.Papers Document Mold Hysteria, Lack of Science

A pair of scientific studies have found mold to be everywhere... and of no real harm to anyone.

The United States Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, in conjunction with the Manhattan Institute Center for Legal Policy have released two papers arguing the growing hazard of mold litigation and the lack of scientific evidence linking mold to health problems.

The papers, "A New Plague: Mold Litigation: How Junk Science and Hysteria Built an Industry," by attorneys Cliff Hutchinson and Robert Powell, and "A Scientific View of the Health Effects of Mold," review the state of litigation and science over alleged mold dangers.

The first paper traces the media generated development of litigious hysteria over the pesticide Alar and plastics and "sick building syndrome" since the 1980s and fixes the origin of the current hysteria over mold to media reports of a 1994 investigation by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) into a bleeding lung disorder in eight infants in a Cleveland hospital. The conclusion, repudiated by the CDC in 1999, was that toxic mold might have contributed to the disorder.
An examination of the science currently in use in litigation concludes that it cannot pass the U.S. Supreme Court’s "Daubert" standard for evaluating scientific evidence conclude the papers.
The Insurance Information Institute estimates there are 10,000 mold related claims pending, a 300 percent increase since 1999. The authors blame the hysteria on bad science and worse journalism.
In the second paper, a team of four scientists, led by Bryan D. Hardin, examines 20 years of scientific studies, concluding that the molds that can cause disease will not grow indoors and that the one indoor mold that can cause illness, stachybotrys chartarum, cannot produce enough airborne spores to present a danger to any but the few persons with compromised immune systems.
Both papers note that mold is commonplace and ubiquitous; if it were dangerous there would be widespread outbreaks of illness.

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