Contributed by Patrick Hartshorn
If you were not able to read my first article in last month’s “The Peoples Paper”, please do so to assure you are reading this as part of a series from where we were when I start in this industry to where we are now.
My parents were career public safety and judicial service employees and being raised in that environment naturally led me into public safety as my first career choice. Once that tenure was completed, I decided to start my own business and I knew I had to do something to benefit from my years of experience with Investigation’s and report writing experience, and it would have to include my passion to help others.
When I started this company, I wanted to assure my clients that I was had the experience they could trust, and I wanted to expand my level of expertise. I attended a professional building science academy and multiple other training courses that included residential building inspections, indoor environmental consulting, moisture intrusion management and remediation oversight. Originally, I was primarily focused on being an existing home inspector wanting to help people make informed decisions about their home purchases and other real estate related investments. Within a few months in I found myself discouraged by the lack of knowledge about the procedures necessary when a home, or any building, was determined to have an indoor environmental issue, such as mold growth. I could see there was unintentional misrepresentation throughout the real-estate industry by all types of service providers involved with the process. There even was, and still is, a fair amount of ignorance by many who are entrusted by clients to provide direction and be the voice of support and reasoning with good, sound, and credible advice. The recommendations provided are often incorrect with common statements such as "bleach it & paint it” or “kill it with this or that chemical”, which are not appropriate responses to these situations and have no credible support in this industry!
Over time, I became aware that the leading cause for all the confusion was not just because of misleading marketing, or ignorance, but that there was a severe lack of education for those involved with the real estate transactions, to include contractors trying to help and clients trying to understand. While I was aware that in 2003 there was an industry standard published specifically for professional mold remediation, the knowledge of its existence was sparse and those that did know about it, for the most part, were ignoring it!
Jump ahead to today and it’s been over 17 years of working with indoor environmental projects where parties involved battle over following the standards-based procedures or doing it “the other way”, referencing methods promoted by marketing, social media, individual opinions, and junk science. I can’t count the number of times I have heard the ever so popular phrase "I’ve always done it this way", but it’s been a lot. Some of what I have learned is that 1. marketing is typically word smithed for financial gain, 2. social media is a platform for spewing falsities, 3. individual opinion is becoming a common pathway to litigation, 4. junk science is largely based on a pre-determined outcome. And then there is that “I’ve always done it this way” problem, which is ignorance towards learning the correct way. None of these mentioning’s are backed by independent science, are peer reviewed or are credible and therefore, are strongly discouraged. In the remediation industry, only industry standards are peer reviewed, credible, and therefore, defensible.
As I explained in last month’s article, in an industry where you are contracted to serve clients with professional services, your obligation is to follow applicable laws, codes, manufacturer recommendations and/or industry standards. If none of these exist for the type of service being provided, then industry guidelines, industry norms and/or best practices would be used. There are no local laws, codes, or manufacturers recommendations that I am aware of for mold remediation, but there are industry standards recognized worldwide and applicable to Alaska.
Next article will be about the steps to take once you realize an indoor environmental issue exists and the following month will be the process of staging a property to be properly remediated.
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.
Patrick Hartshorn, IH, CRMI
Advance Look Building Inspections & Environmental Testing
907-232-1007 • info@advancelookak.com
