Best Mold Test Kits 2021
Weve rated the best mold test kits for detecting spores around your home.
The best mold test kits are essential if you can see mold spores in your home or you suspect that theres an issue with damp. These handy kits allow you to swab areas in your home before sending off your samples for professional analysis so you can get on top of the problem.
If youre after one of the best black mold test kits, weve included some great options that are approved by the American Industrial Hygiene Association and are very easy to use. Treating black mold in your home is not only essential because it looks horrible, but it can also lead to health problems if it spreads. If left to its own devices, mold can devalue your home and cost thousands to fix.
The good news is that even the top-rated mold detection kits wont cost you a fortune, and many options in our guide are less than $20. Take note, however, that some kit companies charge you extra for the lab testing part of the process but some return your results in just five days.
Weve ranked the best mold test kits for how easy they are to use, any extra fees involved, and how quickly the results are returned. You can find a range of kits to choose from below but for other ways to monitor and tackle the air inside your home, head to our guides on the best air purifiers or the best dehumidifiers.
Can You Get Rid Of Mold Spores In The Air
Mold spores are constantly all around us.
Due to their size , theyre invisible to the naked eye and can stay in the air indefinitely. Even the smallest breeze can easily carry them great distances and into homes and buildings.
In fact, even the EPAs website succinctly states that mold spores cannot be eliminated from indoor environments.
So what can you do if youre suffering from health problems from mold spores?
While its not feasible to maintain a completely sterile environment free of mold spores, there are ways that you can significantly reduce the amount of mold spores in the air in your home.
Consider The Indoor Air Odor
When you first walk into the apartment, you should be able to assess the smell of the home. Most often, mold spores put off a musty smell caused by moisture problems and is undeniable to the senses. If you find yourself constantly burning candles or spraying fresheners to change the smell of the air, you may be dealing with a mold infestation. You can always ask friends or family members to come over and see if they can smell anything that may be mold growth. You may have a smell in a particular closet or room.
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Removing Mold From Leather Shoes Coats Accessories And Furniture
Mold on leather coats, shoes, purses, and furniture should be removed outside, if possible. Wipe down the surface with a cloth dipped in distilled white vinegar and then with a good leather soap and warm water. Dry with a soft cloth and allow to air dry completely. Once completely dry, treat the item with a leather conditioner.
How To Test The Air In Your House For Mold: Step
With new technology, mold testing has become simplified for homes. The best places to test are the following spaces:
- In ventilation ducts
- Where leaks previously occurred
Go for a viable test kit to detect spores in the air. You can buy an easy test kit to use at home by searching the web. Be sure that it is for indoor use and conditions like yours.
Heres how to use your kit once your purchase it.
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How To Prevent Mold In Your Home
Mold thrives in moist areas and you can often find it around pipes, leaks, or windows. The best way to keep prevent mold from growing is to minimize moisture in your home.
- Regularly inspect your home. Look for signs of water damage or visible mold. Fix any leaky pipes or leaks in your roof that can cause water to accumulate.
- Keep humidity levels under control. Consider using a dehumidifier in damp areas like a basement. Humidity levels between
Dark Grout Between The Shower Tiles
The surprising bit about mold is that it accumulates in some of the unlikeliest of places. If your bathroom has leaking parts, mold may begin to grow around the grout. Unfortunately, most of the mold that thrives in the bathroom can be toxic.
You need to pay close attention to the spaces around the bathroom tiles. However, it takes a keen eye to notice the color changes. Are you finding it hard to differentiate between the normal darkening of tiles and mold-related discoloration? Our experts at Beyer Air Conditioning and Heating are always on-call to test if such darkening spots could be molds. Dealing with mold early helps you minimize the risk of allergies and other issues caused by low air quality.
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How Air Quality Monitors See Mold
The type of sensor thats going to pick up mold is a particle detector .
These sensors work by shining a laser through the air drawn into the monitor. Any particles floating in the air will scatter the light beam, and the sensor then measures both the strength and angle of the beam. An algorithm will then tell you how many particles are in the air sample and their size.
So, why is this important? Mold spores clog up your air, and some spores are similar in size to particulate matter. When the particle detector exposes an air sample to the laser, the mold spores will also diffract the light, and the sensor will count it as particulate matter. In this way, your monitor does pick up mold in the air, as the particle count will be higher.
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Can You Get Sick From Mold In Your House
Yes. Those will allergies, compromised immune systems, asthma, or other such issues are at a higher risk as even minor, non-toxic molds could cause a variety of uncomfortable symptoms. Mold in your house is rarely life-threatening. However, prolonged exposure is far from ideal for a number of reasons.
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Who Is Most At Risk For Health Problems Associated With Exposure To Mold
People with allergies may be more sensitive to molds. People with immune suppression or underlying lung disease are more susceptible to fungal infections. Individuals with chronic respiratory disease may experience difficulty breathing. Individuals with immune suppression are at increased risk for infection from molds. If you or your family members have these conditions, a qualified medical clinician should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment.
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How To Treat Mold On Walls
If you find mildew and mold stains on the wall, you must first find the cause of that growth. It is insufficient to simply remove the mold without solving the problem, as the issue will just continuously repeat itself.
Some reasons for a mold infestation in the walls include insufficient insulation, an overly humid room climate, or repeated exposure to steam. If you do not treat the cause, then the problem could even lead to black mold, which can be toxic.
Try out these home remedies to help get mold off the walls:
- Vinegar: Dab a soft and non-staining cloth with colorless vinegar or diluted vinegar essence, and then dab the mildew and mold stains on the wall until they have disappeared.
- Methylated spirits: Dampen a cloth with methylated spirits and then dab the mildew stains off the wall, much like you would with vinegar.
Keep in mind: Vinegar and methylated spirits can dissolve and ruin wallpaper, so be careful. After removing any mold or mildew stains from the walls, wash thoroughly with a sponge and soapy water, but be careful not to stain the wall.
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Check Your Overall Health
Though invisible to the naked eye, mold spores floating around the air in your apartment can lead to and cause health problems. Even if you dont normally struggle with allergies, mold may be toxic to the body and can create breathing problems and skin rashes. A chronic cough that doesnt seem to go away with treatment could be a sign that the air in the home is contaminated. Skin conditions like psoriasis can also be associated with mold toxicity caused by water damage, and those whose bodies are struggling with fungus exposure may find themselves continually fatigued and weak.
Asthmatics may struggle more with moldy air, though anyone could experience wheezing and breathlessness. Children and older adults are especially susceptible to these health concerns. If you or members of your family find themselves constantly dealing with allergy symptoms or respiratory conditions, you may want to have the indoor air quality checked for the presence of mold growth. If you find that these conditions seem to improve when you are away from the home, it could be that it is your environment causing the allergic response.
Allergy Symptoms Or Illness Occurs
As mentioned before, if you are allergic to mold, your symptoms will emerge. It can also cause other symptoms.
Allergy symptoms you may suffer from can include sneezing, coughing, watery and itchy eyes, and breathing difficulties. However, you might suffer more troublesome conditions apart from these, such as severe nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and fatigue.
For these reasons, it is important to stop using the HVAC system if any of these symptoms occur. If any mold growth is discovered, do not activate your system until it is free of any mold.
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How Does Mold Grow In Aircon
How Does Mold Grow in Aircon? You enjoy the comfortable air conditioning in your home, but lately, youve noticed that its been smelling funny. You decide to investigate and discover mold growing on your air conditioner.
Thats not good, and it needs to be fixed immediately! In this article, well discuss what causes mold growth on air conditioners, why it happens, and how you can prevent mold from growing on your AC unit again so you can breathe easily.
How To Test For Black Mold In The Air
Are you breathing black mold? For your healths sake, its important to find out. Most airborne molds are capable of harming certain people, but toxic black mold presents a particular risk. Even short-term exposure to black mold can be dangerous to health.
When people talk about toxic black mold, theyre referring to a specific variety known as Stachybotrys chartarum. Like all molds, black mold is insidious its hard to find and even harder to remove. Just because you can find a visible mold colony, doesnt mean youre not inhaling its spores and byproducts.
If you suspect black mold is growing in your home, its a good idea to run a test before beginning the expensive remediation process. While youre investigating, make sure to run a high-quality air purifier for mold to protect yourself and your family. Keep reading to learn when and how to test for black mold.
If your home has a mold problem, its time to act. Protect your family by running a high-quality air purifier from Air Oasis. Questions about our purifiers? Give us a call at .
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Removing Mold From Your Home
Resolve any issues causing mold growth, and throw away anything affected by mold or contributing to mold growth that you cant clean.
- Wear protective gear. As youre dealing with the moldy area, cover yourself with a mask, gloves, goggles, and rubber boots. If youre cleaning a lot of mold, you can also wear disposable clothing or a mold-resistant suit.
- Ventilate the room. Open all doors and windows to increase ventilation.
- Sort and discard. Remove any objects from the area that havent been touched by mold growth. Throw away any items that cant be cleaned.
- Replace moldy housing materials. Cut away and replace mold-damaged drywall, ceiling tiles, and carpet.
- Scrub and disinfect. Cover and scrub nonporous surfaces affected by mold with bleach, a fungicide, or detergent and water, then dry them. Dont mix cleaning products together.
- Address any water issues. Make sure any water problems are fixed and the area is dry before you renovate the room.
Call Professional Mold Remediation Services
Even if you have done your part and didnt find anything, it doesnt guarantee your air quality is fine. Consider calling on the services of Mold Remediation to conduct a thorough test of the air in your apartment. Using sensitive equipment, the air or surfaces within your home will be tested for the existence of mold. This equipment can also identify which type of mold is present, as there are different remediation processes for each type.
Samples of the air may be taken with a spore trap, where a large volume of air passes over a sticky surface that catches spores. The strong the air current that passes over the trap, the greater a sampling is taken. The trap is evaluated by a professional laboratory, leaving you with an accurate idea of what you are up against. There are mold test kits that can be done your own, but for the best results, leave mold testing and analysis to the professionals.
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Wipe Down Your Bathroom After A Shower
After showering, youll have water on the tiles and shower curtain. Its important to remove this water as quickly as possible, rather than simply leaving it to drip and dry on its own.
A simple squeegee lets you remove water spots from tiles and shower doors, as well as from windows and mirrors. As well as helping to prevent mold growth in your bathroom, itll help keep your bathroom looking shiny and cleanas you wont have water spots and smears.
Encourage family members or roommates to get into the habit of wiping down tiles and other surfaces after showering, too.
To get rid of mold spores in the air, you need to get rid of the source of the moldyou cant simply treat the air itself. By ensuring that your home is kept dry and that mold is cleaned up quickly, youll soon see a huge improvement in the air quality inside your home.
Article Sources
Healing Daily uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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In The Shower And Bathtub
Showers and bathtubs are one of the most common places you may find bathroom mold. With repeated use, these areas tend to be damp most of the time. If you arent properly ventilating during and after your shower or bath, mold spores will thrive. But mold isnt always visible and obvious be sure to check for mold on your shampoo bottles, washcloths and loofahs, shower curtain, in and around the faucet and shower head, and in the tile grout.
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Do Air Purifiers Get Rid Of Mold Spores
Aside from releasing mold spores back outside, another way on how to remove mold spores from the air is by using air purifiers.
Find one equipped with filters that can trap mold spores and other present airborne contaminants.
There are also more advanced features available, like UV light, which is known to kill biological particles like dust mites and mold spores.
We certainly recommend getting an air purifier that comes with one if you can.
Air purifier filters will lose their capacity over time as they catch more particles. Hence, they will eventually need to be replaced.
If you do opt to replace them, do so in a well-ventilated area.
You might also want to consider wearing an N-95 face mask if you believe you will be exposed to mold spores and other harmful airborne contaminants.
Doing this will prevent you from inhaling these particles.
What Is Air Testing
When someone mentions the term air testing, what they are referring to is technically called spore trap analysis. Almost any mold inspection company uses spore trap analysis as their primary form of testing when testing indoor mold levels.
This testing is done using an air pump that pulls spores from the air and traps them onto a slide. The inspector then sends the slide to a laboratory, where a technician will examine the spores on the slide under a microscope. The lab technician will do their best to identify what species of mold are present on the slide. Typically, results are reported in spores per cubic meter of air along with the number and percentage of each spore type.
In most cases, the inspector will take what is called an outdoor baseline air sample. The lab will compare this sample to the sample taken indoors at one or more areas . This comparison aims to show which species of mold are native to the area where the home or dwelling is. For example, suppose the indoor air is comparable in levels and species to the outdoor sample without any glaring elevations. In that case, it is usually concluded that there is no severe mold problem that presents an issue in terms of air quality.
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