How to Test Your Home for Mold (Easy Instructional Video)

Testing your home for mold is not as daunting of a task as you may think.  Mold petri dishes can be purchased at very minimal cost, yet can provide results that will help you in your journey.  The results will help you to determine if there is indeed a mold issue to be fixed, or a negative culture may lay your worries to rest regarding dangerous mold in your home.  Knowledge is power and so I will show you an easy way to test your home for mold.

How To Test Your Home For Mold (Video)

Read on and I will also answer some common questions surrounding mold as well as share my story of past chronic illness due to toxic mold exposure.

My Story of Toxic Mold Illness on PBS American Health Journal

The home depicted in my PBS television interview above was not the home I lived in.  They used that home for purposed of B-Roll.  Although I am no longer in the house or apartment that had mold issues, I am very cautious about my environment these days.  When we bought our new house one of the first things we did was test for mold.  There are two reasons for this.  For one, I know firsthand what mold can do to your health, also because I am highly allergic to mold, my health depends on keeping mold counts down.

You can read about my downward health spiral due to mold here.

Below is the Microbalance mold fogger and EC3 mold spray.  I fog my home with each month.  It is safe for pets and contains no toxic or harsh chemicals.  If you cannot afford the mold fogger, EC3 mold spray is only about 20 dollars.  Of course the mold fogger covers more ground, but the EC3 mold spray is a good choice on a budget.  You can simply spray your entire home including your furniture and carpets.

FAQ About Mold Tests

Where can I buy the petri dishes?  

You can buy them at Home Depot, or from Mold petri dishes.  They are pretty cheap and you can send the samples away to a lab (they enclose an instruction sheet on how to do this) so you can find out what type of mold you are dealing with.  We did not find any dangerous mold in our home but we did find the mold counts were too high in certain rooms which can cause problems for people with mold sensitivities.

If the mold counts are high enough, even people that are not sensitive to mold can begin to have problems so we went about bringing those counts down to an acceptable level.

Can Fungus still be the cause of my illness even if my home doesn’t have a mold problem?

Yes.  Environmental mold is not the only cause of systemic fungal infections.  Overuse of antibiotics and alcohol, as well as the standard American diet (SAD diet) are just a few examples.  Keep in mind a large percentage of office buildings and schools in this country have mold issues.  In the past I actually took a petri dish into my place of work to test for mold.  Don’t forget to also test your car when you decide to test your home for mold.

My home is so clean, can I really have mold issues?

Absolutely.  Mold can be hiding under floorboards (as you can see in our video), carpets, curtains, upholsteries, or in damp moldy areas like basements.

What if I don’t see any mold in my home?

The petri dishes can detect what is in air or in your carpets and furniture that you may not be able to see.

Petri Dish Full Of Mold Spores

My Television Interview On Know The Cause About Mold Illness

Signs Your Home May Have A Mold Problem

There are many signs your home may have a mold problem.  I’ll tell you what my Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor used to say.  “If you can see it or smell it, you have a problem!”

• Can you smell mold on items such as clothing or books?
• Moldy Carpets – as you can see in my video above, the carpet in my son’s bedroom had high levels of mold.  Once we replaced the carpet and rechecked with a fresh mold plate (petri dish) there were zero levels of mold detected.
• Chronic sinus infections, allergies and asthma.  As a child, as soon as we moved into our new home I developed asthma.  Later as a teenager when I moved into a moldy apartment, I began to get sinus infections I just couldn’t seem to eradicate.  These chronic type conditions are often associated with mold.
• You see mold on the walls or furniture.  Remember what my doctor said, “If you can see it or smell it, you have a problem!”
• If you have had previous floods or leaks you may have a mold problem.
• Visible mold spores on clothes or shoes.

Tips For Reducing Mold Spores In Your Home

• A good rule of thumb is to remove carpet from rooms you are sleeping in, or any carpet that has a high mold count.
• If you have pets, shampooing them with a safe anti-fungal shampoo once a week really helps.
• Good quality air purifiers are fantastic at removing mold spores in the home.  I think they are such a great investment!  We bought an IQ air purifier and I know that it works.  I did a test before purchasing the filter as well as after and the proof was in the petri dish.  I provided a link to the exact air purifier we purchased.
• If you are in the market for a large room purifier for odor reduction and for allergies, you may like the MSA3 HEPA air purifier.
• As stated above using a mold fogger once or twice per month will also help reduce mold spores in your home.
• Getting mold out of your clothes and recognizing when it’s time to just discard them.  For more information I have written an article titled How to Get Mold out of Clothes.

If you know that mold has made you sick, visit my posts below on how to detox and get mold out of your system.

Check out the second edition of my book Eat Pray Get Well – A Journey from chronic Illness & Brokenness to Wholeness & Healing.  Foreword written by Doug Kaufmann – Host of televisions Know The Cause.  As seen on ABC, CBS, NBC, CTN, Know the Cause and more.