The Sensitive Nature of Mold

4/4/2018 (Permalink)

By: Winder Buchanan 

Nobody wants to hear the word mold. Since our youth we have been taught mold is bad and harmful to your health. If you have mold on your food you throw it away. If mold is in the air you pray for rain and head to the drug store for sinuses medicine. If mold is involved there is a problem, especially if it is in your house. But, luckily for everyone mold can be remediated. People forget there are mold spores all around us outside all the time. The purpose of a house is to protect you from the outside elements like keeping mold spores in nature. Some individuals are more sensitive to allergies than others. For any concerns on symptom’s and health safety you should ask a doctor.

Most people won’t find out about having mold until an event happens to cause them to look into it. The most common way to find out is during the buy/sell of a new home. The home inspector will go in the attic, the crawlspace, and check around all plumbing areas for signs of mold and moisture. Most people do not regularly check their crawlspace to see if a pipe is leaking or the snow melt has seeped into their crawl until it is too late.  As the Humidity increases and moisture evaporates to saturate the wood on the floor joist and sub floor, mold is able to grow.

Once, mold is discovered the panic starts to set in. What is it going to cost?, am I going to get sick?, and why do I have mold?. Mold Remediation is a common practice and can be done in a timely manner. Some specific steps must be taken to prevent cross-contamination (spreading mold spores to an area that originally was unaffected) to ensure it does correct. There are multiple ways to remediate mold depending on the building material, access to the area that is affected, and total square footage. Air sampling test post remediation is recommend because it is the only way to ensure the clean-up was done correctly and not just masked to come back at a later time.