Dr. Robert Bonham talks with HousingZone.com Web editor Erik Gabrielson about the Texas Medical Association's report that found no link between mold and human disease. Bonham is a member of the association and was a key figure in the report. He is a board-certified ear, nose and throat, head/neck surgeon in Dallas and has been practicing for 29 years.
Gabrielson: What's your involvement with the TMA's black mold report?
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It's based on false assumptions that mold is toxic to the body. There's just no clinical, medical evidence [that] that's true. Some people are allergic to mold, and they have allergic reactions just like you do to ragweed, cedar, anything else, but there's no evidence that mold is toxic to the human body. The only problem that people have with mold is [when] somebody has AIDS or [is] severely amino-depressed with cancer or chemotherapy — [then] there are the rare occasions that somebody can develop a mold infection. But that's very rare, and that's an unusual circumstance, but the normal person around mold, it is not toxic to the body. ( 
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Gabrielson: So basically you're saying that the only health risk associated with all mold is that people certain people have allergies to mold?
Bonham: There are certain people who have allergies, and different people react different ways. In some people, it's not a big deal — runny nose, sneezing — and some people have some pulmonary problems and really severe problems if they're really allergic to it. But that's no different than being allergic to cedar tree or ragweed really bad.
Gabrielson: What about the cases where people claim that they have memory loss and fatigue?
Bonham: There's no evidence of any of that. We went through each one of those things — like it produces cancer and stuff — I went to M.D. Anderson [Cancer Center, University of Texas], they said they don't know [of that] happening. And I've talked to the psychiatrists, and they don't have any evidence that [mold] causes any of these problems.
Gabrielson: Are any of the findings based on laboratory tests that were actually done by the Texas Medical Association?
Bonham: We didn't do lab tests. We did clinical reviews from everybody, because if these people are having these problems, we should see them as doctors, and they don't. If you look on their Web site and see who put all this stuff on there, it's put on there by Ph.D. clean-air people. It's not medical people who put all of these symptoms and signs and all of these problems on there. Harriet Burge, she's a Ph.D. at Harvard School of Public Health, she has [spent her] lifetime [doing] lab research with mold, and she also agrees that there's no evidence linking this to human illness.
Gabrielson: What are the common misconceptions about mold?
Bonham: If you're allergic to it, you can have typical allergy symptoms to it. But only about 20% of the people who are allergic have allergies to mold.
Gabrielson: Do you guys have any recommendations about how to fix a mold problem in a house?
Bonham: That's where the problem is. That's where the expense really is at. What has happened, those guidelines that came out of New York City [say] that [mold] is toxic to the body. They kind of follow guidelines that look really similar to asbestos. What happens is, they want you to tear out so many feet of wood and block the house off — people have to move out, and they have to clear the air, and they have to rebuild a certain part of the house. There's just no reason for that.
What we're recommending, and we're working on these new guidelines so it will be out there … that a water leak is the major source of the cause of mold growth. Because mold is in the air everywhere anyway, and it just needs the right setup to grow. So you have mold in your house and outside all the time, but if you repair a water leak, and then you kill the mold off with a biocide, such as Clorox 1:10, will kill it. Then you replace the damaged area, whatever the mold ate up — some fiberboard or some wood. You get rid of that and make a logical, cost-effective reconstruction of the area, and that's the end of the story. ( Listen. )
Gabrielson: Say that somebody does suspect that they have mold in their house and are having allergic reactions, what would be the next step for them?
Bonham: Probably go see a doctor because what has happened is [everybody] says there are no standards. There are no standards made of what amount of mold in the air is significant to cause a problem; therefore, a lot of these [companies] that sprung up around the country that do all of this [mold] testing and stuff [are] based on something that they have developed, but there are no standards out there by any of the major government agencies that say, "This level [of mold] means there's a significant problem." It's not out there.
So what somebody needs to do is not even have mold tested. What we recommend, and also what Dr. Burge recommends and the CDC, there's no reason to go test for mold because we don't know what were testing for. But if you think you do have a mold problem, or you see it and you think you're reacting to it, go see a physician, somebody credentialed to understand allergy-type stuff, and see if you have a problem with it.
Gabrielson: Is the TMA going to take an active role in developing such standards?
Bonham: Yes. At the present time, what we've done is we're going to the [Texas] Legislature. Our Legislature meets every two years, so they're now just starting in session. And we'll go to the major people, the speaker of the house and lieutenant governor and attorney general, and we're going to the Department of Health and through the Legislature to get these guidelines revised to more logical levels.
Gabrielson: Did you say that the CDC has agreed with your report?
Bonham: Yes, they say they don't have enough evidence to show that it causes any problems, and they leave it up to each state to come up with their own guidelines because they don't know what the guidelines are. [Visit the CDC's Web page on mold.] They don't have evidence that it is toxic. I'll tell you what the CDC is doing right now. Harriet Burge is head of a committee that's looking into this, and they have one year to come back to them with some recommendations and guidelines, and that will be through this March — they started last spring. But prior to her being on that committee, she came and talked to the Texas Department of Health, and she made the statement that there's — I'll give you — and it's not in exact quotes, but I'll give you what she said: "Reports about mold being toxic to humans … are lacking in sufficient data to document any clear connection between the exposure and disease." And I've talked to her on the phone, and she's told me that we just don't have any evidence it causes human disease.
Gabrielson: Has the EPA issued a report on this?
Bonham: No. … They said that, in essence, you clean up [the mold] you have, but you don't go to the extremes like they've been doing. Essentially, they're backing off, saying if it's toxic, they don't have any evidence that it is. [Visit the EPA's Web page on mold. (See the Can mold cause health problems? section for the EPA's stance on mold and human health.)]
Gabrielson: What's the next step for you guys?
Bonham: The Department of Health has their first meeting tomorrow [Jan. 16, 2003]. I've already talked to people there, and they're going to present it to their board meeting, and then we're going to go from there. [Texas] just adopted what was from New York, thinking they had looked into it. And you look at New York, and they just made assumptions that [mold] was toxic. But yet when I try and find the data it's very, very weak where they ever came up with [their conclusions].
Basically, what we tried to do is change the guidelines first, and then what we're going to do is [require] the people who go out and test for mold and the remediating companies to have a license so they understand the correct thing to do. Right now they are not licensed, and anybody can go to a weekend course, or a computer course somewhere, and become an expert on mold. These people have sprung up. and they go into a house. and they do all this testing, which nobody agrees has any validity. But it costs $5,000 to come out and test your home. Then they go in and tear out all this stuff, and all these bills are going to the insurance company. To give you an idea, Texas in 2001 spent $1 billion in mold claims.
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Gabrielson: I've read several reports that there's a lot of fraud out there, too.
Bonham: You wouldn't believe some of the stuff. They're putting big signs in Texas on billboards. You call them up, and they come out and tell you [that you] have to get rid of your air conditioning and all of your electrical motors because they're contaminated with mold, and [to get] new electrical appliances through the house because they're the people who supply them. Or they'll come in and tell somebody that they have to move out. We're talking about cases where they've literally torn houses down in Texas because they said there was mold under the foundation. And this is the same mold that you go into your shower, if you leave it alone, it grows, you spray it with some mildew cleaner, and it goes away. Same stuff. It hasn't killed you yet, has it?
Gabrielson: How many types of toxic mold are there?
Bonham: There's no toxic mold in the human body. What happens is, certain molds produce a myotoxin. The mold itself produces that, but they're not sure what that's for — if it's a self-defense for the mold itself or what. But they took that in assumption that it's toxic to humans. There's no mold that we've ever proven that's toxic to the human body.
Gabrielson: Do you have anything else to add?
Bonham: We started because we realized we've got the answers, but now we have to educate the public. We're forming a nonprofit organization [about] mold education. We have about 70 major companies that are coming on board to help fight this and promote it. Because … you can see what this does to real estate people. If you have mold in the house, you can't sell the house. If somebody tries to buy your house and it has mold and you have them clean it, they can't get a loan. If you have mold in the house and you have it cleaned, then they're going to drop your insurance next time it comes around. So the real estate people are all for us doing this. We've got some of the big companies behind us.
Number two is you go into construction. Construction people, especially the wallboard people, [are screaming]: "My God, everybody in the world is trying to throw claims against us." They've got mold on their wallboard where they're building these new buildings. So a lot of the builders now are requiring that they have special mold insurance for the contractor, and this is just ridiculous. If [the wallboard] gets wet and damp, what can you do about it? Also, for the plumbing and air-conditioning people, they're making them have extra insurance. What happens is the loan people won't give them the loan unless these people get insurance. A lot of times, with the tight market, that's their profit.
Gabrielson: Most of the general liability insurance excludes mold from coverage.
Bonham: That's right. A lot of them, to get the loan to do it, are requiring them to have a special [policy], which costs a whole lot more, and there's really no reason for it. You can see that in the trades, those are the people who are really getting hurt.
That's why we're trying to get [the report] out there so we have a legal basis to stop this. I don't build, I just own my own house, and the premiums went up high, and it made me mad, and I got started on this. I'm not taking any money or anything. I just said, "This is ridiculous, and I'm going to do something about it."
Related Links:
Black Mold and Human Illness report
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