Healthy Indoors Magazine
Issue link: https://hi.healthyindoors.com/i/1489776
Healthy Indoors | 25 which do not comply with S520. Which, by themselves is fine. But it would be to their advantage to legitimately claim compliance with the national industry consensus mold remediation standard which is ANSI ac- credited. Which would also be fine, if what they do stays on the "road" between the guardrails of S520. The other force is the economics and politics of expanding S520 to include the currently non-compliance methods. A consideration of the potential loss of reputation as the accredited consen- sus standard must be considered. The Two Claims As I understand it, the basis for the challeng- es is that physical removal is not the only method to achieve the result of the pro- cedures of S520. Because the science and technology of denaturing mold and killing mold is now equivalent to, or exceeds, phys- ical removal, those methods should be in- cluded in S520 along with physical removal. If true and effective, these methods will reduce the cost of mold remediation by a factor of two or more providing tre- mendous benefit to all parties – owners, occupants, landlords, and insurance com- panies. In addition to savings in direct cost, the procedures take less time to complete, and the displacement of occupants during the work will be reduced to hours instead of days or weeks. If these alternative methods are true, then they would be powerful industry dis- ruptors. Disruption is not necessarily bad. In fact, it can be quite good or even necessary. If the changes perform as claimed to pro- vide at least an equivalent result. That is the question that must be answered – not with opinion, but with a clear, coherent body of information independently validated. My Analysis My analysis will use the methods I been de- veloping in the last several columns. (Read those for additional explanation). I de- scribed starting with first-facts, those that Fig.1: Kineman, Ch 2, A Guide to Systems Research, Edson edit 2017 are fundamental and beyond dispute. The next step is to connect subsequent facts to the first-facts in a defensible way by contin- uously looping back to the beginning. This process of confirming the relationships is the guardrail of validation. It creates a closed system of intent, function, and formal logic that is internally consistent and anchored in the physical world.