Mold Busters

By Arnold Mann/Bethesda

Like people who dread physicals, fearing that these "routine" examinations are going to turn up some fatal disease, my wife and I were a bit apprehensive about putting our house through an environmental physical. I once interviewed a Texas woman who paid $350,000 for her dream home, only to find out after she moved in and got sick that the place was infested with a highly toxic mold and required a $650,000 cleanup, with men in moon suits cutting out every piece of mold-infested timber, wallboard and carpeting and carting it off for burial as toxic waste.

When Rachel and I bought and renovated this 1935 Cape Cod in Bethesda, Md., three years ago, we did the usual engineering, radon and termite inspections. But like most other new homeowners, we knew nothing about what might be brewing behind the walls. Neither of us had any symptoms that might indicate this was a sick house. We had had a series of roof leaks over the past year, though. Were we next?

To find out, we hired indoor-air detectives Terry Brennan and Richard Shaughnessy to come in this summer and give us a thorough checkup. Shaughnessy is head of indoor-air research at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. Brennan is president of Camroden Associates of Westmoreland, N.Y., and is generally regarded as one of the top "building scientists" in the country. Things have never been busier for them and the thousands of other indoor-air experts across the country, Brennan says, because people are catching on to the effects of indoor contaminants. Last week, a University of Maryland professor announced that certain molds, when inhaled, can attach themselves to the intestinal walls and cause flulike symptoms. A 1999 Mayo Clinic study attributed nearly all the chronic sinus infections afflicting 37 million Americans to molds. And that's just mold. Today's energy-efficient homes constantly recycle everything from combustion fumes to dust-mite allergens.

These guys are pros. They arrived armed with moisture meters, bottled smoke (to check air flow) and a gadget right out of Ghostbusters that reads temperature, humidity and carbon-dioxide and carbon-monoxide levels. But like any good examiner, they started by asking us questions. No, we don't live near chemical plants or landfill, which was the first thing Shaughnessy and Brennan looked for when they arrived this morning. There is traffic a couple of blocks away, which picks up during rush hours. That could mean higher levels of lead and other toxic metals in the soil, which can be tracked indoors and into carpets and can eventually get into toddlers' mouths. It was good that our floors are mostly hardwood and are damp-mopped weekly, noted Brennan, though he suggested adding rubber mats at front and back doors "to further reduce track-in."

Whatever lead paint is left in the house has been painted over. There may be some lead leaching into the water from old plumbing joints, but we drink mostly bottled water. And we don't often burn candles; some wicks contain lead that can reach toxic levels. The biggest source of lead here is Rachel's stained-glass studio in the basement. But Brennan declared himself "wickedly impressed" by the exhaust fan, respirator, fume collector and gloves Rachel uses when she works.

Temperature and humidity readings indoors are similar to outdoor levels, according to Brennan's calculations. Moisture is the first thing they look for inside a house. Recent studies have shown that mold spores, which thrive in dampness, are potent allergens and an asthma trigger. Some studies have even shown that they can cause memory loss. Our biggest concern is the roof leak, which took the roofer three shots to fix. "It seems pretty much dried up," Brennan says, running his moisture meter up the wall. "You might have some dead mold back there, but I wouldn't bother ripping the walls out."

We don't have dust-mite covers on the beds, but neither Rachel nor I am allergic, and Rachel hasn't had an asthma attack since we left Los Angeles. Penny, our English Setter, doesn't shed much except in spring, and she is bathed once every two weeks. If she were a cat, Shaughnessy says, she would have to be bathed once a week to keep her dander down.

Everything was looking good until we got to the kitchen. Brennan noticed that there was no outside vent for the stove. Bottled smoke, which determines air flow between walls, led him to the crawl space. "Here it is," he called out from the darkness, pointing a light above his head. "It's all dumping right in here. The clothes dryer too." Contractors frequently forget--or don't bother--to hook up stoves and dryers to outside venting, says Brennan. "We see this all the time in problem buildings." In this case, the fumes we thought were leaving the house were being dumped into the crawl space. Worse, Shaughnessy points out, the nearby air-conditioning system could be sucking up the exhaust fumes and moisture from the dryer and recirculating them around the house. But we eat out a lot, and it's an easy fix.

Inside the crawl space, Brennan also found dryer lint clinging to the walls. "There's a lot of moisture dumping in here from the dryer too," he says. "And we've got some rodent poop by these holes around this ventilation duct." Mice can pass through a 3/8-in. hole, he says, and "they will come back to the house from two miles away if you don't kill them." Brennan used to be more casual about mice before 1993, when the Hanta virus, traced to mouse urine, killed 19 people in New Mexico. "They started finding it in New York and Connecticut, and now it's scattered around the country," he says.

The rest of the house got pretty good marks. The only mold was in the air-conditioning coils, which we'll get cleaned. We shouldn't store chlorine bleach and ammonia-based cleaners together in the upstairs bathroom. If combined they can produce highly toxic chlorine gas. The paint-storage room would be better off vented out of the house. Fumes from the garage are not an issue because our garage is freestanding. Still, Brennan urges us to get a carbon-monoxide detector.

"We found some things," Shaughnessy says, "but compared with most homes we get called to, they're extremely minor." The physical is over. We're going to live after all.