u/PaddyMcGeezus

I live in a 100+ year old building without central air (radiator for heat). Under my kitchen sink, the wall has been replaced with a patchwork of small wood panels and a piece of drywall. Which has now been blown out of place due to high winds (tornado level) somehow blowing through the wall cavity. Last summer there was a sewage leak from the toilet pipe above my unit and they had to cut a hole in the concrete/wire mesh floor and plaster ceiling to fix it. In doing so, an old access hole in my kitchen that was cut and patched had one of the seams broken due to the vibration of the saw. Which I didn't find until recently because it's in a tight corner between my stove and kitchen cabinet.

So recently I've noticed a musty smell in my kitchen and it's gotten worse. Since our building is old, the kitchen and bathrooms have metal "windows" that open into an 4'x4' exhaust shaft. So when my neighbors smoke or cook, I smell it. Which is why I only open it in the bathroom. Also the hallways smell like cigarette smoke regularly. So despite cleaning my apartment, smells get in here from other units. Within the past month, I stated smelling an old ashtray smell that is unlike the smell of smoke. It wasn't all the time and it's come in gradually. Last night I googled "what kind of mold smells like an ashtray" and black mold came up. I got into the corner to put tape over the crack around the seam of the access panel and stated coughing to the point of almost vomiting. Today, my lungs feel like they do when I've had a severe reaction to oak or cedar pollen. (This northern Ohio and we haven't reached oak pollen season yet).

So my question is how to I proceed? Last year it took me 2 months of asking the lease manager and then refusing to resign my lease until the leak above me was fixed (it started as a small stain that kept getting bigger). One friend is telling me to get a mold specialist in here in my own to assess before contacting the management. I'm going to be contacting my rental insurance carrier to see wha they say. My lease is up at the end of May but I was going to go month to month after that (because I was going to move out of state (which I can't afford just yet).

Edit: over the past weeks I've had increasing itchy eyes and horrible allergies. Plus I've noticed today that the inside of my lips and the tip of my tongue feels odd, almost numb-like. I don't use drugs or smoke myself.