“Mold,” I replied

“MOLD? Whaddya mean, mold? You do castings? Jello?”

“We help people find mold in their homes and get rid of it.”

“Oh. (Eww…) You can actually make a living doing that?”

“Actually, yes, we do.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Not really,” I said. “But it’s important.”

The sad truth is, there is no fun in fungi. Even though I can be a fun guy, especially when the lampshade goes on the head at the party, fungi are not fun. Fun Gus is one thing. Fungus is another.

Which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy my work. I do, mostly because I know it’s important to tell people about fungi, molds, indoor air quality, moisture problems, and all the health hazards people face from a little mold inside a wall.

But we don’t hit the top of the charts on Google, we don’t have huge crowds following us on Twitter and Facebook. We’re not ringtones, or games, or music, or videos. We don’t make anyone laugh out loud. We’re not iPhones, or iPods or iPads. We’re not about toys, or bright colors or any of that. We’re not cool. We’re not fun.

Our rhetoric is dry, our topic is usually damp, and always moldy. Blechh. (No, no! Don’t use bleach on mold!)

Over at 1800gotmold.com, it’s a little livelier, because we have the dogs. Everyone loves dogs. And we have some cool high-tech gadgets to help us pin down the mold infestations our dogs tell us are there. And we have great stories sometimes about how someone who was really sick got healthy and happy after their mold problem was eliminated.

But it’s still mold. So no groupies, no fan clubs, no cheering throngs. No fun. Nobody wants to read about mold until they think they have a mold problem. Then, they’re a little freaked and looking for answers, and sometimes looking for simple, fast answers. There aren’t any. And it’s not fun dealing with fungi.

A lot of people want to know what type of mold they have, or what type of mold is bad for people. They think, “Well, if it’s harmless mold I can just ignore it.” And we have be the party pooper and tell them there’s no such thing as harmless mold in your house.

Yeah, there are the little streaks of mildew on your tile grout, and you can scrub that off and not worry much about it. Except that you need to make sure your grout and caulk are sound, and that water hasn’t already gotten behind the tile, because hidden mold inside a wall can make a lot of people sick. Plus, eventually, all that tile will end up in a heap in the tub and you’ve got an emergency on your hands. So we can’t even be cavalier about a little moldy grout.

A lot of people have been buying those mold test kits you see in the big-box home stores, because they’re cheap, and they promise to tell you if you have BLACK MOLD! or TOXIC MOLD! in your house. And we have to go and spoil it again, and tell them no, those kits won’t tell you anything, at least not anything useful.

See, there’s all kinds of science behind the way professional mold assessment people test for mold. There’s about as much science in those cheap kits as there is in a Chia Pet. Well, maybe less. Chia Pets are kinda cool, and you can eat chia.

Those cheap kits have so much wrong with them it’s not even funny. There I go again. Not funny, no fun. Anyway, here’s the unfunny truth.

The way the cheap kits work is they use what’s known as a settling plate: a little dish with goo in it and a lid. In a lab it might be called a Petri dish. What you’re supposed to do is take the lid off and put the dish of goo out on a table or a counter for a couple of days, and see what grows in it. They give you some pictures to compare with what grows in your goo, so you can decide what it is. You’re an expert now, right?

You might as well just leave a wet slice of bread on the counter. It’ll get moldy. So what? Drop a hamburger on the floor and the dog will eat it. Put a handful of peanuts on the porch and the squirrels will eat them. Put out some goo that mold likes, and mold will grow in it. Now what do you know that you didn’t know before? Nothing. Mold spores are, literally, everywhere. So setting out a mold banquet to see who stops by to eat is pointless.

Then there’s the claim on the cheap test kits that they can tell you if you have BLACK MOLD! Hogwash. They can’t do anything of the sort, for a couple of reasons. First, you’re not going to leave it out long enough to grow the black stuff, called Stachybotrys, because it takes a long time to establish itself. And second, the goo they put in the settling plate is not Stachybotrys food! It won’t grow there.

What you need to know is this: What’s in the air you’re breathing, and does that provide evidence of indoor mold growth? The only way to know this is to sample the air, both indoors and out, and analyze and compare those samples microscropically. If you have a higher count indoors than outdoors, or if you have types of mold indoors that don’t show up outdoors, it’s a red flag. It means you may have indoor mold growth.

There are three ways to get these kinds of samples and have them analyzed. One is to hire a professional mold assessment company, meaning you’ll spend something in the neighborhood of $1,000 for an expert eye and some air samples. The second way is to buy one of the old-style mold test kits with the expensive, complicated air pump that you have to return, and which, if you break it or lose it, could cost you plenty. And you’ll spend $350 to $500 for the deal, plus $100 or so per sample, and you’ll get a report you can’t comprehend.

Third is the GOT MOLD? Test Kit, which includes a disposable pump, clear and easy instructions and tons of extra information, plus a report that’s color-coded, simple, straightforward, and tells you what to do next. And it’s $99, plus lab work, but the lab work is less costly than all the others at $30 per sample (and the first one’s free), so that the MOST you can spend if you go crazy with all the samples is $150, making your total cost just $249.

Dealing with a mold problem is not fun. Reading about mold is not fun. We know we’re in a no-fun business, which is why we decided to make it easy and simple and less expensive.

Maybe that’ll put a smile on your face.

But maybe you don’t own your home. Maybe you rent. That makes it more complicated. If you incurred the expense of a professional mold inspection, say from 1-800-GOT-MOLD?, what would you do with the information? If a mold test discovered a mold problem, you can’t just proceed with hiring a remediation contractor. It’s not your property.

Maybe the problem is where you work. Chances are, if you’re a teacher or an office worker, your employer will not be falling all over himself to hire a professional inspection company based on your health complaints. And you don’t have the authority to call in the mold squad yourself. What to do? Testing mold is a daunting proposition for many.

The GOT MOLD? Test Kit is the perfect secret weapon. You can follow the clear instructions and do a preliminary screening of your home for a fraction of the cost of a professional inspection and with more usable information than any other home mold test kit.

In fact, before you even consider buying the GOT MOLD? Test Kit, you can learn exactly how to conduct your initial survey, find potential trouble spots and know exactly where to take your samples. Just download our free ebook, right here.

You can bring the components to work with you in a lunch bag or whatever you carry – purse, backpack, briefcase. Once unpacked, the components are small, light and easy to cart around. Choose your time, do your outside air sample for a baseline, then your inside samples. Do a surface sample here and there on those suspicious-looking dark spots on the ceiling, the wall, whatever.

Wherever you have done your sampling – and maybe you decided to do both home and work environments – you pack up your samples, fill out the online form to register them (and to qualify for your free outdoor baseline sample analysis), and send them off to the lab.

Then a few days later (10 business days is our promise), you have your report, or your reports. Will you need an expert to decipher the gobbledegook, translate all the mycological mold-speak into something meaningful? Not with the GOT MOLD? Test Kit.

All the scientific information is in there, if you care to wade through it, or need to show it to an expert. But right on top is a color-coded summary of each of your samples, telling you in plain words what you have. Our reports are color coded Green, Yellow, Orange and Red, with a simple explanation for each color.

For example, if both your indoor air sample analyses are similar to your outdoor baseline sample and to indoor air quality standards, your codes will all be Green. This will indicate no evidence of an “Alert Condition” was found in your samples.

A Yellow-coded analysis means slight evidence of an Alert Condition was detected in that sample, and you may wish to consider further investigation.

An Orange-coded analysis indicates moderate evidence of an Alert Condition was found, in which case we would recommend a professional mold assessment be done.

If you receive one or more Red-coded analyses, it means there is evidence of significant indoor mold growth, and we will urgently recommend that you consult a mold-assessment professional.

Now what? Well, now you have solid evidence in hand that your home or your work place has a mold problem. This is what you present to your landlord, principal, supervisor, or whoever is in charge of the building in question. This is where you begin your campaign to get this problem solved, because fixing a mold problem can alleviate all sorts of physical ailments.

Don’t be intimidated by anyone who points out that, hey, you’re the only one complaining. If that’s the case, it may well be that you’re the only one whose immune system is sensitive to mold exposure. Or you may simply be the only one who has connected the dots and spoken up.

And if you prevail in your quest, and 1-800-GOT-MOLD? has a team in your area, the purchase price of your GOT MOLD? Test Kit is deducted from the price of your inspection. Offer this to the powers that be as a token of good will. It just may be the key to victory.

And then this ignoramus claims a mold test kit (he doesn’t specify which one) is just as good as a dog!

Outrageous.

The GOT MOLD? Test Kit is indeed the best home mold test kit on the market, bar none, and the easiest to use and the most bang for the buck… But it’s no match for our dogs.

Our original mold dog, Oreo, can walk into a house, look around and then bolt right to a wall, where she alerts. It’s as if she can see the trail of mold-produced gases (MVOCs) in the air, and can see exactly where they’re coming from. Uncanny. So she’ll nail that spot, then jump to another spot, as if to say “This is where it ends.” And she’s always right.

That’s what all the high-tech gizmos are for: to confirm what the dog knows but can’t prove (at least not to us stupid humans).

Now back to the ignorant anonymous blogger. He talks about mold detection and mold remediation (the actual tearing out of moldy materials) as if they’re both part of the same process. Sadly, for an awful lot of mold contractors, they are, despite the fact that state after state is passing laws to prohibit detection and remediation being done by the same company.

Never the Twain Should Meet

We made our choice a long time ago. We will have nothing – nada, zip, zilch – to do with remediation. We won’t take a nickel from a remediator even if we recommend them for a job. The closest we get at 1-800-GOT-MOLD? to remediation is as a consultant to our customer. We’ll define the scope of the project, write a remediation plan, supervise the setup of the remediation job to make sure the contractor isn’t going to contaminate the rest of the house, and do final testing to determine whether the job was done properly. The customer pays us to hold the remediator’s feet to the fire.

The GOT MOLD? Test Kit is a great place to start if you suspect you have a mold problem but aren’t sure. It’s easy to be unsure about mold. Lots of so-called mold inspectors are so unsure about mold they can’t see it when it’s staring at them. My son once went on a job where three other mold inspectors had said they couldn’t find anything. He walked into one room and almost fell over backwards. One entire wall was black with mold!

Needless to say, Oreo never got out of the truck. You don’t need a dog to tell you what’s right in front of your face. And we don’t ever expose a dog to a moldy environment unnecessarily. They are family. They sleep in our beds, crawl in our laps, just like any other household pet, which is why my head was flapping so hard at the anonymous blogger’s claim that using dogs to find mold puts the dogs in danger. Not on our watch, it doesn’t.

So yes, a mold test kit, providing it’s a GOT MOLD? Test Kit, is a good first attack on a suspected mold problem. It can confirm, or contradict, your suspicions. And it’s never wasted money. If you still need a dog and an inspector with a lot of fancy gadgets to find hidden mold, the $99 you paid for the kit is credited back when you call 1-800-GOT-MOLD?

And if you really want a jump start, here’s a freebie: We have published a free ebook, “How to Find Mold and Moisture Problems in Your Home and What to Do About Them: Secrets of the Professionals,” which you can get right now, just by clicking on the title.

Good luck, and stay dry.

No mention was made of teaching students not to make piles of dirty socks, underwear and wet towels, or to throw out yesterday’s leftover pizza before it becomes last month’s petri dish, or to clean and dust their rooms periodically (more than once a year), or to clean up spills immediately, or to make sure plumbing leaks are reported and fixed promptly, or to close the windows when it’s raining, or to refrain from food fights… the list could go on for awhile.

This is classic baby-with-the-bathwater thinking. Yes, an overwatered plant can create a mold problem, albeit a small one that’s easily corrected. Odds are, however, that a potted plant in a dorm room will be underwatered to the point it becomes a fire hazard, because we know how diligent college students are about taking care of their things.

Meanwhile, the classrooms, labs and offices will also have to do without greenery, which is a shame, because plants can soak up volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are airborne chemicals you don’t want to breathe. The authorities on this are NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America, who did an actual lab study back in the 1980s with tropical plants and some common VOCs.

“The tests were conducted in sealed test chambers that contained pollutants such as formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene, commonly present in indoor air from paints, varnishes, insulation, particleboard, pressed wood, adhesives and other sources,” says the article in The Daily Green.

Chances are a building full of classrooms, laboratories, offices and dorm rooms will contain these ugly chemicals and more.

Parents are naturally concerned about a lot of things when they send their children off to college for the first time. These concerns are magnified if the children are asthmatic. Settling into a new environment with a lot of other people opens up a whole spectrum of unanticipated irritations for someone who’s already sensitive. Mold, dust, VOCs and pollen are common irritants for asthmatics.

This article at USA Today offers some useful tips for helping asthmatic students protect themselves from respiratory assaults at college, although I have strong reservations about the flu vaccine part. A regular habit of vitamin D supplements and intelligent sun exposure would be more effective and less hazardous, but that’s just my opinion (I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen one played on TV).

I have some additional tips for parents of college students.

We have a free ebook available, “How to Find Mold and Moisture Problems in Your Home: Secrets of the Professionals.” If you haven’t already downloaded it and read it, now’s the time to grab it. Go here to get it. Inside, you’ll find a comprehensive guide to inspecting your home and finding signs of water and moisture problems. If you find moisture problems, it may be time to test your air for evidence of indoor mold growth. If someone in your home is chronically ill, or just not feeling well, a mold test is imperative.

Water matters, because without it mold won’t grow. Of course, without any water, no life will grow. But humans, pets and plants can get by on lower relative humidity than mold. Mold is happy in the same temperature range people like. And pretty much everything people use to build homes and furnish them is pure mold candy, as long as there’s enough water.

How much water? Well, 50 percent relative humidity or more is adequate for mold. It helps if the air is fairly still, too. This explains why so many schools have mold problems every fall: They are closed up in June with no ventilation or air conditioning, giving mold a nice summer vacation with warm, humid air to grow and get healthy. Healthy mold means sick people. Often they make it even healthier by shampooing the carpets in August, and leaving the windows closed and the AC off. Yow.

So water can come in with the air. Air conditioning dehumidifies, so homes with AC can keep their humidity levels down during the summer. But AC creates other moisture issues. The condensation created in the AC unit itself needs to drain outside the house. If that drain is clogged or leaking, there’s a source of excess moisture. Dehumidifiers can help too, and one advantage is they don’t lower the air temperature outside the unit.

Temperature differentials are another issue created by AC. Even in the driest of climates (think Arizona), you can have condensation forming in wall cavities and attics, where the cool inner wall or ceiling meets the warming outside air, bringing it down to dew point. This can produce enough moisture to support mold growth that’s completely invisible.

Bathrooms are a great source of water (no, duh?), sometimes in unexpected ways. Obviously, drips and leaks create excess moisture where it doesn’t belong. Exhaust fans vented into attics or crawl spaces are another common water-maker. But how about a bathroom with an open window and no exhaust fan (there are a few million of these)? You can bet on moisture in the ceiling space above, or in the attic/crawl space. Water vapor can penetrate almost anything, and even with a properly vented exhaust fan you can still end up with a moldy attic if the fan isn’t powerful enough or doesn’t run long enough.

Tub and shower surrounds, tile and grout all can leak and deposit moisture in wall and floor cavities, promoting mold growth. Kitchens are another obvious source of excess water, as are windows, doors, roofing, siding, gutters, etc.

Then there is concrete. They make swimming pools out of this stuff, so it ought to keep water out, right? Not so much. Basements are notorious for being damp enough for mold growth, but water can also intrude into any space that’s below grade, such as a ground-level room with a block knee wall below grade – very common in split levels. Water in the soil actually bears against anything that blocks it with tremendous, persistent force, called hydraulic pressure. The slightest porosity will allow more water through than you’d imagine.

A slab foundation, meaning a home with a solid concrete first floor, can wick moisture up out of the ground and feed it into wood framing, carpeting, etc., creating a chronic mold problem. Outside grading is also a major factor in water intrusion. If the soil around a structure slopes toward the structure, it carries water in that direction and creates hydraulic pressure against the foundation. Water will eventually seep in.

So we know that mold is everywhere, and water is everywhere. The trick is to keep them apart, and the only way to do that is to be constantly on the lookout for signs of water intrusion or condensation.

With apologies to Thomas Jefferson, the price of mold freedom is eternal vigilance.

Again, if you haven’t downloaded your free copy of “How to Find Mold and Moisture Problems in Your Home: Secrets of the Professionals.” you can still get it here.

Have dry and mold-free day. And of course, if you feel you need to test for mold, remember that not all home mold test kits are created equal. For a comprehensive comparison of mold detection kits, click here.

So we think the Got Mold? Test Kit is the “bestest best ever” do-it-yourself mold test kit on the globe. You ask why. And you should. I’m glad you did.

For starters, it works. I can’t say that about some of the best-selling kits on the market, because, well, they don’t. Consumer Reports did a review of a bunch of mold test kits awhile back and basically shredded them all. Unfortunately, ours wasn’t out yet, so we missed a shot at being an overnight sensation. But we were already in development, and none of the flaws CS found in other kits exist in ours.

The non-working kits are the ones that feature “settling plates,” or Petri dishes – little flat saucers of goo that mold spores like to grow in. The theory is, you leave one of these goo gardens out on your counter or table for a few hours, then clap the lid on and wait a few days to see what sprouts.

In most cases, you get a pamphlet with some photos, which you’re expected to match up with the creepy, fuzzy stuff in your goo garden so you know what “type” of mold you have. This is an exercise in futility. Here’s why:

First: Mold spores are everywhere. Everywhere. If you leave a hotdog on the beach, a seagull will eat it. If you place a source of moist nutrition out in the air, mold will grow on it. The only exception might be a “clean room,” the kind where they make silicon chips. Even there, I’d bet on mold over the filters and scrubbers. You can fit 10,000 mold spores on the head of a pin, which makes the old angel trick look silly.

Second: The makers of these kits claim they will tell you if you have what the fear-mongers in the industry call “toxic” or “black” mold. They’re talking about stachybotrys chartarum, which is alleged to emit some very nasty stuff called mycotoxins and is blamed for the big-publicity cases such as Ed McMahon’s dog and the original big case involving Melinda Ballard. Here’s the glitch: Stachybotris spores are wet and heavy, thus unlikely to make it into a Petri dish in a few hours. And the killer is that the goo in these kits won’t grow stachybotris! It’s the wrong formula, plus it needs a lot of time to get established.

Third: You end up with zero usable information. Is mold actually growing inside your home (that is, outside the goo garden)? You won’t know. Is there a higher spore count indoors than outdoors? You won’t know. And those are the only things you need to know, except for where it’s growing if it’s there.

Fourth: Do you really want to encourage mold to grow in your house? A little dish like that with 24 hours worth of mold growth in it will be spewing out spores by the millions. For my money, if it’s not already in my cheese, I don’t want any mold in my house. OK, my shoes are another story.

Other mold test kits offer cotton swabs, or suggest you use a piece of Scotch tape, to get a surface sample. Again, this might be fine if you’re trying to decide whether the stain in your suitcase is mold or coffee (who cares?), but the only important question is: What’s in the air you’re breathing?

Surface sampling has its place, and the Got Mold? Test Kit includes three industry-standard BioTape™ surface samplers, in addition to the three industry-standard Air-O-Cell™ air sampling cassettes.

Then there are the vacuum cleaner kits. With these, you place a filter of some kind on your own vacuum cleaner and go vacuum the heck out of your carpets, bedding, upholstery or whatever, and send the dirty filter to a lab. Guess what? There’s mold! So what? Remember, mold is everywhere. So what you still don’t know is whether the mold in the air inside your house is more prevalent than outdoors. It’s another zero-information game.

There is one type of kit that works. It’s what I call the “rent-a-pump” kit. But these are generally expensive, and entail the hassle and risk of using a very expensive professional air pump that needs to be returned intact, or you bought it. Other than that, they generally use industry-standard air sampling cassettes, so they work, providing of course that the pump has been properly cleaned and recalibrated before you got it.

The Got Mold? Test Kit includes our proprietary BioVac™ air sampling pump, which is cordless and disposable. You can keep it if you like, but it really is disposable. For a peek at what’s in the kit, go here.

So what makes the Got Mold? Test Kit the “bestest best ever” is:
1. It works – industry-standard components and solid science
2. It’s affordable – fully deployed, it’s less than the starter “rent-a-pump” kits
3. It’s easy to use – clear instructions are included; a kid can do it.
4. It’s hassle free – take your samples, drop them in the mail, get your report in 10 business days

We’re already working on the next generation of the Got Mold? Test Kit. It’ll be even easier! Stay tuned.

The origin of MycoLab USA, the maker of the Got Mold? Test Kit, was the realization my son Jason and I had years ago that indoor mold growth is a serious health issue for millions of people. The follow-on realization was the fact that there was no scientifically valid, affordable home test kit available on the market.

All this percolated to the surface while Jason was working with his Mold Dog™ Oreo to develop what would turn out to be the model for MycoLab USA’s sister company, 1800-GOT-MOLD? During five years of business building, research and brainstorming, we got a lot of feedback from customers, and lots of unsolicited queries from all over the country, thanks to the internet.

The two most common questions from callers were: “Do you do inspections in my area?” and “Do you sell a home mold test kit?” The answer to the first was often negative, and the second answer was always “No,” but it started the gears moving. Eventually, it became clear: We would have to expand nationally by creating a franchise network of mold inspectors with dogs, and we would have to develop a home mold test kit. So it was that the original company Jason founded, Lab Results LLC, evolved into Mycelium Holdings LLC.

“Mycelium is created when the roots of mold growth join together to form a common structure which helps the organism to extract more nutrition from its surroundings, enabling stronger growth and ensuring its survival.”

Like a good mycelium, the parent company sprouted subsidiaries, including MycoLab USA LLC, 1800-GOT-MOLD? LLC, IndoorHealthSolutions.com and Moldfacts.org.

Okay, to be fully accurate, Mycelium Holdings does not cite “putting ourselves out of business” as its mission. Here’s the actual mission statement:

“Our mission is to improve the quality of the lives of everyone we touch – our employees, our customers, our stakeholders and our vendors – and to improve the indoor air quality industry by virtue of our innovation, our effectiveness and our integrity. We will do this by providing the tools and knowledge people need to breathe freely, one customer at a time.”

The unwritten version of that is: We want to help every person with an indoor air quality problem breathe freely again. If we succeed in that quest, we will have no more work to do. Of course, that’s the same as working for world peace; success is about as likely as getting a sunburn in a coal mine. But I can’t think of a better goal to have when you’re in the business of helping people.

The Got Mold? Test Kit was built from that premise, to be affordable, hassle-free and easy to use, while adhering to industry-standard science. We had to include a ton of information for our customers, to help them understand how to look at their homes and what to look for, before they actually use the sampling devices. We also decided to give much of that knowledge away, in a free ebook. If you haven’t read it, you can get it here.

Meanwhile, I’ll go back to work, putting us out of business.