A short YouTube clip (speaker: Matt Kelly) answering why bleach should not be used to treat mold. Kelly explains that household bleach contains only a small amount of active ingredient and is mostly water; the water can remain in porous materials (drywall), feeding invisible mold 'roots' left behind after surface scrubbing. He cites IICRC S520 guidance recommending cutting out mold-affected material with a 2-foot buffer in all directions. The clip ends with an offer to book a consultation.
Terry is asking a great question in which nobody knows if they haven't been dealing with mold sickness or mold toxicity. And it is. Can you explain why it's said not to treat mold with bleach? And that's what we all grew up thinking and doing. If you see mold, you bleach it down, okay? And you can't blame people for doing it, because that's what we always did and what we always thought was the right thing to do. But the problem with bleach is that the active ingredient is very small amount. The rest is water. And that active ingredient dries out quickly and is gone. And the material is potentially left with all that moisture from the water. So if you have a spot of drywall that has some bleach or has some bleach, has some mold on it, and you get a bleach cloth and you scrub it or a brush and scrub it, basically you're just taking the visible mold, the colony, the spores off and leaving a damp spot behind. And while that's drying, it's feeding the roots that are left behind because you didn't actually remove the mold. You're just putting water on top of the mold. And mold has all kinds of little invisible roots that we don't see with the naked eye that go into that organic material and just keep spreading. And that's why in IICRCS 520 guidelines, they say if you have a spot of mold, you're to cut two feet away from it in every direction when you're removing that effective material. So if you have a spot this big, you're cutting a square that big because of its roots, and you don't want anything to take over where you left off. If you cut just a tiny spot, there could be roots over here, here, here, and you could start. It could continue on. So the reason why is because we don't want to leave that water behind, which will then feed the existing and invisible to the naked eye mold roots. Hope that helps.
Terri, do you have questions about mold in your home or body? Book a consultation with Matt, AKA the Mold man, to guide your home and body to the next level of healing.
