Re: Urgent: Advice for mold in car trunk?

June 22, 2004

,

Tell your friend to send it back. The problem is no longer just mold

but also odor, perhaps pet urine, that is in an additional location.

So now there are two areas to fix. Are these the whole iceberg or

just the tip? Your friend has a history of reactivity with a high

impact on her life which further reduces the chances of making this

work. Cars can be extremely difficult because of all the tiny,

hidden, locations that cannot be accessed easily or at all for

cleaning. Also, the mold -- if it was mold (it might be from battery

acid spilling out or road salt or who knows what) but that really

isn't important right now -- has not been completely removed and has

most likely been compounded with bleach and whatever interactions it

has with all the other components of the trunk.

Finally, just in regards to the mold -- Did it grow because something

was spilled on the wooden piece or was the car in a damp garage long

enough for the wood to grow mold? If the latter, then the fungal

ecology (IICRC S520) of the garage had shifted and brought the car

along with it. Until the environmental conditions of the car changes

the mold continues to grow. This is one reason why history can be

more important (and cheaper!) than mold testing.

Once the fungal ecology has been shifted back then the mold still

needs to be removed (EPA, IOM, S520). But how does one remove it from

all those tiny spaces mentioned above? How long? What cost? What if

it still doesn't work? She is then stuck with a car she can't use

plus the loss of the cost of the car plus all the remediation

attempts.

Your friend will spend more money, time and " brain damage " trying to

fix a " train wreck " than it will cost to ship it back, get her refund

and try again.

I don't mean to be blunt, but I've had more failures with fixing cars

than houses for all the above reasons plus a few hundred more. Even

clean cars can be very difficult. Bad ones like this are almost

always impossible. Send it back.

Carl Grimes

Healthy Habitats LLC

grimes@...

303-671-9653

--------

> Urgent advice needed for A., a very giving person whose life work is

> helping children:

>

> " A " bought a four-year-old foreign-made car, sight unseen, from

> another state and had it shipped to her. Alas, the car has whitish

> mold in the trunk and the wood platform that sits over the spare tire

> compeltely fell apart into small moldy pieces. " A " is somewhat

> handicapped and unable to do mold remediation herself, but her sister

> removed everything that could be removed from the trunk and treated

> the trunk with bleach (even though A knows bleach is not a long-term

> solution for mold). However, there are pieces of trunk that cannot be

> removed and moldy-looking places remain.

> The dealer, a relative of A's good friend, says perhaps he failed to

> look in the trunk. (I question how someone who was supposed to

> thoroughly check out a car bought at auction could fail to look in

> the trunk....)

>

> Dilemma: A also had to flee an apartment 1 1/2 years ago due to

> visible mold. This was as a precaution; she does not know that she is

> hypersensitive to mold.

> Should she reject the car and pay to ship it back and get her money

> back (although she desperately needs a vehicle because her other

> vehicle was in an accident)? Or try to get it remediated?

> At this point, she has not signed the title or gotten a license in her

> state and is unsure the car is legally hers; she has sent payment. The

> front of the car has an odor, which seems to be a pet odor, but does

> not appear to have mold. (I wonder if this is an odor to cover a mold

> odor.) Thoughts? (This is made much more complicated by the fact that

> the car was purchased from a relative of a friend!) Know anyone honest

> who does mold remediation (on cars, etc.) in the San Francisco area?

> Thanks, J.

>

June 22, 2004