Hawai'i sprouting with mold anxiety

By Dan Nakaso and Christie Wilson
Advertiser Staff Writers

Health officials and mold inspection companies are being flooded by worried calls from homeowners and businesses, leading to concern that underqualified companies will cash in on fears since mold was discovered at the Hilton Hawaiian Village's Kalia Tower.

Concerns about mold have exploded since last month, when Hilton closed the 453-room tower in the heart of Waikiki, estimating it would cost at least $10 million in repairs and to test employees for possible mold-related allergic illnesses.

State Department of Health officials said the agency had received more than 100 calls about mold in the last two weeks. Several private inspection firms said yesterday they had seen a 25 to 30 percent increase in calls as nationwide concern over the possible health effects of mold hits Hawai'i.

Officials with AirCare Environmental Services said they had gotten about eight more calls a day from existing and potential clients wondering what they should do.

Some in the industry say the sudden surge likely will lead to changes in everything from insurance coverage and homeowner disclosure to the reshaping of the mold-remediation market, a relatively new industry scrambling to develop standards and certifications around the country amid calls for regulation.

"In any embryonic industry, you have opportunists," said Randy Herold, president of MoldPro International, a Kailua-based indoor air-quality inspection and consultant. "There were guys that were mowing lawns three weeks ago who are now calling themselves mold remediators."

Honolulu had only one or two companies specializing in mold removal a few years ago, said Mike McKenzie of McCleans Restorations Services, which removes mold from homes and businesses.

"Now there are 15," he said. "The market is just flooded with fly-by-nighters."

While there's nothing illegal in forming a company to remove or identify mold, inexperienced companies might overstate the problem, said Jason Princenthal, president and chief indoor air-quality consultant for AirCare Environmental Services Inc.

"I've seen that over the course of the last year or two," said Princenthal, whose company has been dealing with mold in Hawai'i since the 1980s, when the Westin Kauai found itself with a mold crisis as it opened its doors. "Mold has every right to exist, and quite frankly a lot of buildings and homes have had mold in them for a long time. But clients have been scared into thinking that they have a severe problem, when all they need is a little cleanup and a little tweaking to the air conditioning system."

Guy Tamashiro, chairman of the Honolulu Board of Realtors, said he had not heard of any cases of buyers requesting a mold inspection of new homes, "but that's probably going to change because of the Hilton Hawaiian Village problems."

California has a mold disclosure law for real estate transactions, and Tamashiro predicted it would only be a matter of time before mold is included in routine disclosure statements here.

And while the Hawaii Insurers Council says local insurance companies have had only a smattering of mold-related claims — usually from inadequate work to clean up water damage — experts say that with multimillion-dollar claims increasing on the Mainland, Hawai'i insurers who do not exclude mold coverage from policies likely will in the future.

"We added an exclusion within the last year," said Mike Onofrietti, vice president for AIG Hawaii Insurance Co. "What I think is you find that this will be more of the norm rather than the exception very soon."

Ernest Fukeda, president and chief operating officer for The Hawaiian Insurance & Guaranty Co., said his company was looking at dropping mold coverage for homeowner policies.

"This is something that has come up for the past year and a half," Fukeda said, "but no decision has been made yet."

Fukeda said many Hawai'i insurers are taking a "wait and see" attitude.

Experts say mold is unlikely to affect people's health unless they are prone to allergies or illness or have a major colony of toxic mold inhabiting their homes.

"The fact of the matter is that molds are all around us," said George Wong, an associate professor in the University of Hawai'i's Botany Department who specializes in mycology, the study of fungi. "When you go outside or in the home, their spores are all over. You're probably inhaling some right now. If you're healthy and your immune system is working properly, it'll take care of it."

While there is no practical way to eliminate all molds and spores indoors, moisture control is the key to keeping it in check, experts say.

Most of the calls to Wong have been from homeowners in damp areas such as Manoa who are worried about growths on their bathroom walls, or in caulking or grout. In those instances, he advises use of common cleansers.

A variety of home test kits are available on the Internet, ranging from $9.95 for a kit that will only detect the presence of mold, to more than $100 for a kit that covers the cost of lab analysis.

But the National Center for Environmental Health, under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said it is generally not necessary to identify the species of mold in a residence, and the agency does not recommend routine sampling for molds.

Reliable sampling can be expensive, the agency said, and standards for judging what is an acceptable or normal quantity of mold have not been established.

Advertiser Staff Writer Frank Cho contributed to this report.