Another Mold Story - Read and Decide

[hausdok]

Owning your first home is a dream come true for most young families. It can represent the accomplishment of goals, the start of a new life and countless other mile-markers. For the Wildauer family of DuBois, their dream home has become a nightmare.

Jennifer Wildauer enthusiastically greets the family's four cats, whom she hasn't seen in about two weeks.

"We're not trying to get rich, we're not looking for pain and suffering or any of that," she said. "All we want is our home back."

Jennifer, her husband, Gabriel, who is an Iraqi War veteran, purchased their first home on Robinson Street. His status as a military veteran qualified the family for a VA guaranteed loan for their new home.

To read more, click here.

[Mark P]

"A few days before closing on the home, Wildauer said their realtor had contacted them to say she had "forgotten" to schedule a home inspection....the realtor told the family they could wave the inspection and close on the home."

[John Dirks Jr]

Its sad they got displaced from their home.

I think the deciding factor in problems between mold and humans is the individual persons allergic reaction. If mold was the true culprit then wouldn't we all be sick?

Please don't say I'm blaming the persons who are affected. I'm just trying to come to a logical conclusion that, it's going to happen now and then.

I think the article makes a number of "assumptions".

I found this at the CDC site.

"Whether concentrations of airborne mold toxins are high enough to cause human disease through inhalation is unknown, and no health effects from airborne exposure to mold-related toxins are proven."

It makes me think twice about how I, as a home inspector, will answer the question, "do you do mold inspections"?

[Chris Bernhardt]

That's interesting. The article runs contrary to what is stated in "Mold, Housing, and Wood".

My understanding is that without a source of moisture the mold will go dormant. There's no more growth, no more VOC's, no more spore generation, etc. it just sit's there until you disturb it.

The article alludes that the dormant mold has to be removed. My understanding is that the only reason to mess with it at all is because you either don't like to look at it or it's such a large amount and likely to be disturbed to a degree that you can either start inhaling or consuming the dormant stuff and reacting to that.

My understanding is that because mold spores are everywhere floating around in the air, that as soon as you pat yourself on the back for your remediation efforts of trying to clean & kill whats there, the spores have already seeded the surface just waiting for moisture levels to build up again.

If they had continuing mold growth and assuming there was no leak source, then I think the building materials must have still been damp enough to support mold growth.

Chris, Oregon

[kurt]

One thing for sure; no reasonable or competent analysis can be made from the information presented in the article. There's enough contradictions of published scientific fact to make it all very curious.

There could be any number of toxins in the house, in multiple forms, that could be the root cause, and mold is a red herring.

Maybe the cats dragged something into the house.

Maybe the house was used as a meth lab or some other toxic drug manufactory.

Or, the family has an extremely rare form of predisposition that makes them extremely susceptible to all molds.

No one has done the sort of analysis that would delineate the actual problem; there was a knee jerk response to mold because they were able to fill all the vaguaries of their symptoms.

"News" articles like this aren't news. They are mandated by editors looking for content. In this one, we have a trifecta of an Iraqi war vet, family, and mold.

God Bless them all, but there's no science here, only dramatic content.

Could be mold, but also could be about a thousand other things.

What's necessary is less "content", and more medical and scientific professionals making educated determinations about causes. Right now, it's an associate editor at a dinky daily paper that's filling column inches with content.

[Chris Bernhardt]

"News" articles like this aren't news. They are mandated by editors looking for content. In this one, we have a trifecta of an Iraqi war vet, family, and mold.

Exactly right.

A few years ago a local TV station ran an "on your side" piece declaring that Oregon certified home inspectors are not required to perform wood destroying pest inspections. They spot lighted a single mother who had bought a house in the prior fall and when spring hit she had winged carpenter ants flying about. The inspector's report disclaimed hidden pest infestations, the disclaimer which they showed on the air with the inspection company name lighty blotted out but still readable. They showed a pest contractor walking about with his spray can, with a disgusted look and shaking his head and the lady singing that she would have never bought the house if she had only known, while she batted away flying carpenter ants for dramatic impact.

What they of course failed to report on is that the vast majority of Oregon certified home inspectors are also licensed/certified by the Oregon department of Agriculture to perform pest inspections. You can't really have an inspection business here without also performing a P&D inspection along with the full home inspection.

Chris, Oregon

[pfallah]

Just another sad story. Lack of scientific evidence, misinformation, possibly misdiagnosis, failure to show cause and effect. it appears a lot of people are involved trying hard to relate their problem to "mold" or "toxic mold".

No mentions in the article that there was mold growth and what it was. water stains do not necessarily mean mold growth. This is a common assumption.

For fungi/mold to grow you need a few things: generally spores, food source, and moisture. You cant control food source and spores because they are everywhere indoors. But moisture can be and ought to be controlled. Without it mold cannot grow.

[Paul N Frey]

Chris - your statement concerning "the vast majority of certified home inspectors are certified" is false. Take the time to go through the ODA license site query name by name and you will find that most inspectors are NOT licensed by ODA. Hell, many of the "grey hairs" still argue that it is legal to use their CCB or OCHI numbers on a NPCA 33 form. Washington has it all over us when it comes to regulating WDO inspections. I had one "inspector" try and tell me that an old WBB damaged sill plate and rim was a sub termite in festation and the residence should be treated! When I asked him if he held his ODA tag he replied that he didn't need to as he "knew enough to identify". Just think how many sellers have spent hundreds / t their homes treated due to this incompetent ass!! The last time I checked local inspectors on the ODA site there were less than a dozen that were licensed.