Links: Aerias: www.aerias.org Air Quality Services: www.aqs.com

HousingZone: Your site explains how 2003 was a very active year for mold and indoor air quality legislation. Twenty-seven state legislatures considered more than 60 pieces of indoor air quality legislation. Mold was certainly the biggest of those. What was some of the more important mold legislation from 2003?

Spanos: I think a lot of the legislation in Texas is very important because it set about trying to get a handle on the mold remediation issues. With the proliferation of mold, particularly in the hot and humid Southern states, everybody jumped into the business, whether or not they were really qualified to assess and remediate mold. Texas was particularly hard-hit. I'm sure you've read a lot about the insurance issues and how various insurance companies wanted to stop writing insurance in some of these states because they were being hit with these incredible claims. Some mold remediation companies were doing some pretty terrible things. So there was a lot of legislation in Texas, and there were several things that were passed in Texas that helped to deal with some of those issues. There was the Texas Senate Bill 129 that set requirements for issuing mold remediation license programs. I think what it does -- and it's not just any one bill, it's a collection of bills -- is just help put some boundaries on making sure mold remediators are properly trained and properly licensed so people don't get bilked and into bigger trouble.

HZ: In that bill, the mold assessment and mold remediation had to be done by separate companies. What is the importance of that?

Spanos: If you have one company that's doing the assessment and the remediation, they may go in and say, "OK, you have these terrible problems, and we're going to fix it all for you," where in fact it may not be all that terrible. So they're in a sense trying to pad the statement of work or scope of work for their remediation group. If you have two different companies, they could give a truer picture of what's really going on in the building. The remediation company would do the remediation work based on the assessment by another company. It's trying to keep the unethical practices down.

HZ: There has been a fair amount of education-related legislation, trying to educate both homeowners and also builders as well.

Spanos: Education is really the key. And it's not just educating people about the potential health effects of mold and what's real and what's hype, because there's certainly a great deal of hype out there about reported health effects associated with mold and a lot of scare tactics and fear. That's part of it. But the other part of it is educating the builders and designers about how to build the building correctly to avoid the moisture problems in the first place, because if you get rid of the excess moisture, you get rid of the mold. It's really a re-education of the whole process, from the initial design all the way down to the building and commissioning and occupancy. And it's also an education for the building occupants themselves because the building occupants can add a great deal of moisture to the indoor environment as well.

HZ: Related to the education aspect, a number of states announced they were going to introduce legislation this year about funding for mold studies. What sort of impact are these studies going to have on mold-related issues? Is it going to be anything groundbreaking, or is it more of what we already know?

Spanos: I think they are trying to get a handle on what's real and what's not, what's real and what's hype. I don't know what these different state task forces are looking at specifically, but I think a large part of it is to appease the constituents, to say, "Yes, we are taking a look at this and, yes, we are considering this as a serious issue." The other part is to just get a handle on what those issues are, particularly with respect to their states. A lot of them are then reporting back with recommendations to the legislature about what other kinds of things the state should be looking at doing. In some cases, some states want to try to look at establishing permissible exposure limits and exposure standards. That's a very difficult thing to do. You really don't see a lot of those kinds of numbers in the scientific literature because that's a very difficult thing to establish.

HZ: What about 2004? What's ahead for mold? Is it going to be as big an issue as it was in 2003?

Spanos: It's looking to be at the same level as last year. Right now, there are about 60 pieces of legislation being considered in 25 states. And Texas is out of session this year -- its Legislature only meets every other year -- so New York, Illinois and Massachusetts are the states with the most legislation at this point. Right now, only one piece of legislation has passed. That's Virginia House Bill 824 that requires a landlord to sign a contract stating there are no visible signs of mold in the dwelling. If during the move-in or prior to the move-in date the tenant sees mold, the contract can be terminated.

I think one thing that's interesting about this year as compared with last year is it seems like the IAQ legislation has a broader focus. There's a lot focused on mold -- there are 33 bills that are focused on mold -- but it seems to be focused on the whole issue of mold -- a lot of different things -- and not just licensing of mold remediators.

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