Can Mold Be in Areas That Aren’t Visible? | Atlanta Toxic Mold Attorneys | Mold Firm

Mold Firm

Carson Jeffries: Good morning, I'm Carson Jeffries with the Mold Firm and I'm here today with long-time friend and owner of Air Allergen & Mold Testing. Richard Johnson: My name is Richard Johnson and I'm the President/CEO of Air Allergen & Mold Testing. Absolutely true. I mean, you can't walk into a house and say what's in the carpet dust, for instance. But the carpet dust and the mold in the carpet dust in particular, has been shown to be very strong indicator of health risks. For instance, there's a study out of the, well, the whole ERMI environment where the mold in the Moldiness Index was based on the mold spores that were found in carpet dust. Carson: And that's from the EPAs, is that correct? Richard: That's correct. That was funded by the EPA. It was done in the 90s. It was done and demonstrated at that time that there was an association between what was found in the carpet dust, if it was more moldy than average based on their index compared to not, that they were associated with health concerns. More recently there has been other studies that have used that as a measure. One of the ones that I've found to be most definitive is one done by the Cincinnati Children's Hospital. And what they did was, they took the ERMI index and if you're more moldy than average based on what spores were found in your carpet and these were for children that were treated in the emergency room at least twice in the previous year, or hospitalized once in the previous year, and then diagnosed with asthma. So, they went into the homes and they did this ERMI test. They took those that were shown to be more moldy than average, and they divided them into two groups. They went in and cleaned the one group and took out the moldy materials and cleaned the surfaces and everything, places that they couldn't see. And they didn't do anything in the other group - the control group. And in the ten months following that study, there was a tenfold reduction in the emergency room visits and hospitalizations from the group that they cleaned up, compared to the group that they didn't. There was a similar study up in Chicago that showed a sixty-five percent reduction in the group that they took the moldy materials out and cleaned everything out. Then there was another study in Boston, in New York, that showed a ninety percent reduction, but they include pest control as well. It brings up another issue that we're talking about when we're talking about leaks as, for instance, from water damage in something. The thing that attracts pests is moisture or water. So, if you're not controlling water like, from lakes and stuff, you're far more likely to have pests, whether they'd be crickets, or spiders, or cockroaches, or rodents – they are all looking for moisture. Controlling any kind of leaks like that will reduce the incidents of those things as well. So, the kinds of environment that the people are living in have a great deal to do not - the mold that we use is a good indicator of whether or not it's a healthy environment, but it can affect so many more things than just the mold by dealing with that environment.