Module 3 · Health, Law and Duty
3.1 Damp, Mould and Health: What the Evidence Supports
9 min read
For years the industry's position on damp and health ran between two errors: dismissing mould as a cosmetic and lifestyle matter, and attributing any symptom in a damp home to it. Both are unusable in a report — the first because it is wrong and now indefensible, the second because it overstates what a surveyor can establish and collapses the moment it is tested. The defensible position is narrower than either and considerably more useful.
Learning objectives
By the end of this lesson you will be able to:
- State what the evidence robustly supports about damp, mould and respiratory health.
- Identify which populations are recognised as at heightened risk.
- Distinguish a hazard assessment from a medical opinion, and stay on the right side of it.
- Write a health statement that is accurate, useful and within your competence.
Key terms
- Association
- A statistical relationship between exposure and outcome. Robust for damp and respiratory symptoms; it is not the same as establishing causation in an individual case.
- Sensitisation
- The immune system developing a specific response to an allergen, after which subsequent exposures provoke a reaction at much lower doses.
- At-risk group
- Populations for whom the same exposure carries greater consequence — infants and young children, older people, and anyone with a respiratory or immune condition.
- Hazard assessment
- A judgement about the likelihood and severity of harm from a condition in a dwelling. What a surveyor does. Not a diagnosis of any individual's illness.
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