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Josh Sommer, mold-prevention advocate
When Josh Sommer '09 and his mother began
suffering from strange symptoms in the fall of 2001, they initially
thought it was stress. Plagued by headaches, nosebleeds, and fatigue,
they also had difficulty remembering and articulating their thoughts.
Josh dropped soccer because of acute asthma that would often leave
him gasping for breath on the field.
Eventually the cause of their symptoms was traced back to a basement
remodeling project. "A contractor started demolishing a wall
where a water heater had leaked," Josh Sommer recalls. "The
wall was just filled with mold." The contractor, untrained
in proper mold-remediation techniques, demolished the wall, dispersing
the black substance into the air. For the next nine months, their
immune systems were primed by toxic mold particles floating throughout
their house.
Sommer, a native of Greensboro, lost his home and spent the next
few months jumping from apartments to hotels to relatives' homes.
His mother, Simone Sommer, a single parent with her own medical
practice, was forced to stop work, leaving them without a steady
source of income. The two endured constant medical challenges over
the next few years. His mother still "suffers from chronic
fatigue, fibromyalgia, and all kinds of immune dysfunction," he
says. "It was just a nightmare."
Since that traumatic period, Sommer has striven to educate himself
and others about the dangers of household mold. He has become a
passionate activist, policymaker, and researcher. "Nothing
really excites me like doing this kind of stuff," he says. "I
see myself tackling the scientific research, the epidemiology,
and the public policy of household mold."
As a freshman in high school, Sommer was asked by Congressman John
Conyers of Michigan to speak at a press conference introducing
HR 1268, the U.S. Toxic Mold Safety and Protection Act (reintroduced
as HR 1269 in the 109th Congress). "At first, this was totally
thrown in my lap. I had no idea what I was doing and was just going
with the flow," he recalls. However, when the bill ran into
some trouble, Josh and his mother realized that they had to step
up.
"At that point I started spending a lot of time researching.
We went up and met with Congressman Conyers and actually traveled
with him to some conferences. For about six months to a year, my
mom and
I were the only ones keeping this bill alive."
Over the next few years, he worked closely with several congressmen
to raise public awareness of the dangers of mold and spoke at congressional
briefings and press conferences on health and public safety.
Sommer finds the biggest obstacle to implementing significant policy
changes to be a dearth of research. He is working with Claudia
Gunsch and Andrei Khylstov, assistant professors of civil engineering,
to develop a toxin-detecting device that could help builders and
public officials ensure that buildings stay mold-free. "Without
the research component, everything else just stalls," he says.
Sommer's expertise overlaps with his work on Duke's newest major
engineering venture, the Smart House, a live-in research laboratory
designed to contribute to "the innovation and demonstration
of future residential building technology." He leads the indoor
environmental air-quality team, developing tools to keep the house's
ventilation systems free of his nemeses--dangerous toxins. When
the semester ended, Sommer--an intended double-major in civil engineering
and public policy--was planning to set up epidemiological studies
in Greenville, North Carolina, which has been suffering from mold
problems ever since it was hit by Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
The title of national mold spokesperson is less than glamorous--raising
eyebrows rather than dropping jaws.
"I definitely get teased about it," he says, "but
it's always in a good-hearted manner."
For more information on the Smart House - http://smarthouse.duke.edu
--Daniel Fenjves
'08
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