NYT: Nightmares on Mold Street

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December 11, 2003TURF

Nightmares on Mold Street

By MOTOKO RICH

OR 32 days, Wessling, a 44-year-old chef in Pineville, N.C., was forced to stay out of his condominium because of a sore throat, pains in his fingers and neck and other ailments that his doctors attributed to mold behind his baseboards and kitchen cabinets.

After $3,300 to clean out the mold, Mr. Wessling is spending nearly $2,000 on doors, gutters and grading to make sure it doesn't comes back. "It was nasty," Mr. Wessling said. "It can sneak up on you."

Toxic mold began making headlines nearly a decade ago when fungi like Stachybotrys atra and penicillium were discovered spreading their wispy Addam's Family tendrils up library partitions and down school hallways. The mold was said to cause flu- or asthmalike symptoms, skin rashes, heart palpitations, headaches, respiratory problems and chronic fatigue. Then the fear of mold spread to the home.

While mold claims increase, and new products are introduced to combat mold, some doctors are questioning whether molds cause many of the ills attributed to them. Insurance companies are excluding mold coverage in many states, and some builders are skeptical about the efficacy of new mold retardants.

Kirk Hansen, director of claims for the Alliance of American Insurers, a trade group in Downers Grove, Ill., said there are 10,000 active lawsuits involving mold in homes. Bianca Jagger has sued her Park Avenue landlord for $20 million, alleging that the company failed to fix a persistent leak that caused mold to spread across a wall in her rental apartment. Across the avenue, at 515 Park, condominium owners are suing a developer over construction defects they say caused a mold outbreak in their multimillion-dollar apartments.

Last month, a jury in Salem, Mass., awarded Katrine s, a former condo owner in nearby Gloucester, $549,326 in damages and interest after she was exposed to mold that her doctors said made it difficult for her to breathe and forced her to leave her home after just a month and a half.

Despite some doubt about what ills can in fact be attributed to mold, insurers paid out $3 billion on mold-related claims last year, more than double the $1.4 billion in 2001, according to the Insurance Information Institute, a New York-based trade association.

Now, Hartwig, chief economist at the institute, said many insurers will no longer cover claims related to mold. In fact, he said, 43 states (not including New York) have already made it legal for homeowners policies to exclude mold coverage. Mr. Wessling paid for his repairs out of his own pocket, he said, because his insurance didn't cover mold damage.

"It's a nightmare because we've lived with mold for thousands, if not millions of years," said Stuart Saft, a real estate lawyer and chairman of the Council of New York atives and Condominiums. "And now every time anybody sees any mold whatsoever, they immediately feel that their life is in danger and that it's building-eating mold."

The lawsuits, the occasional legal victory and the headlines have generated an anxiety about mold that has created its own industry for prevention and care.

Some measures to prevent mold are obvious and cost nothing; builders can make sure that wallboard and other materials stay dry during construction. Some builders are paying extra to install wall panels or paints meant to be mold-retardant. Others are handing out brochures and videos to home buyers urging them to use bathroom fans and kitchen exhaust hoods regularly. In humid climates, residents are advised to close their doors and windows and use the air-conditioners, which act as dehumidifiers.

Concern about liability means apartment owners and managers respond more quickly to complaints about leaks. And people building homes are not relying on others to protect them: they are installing leak-detection systems, or demanding customized houses built without wallboard or drywall, where mold seems to thrive.

None of this has escaped the notice of home builders and property owners, who foresee additional liability as insurers shirk the burden.

During construction at the Time Warner Center, the high-profile condominium project at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, the developers hired environmental engineers to conduct weekly inspections of various floors of the building to locate potential mold risks.

J. Wine, vice chairman of the Related Companies, which is developing the center with Apollo Real Estate Advisors, said his company had conducted mold-prevention inspections on two other buildings, mostly in response to headlines about toxic mold. Mr. Wine said the engineer at Time Warner recommended that the builders remove wet wallboard or other building materials.

Wet building materials were fairly common as home builders and condo developers rushed to put up structures during the housing boom that began in the late 1990's, said Benda, chief executive of Chelsea Group, an Itasca, Ill.-based testing and remediation business specializing in indoor air quality. In their haste, he said, builders often install fixtures like cabinetwork and carpeting before cement or wallboard has dried.

Drywall can also get wet if it isn't adequately protected from rain and snow. If that moisture is trapped inside the building, it can lead to the growth of mold.

Besides being unsightly, a mold like Stachybotrys atra (pronounced stock-ee-BAH-trus AH-tra) can create serious problems for people with impaired immune systems, like cancer patients, and many people can develop mold allergies, which lead to hay-fever or asthma-like symptoms.

Doctors are less certain about claims that exposure to molds leads to memory loss, nerve damage, arthritis and fatigue. "The evidence is more mixed," said Dr. Redd, chief of air pollution and the respiratory health branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Nevertheless, the C.D.C. urges anyone who discovers mold at home to remove it promptly. More important, Dr. Redd said, is to stop the source of the mold. "If you just clean up the mold, put the same material back and don't deal with the water problem," he said, "you're going to have the mold problem again shortly."

Because leaks can go undetected for days, if not months, FloLogic Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., makes a device that monitors water flow in houses and shuts off the water to a house at the main line if it detects water flowing for more than a predetermined time, say, 30 minutes.

"I would hate to have a situation where the water just runs for two weeks without anyone knowing about it," said Chip , a venture capital investment banker who has bought the system for his 19th-century two-story bungalow in Rye, N.Y.

FloLogic, which introduced the product in 2001, is negotiating a deal with Policyholders of America, an advocacy group based in Austin, Tex., that wants to bring out its own homeowners insurance policy next year.

Melinda Ballard, the group's founder, said homeowners who want coverage for water damage and mold will have to buy a FloLogic system. Ms. Ballard well knows the risks of mold: after rampant mold growth forced her and her family to flee their Texas home, she sued her insurer for failing to pay for repairs that would have eliminated the moisture. She was awarded a jury verdict of $32 million, later reduced to $4 million.

Some home builders are trying to protect houses from mold even if leaks do occur. The Lennar Corporation, a large national home builder based in Miami, has replaced the moisture-resistant wallboard normally used in bathrooms with a cement-based product that it says resists moisture more effectively. The company also coats wood and wallboard with antimicrobial sprays when deemed necessary based on geography and climate.

Companies that have developed mold-retardant products say sales are growing briskly. Georgia Pacific, the Atlanta-based paper and building materials company, last year introduced a new wall panel sandwiched between glass panels to protect against mold growth. A spokeswoman said sales were growing about 30 percent a month.

Sales of a mold-resistant sealant made by Fiberlock Technologies in Andover, Mass., are up sevenfold in the last two years, said Andre Weker, director of marketing at Fiberlock.

But some builders question whether those products are as effective as their makers promise. "There is no universal protocol on how to evaluate these building products," said , research analyst and wood-product specialist at the National Association of Homebuilders Research Center.

What's more, said Jaffe, vice president for construction liability for the National Association of Homebuilders, new treatments for deterring mold might have other drawbacks, like causing building materials to degrade faster. "We don't want to address one problem and create others," he said.

Trying to stem the risk of mold in the construction process is one thing, but keeping it at bay throughout the life of the home is another. D', an environmental scientist at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in New York, said owners need to monitor plumbing regularly for leaks, repoint brick facades so rainwater can't seep in, repair roofs and terraces and remind tenants to keep bathrooms and shower stalls clean.

Still, many homeowners and building managers don't believe mold can happen to them. "It's easier to get people to do something about mold once it happens than to take the steps to keep it from happening," said Eva Talel, a Manhattan lawyer who advises co-op and condo boards on how to prevent mold in their buildings. "That's the next level of consciousness raising."

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