r/Mold

I need some direct help, hopefully from someone who has navigated this process successfully in the past.

*If your internal response is “mold is everywhere,” without understanding the health impacts of toxic mold on immune susceptible people, this post is not for you.

I’ve been hired to help locate a 6+ month rental for clients in the Studio City / Los Angeles area who became significantly ill after long-term mold exposure in their home, followed by a couple of rentals that ended up not much better. The LA rental market is also rough right now because we are still recovering from major home losses from the fires.

Before moving into their current rental, they performed ERMI testing on several prospective homes and chose the cleanest option they found, partly because it was also a newer build. It was borderline on the HERTSMI at 14, but they believed the results might reflect old tenant moving dust rather than active issues.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a much larger problem, with bad shower installs, active moisture issues, and a landlord who does not want to acknowledge the extent of it or follow safe remediation protocol, despite independent inspection, moisture verification, cavity sampling, and lab testing. They are at their wits’ end and cannot go through the process of finding another place themselves again.

So they hired me, and I need to come up with an efficient procedure for finding the cleanest possible house for them to rent. They have a healthy but not unlimited budget, and are looking for something nice, ideally 3+ bedrooms with some privacy and a yard. But we now know expensive does not mean healthy.

Right now my thought is to line up a large number of viewings myself, narrow them down based on smell, visuals, etc., then test the strongest candidates using HERTSMI, then upgrading to ERMI is a property qualifies, and present the final options to the clients. But that was essentially their previous process too, and it still failed, possibly because the testing approach itself was too limited. After ERMI testing 6 previous properties, they still ending up in a problematic house, I feel like I need a more direct or thorough approach. It also can’t become an endless process or we lose prospects.

I do have a mold inspector willing to discreetly look at 1-2 finalist properties, but even that may slow things down too much. Honestly, I wish I could hire an inspector to handle this entire process, but I haven’t found the right person yet.

My instinct is that the best option may be a well cared-for family home where the owners genuinely maintain the property, rather than another furnished “luxury rental” run primarily as a business. Over the winter, they stayed in a couple of those, where very obvious leaks happened during the rains and management brushed it off and refused to do the work to address the issue in any way that would have prevented mold damage, in favor of a little putty and paint, and having a next tenant come in the following week. 

They do not need perfect, and they absolutely do not want sterile. They just need clean enough to begin recovering, which they haven’t been able to do because they’ve had to move multiple times over 5 months. Furnished with some character would actually be ideal so it still feels like a home.

What efficient process would you use in this situation? Are there specific professionals who can handle this type of search from beginning to end?

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING AND KINDLY HELP ME OUT

So we discovered a significant mold problem behind wallpaper on the second floor of the bedroom in our house. The wallpaper has now been completely removed and the visible mold was scraped, antifungal chemical was applied on wall, ugly stains still stayed on the wall, we were told it's dead fungus, after 2 weeks ge got sanding done on the wall along with putty (wall filler) and primer. The room and surfaces were vacuumed and cleaned multiple times after that (including with vinegar/Dettol),

The room has been ventilated continuously with ceiling fans and a mesh balcony door open for airflow, it has been a week since the sanding process and 3 weeks since the initial antinfungal treatment. Humidity is not extremely high currently.

However, even after cleanup, my throat burns when I sit in that room/floor even for 5 minutes, this never even happened when the mold was hidden behind the wallpaper earlier. Now, the only time my throat doesn't burn on that floor is when I sleep with the blanket over my face. My throat stays perfectly fine on the other floor so clearly it has to do with that specific room.

I’m trying to understand:

Why is this still happening even though the wall was treated and cleaning has been done multiple times.

There are 2 mesh doors on that floor that lead to different balconies, still the issue stays persistent, what's the root cause?

How can I solve this issue? Any tips? Should I get tea tree oil to spray in the room? How can I fix this? Please help me figure out what exactly is going on, I'm literally unable to use my room due to this 🙏

*please note this post was removed from rva sub by mods

Hey Richmond, I am dealing with a potential severe, building-wide housing hazard in the Fan/VCU area. Every single city resource has completely failed me, and I am facing retaliation from property management for exercising my legal rights. I need advice, tenant advocate recommendations, or local journalist contacts because this is a possible active environmental and medical emergency.

The Exposure & The Building-Wide Crisis
Following **two floods in my apartment over a two-month span**, I grew severely concerned over management's cleanup and paid out of pocket to hire an independent industrial hygienist. While assessing my HVAC unit for moisture, the inspector discovered something completely dangerous: the apartment maintenance team had placed a **highly concentrated commercial restroom urinal screen** (Renown Wave 3D) directly inside my residential HVAC unit behind the air filter.

Urinal screens are commercial restroom deodorizers made of an Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate plastic matrix saturated with intense fragrance oils. They are designed for open, high-airflow public restrooms—**they are absolutely not safe for residential HVAC use.** High HVAC airflow acts as a forced-induction chemical diffuser, stripping the highly concentrated volatile organic compounds (VOCs like Benzyl Benzoate and Linalool) off the plastic and pumping toxic chemical vapors directly into the home.

During that same inspection, the official lab report from Hayes Microbial came back with horrifying results: **The surface swab taken directly from inside my HVAC unit isolated a massive growth of Cladosporium mold at 20,000 cfu/cm².**

*Cladosporium* is a documented cause of **Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis** (severe lung tissue inflammation). I have an appointment for medical evaluation at **VCU Health Pulmonology.**

This is a possible building-wide issue. After finding this in my unit, I looked (with permission) into the HVAC units of two other residents in different areas of my building. Both units were heavily coated in rust and **another unit also contained a urinal screen.** Management has completely failed to investigate or reveal the actual source of the moisture.

**The Total Failure of Richmond City Departments**

I have tried to follow every correct municipal channel, and the bureaucratic buck-passing is disgraceful:

**Richmond Code Enforcement** flatly refused to investigate the urinal screen (a foreign chemical object placed in an HVAC system) and refused to investigate the mold, stating "we don't have a way to test for mold." Code Enforcement claimed it was out of their jurisdiction and referred me to the Health Department and Attorney General. They are incorrect about their jurisdiction.

**The Attorney General's Office** took the time to speak with me and kindly explained that this falls outside their scope and is not the Health Department's jurisdiction either—they referred me right back to City Code Enforcement.

**My Local City Council Representative's Office** dismissed this as an "individual matter." They only relented and mentioned "possibly having a meeting with management" after I stated that this exact hazard was observed across three separate HVAC units in different parts of the building, proving a systemic failure.

**Management’s Retaliation & My Legal Rights**

Now that management knows I have independent scientific proof, they claim they have a "remediation plan" and are trying to force entry. However, **they are actively refusing to share the written remediation plan or contractor licensing details with me.**
When I insisted on seeing the documentation, management stated that my request "violates my lease" because I am denying entry.

**This is a lie.** Under the **Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (VRLTA) § 55.1-1220**, landlords are legally required to provide the full package of remediation reports and information upon tenant request. I have a statutory right to confirm that a certified, professional environmental contractor is performing this work so that my apartment isn't cross-contaminated with millions of airborne mold spores.

Since local city government refuses to protect its citizens, what are my options? Are there any local Richmond housing watchdogs, legal groups, or investigative journalists (NBC12, CBS6, Richmond Times-Dispatch) who will expose this building-wide hazard?

Thank you for reading. The HVAC is off and my vents are taped shut, but this building is a public health hazard