There is a lot of flooding happening in Western PA. For many, the first and only thought once the water is going down is “What do I do?” The second thought may be “Do I have insurance for this?”
For some of you, there may be good news. Many insurance companies will cover a loss if the source of water is sewer lateral problems. That occurred in a previous home I owned. Un-Flood-It of Tarentum Pa did the cleanup and by working with my homeowner insurance company, the loss was covered by insurance.
Click Here to Download PDF of my article about that cleanup
Other policies may cover if the damage happens if it is the result of another contributing reason that is covered by the policy. Policies that have mold exclusions or limits often have provisions to cover mold IF the cause of the mold is an event that IS a covered loss. An example of that is if mold is a consequence of a burst pipe...or flooding from a lateral sewer line. The bottom line on this is that reading a homeowners insurance policy from from to end may be a tedious and boring exercise, but may gain you information that gets you insurance coverage.
What is next after the flood and heartache
Let’s summarize this subject of flooding with a collective “YUK”! There are not many events in home ownership that are more disgusting and heartbreaking than any flooding. In addition to sewage backing up from your drain, almost all flood water has sewage from the main sewer system in it.
Whether you have insurance coverage or not, taking the correct steps as promptly as possible will minimize the heartache and expense. Saving your contents, valuables pictures and other keepsakes is a major part of that effort. When there is a major area wide flooding event like we now, finding a professional to help may be difficult if not impossible. To help with that, there are Envirospect.com article links below for help: Click on the links below:
Homeowner Guide to Flood Recovery in Your Home
Cleaning Contents in Your Home
6 Top Questions about Mold Cleanup.pdf
Getting a Home Healthy after a Sewage Contamination
Limited Sampling
Purpose: The purpose of Limited Mold Sampling is to detect the presence of mold in Client chosen areas of the Subject Property.
Scope of Limited Mold Sampling. Limited Mold Sampling consists of a visual assessment for mold problems in area(s) designated by the client to test and the collection/analysis of sample(s) in these designated area(s). Further, the objective of Limited Mold Sampling is to determine whether mold problems exist in the designated area(s) sampled at the time the Limited Mold Sampling is performed. As such, the results of Limited Mold Sampling are not a guarantee that mold does or does not exist in the Subject Property. The results are indicative only of the presence or absence of mold in the areas sampled at the time of the Limited Mold Sampling is performed. Limited Mold Sampling is narrower in scope than other mold inspections and testing strategies that area available. Mold inspections will be conducted only in these Client-defined areas and is NOT a complete assessment of the Subject Property.
Mold Screening
Purpose: The purpose of the Mold Screen is to test areas of suspect mold contamination base upon a visual inspection. This is done to detect the presence of a microbial problem in the inspected areas of the Subject Property and is not a comprehensive testing of all areas.
Scope of Mold Screen: Mold Screen consists of a visual inspection in readily accessible area for mold and/or conditions that may indicate the presence of mold. For example, musty odor and/or evidence of water penetration.
The Benefits and Limits of ERMI Testing
There are several testing methods used for diagnosing mold issues. As in all things in the world, there are advantages and disadvantage to each type of testing. That means that each type of testing is useful in its own way….and often not appropriate for other applications.
ERMI (Environmental Relative Moldiness Index) is one test that is not often used or understood. ERMI is the product of the modern miracle of DNA technology. The EPA owns the patent on the process and limits its use to approved labs. The EPA also states that their approval of the technology is only “experimental.”
However, there are many studies and anecdotal evidence of the benefit of the test results for patients with CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Respiratory Disease) There are also some very interesting, but limited studies that high ERMI scores correlate with high lactate in the brain. High lactate correlates with cognitive problems. It may be that identifying high ERMI score conditions may be useful in treating some diseases. These are still very preliminary studies and require more research.
Let’s do the Pros and Cons before we talk about how this technology works.
Pro:
ERMI can give very targeted specific specialization for target molds that can have an influence on health
ERMI can give evidence of the historic (new or old mold contaminations) mold conditions in a building.
Historic evidence of long term exposure vs short term exposure can be useful for medical practitioners
Con:
ERMI does not quantify mold, it only identifies the 36 species of targeted molds
ERMI requires old carpet that was not regularly cleaned to provide the source of dust to give that historic record
ERMI is still an evolving science in terms of correlation of ERMI results and health implications
ERMI does not help to isolate the source of the mold contamination to aid in any required remediation
Overview of the process
A sample of dust is taken using a specialized dirt trap. The dirt/dust/debris is to be collected by using a vacuum cleaner hooked up to a specialized air filter. An alternative system is a smaller cassette and a standard air sampling pump. The sample is supposed to be drawn from a roughly 2 square yard carpet area in either a living room or bedroom.
The sample is sent to an EPA licensed lab. The lab takes the dust from the dirt trap and puts it through a filter to isolate the small, mold size particles. (Think spaghetti in a strainer, only microscopic in size)
Those particles are put into a tube with a known amount of Geotrichum candidum
and the DNA is beat out of the mold spores with microscopic beads called “bead pellets.” That mush is then filtered and the sifted genetic stuff is mixed with a buffer solution. It is then dumped into a solution called “Master Mix” and put through a series of temperature controlled reactions.
If you are wondering the technical name for the magic chemistry we are doing, it is MSQPCR
Mold Specific Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction
Now remember that known quantity of Geotrichum candidum that was in the mix? That is the reference basis that can be used to compare the assays (checking process) for each of the target molds (molds that they are looking for). The checking process is done with a “Sequence Detector” (which is identifying DNA sequences)
The reason for the look at the ratio of the two is that the exact quantity of each mold is not determined by this test. That is the result of several factors. Our size of sample could be small or big, based upon the amount of dirt we swept up. We can’t figure out by counting pieces of DNA if there is a little or a lot of mold in the building. You get the point. We do not know how much mold is in the building from an ERMI test.
What we do know is that if most of the mold DNA is the outdoor molds, then there is less mold growing in the house. If there is a whole bunch more of the indoor mold than the exterior, oops, there is a lot more mold growing IN the house than coming in from the OUTSIDE.
Scoring is done on a scale of -10 to 20. The higher the number, the more mold that is from growing inside the house in the tested building area. That ERMI Score number is a “sort of number,” not an exact measure. It is based on a limited number of tests from a limited geographic area. Hence reference to it as a “Relative Score.”
That folks, is what this ERMI testing is about. It is amazing technology, but has a very limited application. It can’t quantify mold contaminations or the success of any remediation efforts. According to the EPA, ERMI is an “emerging technology”. They further state that ERMI is still in the experimental stages and is not approved for medical diagnostic use.