Mold and Air Quality Testing
Serving The San Francisco Bay Area
Do-it-Yourself Mold Test Kits
Avoid do-it-yourself mold test kits. These kits contain a petri dish and growth medium, and instructions to expose the growth medium to the suspected mold source. If mold colonies do appear, it is supposed to mean that you've got mold.
Mold Spores are Everywhere
The concept of mold testing kits is scientifically sound. Unfortunately, mold spores are everywhere. In fact, it would be surprising if a Petri dish exposed to air inside an average home mold did not grow mold.
Bottom line
Mold kits might be a fun experiment to do with your children, but the results are likely to create more questions than they answer. Even the cleanest of homes has mold spores, so mold colonies on a Petri dish don’t prove a thing.
Consumer Reports
Here’s what Consumer Reports wrote about mold test kits in February 2006:
"All of the kits we tested have major flaws, serious enough to earn a Not Recommended rating."
There’s no substitute for a professional
Mold investigations should be conducted by a professionally trained environmental consultant and analyzed by a certified laboratory using industry approved protocols. The consultant should identify the type and quantities of mold and make recommendations for removing existing mold and eliminating the conditions that allowed it to grow.
