Mold toxicity: Infinite variability

"Mold is pretty amazing stuff. When the experts tried to grow it in the lab it wasn't toxic at all. Turned out that unless [Stachybotrys] has competition, it won't even bother to go to the trouble of producing toxins. How efficient!


And since the toxins it does bother to produce depend heavily on what it has to work with, toxicity varies considerably depending on the substrate it's growing on.

No good trying to even guess at toxic exposure based on toxicity measurements of a sample of spores. It changes even within the same colony.


 
 Trying to measure someoneʼs exposure to mycotoxins by counting spores in a mold plate is like trying to measure someoneʼs secondhand smoke exposure by counting cigarette butts in an ash tray.
 
The only measurement that means a thing is whether you feel good or bad in that environment."


- Erik Johnson
The Role of Toxic Mold In Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,  ed. Lisa Petrison, pg. 199. (emphasis mine)