Air Quality

Air quality is an essential part of the health and safety of your home. The quality of your air determines how safe it is to breathe, and whether the air will promote good health for your family or cause illness. Elements of poor air quality include excessive dust, pollutants, carbon monoxide, allergens, and of course, mold spores.

Believe it or not, mold spores are the second most dangerous item on the above list of poor air quality elements. Your home likely has smoke and carbon monoxide detectors for emergency air quality impact. But do you know how many mold spores are in your air? The answer is that no one does – not before they have their air quality tested. Mold spores can be detected, but not by an in-home device. Testing for mold involves taking samples from multiple locations in your home and sending the samples to a lab for testing. If you have detected signs of mold or your family is experiencing certain health problems, it’s important to get your air tested to know just how many mold spores are in your home’s air right now.

• Pervasive Musty Smell
• Food Molding Very Quickly in the House
• Damp Laundry Gets Musty Very Quickly
• Allergies Worse at Home
• Mold Spots Come Back After Washing

Mold in your home, even hidden mold, can have a huge effect on your home’s air quality. Mold is a type of fungus which releases spores to grow and reproduce. But one patch of mold can release millions of spores, and the more mold is growing –seen or unseen– in your home, the more spores are in your air.

This might not sound too bad to start with, until you realize just what mold spores can do to the human body. At their least harmful, mold spores clog your sinuses and trigger allergies. Many people are allergic to mold spores or develop an allergy. With constant exposure to mold spores at home, those allergic will consistently experience allergy symptoms as more and more mold grows and spores build up inside the sinuses.

Unfortunately, mold can do worse as well. Some types of mold are toxic to humans, and mold is not adverse to growing from spores inside the body. All it needs is a porous non-acidic environment with plenty of moisture. So while mold can’t survive in your stomach, mold can grow on the brain with extensive exposure in the home.

This means that mold, air quality, and quality of life in your home are all integrally linked.

• Headache
• Sinus Problems and Allergy Symptoms
• Fatigue and Weakness
• Lack of Focus
• Aches and Cramps
• Illness that Gets Slowly Worse Over Time
• Focus and Memory Problems
• Humans or Pets Smelling of Mold

So what do you do if the tests come back with a high spore count and your home and family have started showing signs of a serious mold infestation? There are several solutions that, together, can help clean the mold from your home and the spores from your air over time.

Working with a mold remediation team can help you hunt down the colonies of mold. The team will then kill the mold and clean the area and/or remove deeply infested items from the house. Even mold behind your walls and inside cabinets can be dealt with by professionals who know how.

At the same time, install allergy air-filters in your home HVAC system and change them regularly to help pull all the existing mold spores out of the air. Mold remediation can also briefly result in an increase in airborne mold spores as the mold colonies are disturbed. A good air filter, and possibly additional air filter units, can help improve your home air quality during remediation.

Finally, be sure to keep humidity low in your home to prevent the spores from finding new moist locations to grow. Use dehumidification techniques to reduce the ambient moisture in your home.

Getting rid of mold in your home and improving your home’s air quality is best done with help from pros like the Twin Home Experts. If your home is located in the Los Angeles area, contact the Twins today to schedule your initial air quality test and begin mold remediation steps.