It is very important to identify and timely treat mold as soon as it is discovered. If the presence of mold is discovered or even suspected steps should be taken to treat the mold before it becomes a problem to health.

There are many do-it-yourself mold testing its available in the market and must be used, with the prescribed precautions, to collect and send samples to the laboratory to determine the nature of the mold.

Testing Mold Growth

If an occupant of a building detects the growth of mold on a wall, ceiling, floor, heating or cooling duct register, or any other surface, the mold particles can be scraped off the growth area onto the sticky surface of the opened mold testing kit. During scraping of the mold growth, the tester must wear rubber gloves and a full-face respirator mask with an organic vapor filter. The scraping should be carried out with clean and disinfected paint scrapers and placed on the sticky testing surface designed to prevent the mold from flying and infecting other areas.

Label the Sample

Print neatly on a large pressure sensitive label the name of the property owner, address, precise test location at that address, testing date, and the type of sampling method such as a mold test kit settling, time duration of the test along with the testers name and contact information.

Testing The Indoor Air

Use a separate mold test kit to collect a mold sample from the air of different areas such as Heating or cooling duct register. Expose the sticky side of an open mold test kit to the outward airflow from each separate duct register. Run the system on fan ventilation for a few minutes before removing the mold test kit from each duct register. Then close, seal, and label each mold test kit.

Collecting mod samples of room air by the settling method. Test the air of each room, attic, basement, crawl space, and the garage for the presence of mold by first running a cleaned fan to stir up the air in each room. Shut off the fan, open up a mold test kit, and place it upwards in the middle of the room for about half an hour to allow airborne mold spores to settle down onto the sticky surface of the mold test kit.

Be sure to use the same time for all air test locations for the standardization of the mold test results. Then close, seal, and label the mold test kits. And send them to the mold laboratory for testing.

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