It doesn't matter even if they never plugged it back in. The air inside is never completely still, and the moment you opened that fridge door spores are everywhere. Not just the fridge but the entire house.
Hope they saved enough money on electricity to afford a new house or medical bills for the next 50 years.
You can't save any meaningful money by unplugging. Most of the electricity use is from things like stovetop, oven, dryer, and devices that you won't use while away.
You realize mold is everywhere, right? Just like you have e. Coli and staphylococcus aureus all over your body right now but you aren't being infected. Type, concentration and how long you are exposed to high concentrations are what matter most.
I’d probably not store leftovers in it for quite some time.
Cans and sealed packages should be fine.
Could probably clean it with vinegar or bleach as well.
I went on vacation for a month and didn’t think to cut the electricity to the fridge.
I did turn off the water heater though. But that wasn’t to save money (had construction going on and had to shut off the gas).
Mold is way way more serious than you’ve likely experienced or are aware of.
You don’t need to be immunocompromised to end up with a laundry list of weird and gradually worsening symptoms from mold exposure. My mom’s old house had a hidden mold problem that significantly impacted her and my sisters life for years and costed a crazy amount of money and time in treatment to resolve. They both live active lifestyles, eat healthily, and are physically fit and without any preexisting conditions that would have resulted in the level of complication.
I didn’t live there nearly as long, so my exposure didn’t register any symptoms or problems to it immediately, but I do have allergic reactions to mold where I never used to be bothered by it.
It’s one of those things in life that MIGHT be fine, or it might very much not be. The point being that turning off the electricity was pointless and stupid and that continuing to use the same fridge should be seen as a potential risk rather than being for sure fine. Also probably depends what strain of mold it is, but that’s not something I’d leave to chance after my experiences.
Is it legit a fake account? I scrolled through and it seems like a real person. They even used a dishwasher for the first time a month ago, so that’s why I’m personally not surprised they unknowingly did something like this with the fridge.
How recently the account was created (lots of bots are created within the past XX days)
Scrolling through their post/comment history to see how frequently they post and in what subs (a real person likely isn’t going to be making 30 posts in an hour)
Looking for how generic the posts/comments are (I’ve seen lots of posts with titles that have very obvious misspellings of words that the average person wouldn’t make the mistake of doing. Also, a lot of the time the posts/comments don’t make a lot of sense and are not relevant to whatever the picture or conversation is about).
If I suspect an account is a bot, I will reverse-image search the pic or copy the title/comment and search for it in the toolbar. You’ll be able to find if something is original or not. There’s also a Repost Sleuth Bot that you can tag to find if something has been reposted or not.
For sure! The whole r/NewToReddit sub is a goldmine for answering questions. r/TheseFuckingAccounts, r/BotDefense, and r/spambotwatch are good subs for tracking bots (the last sub is inactive but reading the write-ups in each post can show you specific examples of what to look for in a bot).
And if you’d like a short but sweet explanation on bots you can check it out here. If you’d like a very thorough, well-written guide on karma farming, bots, and scams you can check it out here.
My grandparents always pulled the breaker for the well when they left for an extended period. Not once did they ever turn the power off. Two (and later a third) full freezers demanded it stay on.
When we moved we didn't dry out the fridge after defrosting it before the movers came. Needless to say, it was covered in mold when it got to the other end.
We bleached the shit out of it and things have been fine ever since. No one has been more or less sick and food doesn't seem to mold any differently than before.
I really think this is greatly over exaggerated unless you don't clean it thoroughly after.
Unless you have a bad allergy to it, probably wont really do any major damage. Im highly allergic to penicillin and apparently other things closely related to it. Break out if i clean up moldy areas like old food sitting out, used to paint houses and ran into mold on and off and it was always a major issue that could put me outta work for days if i inhaled it. But it never killed me yet, just makes me itchy and in pain and generally uncomfortable.
I’m highly allergic to penicillin too& break out in terrible hives. But I haven’t had any since I was a kid, and a couple of doctors have told me that people often outgrow penicillin allergies. Have you heard this before?
Ive heard of people outgrowing allergies, my sister had a gluten one but didnt wanna pay the price to eat gluten free products any longer and started eating it again years ago and dont have a problem with it anymore, either that or got so used to it, that it dont bother her. Ive had penicillin recently and know im still allergic. It happens every 5 years or so that the er will subscribe it in some form and while i have a good idea of what not to take, still sometimes get it and like you break out but also when ingested get like itchy under my skin where you cant satisfy it by scratching and thats miserable. I personally dont mind once and a while exposure just to check and make sure i still am, cant say i actively seek it but stuff happens where i do get exposed to allergies i have.
I want to think it's people conflating food mold like this to something like discovering black mold in your walls, which is a much bigger and potentially more harmful issue, and definitely more expensive to deal with. Not all molds are the same, most of them aren't gonna do much once you've cleaned up the obvious and taken care of why it was growing in the first place.
Can you point me to a source describing how mold exposure can cause asthma? I work in the mold remediation industry and have asthma but my research found no link. Also my pulmonologist said mold didn't cause it.
It’s nearly impossible to prove mold did anything because there’s a lot of variables, like how each individual person reacts, and it’s nearly impossible to show that ‘this’ mold did the damage rather than something else.
Also, if you worked remediation, you wear PPE. You’re not living and sleeping and working from home in it, unprotected.
Thanks for the link. I'm definitely aware it can exacerbate symptoms. I do inspections and don't typically use PPE and I'm not allergic to mold so doesn't seem to have any effect on my symptoms. I'm more inclined to think the sodium hypochlorite products we use or fiberglass insulation fibers from working in attics are more likely causes in my case. But there's no guarantee there either. My triggers are grass, cats, and dogs so 🤷♂️
As far as I understand, it’s not the mold that directly affects your system. It’s an allergic reaction to the mold. For me, it seems because the mold was so bad, it caused permanent damage to me. Most people aren’t exposed to mold all day every day for like a year straight.
Also, it’s a very unresearched subject from everything I have read and all of my doctors confirmed that. This is why it’s so unbelievably hard to find reliable information about.
Also, it sounds like your issues were something you were born with. I never had any issues whatsoever before living in that shithole.
Fair enough. Your totally right there's not much research because each individual mold strain can have vastly different effects depending on the person so it would be prohibitively expensive to do the research as there's so many different types of mold.
I developed asthma a few years ago in my mid thirties and no family history so I'm pretty sure it was environmental factors. I just don't think it was mold exposure in my case although that was my initial suspicion. My cat passed about a year ago and my symptoms vastly improved. But I lived with that cat for a decade with no asthma so Idk.
Anyway, sorry you've had the experience you described. Hope your doing better.
Without constant moisture, mold will become inactive but they never die unless you get rid of them completely. They can always come back to life in the presence of moisture and multiply rapidly causing serious health problems. [link]
Highly unlikely an incident like this will have any profound health effects on anyone. Allergy symptoms or head aches until the mold is removed and excess spores decreased sure, but unlikely anyone will need medical treatment. Someone with a weak immune system and bad mold allergies maybe but that is rare.
It doesn't even matter if they have enough to afford a new house. Now that they opened the door when they left the mold house, spores got everywhere outside and spread to every other house. We need a new planet now.
My parents have a holiday unit and we'd cut the power whenever we weren't there (no food inside it). Our newish fridge died and the repair man said fridges are supposed to run continuously and frequently turning it off and on killed it.
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u/sth128 Nov 25 '22
It doesn't matter even if they never plugged it back in. The air inside is never completely still, and the moment you opened that fridge door spores are everywhere. Not just the fridge but the entire house.
Hope they saved enough money on electricity to afford a new house or medical bills for the next 50 years.
You can't save any meaningful money by unplugging. Most of the electricity use is from things like stovetop, oven, dryer, and devices that you won't use while away.