If you have ever been in a damp home you know what it smells like and feels like. Often during a home inspection we will enter a home and almost immediately get the indications that something is growing, and it's not just the tomato plants.
Mold testing is pretty straightforward, and there are several ways to accomplish it. The question often is, "if I know (or think I know) the smell and the grey spots are mold, why should I bother testing? Why not just go straight to mold remediation?"
The answer is complex, but it revolves around the fact that there are thousands of different mold spore types, and each of us is affected differently by those spores. Some mold spores seem to have a more detrimental effect on people (remember the stacybotrus, or "black mold" hype several years ago?). So the answer to the question is dependent on whether you want or need to know not only the presence of mold, but also the spore type. If the samples come back as elevated for hyphae, for example, it's probably not as alarming as if it comes back for, say, stachybotrus, aka, "black mold".
Next week- what do I do if my mold sample comes back elevated?
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