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When a mold inspector takes bulk, tape, carpet/dust, or swab samples, spore numbers are not compared quantitatively to outdoor levels. Thus, the number of spores in these types of samples often are not as meaningful as the numbers found in air samples. Also, because the air is not being tested, your inspector cannot say for sure how much if any of the mold sampled from surfaces is in the air you are breathing. However, these samples can be helpful because they typically provide the analyst with more than just the mold spores so that identification of mold type can be more accurately conducted by viewing various structures of the mold, not just spores. In addition to providing more structure for direct microscopic examination, bulk samples are sometimes grown in the lab or run through PCR testing for analysis to the species level.

Mold Testing with Tape

When a tape sample of actual mold from a moldy surface is taken using Biotope, a clear piece of Scotch Tape, or a sticky Cyclex slide, the sample will often show entire mold structures including spore forming structures and hyphea. These can be used to confirm mold growth To Read More Click Here

Below are the five most widely used methods of taking mold spore samples from the air during mold inspections. They are used by scientists, industrial hygienists, and mold inspectors.

These mold testing methods have been proven over and over by time, legal trial, and third party scientific lab verification for reliability taking into account many complex factors related to aerodynamics and physics. Surface sample methods just do not provide as much quantitative info as the following 5 air sample methods.

1) An Air-O-Cell non viable spore trap with pump calibrated and run at 15 LPM typically run from 1 to 15 min.

2) A Micro5 non viable spore trap with pump calibrated and run at 5 LPM for 1 to 5 min.

3) A CyClex non viable impactor with pump calibrated and run at 20 LPM for 1 to 10 min.

4) A CyClex-d non viable spore trap with pump calibrated and run at 20 LPM for 1 to 10 min.

5) A single stage viable impactor plate, such as an Andersen Impactor or one of it’s exact duplicated clones (such as an Aerotech 6, or ems E6 with a pump calibrated and run at 28.3 LPM for 1 to 5 min.

The To Read More Click Here

Toxic black mold is the most feared of all molds because of numerous news reports, newspaper articles, and magazine articles attributing possible brain damage, infant deaths, expensive property damage, and other horrible consequences of the growth to this type of mold in residential settings.

Often toxic black mold is present, but other agents - such as cigarette smoke, water damaged building materials, or general unhealthy and unclean conditions resulting from flooding - are also present that may have contributed to some of the serious health problems as well. As of 2005, science has not demonstrated as a fact that breathing in toxins from mold can or cannot result in health problems in residential settings. It is a fact that eating stachybotrys can result in toxic poisoning.

You see, many molds produce mycotoxins; these are toxic chemicals that molds use in a type of microbial warfare. Living things that do not posses claws, fangs, or a hard shell to use in self defense or fast legs to run away from predators will typically revert to the use of camouflage or the production of poisons; this is very common in nature. Various To Read More Click Here