Mold News
Mold Problem Spreading
Written by The Wall Street Journal
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Mold has become a huge legal and financial problem for homeowners and insurers, not to mention a significant health concern. Now it is turning into a big headache at commercial properties - from apartments to hotels to shopping centers.
Mold is even affecting big real-estate transactions. Last summer, a buyer at the last minute abandoned a $30 million deal to purchase a 250-unit apartment complex in the Southwest because it had mold, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., a Chicago real-estate services firm that represented the apartments' owner.
Real-estate attorneys say mold inspections are increasingly becoming part of the industry's due-diligence process before taking on a transaction. The fungal growth, found in damp or wet conditions, has been blamed for a number of health problems, including breathing difficulties, headaches, nausea, gastrointestinal ailments, skin rashes, severe allergic reactions and neurological damage.
Mold-related expenses cost companies that underwrite homeowners' insurance $1.3 billion in 2001, a number that is expected to grow this year, says the Insurance Information Institute, a New York-based trade group. Some insurers have even started excluding mold from their property-damage policies as well, says the Insurance Information Institute.
Chlorine Bleach and Mold Clean Up
(Let's Set the Record Straight!)The Myth.
A myth exists concerning the use and "effectiveness" of chlorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite) in the remediation of a mold problem. Mold remediation involves the removal and or clean up and restoration of mold contaminated building materials.Opposing Views and Confusion.
Chlorine bleach, commonly referred to as laundry bleach, is generally perceived to be an "accepted and answer-all" biocide to abate mold In the remediation processes. Well-intentioned recommendations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal, state and local agencies are perpetuating that belief. And confusing the issue is one federal agency, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), taking an opposing point of view by NOT recommending the use of chlorine bleach as a routine practice in mold remediation.MOLD: A Health Alert
Written by USA Weekend
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It started with a series of leaks. Within a year, Melinda Ballard's 11,500-square-foot Texas dream home was quarantined; her 3-year-old son, Reese, was on daily medication to treat scarred, asthmatic lungs; her husband, Ron Allison, had lost his memory along with his job; and the family was living out of suitcases and locked in a seemingly endless battle with their insurance company. The problem? Household mold.
"I call it the house of pain," Ballard says, sitting at the gazebo by the fishing pond, a quarter-mile from the abandoned house on the hill. Nobody enters that house anymore, except when Ballard puts on a HEPA respirator once a week to make sure the air conditioning is still running. That's the only thing keeping the mold at bay.
"It was our Shangri-La," the New York heiress says of her 72-acre estate in Dripping Springs, just west of Austin. "It was nirvana. Then we come to have Stachybotrys."
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