The Best Way To Check For Toxic Mold In Your Home And Ways To Get Rid Of It
Nobody wants to have mold in their home. While it can be easy to detect, it's hard to get under control - and the damage to your health and your home can be significant.
Fortunately, if you do have mold in your home, you're hardly alone. There are ways to detect and deal with mold, even if it seems daunting. Read our guide to dealing with this irritant, and find out the best ways to have a mold-free home moving forward.
You'll need to understand mold.
Mold can grow indoors or outdoors, but the common denominator - and the factor that makes it thrive - is moisture. This is because mold spores float through the atmosphere until they can find a good host surface - and a good host surface is typically a moist surface.
From there, a mold colony can grow. Lots of types of mold are harmless, or even beneficial. But the types of mold that can grow in your home tend to be the types you'll want to get rid of.
Follow your nose.
The first sign of mold that you'll notice will typically be a musty smell, one that can pervade your entire house. While it's probably emanating from a certain area, the musty smell can spread to every corner of your home.
Tracking down the source of the smell is probably a matter of finding moist areas of the house. This often means a bathroom or the basement, but can also come from areas with recent water damage.
There are visual clues, too.
Smell is generally the first sign you'll notice, but mold is often visible in certain areas, too - if you can find them. The earliest visual signs of a mold infestation are often a series of slightly discolored spots on surfaces like walls and floors.
These can occur not just in structural parts of your house, but also on soft surfaces that you store in your home like clothing and blankets - particularly if your garments are made out of natural fibres.
What about mildew?
There's often a perception that mildew is a separate issue from mold - one that might not be as serious. Unfortunately, mildew is a type of mold. It's commonly recognized because it's one of the fastest-growing types of mold.
Mildew is typically a light whitish-grey color, and has a powdery texture (not that you should really be touching any kinds of mold). Mildew often pops up in bathrooms, and can be effectively managed with a mildew-specific bathroom cleaner.
It can negatively affect your health.
Different types of mold (there are literally hundreds of thousands of varieties) can cause different effects, but early intervention is key if you're trying to preserve the health of your family and pets.
Those who already have respiratory issues should be particularly mindful, as mold can not only cause respiratory problems, but make existing issues worse. If you smell a musty smell and are feeling throat irritation or experiencing skin rashes, mold is probably the culprit.
It can mess up your home as well.
While mold can start with some microscopic spores, it spreads quickly and can take over much of your home if left unchecked. When structural building materials like walls and wood get damp, they can attract mold, which will permeate their surfaces.
Repair work can be done to replace moldy surfaces, but this is generally a costly proposition. In some cases, if a mold problem is severe enough, a structure may be beyond saving, making demolition the only viable option.
Mycotoxins are the problem.
There are too many individual types of mold to get into here, but the essence of harmful mold can be found in its mycotoxins, which is a name for dangerous chemicals that live in mold.
The most dangerous type of household mold is "black mold,", or "toxic mold," which is full of mycotoxins. It isn't the only type of mold that contains these nasty chemicals, but it does tend to contain the highest quantities.
What are the biggest problem areas?
General areas like basements and bathrooms are a good starting point, but there are also specific areas of the house that tend to harbor mold. Any wet areas, such as under your sinks or near your bathtub, are a good place to start.
From there, pull your appliances (especially your fridge) out from the wall to see if there are signs of mold behind them. Ventilation ducts are another problem area. Finally, if you've had water damage, anywhere that was damaged will be a hot spot for mold growth.
How can you be certain that it's mold?
Mold has a telltale smell and appearance that can make identification fairly straightforward. Still, if you want to be certain, there are a number of home tests that take samples of the air in your house to detect if mold is present.
These test kits are fairly inexpensive, usually costing somewhere between $10 and $40 per test. If they detect mold, they can be sent to a lab which can determine the specific types of mold present - though this additional testing carries an additional cost.
It comes in all the colors of the rainbow.
You may smell mold before you see it, but in many cases, you'll still see it - particularly if it comes in bright colors. Many types of household mold will be greyish-white, like mildew.
That said, the thousands of varieties of mold come in nearly as many colors. Mold inside your house can be pink, blue, purple, brown, or a combination of those colors. Brighter molds - the ones that come in orange or red hues - typically thrive outdoors.
Should you call the professionals?
If you've allowed a mold infestation to go unchecked, it may be necessary to call in professional help to identify and contain the problem. Even if the problem is relatively minor, professional help is still a good option if you can afford it.
That said, homeowners who are diligent and catch an infestation early on may want to try to take care of the problem themselves. This will require some equipment, but will save money in the long run.
First things first: gear up!
Mold is gross to touch or inhale, so you'll want to limit your contact with it. This means wearing decent respiratory protection, such as an N-95 or P-100 mask, along with protective goggles and gloves.
For clothes and shoes, you'll want to wear old junk that you don't care about getting dirty. After you're done, you can throw it in the washing machine - or, most likely, you'll want to throw it away entirely.
Keep the air flowing.
Part of the mold remediation process involves literally blowing the pesky spores out of your space. For this, you'll need a decent box fan to blow the spores away - and, unfortunately, you'll likely need to throw it away after, since it'll be covered in spores.
Cover your air ducts, set up the fan in a window, and tape up the gaps around the fan to keep the spores from floating back into the house.
Now it's time to get started.
Assuming you're geared up and have set up your area, you can now begin. Once the area is fully dry, you'll want to get a microbial cleaner in a spray bottle and spot-treat the troublesome areas.
If you're treating a larger area, such as a whole basement, you might want to use a fogging machine to fog the entire room. In any event, you'll want to get the microbial cleaner applied to any surfaces that might be moldy.
Soap and water helps as well.
Microbial spray helps attack the mold spores, but good old fashioned soap and water is effective when it comes to cleaning away the spots where the mold spores were taking hold.
Bleach and water isn't bad either, but soap and water is far more effective when it comes to physically removing mold from a surface. Just about any dish soap, slightly diluted in water, should do the trick. Just apply it using a cloth.
When is a job too big?
These tips can help homeowners effectively contain and kill mold when it's isolated to a relatively small area. But mold grows quickly, and by the time it's detected, it's often spread to multiple rooms.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends professional mold remediation if the mold growth present is larger than 10 square feet. This is costly, unfortunately - costing more than $2,000 on average, and ranges upward depending on how much mold is present.
What are the next steps?
Mold seems like an insurmountable problem, but if you're proactive and willing to put in the work (and expense), it's entirely possible to banish harmful mold from your house. From there, you'll want to do everything you can to ensure that it doesn't come back.
To keep mold away, you'll want to keep moisture at bay. The best way to do this is to make sure that there's a low risk of water damage, so shore up any basement or roof leaks and make sure your windows don't have any gaps.
Dehumidifiers are crucial.
Some homes are going to be prone to moisture buildup any which way, especially if they're located in a wet or humid environment. In these cases, the best way to remove dampness from the air is to set up a dehumidifer.
In larger homes, homeowners might even want multiple dehumidifier units, with one in the basement and one in a central part of the house. Most units can be attached directly to a drain, which eliminates the need to empty their bucket.
Check your storage.
We all tend to accumulate stuff, which in turn tends to fill up the empty spaces in the home. There's nothing inherently wrong with having these possessions, but it's good to be mindful about the stuff that contributes to mold growth.
Porous materials like paper trap moisture, so if you have old newspapers or magazines piling up, it's probably best to ditch them. The same goes for old clothes, especially if they're made of cotton or other natural materials.
Wipe down your bathroom.
People with glassed-in shower areas may already use a squeegee to remove water droplets after a shower, and this is a good practice to continue in order to keep mold growth at bay.
Wiping down any wet surfaces, especially in a humid environment like the bathroom, is a good habit to get into. Taking a shower can coat your whole bathroom in water droplets, and the goal is to eliminate as much of this moisture as possible.
What if you've been exposed to mold?
The symptoms of mold exposure are usually respiratory in nature, and these effects will be worse in people who already have respiratory conditions. In some cases, mold exposure can lead to respiratory infections or even mycotoxin poisoning.
Some tests claim to be able to identify mold exposure in humans, but they're often unreliable. Best practice advice is to consult a doctor, who can do tests to determine your susceptibility and sensitivity to mold complications.
Toxic mold lives up to its name.
Stachybotrys chartarum, better known as toxic mold or black mold, is the least desirable type of mold to find in your house. Fortunately, it grows more slowly than other molds, and not all varieties even produce mycotoxins.
This mold is indeed hazardous for both humans and pets, but its specific long-term effects are tough to pin down. Generally, severe illness only occurs in cases where levels of black mold are unusually high.
Spores are everywhere.
While certain conditions will lead to mold, it's almost impossible to determine how the mold entered your house. That's because mold spores are invisible to the naked guy and literally travel through the air.
This is why, in addition to the other precautions you'll take when cleaning mold, it's important to promptly dispose of the equipment you've been using. Put it in a heavy duty garbage bag, tie it securely, and take it out of the house as quickly as possible to get those spores out of the way.
Mold will always be present.
It's possible to remove problematic mold from the home, and it's possible to make your home unfriendly to new mold infestations - but removing mold entirely is quite literally impossible, as spores will always be present in some quantity, virtually everywhere you go.
The key is in understanding how mold can grow. Spores are floating through the air in your home, they're present in dust, and they get kicked up when you clean. But if conditions are dry enough, they won't be able to grow into an infestation.
When is the infestation officially over?
It's tough to know if you've eliminated the problem, considering the source of the problem originates in microscopic spores. But if you've taken the proper steps to clean things up, eliminated any damp or wet areas, and fostered a dry environment, you should be on the right path.
Of course, if you've opted for professional cleaning, you can rest assured that the problem has been contained. The professionals you hire should be able to explain what they've done and how it will help.
You'll want to check and re-check.
After dealing with even just one mold infestation, you'll probably become hyper-aware of the possibility of future outbreaks. While you don't want to get obsessive, it's worth assessing in the days and weeks to come whether things seem like they've gotten better.
Pay attention to not just the moisture and humidity conditions in your house, but also things like smell - are things still musty, or have they improved? If you were experiencing physical symptoms, they should go away after mold has been successfully removed.
Remember, mold takes time to grow.
Infestations will continue to spread if left unchecked, but diligent homeowners can reduce the possibility before it even happens. If you notice a water leak, make sure to clean it as quickly as possible, ideally within one to two days.
If the leak isn't present for long, mold spores won't be able to grow because there's no moisture to attach to. Of course, if the leak is an ongoing problem, you'll want to fix it at the source.
Fans are your friend.
In general, keeping the air flowing within your house is a good way to keep things from getting too musty or damp. This means using bathroom fans whenever you're having a bath or shower, and running dehumidifiers or air conditioners when appropriate.
Any appliances that can be vented to the outside, like the fan on your stove or clothes dryers, should be vented wherever possible. Routing steam and hot, damp air out of the house is the goal.
Moisture is the enemy.
It should go without saying at this point, but mold and moisture go hand in hand - and moisture is an ever-present possibility in any home. Understanding where moisture can come from, and taking steps to mitigate it, will go a long way in preventing mold in the long run.
Always consider not just the obvious areas, but also the smaller spaces you don't often see. Mold generally spreads when it starts in an out-of-the-way area and grows without being noticed.
You've got this!
Mold can be a daunting problem, but it needs to be approached like any other problem: as a process that can be solved if the proper steps are followed - and hopefully something that won't pop back up again.
Whether you can clean it yourself or need to call in professionals, eliminating mold outbreaks is absolutely critical for the health of your family and pets, and also for the long-term value of your house.