Three Ways to Detect Toxic Mold in Your Home

Toxic mold can be an extremely dangerous substance in your home, and it’s one that very regularly appears after flood damage. Whether you’ve only had a minor flooding problem that’s resulted in minor damage or a major flood that’s resulted in catastrophic damage, toxic mold is yet another thing you’ll likely find yourself worrying about soon. Because mold exposure can have serious health consequences in even small amounts, taking care of issues quickly is extremely important. But when you consider that mold colonies often grow inside walls and on the structure of your home where it’s out of sight, is it possible to detect these colonies before it’s too late?

The answer is a resounding “yes,” you can detect toxic mold. On this blog we’ll explain a few ways in which mold detection is both quick and effective so you can spot the problem and take care of it before it becomes a serious issue.

Mold Signs

The easiest way to determine if there’s mold in your home is to simply look for a few of the most common tell-tale signs of a mold infestation. If you know what to look for, spotting potential mold colonies is quite simple, and best of all it will give you an early warning that mold may be present so you can obtain a more specific and definitive test.

If your home has recently sustained flooding damage or even just been exposed to a large amount of moisture, including a broken pipe or leaky washing machine, look at the walls and floors around them for signs like discolored walls, irregular staining, or black spots. While these aren’t necessarily indicative that a mold colony has taken root in your walls, they’re usually a pretty strong sign that one is possible, especially when the next item on the list is also present.

Health Effects

Toxic mold doesn’t usually yield massive health issues straight away, but rather the big issues develop over time and constant, repeated exposure to mycotoxins (the toxic substance produced by black mold which actually causes health issues). Unless you have a tremendous mold allergy, compromised immune system, asthma, or another pre-existing health condition that can heighten sensitivity to mold spores, most people will show mild effects of mold exposure early on, and catching these signs can help you rectify the problem before it becomes serious.

What are some of these mild symptoms? Generally, they resemble seasonal allergies quite a bit: sneezing, coughing, asthma sensitivity, and watery eyes. In some cases, over-exposure can lead to headaches, fever, and itchiness. If you or those in your home are also experiencing these symptoms, then you may have a mold problem present, particularly if you’ve also found signs of flooding such as stained or spotted walls and a musty or moldy odor.

Mold Test Kits

If you’ve noticed that both the early signs of health issues and the physical signs of mold are present, you need to have your home tested. There are two options for mold testing: you can have a professional come to your home and provide you with accurate and reliable test results that will give you a much clearer picture of the scope of your issue, or you can go to your local home improvement store and buy a testing kit on your own.

Self-test kits are less expensive, but are usually far less reliable and often take more time to give you a definitive result, all the while the problem can get worse. Generally, with a home-test kit, you’ll have to follow precise instructions to collect samples, and then send those samples off to a testing lab to get your results. This could take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks.

Generally, having a professional come out and do the tests for you both ensures that the samples are taken in the right spots and procedures are followed correctly so the results will be far more reliable. You’ll also likely see results faster as the professional who tests your home can bring the sample to the lab directly (no worrying about how long it will take to get there through the mail), which means you can get to fixing the issue more quickly as well.