A History of Toxic Mold: 4 Cases to Know

Mold is everywhere, especially toxic mold. Despite how little toxic mold makes headlines in comparison to how pervasive it is, toxic mold impacts people across the country regardless of the climate, age of the home, and socioeconomic status.

If you’ve been diagnosed with Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS) or biotoxin illness and you’ve been educating yourself about how to heal, I certainly hope you’ve learned that mold avoidance is the only real solution. Unfortunately, in my experience, mold avoidance is easier said than done. While we strive towards mold avoidance together (and here are some resources for how to do just that), we can get curious about how on earth we got to this place with toxic mold in the meantime.

The history of toxic mold is something that can be explored through many avenues, and we’ll kick off our exploration with four high-profile mold cases after I share why this is an important topic to cover.

Why these cases matter

There are three primary reasons I’m writing about these cases:

People are grossly uneducated about mold, and that’s how the insurance and construction industries want it to stay, unfortunately. Learning about some of the high profile toxic mold cases arms you with knowledge for how to conceptualize toxic mold, and gives you an idea of just how omnipotent this problem is.
There’s a chance that people have heard about some of these cases, so it might help you feel more empowered to share about toxic mold or CIRS with friends and family. Being able to reference something in the news can also give you more ground to stand on since the news feels a lot more relatable and accessible than sharing what the doctor you’re paying to see out of pocket told you about CIRS.
It can feel really isolating when managing CIRS. If you’re the only one whose sick in your family or in the building where you work, it not only feels isolating, but it IS isolating. One of our basic human needs in life is to be known and understood, however, and we achieve that through connection. So, I’m sharing these cases so that you know you’re not alone and that mold does not discriminate.

Case 1: Lake Tahoe, Nevada & California 1984

In 1984, 160 people in Incline Village came down with a chronic illness that was described as “flu-like,” with debilitating fatigue, memory issues, and respiratory symptoms. The CDC sent a team there to figure out what was going on, and while they had many theories about the cause of the outbreak, like Epstein Barr virus or a herpes virus, they weren’t able to settle on one diagnosis that included all the people who were ill.

Erik Johnson was one of those people who didn’t fit the theories, and he became the prototype for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome since he tested negative for Epstein Barr virus. Erik attended high school in a water-damaged building in Truckee, California at the time. Several teachers at the school presented with symptoms of biotoxin illness. Erik theorized that the bacterial outbreak of algae that year on the lake, combined with how weakened people’s immune systems were from toxic mold exposure in sick buildings, led to many people getting sick at once.

Developing his own mold avoidance protocols, Erik figured out how to heal and stay healthy. He has spent many years dedicating his time and energy to supporting research around sick building syndrome and biotoxin illness.

Erik has been one of the best teachers I’ve encountered for learning about the history of toxic mold and about mold avoidance. You can find lots of resources about his work here, and you can soak up knowledge from him by listening to the Exposing Mold podcast. If you appreciate a no-nonsense kind of guy who really knows what he’s talking about, you’re likely going to learn so much from Erik.

Case 2: Dripping Springs, Texas, 2001

Melinda Ballard’s case is one of the most famous mold cases. She had a leak in her sizable 11,000 square foot mansion in Dripping Springs in 1998 and had a plumber come out to take care of it. Before too long, the hardwood floors in the house started to buckle and she reached out to her homeowner’s insurance to address the repairs. As Ballard’s family started to get sick, the insurance company pushed back on footing the bill for repairs.

In 1999, the insurance company send an investigator to check out the source of the problem in Ballard’s home. While the investigator found significant amounts of mold, no immediate response came from the insurance company, although they eventually sent someone to collect air samples.

Ballard had already moved on by then, connecting with a remediator and told her it sounded like her symptoms were coming from the mold exposure. Formal testing revealed Stachybotrus in the house.

So, Ballard sued the insurance company for fraud and bad faith in how they handled the water damage claim from the start. Eventually, she was awarded $32 million for the claims. You can read more about this case here and here.

Case 3: Sacramento, California, 2001

This is a landmark case in toxic mold in California. Darren and Marcie Mazza were awarded $2.7 million in court after suing the owners and managers of the apartment complex where they had rented a home beginning in 1997.

The couple noticed a leak in their master bathroom and quickly notified management, only to be met with inaction. After six months inaction with ongoing water intrusion and subsequent mold growth, the family started to get sick, and the jury in this legal case unanimously supported the family.

The family utilized blood testing to confirm immune reactions to the mold that was found in their living quarters and lack of an allergy to mold. This is the first case, to my knowledge, to utilize blood work to demonstrate immune reactions to mold in the home. To read more about this case, visit this news article.

Case 4: Delaware Valley, Pennsylvania, early 2000s

If you’ve ever thought a new construction home would solve all the mold problems in your life, this case is going to blow that idea out of the water. I highly recommended very carefully researching builders before agreed to purchase a new construction home, especially because of this case. I will never buy a home from one of the popular builders like Toll Brothers or Ryan Homes because of how quickly and carelessly they operate. They are so superficially minded, creating homes that just look beautiful inside and out. It’s like they blind people with how nice the house looks so that the structural concerns go unnoticed until things reach disastrous levels.

On to the case… Toll Brothers and other builders built a lot of homes in the housing boom in the early 2000s in Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester Counties in Pennsylvania. Beautiful, traditional homes in perfectly manicured neighborhoods. Beautiful homes that turned out to be rotting and full of mold before the excited new homeowners even got the keys.

There were hundreds of lawsuits filed against these builders for shoddy construction, where weather-proofing had been neglected, stucco was inappropriately installed, and water was seeping in through all of the cracks. Some people had mushrooms growing on their floors and ceilings, or water pooling inside window sills every time it rained. Others didn’t know there was a problem until they went to sell and saw the moisture meter readings that indicated a significant problem.

Of course, the builders claim no liability, which is infuriating, and they have it in purchase contracts that the right for buyers to sue is removed, so there’s no public record of this problem. Thank goodness for the news, though, because this article documents the problem very well in both words and pictures. It’s a long read, but so well worth it to educate yourself on toxic mold in new construction.

What to do next

Well, if you haven’t already, I highly recommended checking your home for mold. If you’re currently working to find a healthier living space, here’s some food for thought around finding a low mold home. And if you’re stuck in mold while you find a way out and you’re feeling powerless, here are some things you can do to take good care of yourself in the meantime.