidity is preferable. You should wait if there is upcoming rain in the forecast. Latex products will dry very quickly, while oil products will take some time.
THE death of a retired project manager from Mold has been described as «unfair» after he sustained liver damage after taking a course of antibiotics.
Leslie Beanland, 79, of Bryn Coch Lane, but was born and raised in Leeds, West Yorskshire, died at Wrexham Maelor Hospital on January 12 last year after suffering multiple organ failure which came as a result of acute liver failure, an inquest sitting at County Hall in Mold has heard.
John Gittins, coroner for North Wales (East and Central) told the hearing that after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes back in 2006, Mr Beanland was susceptible to suffering from blistering on his feet. It was while on holiday in Barbados with his wife Marion in September 2017 that the abrasive nature of the sand on the beach caused Mr Beanland to develop an ulcer on his fourth toe and despite having it dressed and looked at by medical staff on their cruise around the Caribbean, it required him to visit his GP on their return home.
With the ulcer showing signs of infection, the court heard how Mr Beanland, described by his wife as an avid reader and passionate about rugby and cricket, was subsequently referred to Wrexham Maelor Hospital, where doctors found it had probed to the bone and following a diagnosis of Osteomyelitis, a six week course of the antibiotic Flucloxacillin was prescribed.
Dr Charlotte Hunt, a consultant gastroenterologist at Wrexham Maelor, told the inquest how one of the side effects of a lengthy course of Flucloxacillin, was that it could lead to liver damage being caused in eight out of every 100,000 people with just 10 per cent of those cases proving to be fatal.
However, she went on to say how Flucloxacillin was the only drug available to patients being treated for such an infection in the UK and despite there being no such thing as a risk free medicine, it was only prescribed in this instance because the benefits of giving it would have been considered to have been outweighing the risk.
Dr Hunt said: «It is not known who will develop an idiosyncratic drug reaction in this instance, but patients who are on a longer course of the drug and over the age of 70 would be considered more at risk.
«It is always a case of managing the risks versus the benefits with the prescription of any drug far less likely if the risks were considered to be greater.»
The inquest also heard how it was not considered standard practice to monitor for liver damage when taking the drug, with any signs of such sometimes only becoming clear several weeks or months afterwards, but in Mr Beanland’s case, he began to show signs of jaundice just three weeks after finishing the six week course of antibiotics.
Providing a short narrative conclusion as to the circumstances of Mr Beanland’s death, Mr Gittins told the family he had been struck by how unfair it was, especially when considering the small percentage of cases which can prove to be fatal saying: «It must leave you thinking, why us, and it doesn’t help to hear just how rare it can be. He sounded like a good man.»
The conclusion read: «As a result of a foot injury, which originally began whilst on holiday in September 2017, the deceased developed Osteomyelitis from which he was appropriately prescribed Flucloxacillin (antibiotic). It is a known but rare side effect of this medication that it can result in liver dysfunction and as a result of this occuring in Mr Beanland’s case, he passed away at the Maelor Hospital in Wrexham on January 12 2018 as a consequence of multi-organ failure arising from the liver failure caused by the Flucloxacillin.»
Mr Beanland’s wife Marion, who was a retired banking administrator, said in a statement how her husband had studied at the City of Leeds Grammar School and had been a structural engineer when they met in the 1970’s. She added that despite his diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, he had been in extremely good health and led a very active and fulfilling life and how they had both been looking forward to many more years living in happy retirement.
Damage Mold 