Do I have a mold problem in my home?!

A lot of people ask this question.

 They wonder if the black or green looking spots that show up in the bathtub or on the heating and cooling vents, are mold. Sometimes people are very sensitive to the musty smells from a basement or closet and wonder, “is that mold I smell?”

The internet is full of scary pictures of mold; men dressed in full protection white suits with respirators, walking around taking samples of the air. Common sense can help us arrive at some basic conclusions; but if you think you have a mold problem its best to seek professional help.

The biological facts are relatively simple to outline. If you invest your efforts in education and prevention, it is the least expensive route to take, and offers the most permanent solution available.

Mold is a Living Organism

It breathes air, it consumes food, it requires water to survive, and fortunately, when you take one of these components away, it dies. Mold is a fungus, kind of like a mushroom, but a lot smaller (sometimes it can’t even be seen with the naked eye.) It eats organic matter - anything that was once living – like plants and animals. Mold thrives in environments where we like to live - in structures made of organic material, like our homes. It likes temperatures between 32 and 100 degrees F, relative humidity (moisture in the air) between 70% and 99%, and is typically found in places that are damp or humid for extended stretches of time - like our basements and crawl spaces, for example.

Mold Grows?

When mold spores find the right combination of temperature, food source, and moisture - they grow. When mold grows it reproduces more airborne seeds to grow more mold. These seeds are like tiny parachutes that float through the air - just think of dandelion seeds in the wind. These seeds, called spores, are very light and the slightest breeze can lift them into the air, carrying the spores to new damp organic surfaces to grow on. If the spores stick to inorganic materials like clean metal, ceramic tile, porcelain, plastics etc, they will not grow. If they land on dry surfaces of any kind, they will not grow.

Some mold spores produce a chemical byproduct called mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are what some species of mold use to compete for space with other species – essentially waging chemical warfare on other molds. These compounds can affect our respiratory systems, even making us sick. You can’t see the spores or the mycotoxins, but a lot of people can smell their musty signature.

Mold Can Go Dormant

When mold dries out it goes dormant. When it’s dormant, it stops producing spores, and waits until the next period of high relative humidity or surface moisture

to continue growing and producing spores again. When people have “reactions” to mold, they are not reacting to the mold on surfaces, but

to elevated spore counts in the indoor air. It’s the same as people who are allergic to pollen in the spring; they aren’t reacting to the

budding leaves of the trees but rather the airborne pollen that results from the trees budding.

Don’t be fooled though. We cannot live a mold-free life! It is not natural for mold to be absent in our world. Mold is good – in the

right places. Mold is the mechanism by which organic material is broken down in nature. Without mold, nothing that grew would

break down and decay, ultimately feeding the next generation of plants and animals. But when we build a house out of organic

materials (lumber, paper, plywood, cardboard, insulation, etc.), we don’t want that material to rot back to the earth – we want our homes to last!

An excerpt from Mold Prevention Science, a book authored by Clint Cooper and Larry Janesky.