COLUMBIA - Mistakes that were made during a $5.6 million renovation of the S.C. governor's mansion four years ago are responsible for the mold problem that has forced Gov. Mark Sanford and his family to leave, according to an expert hired by the state.

Making the 148-year-old mansion habitable again will cost taxpayers more than $400,000, said microbiologist Richard Bennett. A more detailed cost estimate will be available next week, he said.

My home inspector's backside is wiggling as she lies flat on my family room floor, nose pressed up against the baseboard. This can mean only one thing. She wants another dog treat.

Actually, I wish that was all it meant. More likely, it means I have to tear off the baseboards and go to war with what is behind them. I know this because my home inspector is Elsa, the mold dog, who is trained to detect 18 kinds of toxic mold. And she's got a schnoz full of bad news for me.

While more than 57,000 people across the country with end-stage renal disease wait for a life-saving kidney, Framingham's Earl Halstead edged one step closer on Friday to getting a new lease on life.

The news came as a huge relief to Earl, who has been sick with kidney disease for a decade but only recently watched his kidney function plummet after his house was infested with toxic mold last year. Doctors told him they expected him to need life- sustaining dialysis within the next few months and a new kidney to keep him alive.

A local real estate broker has reached an out-of- court settlement with the owners of the Plaza Tower office building, who alleged in a high-profile dispute that he conspired with state officials to move lucrative state offices out of the building.

Michael Siegel of Corporate Realty reached the settlement Wednesday with the owners and managers of the building, Schumann and Mondona Rafizadeh of Houston and Bahram Arjmandi of Stillwater, Okla. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Florida Hospital, an Orlando-based system, wanted a more efficient HVAC system. The conventional response--regular cleaning of the AC coils--is costly and sometimes ineffective. Searching for a better solution, the hospital system found that high- output "UVC Emitters" from Steril-Aire Inc., installed in the air handling units (AHUs), provide an effective way to reduce or eliminate coil-cleaning.

Florida Hospital installed UVC lights in a 27-year-old AHU with a visible buildup of mold and a 50 percent clogged coil. Within weeks, static pressure over the coil decreased from 1.8-inches w.g. to 0.7-inches w.g. The coil and drain pan areas looked clean, with no more evidence of mold. Florida Hospital calculated that resulting energy savings would be about $4,867 annually for the unit.

Extech Instruments, one of the world's largest suppliers of test equipment and portable printers, is announcing the availability of its SuperHeat Psychrometer, Model RH350, through its Instruments Division.

Designed for HVACR, mold prevention and plant maintenance applications, Extech's SuperHeat Psychrometer features a large display which allows for the simultaneous display of three parameters: Relative Humidity with Ambient Air Temperature, plus Dew Point or Wet Bulb or external temperature. Incorporating the inputs from two external Type K probes, T1 and T2, differential measurements can be displayed as T1-T2, Air Temperature-T1, and T1- Dew Point. The large backlit LCD provides an easily readable display of switchable temperature units (Fahrenheit or Centigrade) with 0.1-degree resolution.

Israeli medical student Steven Nurkin just completed an odd study and came up with the following result: Doctors should stop wearing ties because they spread too many germs.

Of the 42 physician neckties sampled by Nurkin and his colleagues, 20 contained one or more microorganisms known to cause disease, including 12 that carried Staphylococcus aureus, a five gram- negative bacteria, one that carried aspergillus and two ties that carried multiple pathogens. Staph bacteria, which often live harmlessly on the skin, can cause serious wound infections; Aspergillus, a mold, is an opportunistic infection that threatens vulnerable patients. Gram-negative bacteria refers to a type of staining in the lab.

JACKSON, Miss. - Air conditioning units at the Mississippi Capitol have gotten a thorough cleaning after tests revealed "elevated levels" of fungal spores, said a spokeswoman for the Department of Finance and Administration.

Kym Wiggins said air-quality tests were conducted in the lieutenant governor's offices and some senators' offices at the request of Senate secretary John Gilbert.

WASHINGTON TWP. --In a last-minute settlement that will boost the price of a mold cleanup project at two of the district's middle schools, the Washington Township Board of Education agreed to split more than $1 million worth of remediation work between two competing companies.

The settlement ended a dispute between the board and a Pennsylvania-based remediation company over the way the district awarded a $998,525 contract to another cleanup company.

High insurance claims cost insurers more than $1 billion in 2001, about five times the amount that was paid in 2000, according to insure.com, an online consumer insurance information service.

That's led some home insurers to raise their premiums, and most are excluding mold altogether. Nationwide, 46 states have approved mold-related exclusions in homeowner insurance policies, said Robert Hartwig, chief economist with the Insurance Information Institute in New York. Mold claims typically cost 10 times the average homeowners' insurance claim, he said.

These cards look like a lot like my seven-year-old's Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards. In fact, they look so much like the cards, my son grabbed them out of my purse and started playing with them. He was absolutely fascinated. As a result, I no longer have to worry about explaining what sexually transmitted diseases are. I'm probably lucky he didn't start 'dueling' with this friends, challenging Candida albicans (a 'yeast infection') with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (mad cow disease).

This is a well designed set of 103 cards, each showing the micro-organism itself (electron micrographs, microsope images, sometimes x-ray images, etc.) and a picture of what the affected area of the body looks like.

The cards are divided into gram-positive bacteria; gram-negative bacteria; viruses; fungi; and parasites. Gram staining distinguishes between gram- positive bacteria, which remain colored after the staining procedure, and gram-negative bacteria, which do not retain dye. Gram-positive bacteria stay blue after staining.

For those of us interested in all things fungal, the fungi covered are: Candida albicans; Coccidioides immitis; Cryptococcus neoformans; Dermatophytes (Trichophyton, Microsporium, Epidermophyton); Histoplasma capsulatum; Pneumocystis carinii; and Sporothrix schenckii.

For you Southern California readers, Coccidioides immitis is also known as "Valley Fever." According to the University of Arizona, Valley Fever is prevalent in the San Joaquin and Central Valleys of California, and in the hot, desert regions of southern Arizona (especially in the Phoenix and Tucson areas), southern Nevada, southern Utah, southern New Mexico, western Texas (especially around El Paso), and Mexico (in the states of Sonora and Chihuahua). In addition, Coccidioides immitis is found in semiarid and arid soils in Central and South America. Valley Fever is not communicable - i.e., transmitted from person to person.

These cards will make a great 'stocking stuffer' for a budding doctor or microbiologist. And they cost the same as a starter set of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

In honor of the newly-named Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards, here's a link to jokes. Here are a few of my favorites:

"As soon as Edwards was announced the Republicans put out a new attack ad calling him unaccomplished. He was born poor and became a multi-millionaire. To Republicans isn't that the definition of accomplished?" -Jay Leno "Because of the tough presidential primary last year, there was talk that there might be a personality conflict between Kerry and Edwards. Thankfully, Kerry doesn't have a personality, so that won't be a problem." -Jay Leno

I'm surreptitiously going through my children's toy box, throwing away all sorts of 'treasures.' The Consumer Products Safety Commission discovered high lead content in toy jewelry.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), four toy jewelry importers today announced the voluntary recall of 150 million pieces of toy jewelry sold in vending machines across America. CPSC has determined that some of this toy jewelry contains dangerous levels of lead, posing a risk of lead poisoning to children. Only about half of the 150 million pieces of toy jewelry actually contains lead, but, because it is difficult to distinguish the lead jewelry from the non-lead jewelry, the industry decided to recall all of it. The four firms are A & A Global Industries, Inc., of Cockeysville, Md.; Brand Imports, LLC, of Scottsdale, Ariz.; Cardinal Distributing Co. Inc., of Baltimore, Md.; and L. M. Becker & Co., Inc., of Kimberly, Wis.