Black Mold: The Health Hazard Your Family Is Breathing

No one ever discusses the life that exists within their own walls.

You have painted the patched ceiling; you have cleaned up the dark spot close to the corner of your bathroom. You have convinced yourself that it is merely surface damage caused by the previous rains. Yet here's the truth about black mold: when it is visible, it is already an old growth. The entire time it was growing, whether visible or not, your family has been breathing it in.

And that isn't scaremongering. It is a fact.

What Black Mold Actually Is

Black mold, more often than not, is Stachybotrys chartarum, a fungus growing in moist environments. But not necessarily the places where it is visible. Those are the places where it is wet: within the walls, behind the tiles, under the floorings, within roof slabs, and in the pipes.

The black mold produces mycotoxins, which are poisonous compounds released into the air during the natural process of the life cycle of the fungus. Those mycotoxins are not confined only to where the fungi are living. They travel through walls, through the air ventilation systems, and under the doors. In case there is mold growth in your house, your family is breathing mycotoxins in all rooms, not only in the room where there was a wet spot.

The problem here is not only the spread. It is the slow spread that makes people get used to it. Headaches become routine. Coughing all the time is "just a season." Respiratory infections in children are "just a thing." Nobody makes a connection to what is happening inside the walls.

What Breathing Mold Does to People

Short-term exposure is unpleasant. Long-term exposure is actually quite harmful - and for Indians living through monsoon season, which brings dampness annually, and living in buildings with water leaks in their walls, long-term exposure is much more prevalent than anyone knows.

Here is what science has found out about long-term inhalation of mold spores:

The first threat posed by inhaling mold spores is respiratory damage. They irritate the air passages. For healthy individuals, it could mean constant coughing, wheezing, and sinus infections. For people with asthma, it could be an asthma attack. For children, whose lungs are still developing, constant exposure can result in permanent changes in lung functioning, not only seasonal irritation but also decreased lung capacity in adulthood.

Mycotoxins have a negative impact on neurological effects, even though the connection has not received much attention. There has been evidence of problems with memory, concentration, brain fog, and mood swings associated with mold spore inhalation. If a member of your household has been reporting unusual fatigue or problems with focusing, the indoor air quality in your home should definitely be assessed.

The suppression of immunity occurs gradually. The body constantly defends itself against the presence of mold, and constant low-grade defense exhausts it. This is the reason why people residing in moldy houses find themselves frequently ill: colds, recurrent infections, and an overall feeling of being run down that doctors cannot link to anything in particular.

It is especially dangerous for children and elderly people. An infant sleeping in the room where there is mold growth behind the walls, invisible and unnoticed, inhales the mycotoxins for eight to ten hours each day. In the course of the whole monsoon period, this amounts to hundreds of hours of inhalation at the age when the body is particularly sensitive.

This is not a hypothetical threat. This is what is currently going on in the buildings of Hyderabad, in those households where no diagnosis of water leakage has ever taken place and where the belief remains that if there is no visible problem, then there must be none.

Where Mold Hides in Indian Buildings

There are particular mold hazards that come as a result of the unique construction practices and climatic conditions in Hyderabad.

The roof slab is among the most frequent locations where mold occurs. In Telangana, flat roofs are typical. Once the water-resistant material of the roof fails, which happens quite frequently with buildings older than five to eight years, water accumulates in the slab. It neither drains away nor evaporates since it just stays there for months and provides the required environment for black mold growth. Mold will definitely occur in such cases much earlier than the first signs become apparent on the ceiling beneath it.

Moisture can develop internally in the external walls due to cracks in the structure. Water enters the wall through the crack in its plaster coating. The water cannot get out as the interior wall surface is usually painted or tiled. Thus, the water accumulates between the layers, where mold grows for years without showing up on the wall surface.

Bathrooms and kitchens are certainly obvious danger areas, but the mould which needs to be worried about is not the surface mould which grows on the grout or the tiles. It is the hidden mould which is growing behind the tiles due to a steady moisture seepage from the pipe or the grout failure for months together. Water Leak in Wall Detection is the specific solution to this problem.

The problem areas, like basements & lower floors of the apartments, are the difficult areas where water leaks in through the ground moisture, lack of ventilation, and rising damp. Simply, the basement water leak repair in this condition does not solve the problem, since the building needs to be diagnosed for all moisture leaks.

Underground leaks that seep into the building foundation are not even considered by homeowners as possible. This is because the constant seeping of water underground creates a continuously damp environment, which creates mould conditions. This cannot be solved unless all the water leaks are located. Underground water leak detection services in Hyderabad are designed to cater exactly to this problem.

The Diagnosis Problem

In the majority of cases, the people of Hyderabad have only one approach toward dealing with mold: clean the visible parts, paint over the area, and wait for it to show again.

It inevitably shows again.

And that's because there's an elementary reason behind all this. Mold being present on the surface of a room is a symptom; moisture is the cause. But moisture is caused by something else, and until that cause is revealed, nothing will change. In other words, you treat the symptoms but ignore the cause, which goes on inside the walls undisturbed.

That is the void that water leakage diagnosis services in Hyderabad help you to fill. That's not a person with waterproofing compound in his hand. It's a real diagnosis: where the moisture comes from, how it moves through the building, where it reaches, and how it can be stopped permanently.

A professional water leak detection in homes utilizes such tools as moisture meters, thermal imaging cameras, and acoustic devices in order to find the ways moisture penetrates buildings and spreads inside walls, floors, and slabs. As a result, you get a building structure inspection report that is precise and clear.

But then, the alternative approach of treating the symptoms means you're remaining within that environment along with your family, breathing the same air while the actual problem, which is the mold colony, keeps growing within it.

The Building-Level Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

Fungal growth in individual flats in multi-storeyed buildings is generally a building-wide problem, not an individual flat problem.

In the case of buildings having widespread failures in waterproofing (which is quite common among the buildings built in Hyderabad during the past eight to fifteen years), multiple flats would be impacted at any one time. Dampness in one flat, a musty odor in another, regular respiratory problems in yet another flat; no link between the three because no one has taken a birds-eye view of the building.

The solution lies in carrying out an expert visual audit of the whole building, which would pinpoint the exact points at which the moisture is entering the building and which way it is moving inside the building. This will produce a detailed report containing useful information for society to use.

This is also the place where a contract by the AMC-watertightness makes good sense to apartment societies. Instead of going in for repair works when the problem has already occurred, a yearly inspection before the monsoon season ensures that the entry routes are found out before the water enters. It is economical, it is effective, and it keeps the residents from breathing bad air throughout the monsoon season.

Building repair services in Hyderabad that take care of the building as a whole instead of one flat at a time are the only possible solution for repeated mold issues in multistory buildings.

When to Stop Waiting

There are times when a professional water leak test in Hyderabad needs to be done and cannot be postponed anymore.

In case you had a wet spot that returned after treatment, the cause has yet to be found. In case someone from your family suffered from mysterious breathing difficulties during or after the rainy season, the air quality in your house may need checking. In case you have noticed an odd smell even though the place is dry, there are spores of mold in the air - this is not the visible mold but the odorous spores that float around. In case your water bill went up for no apparent reason, there is an undiscovered leak somewhere.

Any of these cases requires calling a water leak test agency that specializes in diagnosis and not patching. The cost of ignoring these signs is higher than just money. It is health-related. And it builds up every month you postpone a visit.

What Cyond Does Differently

Cyond is a company that does water leakage detection and building inspections, headquartered in Hyderabad. Their process involves diagnosing the problem, that is, locating the water source, followed by recommendations on how best to fix it.

In their leak detection in Hyderabad, non-invasive techniques such as thermal imaging, moisture mapping, and acoustic detection are used. The building is not opened up until the source of the leak is identified. The result is an inspection report containing details of the findings, and not just an estimate by a contractor based on where the staining was observed.

For residential structures, they do everything, ranging from home water leak detection in each flat to building structure inspection in Hyderabad for the whole society. In commercial structures, their commercial building repair and maintenance diagnosis services will enable the building owner to understand the moisture conditions of the structure.

They even have AMC - Watertightness contracts inspection programs on an annual basis to turn building maintenance from a talk into action before another serious leak makes it mandatory.

The key to tackling any issue involving mold growth in your building lies in figuring out the source of water leakage. Everything comes after that.

You can book an inspection at cyond.com.

FAQs

Conclusion

Mold does not advertise its presence. Mold is formed within walls and slab, behind tiles in darkness, releasing whatever it releases into the air, which your family breathes every day. The patch may be noticed on the ceiling only after living with it for many months.

Health implications cannot be ignored. They are backed by facts. Children and the elderly suffer most from them, and they worsen with every unattended moisture season of a building.

The solution is neither painting nor sealing the surface where the mold was found. The task is to identify how the water penetrates the building, deal with it, and check if it was solved correctly. This is the work of a diagnosis, and not of a contractor.

In case you have any indication of water penetration in your building, be it any wet patch, crack, or stain, have it professionally checked before the next monsoon season comes.

Book a water leakage inspection with Cyond →