Toxic Mould Support Australia’s mission is to raise awareness throughout Australia and New Zealand of chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS), and other mould-related illnesses, and to provide support to patients.
Caleb Rudd
Researcher, Website editor
Facebook group administrator (Nov 2014 – June 2023)
I developed Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) while working in London in 2000 after a flu-like illness while living in a damp apartment. With increasing symptoms of chronic fatigue, post-exertional malaise, insomnia, brain fog, and flu-like symptoms, I returned to Australia and embarked on a journey that saw me consult dozens of health practitioners, many tests, and hundreds of therapies, both mainstream and non-mainstream. I was diagnosed with CIRS in early 2015 and embarked on a CIRS treatment protocol shortly after. I had first encountered the work of Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker when I read Mold Warriors in 2006 but no testing was available at that time and I was unable to interest any doctor in the protocol. I believe that exposure to mould, was a trigger, or factor, in developing ME/CFS. My CIRS/ME story can be read in my submission to the 2018 Biotoxin Inquiry [download PDF].
I work for the Lotus Institute of Holistic Health, including the Mold Illness Made Simple online course, and for the non-profit organisations International Society for Environmentally Acquired Illness (ISEAI) and the Australian Chronic Infectious and Inflammatory Disease Society (ACIIDS). I also am an associate investigator on the Macquarie University study (the same one that Sean mentions below), which is detailed in a blog post on this site, also see the NHMRC 2023 progress report.
Sean Di Lizio
Researcher, Website contributor
Facebook group moderator (August 2020 – June 2023)
My CIRS story is published here: The Good News Is Your Illness Isn’t Real. After my own experience of struggling to find medical help, I wrote a brief scholarly review to help potential CIRS patients receive proper testing and referrals, and this eventually morphed into a number of related projects. I worked with Dr. Cheryl Harding of CUNY (with some assistance also from Sharon Noonan Kramer and Erik Johnson) to write a section on Wikipedia detailing the science of how mould and other biotoxin formers can cause innate immune activation. More recently, I worked as the lead author with Caleb Rudd on CIRS Explained and our Science Primer—both of which I’d still direct any new CIRS patients and their support network too. With Macquarie University’s Professor Gilles Guillemin, I helped to write a grant application that won funding from Australia’s NHMRC for further research into CIRS. Despite the negative effects of this illness on my life, I count myself lucky to have met so many other wonderful patients, advocates, doctors, and researchers as a result.