A Massachusetts woman has won over $500,000 because of a mold infestation of her $75,000 condo. (Thomas Grillo, “After 8 years, a milestone in battle over mold”, Boston Globe, Nov. 25). After thousands of years of humanity coexisting relatively peacefully with mold, how unfortunate must we be to live in the twenty-first century, when plaintiffs’ lawyers have discovered the terrible health effects! The Globe, while paying lip service to a quote that there’s no scientific evidence of generalized health problems from mold, then proceeds to identify stachybotrys as “toxic mold,” and uncritically repeats a claim (rejected by a court that otherwise awarded millions in the same case) that such mold has caused brain damage. The UPI does better, even noting that the wide array of health claims made with respect to mold suggest that there isn’t one cause for all of these problems. (K. L. Capozza, “Mold: Unsightly but not deadly”, Sep. 2).
But who has an economic incentive to point out that bleach is the solution to mold when compared to the money that can be made by positing the opposite hypothesis? (Highlight of this site: claiming that a brochure asking if “toxic black mold” is the “Millennium’s Silent Killer” is “NOT intended to scare you“.)
According to an economist quoted in the Boston Globe story, fear of mold litigation has caused insurance companies, when confronted with a potential claim, to immediately move a family into a hotel and perform testing. Unsurprisingly, the resulting payouts and expenses are causing costs to rise for construction and homeowners’ insurance. (Mark Hornbeck et al., “Sting of high insurance spurs probe”, Detroit News, Dec. 3; Scott Wyland, “Insurance premiums hammer construction”, The Olympian, Nov. 23). More: May 26, 2004.
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