Article
John P. Lapotaire, CIEC
Air Sampling for Mold Spores is NOT a Mold Inspection and NOT an Air Quality Sample!
Mold has become an issue for homeowners and home buyers across the country. Mold inspections have become a part of most real estate transactions. However, here in Florida, a mold inspection has become a bit cliché even passé. Today it’s all about Air Quality. Why call it a mold sample if you can charge more and call it an Air Quality Sample? I’ve given my 2 cents about the value of mold sampling and the total lack of value in simply sampling for mold and calling it a mold inspection so I won’t beat a dead horse, well not much.
If anyone is purchasing a home and they want to know if there is a mold issue they will typically ask their home inspector to collect a few air samples for airborne mold spores. This is the add-on feature that benefits the home inspector and adds no valuable information to the home buyer. But hey, the home buyer doesn’t know that, right? Worse yet, the home inspector doesn’t even know that. The home inspector isn’t aware of the standard of practice for mold inspection, the ASTM D-7338. The home inspector simply excludes as much liability as possible in his or her inspection disclaimer and collects a few air samples for airborne mold spores and calls them air quality samples, C’est La Vie, That’s life, thanks for the extra cash and on to the next job.
The home buyer who then becomes the homeowner may soon realize that there’s an issue with water intrusion that the home inspector missed and the mold samples for airborne mold spores didn’t discover. How could that be? The home inspector inspected for mold, right? The home was sampled for mold, right? There were air quality samples collected that said there was no problem, Right?
No, not true. The home was never inspected for mold, and actually only a very, very, small amount of the air was sampled for mold. The actual air quality was never established, and if the one component that was sampled (mold) is undisturbed, the mold won’t be in the air. The air sampling for mold spores is extremely unreliable and will not provide any valuable information. (pardon my beating the dead horse a bit).
The home inspector or mold inspector that collected the samples for airborne mold spores provided the homeowner with no valuable information about the home they just purchased. So now that the new homeowner has discovered a water or mold problem they have to hire a new mold assessor to take a second look at the home. If we are contacted, we always take the opportunity to ask the new homeowners to provide us with their mold inspection report to review.
We have a great collection of mold inspection reports from home and mold inspectors all across the state. Insurance companies and homeowners have been asking us for a second opinion for years and our collection of worthless reports is substantial and growing each week. How our industry came to this is amazing? Let’s just say it’s capitalism at the expense of personal ethics. If all you care about is making a buck and you could care less about the value of what you’re providing your client, go ahead and collect a few more air samples for mold spores and call them “Air Quality Samples”. That’s capitalism without ethics.
So exactly what happens when we get to the home and actually take a look. A disclaimer free look. A true mold inspection in accordance with the ASTM D-7338. Let’s face it, if we’re there, then there’s a problem. If there wasn’t, the homeowner wouldn’t have called us, right? So now we have a homeowner that should have had the opportunity to identify a problem with the home they wanted to purchase prior to that purchase. Critical, right? That’s what they hired the first mold inspector for. To identify any issues with the home that can support mold growth. Prior to the purchase is the time to identify any mold related issues. That’s when the issues can be used during the decision making phase of the purchase.
Regardless of the issue, everything can be negotiated if the issues are identified during the buying phase of the transaction. What the home buyer wants is information about the home. Valuable information about the home not useless airborne mold spore count information. Valuable information like, “The home you are wanting to purchase has areas of building envelope failure that are allowing water intrusion that could support mold growth in the following areas.” Then list the areas of failure. The list should be specific and define the extent of the water and mold damage, describe the failure, and don’t be concerned with the genus of mold because it doesn’t matter. What matters to the home buyer is the knowledge any issues before they make the purchase, not after.
The collection of air samples is a feel good placebo that may help facilitate a sale but is not a mold inspection. If you’re selling a mold inspection, then provide a mold inspection. The only thing worse than collecting air samples for mold spores and calling it a mold inspection is selling that simple collection of airborne mold spores as an air quality sample. With all that can be in the air, mold is but one small piece of the air quality puzzle. I can assure you that sampling the air for mold spores is not and never will be an air quality sample any more than it’s a mold inspection. This is the art of over selling and under delivering.
This brief article should be informative. It should raise questions, but it shouldn’t offend. If it does offend you then you’re probably the guy collecting the air samples for mold spores and either calling it a mold inspection or air quality sampling. If that’s the case, no apologies necessary on my end. My advice, stop it. Stop over selling and under delivering just to make a few extra bucks.
I gotta go for now, I have a dead horse to go kick in another forum…….
John P. Lapotaire, CIEC
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Certified Indoor Environmental Consultant
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Indoor Air Quality Solutions, IAQS
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Microshield Environmental Services, LLC
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