Air Date: 8-12-2011| Episode: 217
Mold Remediation According To The Standard Of Care: Does It Work; Is It Worth It? This week on IAQ Radio our guest is Mark McLaughlin, VP of Field Operations for Restore All, Inc. of Atlanta, Georgia...
Full Description:
Mold Remediation According To The Standard Of Care: Does It Work; Is It Worth It? This week on IAQ Radio our guest is Mark McLaughlin, VP of Field Operations for Restore All, Inc. of Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. McLaughlin has an extensive background in disaster restoration, mold remediation emergency management and training. He started as full time firefighter in Cherokee County Georgia and while began working part time in the disaster restoration industry. Afterwards he formed SouthEast Bio-Recovery, a company that offered crime scene cleaning. After several successful years he left public service sold his company and went full time into the disaster restoration field helping to found Restore All, Inc. Mark recently completed his Certified Mold Professional certification through RIA and as part of the certification process did extensive research while writing a paper on how effective various standards of care are while doing mold remediation. His paper is a comprehensive review of the subject and the findings will be of interest to our listeners.
Z-Man’s Blog:
Just Prove It
On today’s episode of IAQradio, Mark McLaughlin, a disaster repair and remediation contractor, discussed his applied research project with our listening audience. Admittedly, Mark “doesn’t like theory and wants hard data.” He was troubled by guidance found in the Guidelines for the Assessment and Remediation of Fungi in Indoor Environments, more commonly referred to as the NYC Guidelines. Mark was concerned that on small area of 10 square feet of visible mold or less that the document was dismissive of the need for containment, putting worker and occupant health at risk and increasing the likelihood for cross contamination to occur.
RIA’s Certified Mold Program, like all of RIA’s advanced destination programs requires participants to complete a research project. Mark chose to undertake an applied research project rather than book research project. With the cooperation and financial support of his partners in Restoreall Inc, he set out to gather hard data for use as his capstone project for accreditation as an RIA Certified Mold Professional. Their firm rented a warehouse and stick built 4 uniformly sized rooms. After construction the rooms were wetted to stimulate mold growth and then remediated the rooms 4 different ways. 3 of the rooms were remediated with variants of the firm’s standard operating procedure. The 4th room was remediated following recommendations found in the NY City Guidelines.
Sampling 15 Air-O-Cell cassettes were run in each room, 15 liters for 15 minutes. The sampling wasn’t comparative of indoor versus outdoor air, rather indoor versus indoor. The sampling demonstrated the high levels of mold spores and dust that are generated when even a small area of mold is remediated. Mike Pinto’s firm Wondermakers Environmental, provided a gratis analysis of the samples.
Mike Pinto 3 priorities for fungal remediation are: 1)Protect yourself and your workers.2)Protect the occupants. 3)Protect the building and contents. Additional comments by Mike included: anecdotal evidence supports the danger of mold to remediation workers and house wrap prevents moisture diffusion, trapping moisture in newer buildings.
Dieterisms: “dust=mold spores” and “good work inevitably takes less time to perform than bad work.”
Today’s music: Growing Mold by Radioactive Chicken Heads
Z-Man signing off
