Homes and commercial properties of all kinds require regular maintenance to maximize occupant health and safety. After all, several environmental factors threaten the stability of your facility and the well-being of everyone inside, including pests, extreme weather conditions, bacteria, and more. Water damage is a major concern for facilities, gradually eroding structural integrity and allowing fungi such as mold and mildew to thrive. Most of us know that mold doesn’t belong inside homes and businesses, but far fewer understand why it’s so important to keep mold at bay. Here are the top five reasons to remove mold from your facility and how to go about doing it.

1. It’s Unsightly

This is the most superficial reason to get rid of mold inside of your building, but it’s important nonetheless. When mold becomes visible in your facility, it can become a major distraction for workers, guests, customers, etc. In a school setting, the presence of mold can make it harder for students to concentrate on their work due to the unappealing sight and odor that comes with it. If you run a restaurant, mold will quickly turn customers away, signaling a likely lack of cleanliness and sanitation at your establishment. These are just a couple ways mold can go from unsightly distraction to reputational and morale crisis.

2. It’s a Health Hazard for Occupants

As if damaging your reputation and morale weren’t bad enough, mold can also yield more sinister outcomes for occupants. Namely, mold can cause, trigger, and worsen a number of health problems, primarily related to the respiratory system. Many people are inherently allergic to mold spores, so being inside a mold-infested room or building can cause irritation of the skin, eyes, nose, and throat. Those with asthma can see a rapid increase in symptoms such as wheezing or full-on asthma attacks as a result of mold exposure. Mold can also cause upper respiratory infections primarily in older adults and young children, making it especially important for schools, daycare centers, and nursing homes to keep mold at bay.

Unfortunately, the potential health hazards caused by mold don’t end there. The most toxic varieties of mold (such as black mold) can eventually lead to organ failure and other severe, life-threatening conditions for some individuals. These instances may be rare, but even the chance of such a tragedy must be avoided at all costs.

3. It Can Damage Your Building

Mold threatens more than your people, of course -- it also threatens the very integrity of your building (which ultimately does affect your people’s safety). Because mold spores are so tiny, they can easily make their way into porous surfaces like wood, gypsum, and concrete. If neglected, these spores can spread and gradually eat away at these materials, weakening their structures from the inside out. Regular building maintenance helps prevent this degradation, but once mold has taken root, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to merely clear it away or stop it in its tracks. If you don’t take a more substantial approach to mold removal (i.e., replacing affected surfaces and features), you can end up spending an inordinate amount of time and money on repairs over the years.

4. It Can Quickly Become Hard to Control

As alluded to above, mold isn’t easily tamed after a certain inflection point. The combination of high humidity and warm temperatures can cause a surge in mold growth, rendering standard commercial cleaning measures useless against its spread -- this is why it’s so vital to completely remove mold as soon as you identify it. In fact, by the time you notice a mold outbreak in your building, odds are the problem is already deeper than you can initially tell, since the growth typically begins behind walls and in other hard-to-see areas. Still, the sooner you address a mold issue, the easier, safer, and cheaper it will be to solve the problem.

5. It’s a Major Liability

When it comes to commercial regulations, mold is a bit of a grey area. Because research on the negative effects of mold is ongoing and permanent elimination of all fungal spores in buildings isn’t practical, there are currently no sweeping, federal regulations regarding mold removal or remediation (though they are likely in development). That said, certain states, cities, towns, and municipalities may have certain laws or recommendations regarding mold control and prevention for both residential and commercial properties. Moreover, customers, employees, and others (i.e., parents of school children) may pursue legal action against you if your facility’s conditions put occupants at risk. For all of these reasons, it’s best to act as if there are strict codes against the presence of mold in your building and do whatever you can do to keep mold out. Making mold prevention a priority for your property maintenance services is a good place to start.

Why Hire Professional Mold Removal and Remediation Services?

To recap, you should swiftly remove mold from your building to minimize distractions, protect the health and safety of your people, maintain your facility’s integrity, prevent uncontrollable spread, and avoid potential legal liabilities. Of course, proper mold removal and remediation requires the knowledge, expertise, and resources of professional contractors like The Budd Group. We know where to look for budding mold problems, and our team is large enough to enact timely, efficient solutions for evolving concerns. Not only that -- our experts deploy a variety of strategies to prevent future mold outbreaks, including rigorous interior cleaning protocols, pressure washing services, air purification optimized for your facility, moisture mitigation, and much more.

Don’t let mold take over your facility or threaten your people. To learn more about our services and values, give us a call today at 800-221-8158!