In August last year, shortly after Jack Delaplane and his two roommates moved into The Reserve at San Antonio, an apartment complex a couple blocks from the University of Texas San Antonio campus, their air conditioning stopped working. After the complex sent a repairperson to their unit, it worked briefly—and then broke again. Delaplane decided to check and see what was going on in the utility closet himself. That’s when he found the mold.
“Our air filter was broken and laying inside the water of our overflowing drip pan,” Delaplane said. “Half of it was dry and laying up against a live wire. The other half was molding in the water, and the water was full of mold.” The moldy pan was right under the vent that sucks the air up into the AC system; what Delaplane and his two roommates, Nina Mayers and Sammy Nieto, thought was dust collecting in their air vents were made up partly of mold spores easily breathed in, causing chronic headaches, bouts of fatigue, and coughing fits.
“We had COVID-like symptoms,” Mayers said. “And it was very strange to us because we really weren’t going anywhere or doing anything outside of the house.” As with COVID-19, mold can cause worse symptoms in those who are immunocompromised, as Delaplane was while he was undergoing cancer treatment.
