“I see mold but my mold test came back at low levels, so it must not be mold and I don’t have a problem.”
Two things we typically find in this circumstance. One is because the mold colony has not been disturbed, in other words no one has tried to clean it. This occurs in attics and crawl spaces and sometimes even in basements. The colony just continued to grow silently feeding off the wood or drywall. Mold when disturbed by cleaning or someone touching triggers the colony to send out thousands of spores into the air in an effort to survive. This Mother Nature response is similar to when a child or dog runs through the field of flowers and disperses the pollen from a flower into the air.
Secondly, mold actually has a cycle similar to other plants’ pollination cycle. So as mold matures it will send off more spores to continue and spread the colony but that does not occur daily and has a maturation process. If testing occurs during a dormant cycle then the counts may read low. That is why we often use a swab to capture what looks like a mold colony and send to the lab to verify.
The moral of the story... if you suspect mold you may need to call in an expert .
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