Mold: A Growing Problem

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Mold: A Growing Problem

Health Department works with flood victims to head off mold.

By Teschner/Gazette

Mount Vernon Gazette - VA

July 20, 2006

http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?

article=68919 & paper=69 & cat=104

At eight on Saturday morning, 11 employees of the Fairfax Department

of Health were drinking coffee in the Huntington Community Center.

For forty minutes, Yetman briefed them on where to stalk their

quarry (the darkness under the stairs is a particularly popular

hiding place), how to catalogue its presence, and how to wipe it

out. He briefed the team on the operation of the expensive, blaze

orange sensors with LCD screens and sharpened metal prongs that each

person will carry in a small, plastic briefcase as they go door-to-

door down Arlington Terrace and Fenwick Drive. They will be alerting

flooded residents that although the water in their basements has

receded, another health hazard lurks in its wake. And it is growing.

Yetman is the Health Department's expert on mold. The men and women

he was briefing were about to conduct a house-to-house assessment of

the mold problem in Huntington. Although most residents have thrown

out possessions and stripped out parts of their houses that were

obviously ruined by the floodwater, the county is concerned that

many people may not be aware of how easily and quickly mold can grow

if given the opportunity. Wood is the most common incubator for

mold, but it can also grow in anything that has been waterlogged and

does not dry out completely. Drywall and even concrete can harbor

mold.

If left to grow unchecked, mold can quickly cover surfaces with a

soft fuzz. But the health hazards it poses stem from the spores it

releases. People breathe in mold spores with every breath, and at

normal levels these spores are usually harmless. But when mold

proliferates in enclosed environments, its spores can eventually

reach densities that will affect healthy adults, often in the form

of allergy problems. People with illnesses are more sensitive to the

effects of mold. For asthmatics, it can trigger and aggravate

attacks.

THE HEALTH Department's assessment was not an inspection. " We're

just going into these homes to find out how people are doing, " said

Tom Crow, Director of Environmental Health, " how many of the homes

have the mold taken care of and how many have work to do. "

The Health Department workers each paired with a Fire and Rescue

worker. Their primary tools were flashlights and orange moisture

sensors with sharp prongs that could be jammed into wood in order to

read its moisture levels. Any reading over ten percent would require

further drying before a homeowner painted the wood or covered it

over, otherwise " the studs will continue to warp and torque within

the wall, " said Yetman. He said that he used a moisture meter to

test a dry doorframe in his own home. It contained 0.2 percent

moisture.

For drywall, even a one percent moisture rate would mean it had to

be replaced. Drywall's surface dries quickly and often hides a soggy

interior. Yetman said any drywall that had contact with water should

be ripped out. " Drywall doesn't like water, " he said. " That's why

it's called drywall. It starts to crumble. "

Even concrete walls can hold water and support mold. Yetman said

that if cinderblock walls seemed damp, a homeowner could drill holes

in them to allow the interstitial spaces to drain out.

BY 9 A.M., Tom Crow and Dennis, a lieutenant with Fairfax Fire

and Rescue, were knocking on doors at the eastern end of Arlington

Terrace. Portobanco let them inside her mother's house at

2110. She told Crow they had hired a company to clean their

basement, which had flooded to the ceiling. When they went down the

stairs, the sound of a heavy fan roared against the cinderblock

walls of the empty basement. An industrial fan was angled through a

doorway into the space beneath the stairs. A dehumidifier sat in the

same room.

Crow ran his flashlight across studs that lay exposed because the

cleaning company had removed the ceiling tiles. " They've done a good

job, " he said.

But as he looked more thoroughly, he began noticing pale, mint-green

splotchings and splatterings on the wood. " All this up there, that's

all mold, " he said, pointing into a particularly moldy corner.

He called Portobanco down and talked her through what he had

observed.

" You've got a fair amount of work to do here, " he told her. He said

they should use soapy water and a stiff brush to wash down every

inch of wood. Then they should disinfect the wood by mixing one cup

of bleach with one gallon of water and applying it with a spray

bottle. " You can call us when you've washed it, cleaned it out and

dried it out, " he told Portobanco. " We can tell you, `Yeah that's

dry.' "

" They didn't recognize the problem, " he said after leaving the house.

Crow and Dennis knocked on several more doors without results. After

knocking and waiting several minutes, they left envelopes in the

door with information about mosquitoes and how to clean their homes.

There were two forms in the envelope, one that people could use to

record the location and severity of mold in their homes and the

other designed by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management to

evaluate the extent of flood damage to basements. The information

would go FEMA so that it could make a decision on whether to award

federal assistance to individual residents. When residents were

home, Crow filled out the former document and Dennis took charge of

the latter.

AT 2100 Arlington Terrace, Jordan, a renter, was moving

out. She said the basement had been her 19-year-old daughter's

bedroom. " Luckily she wasn't there at the time, " Jordan said.

The basement was stripped bare. There was nothing to suggest that a

teenage girl had ever occupied it. Pale lines on the cinderblock

wall revealed where the landlord had torn off the drywall and the

studs that had covered it. Jordan said the water had taken down the

ceiling tiles on its own. She had found a flip-flop lodged in the

ceiling after the water receded.

Crow pointed his light at several feet of shiny ductwork leading

from the furnace. Jordan said the landlord had already replaced the

furnace, which had been only two years old, and the water heater

that he had installed three weeks before the flood. Crow said the

old ductwork that remained would have to be cleaned out. Mold could

grow both inside and out.

But he concluded that the basement was in good condition. He found

mold on only one stud in the ceiling and a small patch under the

stairs.

Jordan said this was not her first experience with mold. Her son had

become sick in an old house because of mold growing in the

baseboards.