'Mold University' draws sell-out crowd
By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer
The heightened awareness in Hawai'i about mold and the problem of it growing indoors yesterday drew a sellout crowd to a mold education seminar in Waikiki.
About 250 people from government agencies, legal and medical fields, real estate development firms, insurance companies and banks paid $200 to $300 each to learn what experts believe Hawai'i businesses can expect regarding mold-related investigation, litigation and legislation.
In addition, the group, which also included professionals from hotel, construction and property management industries, learned how to identify mold and deal with its cleanup.
The day-long program, dubbed Mold University, was scheduled before Hilton Hawaiian Village shut down its Kalia Tower in Waikiki three weeks ago, but the high-profile situation dramatically boosted attendance.
Randy Herold, president of MoldPro International, a Kailua-based indoor air quality investigation firm doing business in Hawai'i and on the Mainland, started the day talking about multimillion lawsuits and judgements on the Mainland, including a $20 million suit filed by celebrity Ed McMahon over the alleged home mold-related death of his dog.
Other pending landmark cases mentioned included an $8 billion class-action suit by apartment building occupants in New York, and more involving offices, schools, hotels, homes and government buildings.
Mold is an easy target for litigation, according to Herold.
"It's new, it's emotional and it gets a lot of media coverage ... and there is not a lot of consensus on the health issues," he said.
Mold growing indoors was only first linked to health problems in the early 1990s, and was found generally to cause allergic reactions in some people and more serious illnesses in rarer cases.
Damage claims for mold have significantly risen in just the last three years, occurring predominantly in Texas where a combination of liberal insurance policies and aggressive attorneys fueled claims.
According to the Insurance Information Institute and government data, 70 percent of all new mold claims last year were in Texas, which had about 37,000 claims last year, up from about 7,000 in 2000.
Total losses over the last two years from Texas mold cases have grown to an estimated $1 billion, according to the institute and the Texas Department of Insurance.
Such levels of claims and losses are not expected to develop in Hawai'i, but businesses and residents are already dealing with more mold contamination issues since the news spread about Kalia Tower being shut down because of still-unexplained mold growth in guest rooms.
Other cases publicly disclosed since then have included mold at the Prince Kuhio Federal Building and the University of Hawai'i.
"It could be just the tip of the iceberg," said Fred Nakamura, senior loss control consultant for First Insurance Co. of Hawai'i.
Nakamura said he attended yesterday's conference to get a general understanding of the problem and techniques for testing and collecting mold samples.
"The insurance industry is faced with this problem," he said. "Our customers have questions."
Dan Vasilash Jr., senior safety administrator for Dick Pacific, one of the state's largest construction firms, said company clients also have questions.
"I came to have a better understanding of how the mold activity becomes a problem, and ways we can mitigate and abate it during construction," he said. "We just don't want any repeat occurrences."
During the seminar, presenter Harriet Burge, director of the environmental microbiology lab at the Harvard School of Public Health, talked about health effects of mold and the difficulty measuring exposure and proving mold as a cause of illness.
Audience member George Ewing, an allergist at The Queen's Medical Center, said he was rather startled by the health connections linked to mold growing indoors. "This is new stuff to me," he said. "We didn't realize that molds were going to be so difficult."
Other presenters included David Gallup, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based Environmental Microbiology Lab, Ken Beal of MoldPro, and Jewel Woods, president of Corpus Christi, Texas-based cleanup firm Road Runner Remediation.
Gallup discussed sampling methods and interpreting data, Beal addressed investigation issues, and Woods illustrated ways to correct mold problems.
Herold predicted that states like Hawai'i will adopt versions of laws in other states, including California's Toxic Mold Protection Act of 2001, which seeks to require disclosure of mold to tenants and property buyers, establish professional certification and assessment standards, and set mold exposure exposure limits.
Beal said mold testing has already begun to affect mortgage lending in Hawai'i, and Herold predicted that testing will become commonplace in the next 12 months.
"There is a mold anxiety going on," said Kehau Mendes, operations manager of Maui-based duct cleaning company Skyline. "(The education) was very enlightening."
Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8065.
