Which Sample Types Will Give Clients an Understanding of the Species That's In Their Home?

Mold Firm

Carson Jeffries: Good morning, I'm Carson Jeffries with the Mold Firm and I'm here today with long-time friend and owner of Air Allergen & Mold Testing. Richard Johnson: My name is Richard Johnson and I'm the President/CEO of Air Allergen & Mold Testing. When we talk to a client on the phone when they call us, it is to understand what their questions are and what their concerns are and then we will come up with a sampling strategy to answer their questions, and it would be at that point that we would decide whether or not just knowing what the genus level name is, like aspergillus or penicillium, will be adequate or if they need to go more deeply and learn about these species. It is more expensive to do a species analysis than it is to do something to the genus level in the analysis. And cost is always a concern, that's a trade-off between what you're learning and the cost of doing it. We look at it as if we're painting a picture and every sample that we take adds a color, adds a line, adds some detail that allows you to understand what the picture is. So we have to understand what we're looking for to begin with and then we can design a sampling strategy that we believe will give us enough information to make out what the picture is without necessarily incurring the cost of making a Rembrandt or some very expensive set of sampling. Carson: So it sounds like when you do comprehensive testing, a combination both of air samples, surface samples, carpet dust samples as well as development of those samples in your labs, you develop a more comprehensive picture of not only the amount and types of spores but also their health effects in their particular species. Richard: Yes, that's absolutely correct. We learned something from each of the pieces of information we do. Another thing that we make a point of doing is in discussing the sampling strategy with the client before we go there. We try to learn as much as we can that they have, in terms of their experience and the things that they know about, to help fill-in pieces of the puzzle to know what we're looking for and to make sure that we're sampling in the areas that are important. Carson: Yeah, and I know Richard from our end, we will occasionally be approached by clients. And maybe as you alluded to, we’ll go with more limited sampling from maybe another environmental company that is charging them, maybe half as much, and I tell those clients, unfortunately, that when we’re analyzing their case, the report either because it doesn't have any written findings or because of the limited sampling just doesn't provide the information necessary to move forward with the case. And then what the client finds themselves in the situation of, unfortunately, is having to get a mold report – the initial mold report – and then having to come to a company like Air Allergen for more comprehensive report, so they end up paying twice in the end. Richard: That's really true and that is always a struggle especially if people have incurred a lot of medical bills or something and are financially strapped as a result of it. The tendency would be too well, “Can I get by with just an air sampler? Can I get by with a tape sampler?” And we discourage that because what we have found, you can go into a home, we've been fooled before ourselves, you know, even doing. You go into a home, take an air sample, looks okay and then you take a carpet dust sample and you find out that even though it was okay at the time that you took the air sample, they’ve had a history of problems that have not shown up in the air sample. So doing a more comprehensive inspection and taking enough samples to really understand what's going on in the environment is very important. Otherwise you're going to be making choices that you either might be doing less than what you need to do or you might be doing more than what you need to do.