Symptoms of Illness After Heating Duct Cleaning

Workers and homeowners cleaning heating ducts should take precautions in protecting eyes and airways by wearing goggles and masks so as to not encounter bacteria or other allergens. These ventilation systems are easy breeding grounds for all manner of dangerous molds and infectious diseases with symptoms like difficulty breathing, persistent cough, and skin rashes showing up a few days after an infection appears.

Difficulty Breathing/Lung Damage

• Mold spores present in heating ducts, if inhaled, can present a significant health risk. According to molodsymptoms.org, common symptoms of short-term mold exposure can include headache, sneezing, itching skin accompanied with redness and irritation. Those individuals exposed to toxic mold over a longer period of time (such as those that clean heating duct systems for a living) may experience such severe symptoms as lung damage, coughing up blood, sudden asthma, chronic bronchitis, pain in the joints, short-term memory loss and many others.

Increase in Allergic Responses

• People cleaning dust-filled heating ducts over a short period of time may experience an increase in allergic responses to dust mites, pollen or other particles trapped in the system. Symptoms may include a skin rash, cough, mild fever, watery eyes, and sinusitis. Wearing proper masking equipment during the cleaning process greatly reduces the likelihood an allergic response to particles trapped in ventilation systems.

Legionnaires' Disease

• Clogged ventilation systems are breeding grounds for bacteria. Legionnaire's disease grows aerobically in dark moist areas typical of ventilation systems and hot water machines. Workers cleaning heating ducts infected with the bacteria (if inhaled) will experience fever, chills, muscle aches, loss of coordination and generally develop pneumonia. The disease usually onsets between two and 10 days after exposure. Without treatment, the disease is generally fatal.