I can't believe what I heard today...

IMHO insurance companies should not be able to pick and choose their areas of coverage and change in a moments notice. We had the same happen here in

2001 when Houston flooded. The insurance companies love to lobby to make some insurance mandatory but other insurance unavailable if it does not suit them. Unlike most companies, it is extremely rare for an insurance company to not show a yearly profit.
Reply to
Leon
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Well said sir!

Actually, you both may well be correct in your original assertions. The real distinction may be between what lives within the wood or directly on its surface and what lives on the molds, mildews, dust, dirt, and critter droppings that can accumulate on long-stored or long-installed wood objects.

David Merrill (not a biologist either)

Reply to
David Merrill

No offense taken

Frank

Reply to
Frank Boettcher

Frank Boettcher wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

There's a couple of thoughts on that.

Usually, it's a means of applying political pressure on certain regulatory and legal bodies to get certain measures passed.

It irritates their policy holders, particularly newer ones. It really irritates their agents, particularly the newer ones, who make much of their income by selling policies.

They are a mutual company, owned, pretty much, by their policy holders. If they cannot balance the risks, financially, across their base, they have to adjust the base. Sometimes, not adding new policies is the way they do it. They don't like it, either.

My dad was a State Farm Agent for 35 years. I've never been one, but I've been their customer for longer than that.

Things will settle out. The Gulf Coast still is a long ways from settled from the storms, and will be for a while. State Farm will be back in the new policy game at some time, is my guess. They are in and out in California, too.

8 years ago, I had to replace my wood shake roof, or find a new insurance company. I'd only been their customer for 30 years or so at that point. Stuff happens.

Patriarch

Reply to
Patriarch

Not far feched at all if it wasn't the wood, but what was on it

one possiblity is Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome

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had an outbreak about 15 years ago, the people who got sick where cleaning out a shed and an other one was cleaing out a basement if the boards have been sitting in a shed, the mice come in and poop and pee and there you go

Reply to
bobtjanitor

Just homeowners policies are stopped, they will still take your money for auto and life and what ever else they write policies for. Otherwise every State Farm agent in Mississippi would be out of a job, except for handling current policies.

Frank Boettcher wrote:

Reply to
mapdude

In this case it is a State Attorney General, a U. S. Senator, A U. S. district Representative trying to make political hay and "save" the population. They are aligned with a very well known and successful class action attorney. And we know whats in it for him.

There has already been one case ruled upon and in addition to settling the claim, a two million dollar punitive award was given. Multiply that by 10,000 and you begin to see the problem.

Each year I get a renewal notice on my policy and there is separate page in the renewal package with a message in very large, bold face type. It simply states that "your property is not covered from damages due to rising water from any source no matter the nature and cause of the rising water. Because of your location you are not required to have federally subsidized flood insurance but it is available if you feel you need it. The procedure for obtaining this flood insurance is.......You should consider this risk and act appropriately"

I don't have state farm HO but assume all insurers send out this boilerplate message.

The rising water did the damage. The cases are based on the fact that the "wind drove the water in" , or the damage was done before the water got there.

Katrina was a tragedy of epic proportions. Many of my friends and relatives were impacted as was I in a minor way (lost about $5K in woodworking supplies and machinery that were remotely stored and not covered because of the rising water. But I can assure you the answer is not to litigate private companies out of the state which will only limit competition and raise rates or deductibles that would make the policy meaninless.

Frank

Reply to
Frank Boettcher

That may be true of wood kept off the ground, but that's not always the way it is stored. Can't know unless you see the particular case in point, and a guy buying tools at Walmart is unlikely to be a high-end craftsman who has put a lot of time into figuring out his wood storage.

There are acids in the wood that kill bacteria, as I understand it. However, those woods are properly dried, stored indoors and cleaned after use. It's not terribly farfetched to think that something like a pile of maple planks left outdoors could support bacteria if they're stacked face to face and an animal uses them as a toilet or sleeps on them. There are sugars in the sap for the bacteria to consume, and keeping the wood closely stacked can keep the outdoor air from those faces.

Reply to
Prometheus

Also, unless his friend is one of HG Wells' Martians, the bacteria associated with putrefaction (rot) are unlikely to make him sick.

Bodies left unburied in the aftermath of a hurricane or tsunami are gross, but not a health hazard. If the people were not sick when they died, they can't spread disease to the living.

Disease causing microbes require a living host. So even when the victim succumbed to an infectious or contagious disease, by the time the body starts to rot, disease causing microbes within it are likely to be long-gone.

There are exceptions like anthrax, rabies, and others which can survive for years in a dormant state--usually after voiding the host, but most die within hours of the host.

You can get rabies from breathing the dust coming off of old wood IF it has batshit on it and the bats were rabid. You might be able to get hantavirus from rodent urine on it.

I'll agree with the others in this thread that the most likely culprit is a toxic, allergic, or auto- immune reaction to mold or fungus in the wood.

It is pretty important to avoid breathing dust, but especially dust contaminated with mold or fungus, regardless of the source.

Reply to
fredfighter

Just to add a little fuel to the fire; I ran into an older gentleman (who asked me not to mention his name over the internet) over the weekend at the Home Depot who has retired from both the lumber industry and the woodworking industry. He said that this debate is much, much older than I thought. He told me that he's known of many similar instances of what I had told him and everyone in this newsgroup. He said that the symptoms are usually passed off as another type of problem.

He went on to say that supposedly the fungi that grow on the wood won't malignantly seek us out to cause problems but their spore when stirred up can get into the respiratory system and open us up for other infections. Then to the contrary, he added that he could remember a small bit of lumber that sat in an old drying shed that had no fungi or mold or anything as he said on it and it still decomposed. He said that this in particular led him to believe there may be something we were not aware of that made wood (cut wood I suppose) its home and was perhaps the main contributor to decomposition. He added that it may actually be an infectious agent or have infectious properties, but being unknown it was simply passed off as something else.

His reasoning behind this was he had known people who told him that before coming to work in these industries had no known allergies or chronic illnesses, but after exposure to the wood (even those not around the machines where sawdust was generated; I asked) would develope chronic problems that were passed off as allergies, the flu, bronchitis or similar by doctors. He could even recall customers that frequented the yard he worked in complaining that they had not had problems before entering construction or other jobs that required working with lumber or wood. The people he referred to that wasn't around sawdust worked in an area of the yard he called the "pick yard" or "picking area" (I can't exactly remember which). Now I'm not really sure what that is, but he said it was far away from the machines that did the cutting.

He then told me of a Doctor he thought was out of Australia or maybe it was New Zealand that had discovered a microbe (for lack of actual terminology) or something that was infectious and smaller than a virus. Strangely it seemed I thought I could remember seeing something on television some time ago about this very Doctor, but had not payed that much attention to it. It scared me pretty good and with this all in mind, I have to wonder. What do I need to do to take care of my lumber and myself? I bet I won't do any more cutting or woodworking without one of those filtered masks on.

Reply to
mrmjr

Some woods like elm rot so fast that they are notoriously difficult to air-dry. OTOH Elm is also notorious for checking and warping when it is kiln dried. So I wonder what species that was.

While it is commonplace (and probably on balance, a good thing) for people to associate disease with rot and filth, it would be remarkable if the same organism that rots wood, infected humans. Those are just two wildly different 'lifestyles'. But fungi (which are usually what do rot wood) are well know to cause allergic reactions.

Several years ago I bought 300 bf of eastern Aromatic red cedar and drove it home in my van, a trip of about 2 hours or so. I had a roe throat the next day, and being aware of cedar's toxic properties I wore a respirator with activated carbon filter the next day when I unloaded the van. Several weeks later I moved the stack without wearing a respirator and had the sore throat again. A lot of woods are toxic and stimulate allergic reactions. You don't need heavy exposure to the dust develop those problems, long term low-level exposure can do it too.

One such (maybe the only sort) of infectious agent smaller than a virus is a "proteinaceous infectious particles" (prion).

Prions are thought to be proteins, not having any nucleic, material at all. No DNA, no RNA, just a bare protein. They use the victim's RNA or DNA to reproduce themselves and one popular hypothesis is that they originate as fragments broken form DNA or RNA. It is possible that prions are the causative agent in other neurodegenerative illnesses without current known causes.

The most notorious of these is the infections agent for "mad cow' disease, which is believed to be the same prion that causes an handful of previously, separately identified illnesses in humans and animals (scapies, Kuru, Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease). Because prions are protein, cooking does not render contaminated food safe

--unless you cook it to the point where all the proteins are destroyed by which point there isn't much nutritional value left in the food.

protein found in wood would be compatible with human DNA or RNA, but wood can also be contaminated with proteins left behind by animals, various bugs, mites etc. Then again, supposedly something close to 50% of human DNA is the same as found in a bean plant.

A fair number of people don't wear masks because they've "never had a problem". The best way to keep on "not having a problem" is to wear a mask.

Reply to
fredfighter

This goes out to everyone that has replied and may yet still reply to my inquiry. A BIG, BIG THANKS. I have to admit I wasn't sure I'd get a reply and to get one of this magnitude with such great input has really been appreciated. So far, I've learned quite a bit from you all. I guess when it comes to personal safety, it's ok to be a little selfish. I'll be wearing a mask...everytime.

Reply to
mrmjr

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