Insurance is no Assurance.

Insurance and mold have a peculiar relationship. Mold contamination is not covered as itself; it is only covered if it is the direct result of a covered condition. For example, if the plumbing is covered, then the mold resulting from a leak is covered. If flooding is covered and the mold is the result of flooding, then the mold is covered.

There’s a certain level of concentration all of the time; and that concentration is mild and harmless to most of us, but we all know people who can’t set foot outside during a rainy season, or during Spring or Fall. It’s still the outdoor ambient level which is the practical guideline.

The problem is that Mother Nature is so prolific. More than a thousand species of mold exist, and they exist practically everywhere they manage to find a foothold. Even though there’s really nothing such as spontaneous generation, mold seems to spring up spontaneously without a hazardous precondition–or so insurance companies profess.

It grows indoors wherever there is moisture, and we have lived with it our entire lives, usually without ill effect. It exists, so we have to live with it. The common species that show up in homes are stachybotrys, cladosporium, penicillium and aspergillus are just a drop in the big moldy bucket.

Mold is everywhere, true.

The levels of airborne mold should not exceed the levels in the immediate outdoors, true.

Mold is everywhere, it is ubiquitous. Indoors, when the mold goes from invisible mold spores to visible, it normally signals that a problem has taken root. Insurance companies standpoint that mold is found everywhere so live with it is not a fair or reasonable argument. Rather than protect as Insurance is supposed to do, the policy of the policy is to ignore or rationalize away mold, writing to exclude mold contamination which can be a serious hazard.

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