Mold illness and your home

A home-side guide for families with mold illness

When your doctor thinks it’s the house

Many of the families who call us have already been through a long stretch of appointments before anyone mentioned the house. Then a functional, integrative or environmental medicine doctor asks a question that changes the conversation: has your home ever had water damage? Suddenly the problem isn’t only medical. It’s a building problem, too, and most people have no idea where to start.

It helps to divide the work clearly. Your doctor handles diagnosis and treatment. Our job is the building: finding out what’s in it, getting it out, and proving it’s gone with lab results your doctor can read. Everything on this page stays on the home side of that line.

Getting the home tested

Testing is the foundation for every decision that follows, so it’s worth doing carefully. Before anyone collects a sample, ask your doctor which tests they want and what result they’d consider acceptable. Write it down and hand it to whoever does the testing. It’s the simplest way to avoid paying for results nobody can use.

Some families prefer to hire one company to test and a different company to remediate. That’s a reasonable choice. Whoever does the testing, what matters most is that the testing is thorough and that everyone is working toward the same numbers.

Help the inspector by sharing the home’s history: past leaks, roof or plumbing repairs, flooding, a sump pump that failed, musty smells, and any rooms that have been closed off or unused. That history often points straight to the source. If your doctor has asked about a specific room, such as a child’s bedroom or a home office, mention it.

What testing to ask for

For a household dealing with mold illness, a basic air test is rarely enough. These are the pieces a complete home assessment usually includes:

• Dust DNA testing. ERMI and HERTSMI-2 analyze settled dust for the DNA of specific mold species, which reflects what has been growing in the home over time. These are the tests doctors ask for most often.
• A mycotoxin panel. A lab test on settled dust or surfaces for specific toxins. Mold tests identify molds. This one looks for what they left behind.
• Air sampling. A snapshot of airborne spores compared with outdoor air. Useful alongside the others, and a weak test on its own.
• A moisture inspection. Moisture meters and a careful look at the basement, crawlspace, attic, plumbing walls and roof lines. Testing tells you something is there. The inspection tells you why.
• An HVAC check. The coil, drain pan, return and ducts, since a contaminated system reaches every room.

Lab results usually come back in 24 to 48 hours. Our page on mold testing for people with mold illness explains each test and what the reports look like.

Remediate or move?

Once results are in, many families face the hardest question of all: fix this house, or leave it. There’s no answer that’s right for everyone, and it isn’t our place to make the medical side of that call. What we can do is lay out the home-side factors honestly.

Factor	Leans toward remediating	Leans toward moving
Extent of contamination	Limited to identifiable areas	Widespread, or the source can’t be found
Moisture problem	Clear cause that can be fixed	Built into the house, such as chronic grading or foundation issues
Cost of the work	Reasonable relative to the home’s value	Close to or beyond what the home is worth
Your housing situation	You own it and plan to stay	You rent, or the owner won’t fix it
Household sensitivity	Your doctor is comfortable with a return after clearance	Your doctor advises against returning

One point often gets lost: moving doesn’t automatically leave the problem behind. Furniture, clothing and boxes carry the same dust as the house they came from. If you move, plan how your belongings will be cleaned before they go into the new home, and consider testing the new place before you sign. Our remediate or move decision guide goes through each factor, and moving without bringing mold with you covers the move itself. If you rent, start with mold in rental homes.

Preparing a home for someone recovering

Whether you stay or move, the goal is a home that stays clean after the crew leaves. For a sensitive household, that usually means:

• The source is fixed and verified. Not patched or painted over, and checked again after the next heavy rain.
• Clearance passed against your doctor’s targets, not only the contractor’s usual standard.
• The HVAC system is clean, with the best filter the system is designed to handle, changed on schedule.
• Humidity is watched. An inexpensive hygrometer in the main rooms and the basement shows problems before mold does. See what humidity level prevents mold.
• Dust is managed. A HEPA vacuum, damp dusting instead of dry dusting, and less clutter on open shelves all make a difference.
• Leaks get handled the same day. Wet materials should be dried quickly or removed, before growth can start.

We go into more detail in preparing a home for mold illness recovery and keeping a home low-mold.

Bedrooms and children’s rooms come first

People spend more hours in their bedrooms than anywhere else in the house, so those rooms deserve extra attention in testing, cleaning and clearance. When we plan a project for a sensitive household, bedrooms are sampled on their own rather than folded into a whole-house average, and they’re usually among the first rooms cleaned and cleared so the family has a clean place to sleep.

Children’s rooms raise their own questions: stuffed animals, play rugs, cribs and closets full of outgrown clothes all collect dust. If a child’s room is on or near an affected area, tell the inspector. Our page on mold, children and schools covers the home and school side, and any questions about a child’s health belong with their pediatrician or your family’s doctor.

If a previous remediation didn’t work

Some families come to us after they’ve already paid for mold removal once. The house looked finished, but a later round of home testing, often the dust test their doctor asked for, didn’t pass. That usually means something was missed: a second moisture source, the HVAC system, the dust in untouched rooms, or belongings that went back in without cleaning. A fresh round of testing shows which one. We describe how we approach these projects in second opinions after a failed remediation.

Belongings, for a sensitive household

Sensitive families often set a stricter bar for belongings than other households do, and that’s understandable. A few principles make the process more manageable:

• Start with what you need every day. Clean essentials first so daily life can continue.
• Clean outside the clean zone. Items are cleaned in a separate, controlled area, never inside rooms that have already passed clearance.
• Hold the uncertain items. Some families store things they aren’t sure about in sealed bins outside the living space until they decide, or until testing helps them decide.
• Replace the hardest cases. Mattresses, pillows and heavily contaminated upholstered furniture are the items most often replaced.
• Don’t rush the sentimental things. Photos, papers and keepsakes can often be cleaned with patience.

For specific questions, see can I take my furniture if I move out of a moldy house? and our guide to cleaning belongings exposed to mycotoxins.

Working with your doctor

The best projects we’re part of involve three parties talking to each other: the family, the doctor and us. With your permission, we’ll send your doctor the testing results, the written scope of work and the clearance reports. We’ll answer their questions about the building, such as where the source was, what was removed and how the numbers changed.

What we won’t do is interpret those numbers medically, suggest treatments or tell you whether it’s safe for a particular person to return. Those are your doctor’s calls. If your doctor has a specific target in mind, tell us before testing starts so we can build the project around it. More on this in working with your doctor on a moldy home.

Choosing a remediator

Indiana doesn’t license mold remediators, and neither do many other states, so credentials and track record are how you judge a company. For a household dealing with mold illness, these questions tend to separate the right fit from the wrong one:

• Have you worked with families whose doctor is involved, and will you talk with ours?
• Will you test to our doctor’s targets, including a mycotoxin panel?
• Who runs clearance testing, and will we get the complete lab reports?
• How will you keep dust out of the rooms we’re living in during the work?
• Does your scope include whole-home dust removal and the HVAC system?
• Do you rely on fogging alone? (If the answer is yes, keep looking.)
• What products will you use, and why those?

For our part, we use plant-based enzyme products from US Enzyme, designed to break down mold and mycotoxins, together with removal, HEPA cleaning and clearance testing. We’re family-owned, working since 2008, an IICRC Certified Firm, and we travel for projects nationwide. You’ll find a longer checklist in how to choose a mold remediator, and background on the toxins themselves in our guide to mycotoxins in homes.

We remove mold and mycotoxins from buildings. We don’t diagnose or treat medical conditions, and nothing on this page is medical advice. Please make health decisions, including whether and when to return to a home, with your doctor. With your permission, we’re glad to share test results and our plan with them.