A mold remediation company in New York claims that New York State doesn’t require mold to be completely removed — only that the area is “clean, dry, and free of visible mold.” In this episode, I dive into Article 32 of the Law and expose flaws in how some remediation contractors interpret — and twist — the language of the law to suit them. As a mold expert and a rocket scientist, I break down why their interpretation is misleading and unprofessional, using logic, the standard for professional mold remediation, and mold laws from other states for comparison.
You’ll learn:
- Why “mold-growth free” should be the goal — not what’s visible
- How NY’s law can be clarified to protect homeowners
- What homeowners should ask a mold remediation company to ensure all mold growth has been removed
The Mold Money Podcast
SHOW NOTES:
Licensing of Mold Inspection, Assessment and Remediation Specialists and Minimum Work Standards Article 32 New York State Labor Law Effective July 28, 2015 https://dol.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2021/03/mold-law-nysdol.pdf
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Books:
Mold Money: How to Save Thousands of Dollars on Mold Redmediation and Make Sure the Mold Is Gone. On Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Mold-Money-Thousands-Dollars-Redmediation-ebook/dp/B06WP7WVHR
Dust Money: How to clean your home and belongings after mold remediation so you don't have to throw everything awayhttps://www.amazon.com/Dust-Money-belongings-remediation-everything/dp/097946854X
TRANSCRIPT
Today's episode is my comment on a text somebody sent me, a snapshot from an email from a large remediation company in New York. The person says, the bid to remediate $200,000. So I read the comment that the remediation company sent.
The remediation company wrote, Article 32, NYS labor law, that's New York state, became effective in January 2016. And this outlines our filing requirements. It's very similar to Texas.
Every time there's remediation, both the inspector has to file paperwork on what's going to be done, and remediation company has to file paperwork. So I've attached, quote, this is from the remediation company.
I've attached an overview that we drafted years ago for our clients, which outlines the law and mold remediation requirements.
It goes on to say once our mold remediation work plan, in parentheses, estimate, is approved by the client, we will prepare necessary paperwork and file it prior to commencing work.
From a clearance standpoint, clearance meaning test the job afterwards and say it's good or bad, I just want to clarify that mold is part of the environment.
The mold remediation goal isn't is not to create a mold-free building, rather as per New York State guidelines.
The remediation is determined to be complete and successful when the work zone is clean, dry, and here's the most important part that I noticed, free of the underlineness, visible mold. First of all, mold laws are created to prevent fraud.
Moreover, I like to believe that these laws were created to ensure that people, homeowners, get what they pay for. And at a minimum, that would be the standard of care that's written in the standard for professional mold remediation.
This is not often the case. Texas is similar, this is why laws are not the answer. Now we have contractors interpreting the law, instead of just telling consumers where to go to read the law.
We have contractors interpreting laws, instead of consumers getting the standard of care they deserve, care the law is supposed to ensure they get. I'll explain. The remediation company took this out of context.
They took what is written in the law out of context. This was not done with fraud in mind, rather, they simply are not educated and knowledgeable about both what the law says and also how to do remold remediation properly.
This is the problem with licensing people. You just go take a class and now you have a quote license.
The solution to the problem, and I'm going to get to the problem really, is better training by the state and perhaps an amendment to such laws that prohibit companies from providing quote, overviews of the law and the way they interpret it to their clients and homeowners. Rather, they should simply require the homeowner ask the home inspector, the mold assessor, who's supposed to be the third party looking out for the homeowner or affirm to law.
The law can be easily found, viewed, and downloaded online. Here's the facts. This law, like the state of Florida, and I believe the state of Texas, these laws are written.
I'm gonna refer to the New York law because that's the one we're speaking of. The law has, quote, minimum work standards for mold inspection assessment and remediation, end quote. Now, some criticism pointed at the state of New York.
This law article contains definitions, and this is part of the problem too. One of these is the word mold. Back to the contractor saying, mold basically is everywhere.
You can't have a mold free environment. As an engineer, if I was to try to answer, is that true or false? What I do is I go look at the definition.
Why is it in the law? In the law, mold is defined as, it's almost humorous, except there's a lot of money involved in the remediation.
This law says, mold is, quote, any multicellular fungi growth capable of creating toxins that can cause pulmonary, respiratory, neurological or other major illness after minimal exposure, as such exposure is defined by the Environmental Protection
Agency, the CDC, National Institute of Health, or other federal, state or local agency obtained to study and protect health. End quote. Where to start? Every other word needs work.
When I look in my textbooks, for reference, when I look in my textbooks, mold is simply defined as, quote, organisms part of the fungi kingdom. End quote. How more simpler is it than that?
Does the state of New York have mold that's different than mold, other places? I mean, that implies that they want mold's remediators to treat certain molds different than other types of mold.
And this gets us all on the wrong track, because, by the way, some molds are single cellular. In fact, most molds, I could say, are single cellular, not as the law says multicellular.
For example, an example of a single nucleus mold are the Aspergillus penicillin types. So this law would basically exclude Aspergillus penicillin because it says multicellular. It explicitly says multicellular.
An example of a multicellular is Alternaria. Alternaria, something most consider non-toxic because it's ubiquitous and the word toxic doesn't belong in the standard of definitions either, or anywhere in mold remediation.
All molds are capable of producing toxins, including cladosporium, another mold many consider non-toxic. It's the most common mold found in the air everywhere. And yes, all molds can be allergenic, which wasn't mentioned.
It just mentions the word toxic, not allergens. So what's really the intention of this law?
It kind of excluded some molds that are toxic, and yet the statement is conflicting because it says capable of creating toxins, but then it starts with any indoor multicellular.
So that by itself is, it's not a possibly true statement to all under both condition under all conditions. Bear with me.
I'll get back to the issue with the remediation company's idea of clearance testing being okay as long as there's not quote visible mold.
Before we leave this, other issues with the definition of the words major illness and minimal exposure, no such thing. A link to the actual laws in the show notes. Let me know your opinion.
Moving on. In this law, there are definitions for quote mold assessment. It includes language that such an assessment is to include an inspection and how to discover mold.
I interpret the word discover to mean an inspector should locate and identify all the locations mold is present, including mold that is not readily visible, mold that is hiding in walls.
The law says the following, Section 945, Minimum Work Standards for the Conduct of Mold Assessments.
A mold assessment licensee shall prepare a remediation plan that is specific to each project to provide that plan to the client before remediation begins. Great. Section 946, Minimum Work Standards for the Conduct of Mold Remediation Persons.
A mold remediation licensee shall prepare work plan that fulfills all the requirements of the plan developed by the mold assessment licensee as provided to the client.
Now, here's the part I believe the mold remediator in this email doesn't understand. Here she thinks, I just need to follow the law.
In fact, you do, but the law says the remediation company has to do, and this is similar to the law in Texas, and this is why you file the paperwork before and after work starts.
The remediation company must do exactly what the inspector assessor says in his or her report.
The trouble with that is, doesn't mean whether it's right or wrong works or doesn't, as long as the remediation company does what the assessment says to the inspector, it's okay. If they say fog it, it's okay.
If they say spray it with bleach, it's okay, as long as they file the paperwork and do what the assessor said. I don't think this remediator understands that.
They keep referencing, quote, minimum work standards which say there can't be any visible mold. That's true, but that's the minimum requirement. Let's go back and reread what the remediation company emailed.
As per New York state guidelines, remediation is determined complete and successful when the work zone is clean, dry and free of in the underlines here to make it really clear to the homeowner, visible mold. That's incorrect.
A complete and successful remediation is determined by the assessor, the inspector, and what they say it will be before the work begins. The visible mold part, that's minimum and it's just common sense.
Section 947 of the law, post-remediation clearance, clarifies this. For a remediated project to achieve clearance, a mold assessment licensee shall conduct a post-remediation assessment.
It shall determine whether the work area is free of all visible mold, and that all work has been completed in compliance, compliance with the plan. This is the one that was prepared by the inspector before work began.
Now for some other comments about what the remediation company wrote in their email. It's unprofessional, non-common sense to use the word, the phrase, mold-free building.
They did so when they said the goal of remediation is not to create a mold-free environment, as mold is part of the environment. Clearly, New York's definition of mold is not helping here. In fact, it makes it more difficult.
I'm going to show you why. As an engineer, as a thought leader, this is one of my favorite things to do. And when you're trying to understand something, break it down, is it true or false?
Do word substitution. So I'm going to substitute New York's definition of mold for the word mold in the sentence the remediation company wrote as follows.
When the remediation company says the goal of remediation isn't to create a quote mold-free environment, that then becomes this.
The goal of mold remediation is not to create an environment free of multicellular fungi growth capable of creating toxins that can cause health effects after minimum exposure. Well, that doesn't work, right?
And here, substituting for the part where they say mold is part of the environment, if I insert the definition of mold from New York in that mold is part of the environment, here's what we get.
Multicellular fungal growth capable of creating toxins that can cause pulmonary respiratory neurological and other major illnesses after minimum exposure is part of the environment.
I suppose that statement would actually be true because somewhere there is some mold capable of doing that. The other part missing here, they should at least study their words. Go back to English class, get a copy editor.
What's missing here is the word indoor environment. This is like saying I have the COVID, for example. COVID is part of the environment.
Yes, but it doesn't belong in my home. And if you do remediation, I don't want any COVID virus in my home afterwards, for example. So it's missing the word environment.
And here is the solution. Use the proper definitions of mold in context for mold remediation. There is a normally recognized gold standard, an ANSI standard for mold remediation.
It's S520 standard for professional mold remediation. It took care of this problem by defining what actual growth is indoors and what is not in terms of, oh, I see a mold spore. Is that growth or not?
And in this standard, normal mold is defined as normal fungal ecology indoors. I think the wording and definition could be a little better here. What does ecology mean?
What is normal? They're intense ballad. There should be no actual growth indoors.
Keep it simple. Avoid using the word mold by itself. Use the phrase as in this S520 standard where there is mold.
The definition of when there is mold indoors is, quote, actual mold growth. Actual mold growth is not everywhere in the environment. Yes, we can find it outside.
We should not find it indoors. It is not everywhere, and it should not be indoors. And it should not be indoors, especially if you're telling me the clearance has been successful.
How can you say it's everywhere, part of the environment before remediation, and tell me the same thing afterwards? It's part of the environment. It's everywhere after remediation.
That makes no sense. What did I just pay for? I believe the remediation company is not knowledgeable about these definitions, the proper ones to use or what's written in the standard, or how the law is actually supposed to be interpreted.
And given the way the state of New York has defined mold in the law, some leeway goes out to the remediation company.
Perhaps given the poor and misleading language in the definitions the law contains, the mold remediation company is doing the best they can. And they're not a rocket scientist like I am.
This is why the laws are not the answer for regulating mold remediation and inspections. And one last thing.
Most mold inspectors, and especially the IH industrial hygienist, they often will pass a project at clearance testing by simply telling a homeowner, we have good air samples. We got good air samples. Who cares?
I don't even know what an air sample is. Did you get the mold out of my house? Is the actual mold growth gone?
Let's quit arguing about mold is everywhere. Let's use the words actual mold growth. Is there any actual mold growth left in the work area?
Is the work area free of actual mold growth? It's a yes or no question I'm paying you to answer. It's what a homeowner pays an inspector to tell them.
Not, we have good air samples, but a statement mold growth is gone. You will never see such language. It's never in a report.
It's always, we have good air samples, therefore, project passes clearance testing. There's no mention of mold growth in the final statement. The fact is, quite often the air samples look perfect when you can still see mold on the wall.
And this is why mold remediation companies and industrial hygienists love them. It makes your job so easy. We'll just get paid a lot of money to take some air samples.
They're going to look good no matter what we did. We'll spray it just in case. Doesn't work, but doesn't matter because you can have a good air sample and mold won't be in there.
How is that? An air sample for starters is just one moment in time. And consider these guys, the remediation companies, have been running an air scrubber.
Sometimes the air scrubber is actually running when they take the air samples for days. That's not normal conditions. So they can still have mold in the work area when they get good air sampling results.
Don't settle for that. You can tell them it's okay to take them, but tell them you want, at the end of the day, for them to make the decision, yes or no, is the mold growth gone or not? They can't do it.
They won't do it. Even though it's their job. If you have questions, I can help you understand this more.
I can help you interpret a mold remediation estimate, a report, test results. You can reach out to me at healthylivingspaces.com. Until next time, thanks for listening. I'm Daniel Stih.
Certified by ACAC • 20+ Years Experience • Author of Mold Money