What is mold?

Molds are simple microscopic organisms found everywhere, and generally not dangerous to humans. In many respects mold is a good thing. Without yeast, a mold, there would be no bread, nor beer. Imagine a world without mushrooms or cheese. Mold is what causes organic waste materials in compost heaps to transform into soil-enriching natural fertilizer and life saving antibiotic penicillin and even soy sauce. On the other side of the spectrum, mold will do little more than aggravate common allergies, hay fever, asthma, and yellow toe nails, but some mold spores, those that produce mycotoxins are harmful to humans. Mold is a very small fungus with spores 200 times smaller than a human hair. Yes, it is alive, but neither plant nor animal, rather a mass of coenocytic (a multinucleate cell) organisms comprised of masses of tube-type filaments, called hyphae (a long, branching filamentous cell of a fungus) which feed by secreting digestive enzymes that in turn dissolve organic (and inorganic) into nutritional food substances. They then absorb the soluble substances for digestion.

Mold requires three elements for growth: warm air, a food source (remember it will eat almost anything), and most critical to mold development, moisture. Moisture results from flooding, plumbing leaks, condensation from a variety of sources, plugged up rain gutters, and unvented washers and dryers. Unfortunately, it can also be the end result from the fire department just trying to save someone’s home.

Economics of mold

The good economics of mold are tremendous and hard to quantify. Mold carries with it important world-wide benefits, as well as detriments to agriculture and food stuffs. It’s difficult to put a dollar figure on either side of the mold issue, but here are some interesting numbers:

• Asthma associated with mold in Children cost US $23 Billion (Developing Policies to Improve Indoor Environmental Quality, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, 2006)

• Mold Claims Hit $4 Billion in Texas (Insurance Journal, 2003)

• Reduced Nutrient Values and Palpability in Animal feed (North Carolina University)

• Fungus attacks a wide range of hosts and has a worldwide distribution on numerous field crops and vegetables (Greenhouse and Processing Crops Research Centre, Harrow, Ontario, Canada, 1997)

Causes and detection