Should all the stuff be thrown away when moving out from a house with mold?

Question

Can anything from a molded house be safely moved to a new house without any further harm for health?

Can spores be wiped out from clothes and furniture?

Answer 1

The CDC has a great website on cleanup after mold. Also, this is a simple pamphlet. The degree of decontamination needed depends on the item and the extent of the mold. Whether something needs to be thrown out depends on multiple factors. There is too long a list to give a full discussion here, but the fundamentals include:

• Bleach can kill spores. Some clothing can be bleached. Nonporous surfaces can be scrubbed with bleach. Carpets cannot, drywall cannot, generally furniture cannot.
• Not everything requires bleach, like clothing/sheets can generally be washed on heavy cycle with detergent in very hot water.
• If mold did not directly grow on an item, sometimes it can be cleaned in other ways, so read about the specific circumstances. E.g. furniture steam cleaning or shampooing can be successful, depending on degree of mold.
• When handling items contaminated with significant amounts of mold, or in a mold-damaged area of the house, wear a respirator mask capable of filtering mold spores (N95) and other protective equipment so that you don't contaminate other areas.

Mold has known deleterious health effects, so especially if you have allergies to mold, make sure you do read the CDC recommendations if you've experienced mold problems. Spores can be transported to a new location and grow there if it encounters favorable circumstances (damp rooms, leaking roof, etc).

Answer 2

Note: this is my personal experience, not a scientific opinion or anything like that. I hope it helps.

I had a similar situation to you three years ago. We moved out of the damp apartment, full of black mould. We cleaned all of our furniture with ordinary upholstery shampoo, washed our clothes with normal detergent, etc.

We then moved to a nice, dry apartment. No doubt some spores remained on the clothes, etc. However, they did not cause any health effects that we know of. We have moved several times since then and have never had symptoms of anything. The spores need moisture to grow into mould, or they'll die.