Re: Re: Could random mold testing save affordable healthy rental housing?

[Guest guest]

Who will do the random testing?? Federal Gov, State Gov. Local or private.

One more person to point the finger at!

lostonthebeach925 <lostonthebeach925@...> wrote:

The problem is one that you just stated. Until a fool proof testing

methodology exists even random testing does not catch a lot of cases.

it only takes a tiny area of mold to cause a problem and it can be

well hidden until it is stirred up. Yes, random testing/inspection

will catch many places with gross problems but the small partially

hidden patch of stachy may well go unnoticed in an otherwise clean

looking property

Peace,

S

---------------------------------

Pinpoint customers who are looking for what you sell.

[Guest guest]

Yes, that could happen, definitely. (Some bad situations being overlooked)

But I think that the random testing is a good idea because it WOULD put the

issue out there as being one that needed to be addressed. Money that right

now is probably being put into other things would get reallocated to

maintenence if there were laws addressing mold in rental housing and

mechanisms in place that would allow them to come into play when moldy

buildings were discovered, EVEN IF NOBODY HAD COMPLAINED.

And those regulations would require a rapid cleanup with a structured set of

procedures that would not leave things up to chance. (Maybe use of some

fast, efficient method and also residents being put up in hotels until the

work was done, at the owners expense. That would prevent them deliberately

having cleanup jobs drag on for months or years - a tactic that is used to

clear buildings of tenants so they can be sold or demolished.)

The reason I think that would help is that stachybotrys tends to be a sort

of indicator of longstanding and high level water intrusion over time, and

even most moldy situations don't have stachybotrys. You would need a

complicated 'decison tree' but it could be done.

The heart of the matter, as I see it is that if you threw a net wide enough

to catch the other kinds of dangerous mold, the chances are, that would

bring about changes in behavior that would result in the stachy being

reduced substantially. Pre-existing stachy situations would need special

treatment which I think would mean special cleanup procedures that took into

account its ability to poison a building and remain hidden at the same time.

It sounds complex but I really think that it could be done and it could be

done affordably by developing a systematic procedure and following it.

The problem is that UNDERSTANDING the way all of these things interact takes

some time, and the public health and regulatory communities have their hands

full with other issues so they are not volunteering to add this one to their

already full plate.

The only way to do that is to try to get public energized that changing this

lack of attention to mold is ruining lots of people's lives and resulting in

lots of costs to society by doing so.

We know from our personal experiences but they have to see somehow that its

crucially important.

On 10/1/07, lostonthebeach925 <lostonthebeach925@...> wrote:

Yes, random testing/inspection

> will catch many places with gross problems but the small partially

> hidden patch of stachy may well go unnoticed in an otherwise clean

> looking property

>

> Peace,

> S

>

> _

>

[Guest guest]

I think that really would need to be explored by a process that got input

from all interested people over a period of time, and that process would

need to be completely transparent to avoid the problems that have cursed

mold-related legislation up till now.

(It being written mostly for industry groups and not for the people who have

been getting sick)

But the solution needs to be a real, viable solution and that means that it

can't have requirements so onerous that it would drive large masses of

landlords out of business. It needs to be finely crafted to both do what it

is intended to do, change the current landscape of mold - encouraging by

ignoring maintenance that we see into one in which people have healthy

apartments to live in and they don't have to choose between having a moldy

place to live and no place at all, which currently seem to be the only

choices being offered to many poor people. That isn't right. That kind of

outrage can't be allowed to continue. Even old, terribly moldy buildings

COULD BE RECAIMED AFFORDABLY but to do that we would also need to change the

mecanics of remediation from the costly and terrifying (to landlords)

process that exists today to something much less threatening and costly.

While at the same time, MAKING the COST of NON-compliance reflect MUCH more

closely the VERY REAL COSTS to the people who get sick over their lifetimes.

Not just their lost days at work (until they lose their jobs) and the cost

of the medicines they take (as the 'cost' is calcuated now, making it

obscenely, artificially low, while the costs to clean up situations are

simultaneously inflated by a number of mechanisms..

Those cost-benefit analysis are how they claim they decide what to do about

these things but they are skewed in so many ways. For example, since people

who get sick from mold are officially steered by the US government towards

affiliated clinics who are controlled by these two big medical organizations

that are on the record as asserting that mold illness doesn't exist, and

also are tasked with keeping (nonexistant!?) databases of how many people

are made sick by mold..(But doctors who have the courage to make that

connection also get attacked by them)

See how ugly and perverse and unjust and ILLEGAL this situation is?

On 10/1/07, a Townsend <kmtown2003@...> wrote:

>

> Who will do the random testing?? Federal Gov, State Gov. Local or

> private. One more person to point the finger at!

>

> lostonthebeach925 <lostonthebeach925@...<lostonthebeach925%40>>

> wrote:

> The problem is one that you just stated. Until a fool proof testing

> methodology exists even random testing does not catch a lot of cases.

> it only takes a tiny area of mold to cause a problem and it can be

> well hidden until it is stirred up. Yes, random testing/inspection

> will catch many places with gross problems but the small partially

> hidden patch of stachy may well go unnoticed in an otherwise clean

> looking property

>

> Peace,

> S

>

>

>

>

>

>