What are the symptoms of black mold and what does it look like?

How can you tell if there is mold in your house?

• My wife consistently wakes up with asthma-attack-like symptoms--coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath. She is known to have sensitive allergies to dust, pollen, and pet dander. But the attacks can't even be avoided using over the counter medicine like she can with the aforementioned triggers. Several friends and family strongly urged her to consider mold as a the potential culprit. Short of getting a licensed professional to inspect your house, what are common signs of mold that has potential to effect the human respiratory system? How does it effect your health? What does it look like? How do you treat it? Are there different kinds that are potentially harmful? Pics always help.

• Answer:

  There are many types of mold that are allergenic. Unfortunately you can't tell what type of mold it is without testing. Many different molds look the same... Depending on what area of the home you're thinking might have the mold problem, there's different things you might be looking for. Crawlspaces or attics, look for dark black staining maybe even white fuzzy hairs, drywall look for black or green staining, under a sink look for green... It's really hard to tell you exactly what to look for... Feel free to respond with any more questions...