Mold is a microscopic fungus that grows everywhere. Inside, outside, above or below ground, on wood, brick, stone, or tile… there is no place safe from the growth of mold. This is a problem when mold growth gets out of hand and begins to take over your home or property. It can lead to symptoms like asthma attacks, allergic reactions, and even more significant health problems.
The False Promise of Mold Removal
Many companies advertise mold removal, but the sheer pervasiveness of mold growth makes it impossible to completely eradicate mold from your property. Mold remediation is the process of inspecting, assessing, treating, and bringing mold growth back to natural, more tolerable levels. To do this, you need to get a sense of the root causes of mold.
Causes of Mold
The root cause of mold is mold spores in the air which aattach themselves to surfaces with moisture and begin to reproduce rapidly into mold colonies that produce those allergens and health irritants. Again, since microscopic mold spores infest the air everywhere and we need a certain degree of moisture is necessary, it is impossible to completely rid your property of mold. Instead, the goal is controlling the growth of mold colonies and keeping it to a tolerable minimum.
Steps Towards Mold Remediation
The first part of the mold remediation process is inspecting and finding the mold. Sometimes it is detectable through the odor that is emitted from mold colonies. Places in your home or property that smell musty or have a “wet” or “rotting” kind of smell are strong culprits for mold colonies and should be investigated more thoroughly.
While you are searching for possible mold colonies visually and following your nose, you need to check the humidity level in the area. Mold cannot grow without humidity, and the higher the level of moisture in the area, the faster the mold will grow. If the humidity level indoors is above 45 percent, you need to run a dehumidifier to reduce the humidity.
Where you find mold colonies, you will often find sources of moisture, like leaking pipes, floors that do not drain properly, or poorly insulated walls that are susceptible to outdoor elements. The mold issue will not be addressed until you first address the issue of excess moisture, so be sure to repair any leaking pipes, improperly drained floors, or walls with openings letting in outside humidity.
You may need professional help to identify mold colonies and the moisture sources that are growing them on your property. Trained personnel typically can examine and identify mold more efficiently than those without specialized training. When it comes to cleaning the mold though, it is much more important that you get help that has been trained to remediate mold safely. Since mold spreads through the air as microscopic spores, your attempts to clean visual growth areas may inadvertently release these toxic spores into the air around you, leaving your eyes, ears, and respiratory system open to internal attack and any exposed skin vulnerable to allergic reactions as well.
If you suspect you may be dealing with a mold problem on your property, be sure to seek help from your local mold remediation experts.