Sept. 23, 2002

By JANET ELLIOTT
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN -- Black mold may have spawned an insurance crisis, but a study by Texas doctors has found no link between mold and toxic disease.

"There's no medical evidence right now that people should be concerned or in a panic because there's mold in their house," said Wes Stafford, an allergist and immunologist from Corpus Christi.

The Texas Medical Association's Council on Scientific Affairs studied the medical literature on Stachybotrys chartarum, commonly known as black mold.

Mold can cause reactions in people with allergies and asthma, Stafford said. But there's no evidence that it causes other health problems or aggravates other existing health conditions, the report said.

The TMA House of Delegates Saturday adopted the report and recommended it be forwarded to various agencies, including the Attorney General's Office and Insurance Department.

"If you have mold contamination, certainly find out the source of the problem and get it cleaned up," said Stafford. "As far as do you have to be afraid you're going to drop over dead because you were inhaling Stachybotrys mold spores, there is absolutely no evidence in the medical literature that would make anybody be concerned about that."

Mold has been a key factor in the state's homeowners insurance crisis. Insurers have raised premiums and some have stopped writing new policies because of skyrocketing mold claims.

Last year, mold claims generated $853 million in losses, up from $151 million in 2000.

Mold remediation has become a big business, and insurers accuse those companies of driving up the cost of water and mold damage claims.

Tales of families moving out of their homes while mold is cleaned up have become common. Some families have filed lawsuits and won multimillion-dollar verdicts against insurance companies over mold-related health problems.

Earlier this month, Texas Insurance Commissioner Jose Montemayor proposed a rule that would ban insurance companies from using water-damage claims as their sole reason for denying homeowners coverage.

Stafford said the mold hysteria stemmed in part from a study that linked pulmonary hemorrhage in infants at a Cleveland, Ohio, hospital to mold exposure. But reviews by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that the link was not proven.

"I think we need to kind of take a step back and be realistic about this," said Stafford. "The Stachybotrys molds have been out there for a few billion years, probably, and people have been exposed to it for as long as people have been around, and we can't find good evidence in the medical literature that it causes real disease."

The House of Delegates also approved a series of resolutions related to mental health care. The doctors called on insurers to provide equal coverage for mental illness and stop the practice of carving out mental health-related claims to be handled in a separate review process.

Les Secrest, a Dallas psychoanalyst, called the resolutions "historic." He said many physicians now better understand the link between mental illness and physical health.

"By doing good care with the advances we've made you really can decrease utilization on the medical-surgical side. My depression goes away, and my other aches and pains go away," Secrest said.

The doctors' group also heard from three candidates they have endorsed -- Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez, Democratic lieutenant governor candidate John Sharp and Republican Carole Keeton Rylander, who is seeking re-election as comptroller.

To help people understand the mold issue, there needs to be an understanding of our expectations concerning mold presence around us. There are fungal and mold spores all around us in the environment. They are said to be ubiquitous in nature. Fungal and mold spores are on virtually all building materials and products exposed to the ambient air. They are naturally occurring in our environment, and therefore can be found in processing, storage, and in many places in most all structures. There will be fungal and mold spores present at any given time on lumber and other building materials and there only needs to be an increase in moisture to promote growth.

The type of fungal and mold growth depends on the environment in which the growth is taking place. There can be several different mold types present at a given time on a given food source. Some molds and fungi are more ambitious than others, grow faster, and even overtake other mold species.

When observing for biological growth, if it is visible, then there is no question that it exists. Nonetheless, simply because there is a visual observation of fungal growth it does not necessarily mean that occupants are exposed to biological agents associated with the visible fungi or that any health effects an occupant may be having are being caused by the fungal contamination.

When performing air sampling, a background sample is taken of the outdoors environment. This helps establish a baseline of naturally occurring mold and fungal spores around us at the time the air sample is actually taken. The expectation, to some degree, is that the mold or fungal counts present in the outdoor baseline samples be greater than those on the indoor samples and that the genus found outdoors would be representative of those found indoors. We can reasonably expect some level of air conditioning and filtration to take place indoors that would reduce the amount of airborne particulates found indoors, unless the home is open to the outdoors, such as often happens when the weather is temperate and windows are left open.

We must also take into consideration that when dealing with very low counts in either indoor or outdoor samples, the presence of these molds may not be significant. Unless, of course, an individual is hypersensitive to the counts exhibited indoors or is immune suppressed.

As a final note, I do not intend to  represent that an individual cannot be affected by fungal spores. If anyone notes symptoms of allergies, irritation, breathing problems, red eyes, runny nose, or other possible symptoms of allergic reactions, they should seek medical advice.

There are a number of variables we must take into consideration when evaluating the results of any physical inspection and sampling. It is important to obtain a professional evaluation from a ‘Texas Department of State Health Services Licensed Mold Assessment Consultant’, such as myself.  

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