After years of working with mold inspectors, remediators, home inspectors, and their clients, Air Allergen has created three report formats to help you expand your business by better serving your customer. These formats provide alternatives based on your customer’s needs that help you be more productive, more knowledgeable, and more profitable.
The report is designed to help you explain the findings to your client and help the client understand the significance of the findings. This alternative will remain available at the regular cost of lab fees. You can select this alternative by checking the ‘Basic Lab’ box on the chain of custody sent in with the samples.
The cost of this alternative is $10 per job plus regular lab fees. This alternative can be initiated by checking the ‘Expanded Lab Report’ box on the chain of custody.
This alternative is ideal for home inspectors, IAQ inspectors who do not do remediation, and remediators looking for remediation guidance or customer validation.
The cost of this alternative report is only $18 per job plus regular lab fees which can save you hours of writing.
This alternative can be initiated by checking the ‘Expanded Lab w/Remediation’ box on the chain of custody.
Standard turnaround time for a mold spore trap analysis report is one day. (If carpet dust or other cultures are part of the report, the cultures could take up to 10 days to grow enough for identification.)
We strive to make mold spore trap analysis easy to understand. If the answers to your client’s questions are not readily apparent, our microbiologists and remediation specialists can answer your questions.
Call 844-263-6103 or 770-938-4861 or email us at airallergen@gmail.com today to discuss your needs, or simply send your samples to Air Allergen & Mold Testing, 1543 Lilburn Stone Mountain Road, Stone Mountain, GA 30087. A COC form can be downloaded from the left panel for use with your samples.
"As for needing an industrial hygienist you can go a few ways here in Atlanta. Most companies have certifications and not necessarily the education of an industrial hygienist. I personally have used all routes and even tested myself. Currently I am using Air Allergen. You can contact Richard Johnson at 770-938-4861. They are a very reputable and diligent air testing and inspection firm that takes the time to diagnose the properties very successfully."
"They did great job and responded quickly. They were very honest and fair. They made some good recommendations."
"They were very helpful and timely in getting the results back to me quickly."
"At first I was a little confused over price and the testing process but after speaking with Michael, who by the way is a very nice, professional and customer friendly individual, I was able to understand what I was buying and why. It also helped tremendously to receive not one but two telephone calls, within a very reasonable amount of time, to explain, in layman's terms, the results of those tests. I woulddefinitely recommend Air, Allergen & Mold Testing, Inc. before choosing anyone. Others were so anxious to cash in on remediation that they overlooked details concerning testing."
Following WWII, the huge growth in our industrial capacity resulted in declining outdoor air quality in many parts of the country. This was the era when the word SMOG was coined. The first Clean Air Act, passed in 1955, was conceived to address breathing hazards in the outdoor air. A major concern of the ACT was controlling the amount of non-biological airborne particulate.
In 1963 the first Surgeon General’s report was published declaring smoking to be linked to lung cancer. It was the first of many to follow that declared inhaled chemical particulate to be a significant health concern.
One of the first things the EPA addressed following its formation in 1970 was particulate, making a distinction between the sizes of the particles. Greater emphasis was put on the smaller particles called respirable, which were small enough to get into the space where oxygen is exchanged with carbon dioxide in the blood.
During the same period, the way we constructed our housing began to change. We substituted carpet for hardwood floors, paper covered gypsum board for plaster, and air handling equipment for radiators. In an effort to reduce utility cost, recommended wall insulation went from R12 to R19, and the recommended level of attic insulation increased from 8 to 20 inches. Homes were wrapped with materials designed to limit air filtration, windows were better sealed, and double pane windows became standard.
By the early 1980’s, alarm was raised about what was happening to the indoor air quality. This is the era when the phrase ‘Sick Building Syndrome’ entered our vocabulary with a focus on moisture in indoor spaces. An effort was made to reduce the fresh air standard in office buildings but was relatedly short lived when it became obvious that reducing the standard was causing significant problems with the indoor air quality.
Meanwhile, Europe and Canada were examining the indoor air quality and began analyzing mold spores and dust in the air as well as on other surfaces. In 1990, the US held its first Indoor Air Quality symposium in Denver. The keynote speaker was from Canada and other countries contributed their findings to the meeting. In 1995, a study was funded by the EPA that produced what is known as the Environmental Relative Moldiness Index or ERMI.
The ERMI study used analysis of carpet dust to determine whether the home was more or less moldy than average. It, and a number of studies that followed, indicated that adverse health symptoms were associated with homes that were moldier than average. The same conditions that support mold growth can support bacteria, viruses and a variety of other pests. Therefore, a low or high ERMI value can suggest a more or less healthy home from these conditions as well.
As the awareness of potential health consequences related to indoor air quality increased, litigation followed. In 1999, Air Allergen’s founder was asked to investigate a claim made against one of his clients over possible mold in an office building. Investigating the claim brought to his attention details about indoor air quality and how to sample.
Air Allergen & Mold Testing was founded in 2002 in recognition of a growing need for answers about health concerns related to indoor air quality. As Air Allergen & Mold testing grew, an increasing flow of peer reviewed studies from universities and government agencies identified the potential health consequences of poor indoor air quality.
Consequences included increased health care costs, missed work, missed school days, and higher mortality rates. Some studies linked poor performance in school and work to health conditions associated with poor indoor air quality.
These studies coupled with the growing anecdotal information gathered by Air Allergen & Mold Testing as inspections were completed, led to the conclusion that children living in sub-standard housing were more likely to do poorly in school, get poorer paying jobs when they graduated, and then raise their families in sub-standard housing. The implication was that improving the indoor air quality could play a role in breaking the poverty cycle.
In response to a growing awareness that identifying indoor air quality issues was a multi-dimensional problem, Air Allergen & Mold Testing established its own lab to analyze its samples. This allowed greater analysis of mold, background particulate and carpet dust as it relates to health of the home and its occupants.
At about the same time, Air Allergen began writing software that allows it to track customer and job information including health concerns in the same database as the sample analysis findings. This allows statistical analysis between health concerns and the sample results. This capability is unique to Air Allergen and Mold Testing because Air Allergen is one of the only inspection companies in the country with its own lab, and one of the only labs in the country with its own inspection arm.
In 2013, the World Health Organization published a report following the review of over 1000 studies worldwide that declared indoor airborne particulates to be a carcinogen with a greater burden of disease globally than secondhand smoke or radon. Although conditions vary between countries, it is abundantly clear from their position and papers published by others that particulate, including mold spores in the indoor air, is a significant and growing health concern.
Since the first clean air act was passed in 1955, respirable particulate has been reduced significantly in the outdoor air. Over this same period, the incidence of Asthma, a surrogate for breathing difficulties, has increased by nearly 400%. One fourth of all emergency room visits nationwide are attributed to breathing related diseases such as Asthma and COPD.
Air Allergen’s data demonstrates that what is found in the indoor air is significantly different than the outdoor air. According to the EPA, people spend ninety percent of their time indoors. Our population obsesses over what is in the food we eat but knows little about what is in ninety percent of the air we breathe. Improving indoor air quality holds the hope for reduced mortality, morbidity, suffering, and the cost of related health care.
Estimates of potential health related cost savings are in excess of one hundred billion dollars. If all related costs and diseases are considered, estimates are likely to be several times higher.
