Mold Dogs: Hoax Or Help?
The Mold Consultants LLC Releases Results Of An Independent Analysis Of Usefulness Of Mold Sniffing Dogs
(PRWEB) August 14, 2003
The Mold Consultants, LLC has released an independent report analyzing the effectiveness and utility of “mold sniffing” dogs to perform environmental air quality assessments. This report cuts through the hype and emotional entanglements to disclose how mans-best-friend stacks up when doing toxic mold testing in buildings.
Homeowners are increasingly dealing with mold issues in their homes, and theyÂ’re finding out that proper identification and remediation is costly. Further, as insurance companies usually deny coverage for mold claims, the homeowner is usually left to their own devices to try to figure out what to do. Since toxic mold inspections done by a professional mold inspection company can range from $95 to well over $1,500, minimizing the cost of mold identification motivates some homeowners to attempt to reduce this cost any way they can. Mold sniffing dogs have been marketed as a way to reduce the cost of a toxic mold inspection.
Popularized by recent media coverage of how these animals are being used to assist in the detection of mold, The Mold Consultants LLC investigated purchasing a mold sniffing dog as a tool to augment their existing toolset used in their business of providing indoor air quality assessments.
Said Jim J. Hobuss, Principal Consultant for The Mold Consultants, LLC, “Our business is growing rapidly, and we began hearing stories of how dogs were trained to detect mold, thus saving time and expense for the homeowner. Wanting to stay ahead of the competition, we wanted to see how effective these animals actually are, and, if they are really more economical and effective than traditional sampling technology.
So, we began a 60-hour analysis, looking into this issue. We wanted answers to a number of questions: How effective are these animals? Are they really more cost-efficient? Are they as thorough and accurate as a human-based inspection? Can the results be counted on as much as the results from a human-being performing a toxic mold inspection?”
The results of the analytical effort, tailored for the general consumer, is available in a free summarized report on the companies website. The URL to the report is: http://www. mold-consultants. com/sniffingdog. php (http://www. mold-consultants. com/sniffingdog. php).
“We feel it is important that people understand exactly what they are, and are not, getting when they consider hiring a dog to perform a toxic mold inspection. In many cases, their health is in question, and they need this sort of information to make an informed decision. The people selling the dogs to mold inspection companies won’t tell you the limitations that are inherent with the dogs, and the people that work for the mold inspection companies that use dogs won’t tell you about their limitations, for obvious reasons.
We at The Mold Consultants, LLC have broken down the hype and tell you exactly what the mold sniffing dogs can, and canÂ’t, do.
