Three Reasons To Get A Home's Air Quality Tested, Including Testing For Mold, Before Renting Ot Buying

Whether you're renting or buying a home, chances are you're planning to settle down there four months or years. Since this is the case, your health and the health of any family members and pets depends on having a safe environment inside the house, which includes having healthy air to breathe. Here are three reasons why you need to get the air quality tested, including having the home tested for mold, before you sign any contracts or close on a home.

1. Many air-quality problems, including some mold problems, are not immediately obvious

If you don't currently have a mold allergy, chances are that you won't notice even if the mold level is extremely high inside the home you're inspecting. Other air-quality problems, such as a high level of radon gas, can be impossible to detect at unsafe levels except by professional testing. So just because the air smells all right and looks all right does not mean that it's safe and healthy for those who live there. And it's in the seller's best interest not to tell you about mold problems that they consider to be taken care of already (which may mean that the mold was cleaned off the wall but that the air quality wasn't cleaned up, especially if it was a DIY job).

2. Health problems from poor air quality can worsen over time and target vulnerable individuals

Even if you personally never get sick from the high levels of mold in your new home, that doesn't mean the rest of your family will be safe. Mold spores in the air can cause big problems for people with asthma and other respiratory problems even if they don't have a mold allergy, so if somebody in your home has a respiratory problem, mold in the air is very unsafe. Mold in the air is also dangerous to people with low-functioning immune systems, so if you have anybody very young or very old in your home or anybody with an immune compromising health condition, you need to consider their health as well as your own.

3. You can get sick from poor air quality and not realize it

Another insidious aspect of low air quality is that the symptoms it can create even in healthy individuals can mimic symptoms of a cold or flu. So if you were previously healthy and then move into a house with high levels of allergens such as mold spores, you could develop an allergy and then have cold-like symptoms that you don't realize are coming from black mold contamination. This would require the use of a mold remediation service.

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