ERMI Cloths Not Reliable For Mold Testing In Springfield Missouri

You may have heard someone recommend performing an ERMI cloth test for mold testing.  If not, ERMI stands for Environmental Relative Moldiness Index. To perform an ERMI cloth test, you take a cloth and wipe in a location inside your home to see if you have mold. Many times, the cloth is wiped on the top of a door. The homeowner will then send that cloth off to a lab and they will analyze if there are mold spores present.

Unfortunately the results of that ERMI cloth test only give you results of what is happening on top of that door. This is why ERMI cloths are not a standard in the mold industry for mold testing in Springfield Missouri. The only people that really like ERMI cloths are the labs that are analyzing them. They will analyze anything you send them, because they get to charge you for all the testing.

The reason it’s not a standard in the industry is because wiping an ERMI cloth only gives you a snapshot of one area of your home at that time. It doesn’t tell you what you actually need to know. Do you have a mold problem that needs to be addressed inside your home?  This test just tells you that at one time, you had mold in your home and it settled on top of that door.

We all have mold inside our homes. It’s natural in our environment, so you could wipe cloths all day long in your house and you will almost always come back with mold found somewhere.

But what you really need to know, is whether or not there is a moisture source causing this mold. Is this particular species of mold elevated inside compared to outside your home? Can this situation be cleaned up by the homeowner, or do you need a professional mitigation to take place? What about the other rooms in your house? Do they have mold since one cloth at the top of one door has mold? Is this mold affecting your air quality, or is it just something from the past that has settled in this one area?

There are so many questions and so few answers are given by a single ERMI cloth test. Who is selling consumers on these types of tests? A select few labs, doctors, and health practitioners, but rarely anyone in the actual mold inspection industry. This is why the EPA still says this kind of test is still in development and that ERMI should only be used for research.

Bottom line, if you think you have a health issue caused by mold, or you think you have a mold problem inside your home, call a certified mold remediation company in Springfield Missouri like Dog Gone Mold. Our certified inspectors will do a full inspection of your home and take air quality samples if necessary, giving you a much more accurate account of what’s actually going on inside your home and what you need to do to fix it.

An ERMI cloth test is a waste of time and money. Your health is too important to try to diagnose on your own. Leave mold testing to the experts.