Hiring a Certified Mold Inspector: Foundational Steps for Healing from Mold Related Illnesses & CIRS

Mold inspection and remediation is not a black and white thing. But despite the gray areas, it is foundational to pursue for anyone who thinks or knows they have clinically unsafe levels of “old” or “new” mold in their home. A certified, experienced mold inspector is an extension of your healthcare team. Just like how you don’t want a “bad” doctor, you also don’t want a “bad” mold inspector – they both can make or break your health. I will teach you key aspects to hiring a “good one” for your house.

(If you are a renter, this is your landlord’s responsibility – read more here)

However, sometimes mold denial statements delay doing the right thing, which is proper, professional evaluation of your home when there is reason to think the environment is contributing to health problems.

1. “But mold is everywhere.” – Toxic indoor (concentrated) mold is different and more potent that “what grows outside.” It also disperses into the atmosphere & is trivial compared to what contaminates the house and concentrates within the confines of the structure; then you breathe this health hazard in (to your lungs and then circulatory system) in potentially threatening amounts for months/years/decades.
2. “Only black mold makes you sick.” – Color doesn’t matter. All indoor molds can make a person sick depending upon the amount and if they have a specific haplotype that makes them more genetically predisposed to mold “making them sick. Check your HLA DR DQ Haplotype here aka your genes.
3. “But we would all have the same symptoms.” – False. So false.
4. “But my house is too new.” – Water damage causing mold growth can happen in any home or building regardless of age.
5. “But it is just a little mold.” 1 square inch puts off over 1 million spores per day. This can be clinically significant especially for someone with specific HLA DR haplotypes.
6. “But my home inspection would have found it.” Home inspections are not mold inspections. End of story. Unless they are a certified mold inspector, their evaluation has minimal to no validity in regards to mold assessment. Their flashlights and intuition doesn’t count. You need objective, recognized tests for truly and properly evaluating the home for a mold problem.
7. “But we live in a dry climate.” – This is perfect for cracks to happen and water to get in them and mold to grow. Plus, water damage can happen to any home regardless if in the desert or in the mountains. Geography should not be a deciding factor – note mold can grow in any home regardless of where the home is located.

The sooner a person gets over their mold denial, the sooner they can get objective testing done which will lead them down the appropriate path. It took awhile for this to click for me so I can relate to the overwhelm – but it ultimately delayed healing and wasted precious time and was worse due to the delay; and you will hear most people say “I wish I would have done this sooner.”

Note: before we go farther, there is nuance in the inspection process and nuance in the remediation/removal process. I will go over some of that here and considerations.

Many know some of our family’s “mold story” but a part of it that I want to highlight for this blog is that we had a several poor inspectors in our home to investigate my suspicions of mold. They found “nothing” – which delayed the truth, finding the mold, finding the root problems allowing mold to grow in our home (ultimately delaying our healing and leading to tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills, trauma, time lost). I didn’t know about at home ERMI testing back then that you can self order or I would have done one. Get Kit 1 if you are wanting to check for mold.

So big picture – you don’t want to just hire anyone or the cheapest person – being frugal up front could cost you a lot in the end; you want to find someone certified, experience, skilled, thorough & empathetic. And if your gut tells you to, there is never harm in a second or third or fourth opinion. Multiple opinions later is what finally found the mold and saved our son’s life after years of respiratory distress mislabeled as asthma that only worsened.

So what I want to talk about is hiring a GOOD mold inspector and give some insight to the testing process. (Please note this is general education, our experience, and that you should always talk with a certified inspector or indoor environmental professional about your environmental concerns in your own home; I am not a mold inspector and I always refer out for this; I help with caring for the body – I can help you drain the tub, but you need to find someone qualified who will shut off the faucet).

Considerations when hiring a good, effective mold inspector:

1. They are listed on the www.acac.org/find list. Another good, credible website is the www.iseai.org. This means the mold inspector is certified. I originally did not know about this resource and just did a google search to locate the first few inspectors we had out (which was obviously a huge waste of precious time and money). If they show up with just a flashlight, kindly turn the company away. Hindsight is 20/20 for me on this one.
   • Repeat after me: “eyes and noses are not valid inspection methods.”
   • Most mold in a person’s home will be hidden and may not have a smell to it.
     
2. They are evaluating your home through multiple lenses or tools if you will. They will likely do a combination of thermography, moisture/humidity readings, localized air sampling (which is the EPA recognized method). A tripod in the middle of a room is not good enough – this again was another bad test we had that delayed the truth and cost us close to 2k for a reading of “nothing.” ERMI (dust sampling) is controversial but it does tell you what mold is present and quantifies the data too; those with CIRS may need to get this number very low on the test to be able to heal. ERMI will tell you if mold/mycotoxin are in the dust, but does not pinpoint where in the home the issue is and there is a lot of potential for user error. Some criticism is that it can “overdiagnose” and also “underdiagnose” a mold problem in a home.
   
3. They know what small particle cleaning is. If you ask about this and they have not heard of it – kindly move on. Small particle cleaning essentially means a deep clean after the remediation/removal – as “dead mold” is still considered a biotoxin.
   
4. They do not just come in and “spray and pray” and then say the job is over. Just like how I talk about “root cause healthcare,” there is some “root cause” stuff when it comes to homes. They need to help you solve the WHY behind the mold being able to grow. Was it poor ventilation? A leaking pipe? A disconnected exhaust fan? A poorly breathing roof/not enough soffits? An appliance failure? There are lots of possibilities here. They may need to refer out to a contractor depending upon the extent of damages but ultimately they are helping you get to the root cause of the issue; otherwise, mold will likely grow back and you are starting over and spending more unnecessary money on needing to remediate/remove mold again!
   
5. They do “clearance testing.” Meaning once the job is over, an acceptable threshold is met so that way you know objectively the project is over. This may entail repeat air sampling or repeat ERMI to show drastic improvement.
   • ***Please note that there are pros and cons of various types of mold/mycotoxin testing and that this is a controversial topic.
   • The EPA says air testing is “the best” but many CIRS literate Doctors prefer ERMI testing when it comes to the safety of a CIRS patient being able to heal in their home. According to the Shoemaker Protocol, an Environmental Relative Moldiness Index (ERMI) score of less than 2 is a normal range and indicates that a building is safe for patients with certain conditions: MSH: Less than 35 and C4a: Less than 20,000 
     
6. They know and follow IICRC S520 Standards for Professional Mold Remediation. Ask them about this – seriously. They should be able to easily verbalize this process to you and what safety measures they take. This is often outlines in their formal proposal to you (after the inspection) that bullet points the process from start to finish.

This is a non-exhaustive list, but in the same breath these are top recommendations to help empower you to hire someone thorough, effective and safe. Another thing I like to see is that they have “CIRS” listed somewhere on their website and they are “medically literate” when in comes to their job.

On a personal note, our third mold inspector I credit with saving our son’s life after multiple inspectors gave us detrimental advice that “no mold was in our home” and this led to my son continuing to get gravely worse; I had worsening (non life threatening) health problems and so did my daughter – funny each of us had completely different symptoms which is common.

Our third opinion mold inspector who spent significant time in our house doing a thorough evaluation; he checked every single room, used multiple tools, performed multiple tests and explained the whole process to us. He was easy to communicate with and put together a step by step plan, and helped us prioritize the most pressing issues to cover (as we could not afford everything at once. I will say our situation was atypically severe and we had multiple issues in multiple places involving contractors and needed to be done in stages. And of course insurance did not cover. I wish I would have taken out a loan at the time to expedite getting it all done quicker but hindsight is always 20/20. Another tangent – I now know how to help get insurers to rightfully pay when the policy outlines coverage but I did not know these tips at the time – I go over lots of specifics like this in my healing from mold program: the concise yet comprehensive roadmap I wish I would have known when we figured out that toxic indoor mold was rocking our world.

Some other top mold inspectors in the country I recommend (and some will travel):

•  Larry Schwartz
• Greg Bowen
• Brian Karr
• Max Mccord
• Bill Weber
• Michael Schrantz

Don’t let our story scare you – I can help you navigate attempting to work with insurance, and I will say many patients I have spoken with typically don’t have house-wide problems.

I have no financial relationship with any mold inspector – I just trust the ones I have listed – which is also important in the mold world as mold illness/CIRS can be devastating, overwhelming, and complex. Having good humans in your court means the world to your soul and your ability to physically get better as properly “shutting off the faucet” is the first big step to getting better. I’ve personally/professionally seen many conditions drastically improve or vanish once mold was properly remediated.

Toxic indoor mold is at the root of so many health problems. You can get better and often resolve your health problems with proper mold inspection, remediation and small particle cleaning. I’ve got you – between my free resources, online course, or 1-1 consultation, help is on the way!