Plan B
Plan B · test your home

Is mold making your kid sick?
How to test — without guessing.

Mold is one of the biggest hidden flare drivers for a PANS/CIRS kid — and it loves to hide inside walls. You can't treat a mold-sick child in a moldy house. Here's how to find it.

1. Find the moisture first — mold can't grow without it

Before you drill a single hole, find where it's wet. Mold lives where moisture is.

Pinless moisture meter (General Tools / Klein) · Amazon$30–50
USB borescope — snake into a small hole and SEE the cavity · Amazon$25–40
Thermal camera — FLIR One phone clip (optional / borrow) · flir.com~$200

2. Whole-house: the no-equipment test (do this regardless)

The single best “is this house making my kid sick?” test needs zero equipment — just dust. You Swiffer/vacuum some house dust, mail it in, and get a score.

HERTSMI-2 (or ERMI) dust DNA test — Mycometrics / EnviroBiomics · mail-in$150–290

HERTSMI-2 is the version validated for “is this building safe for a mold-reactive (CIRS) person” — the one that actually correlates with whether your kid gets sick in it.

3. Cavity air sampling — pinpoint WHICH wall

This pulls air from inside the wall and compares it to the room. The pump is the only catch — it must be calibrated to 15 L/min or the numbers are meaningless.

Spore-trap cassettes — Air-O-Cell / Allergenco-D (10-pack) · Zefon~$8–12 ea
Wall-cavity adapter — Zefon 'Wall Check' kit · Zefon$40–60
Calibrated 15 L/min pump — Zefon Z-Lite / Bravo (or RENT) · Zefon / rentrent ~$50–100
Steps: (1) take an OUTDOOR + a ROOM control sample first — you read the cavity against these. (2) Drill a small ¼" hole low near the wet spot. (3) Insert the probe cassette pump run 15 L/min for 5–10 min (record the time). (4) Cap, label, mail with the chain-of-custody form. (5) Patch the hole.

4. Where to mail the cassettes

EMSL Analytical — fast, nationwide, consumer portal · spore traps~$25–40 ea
EnviroBiomics — spore traps + ERMI (one-stop) · bothvaries
Mycometrics — ERMI / HERTSMI-2 gold standard · dust$150–290

5. Reading it

The lab reports spore counts by type. Cavity ≫ room/outdoor = hidden growth. Stachybotrys or Chaetomium = active water damage (serious). Elevated Aspergillus/Penicillium is the most common hidden signal.

6. A school or rental you can't drill

You can't open their walls — but you can Swiffer dust from the classroom sills/vents and run a HERTSMI-2. That gives you hard, lab-backed evidence to bring to them.

7. When to just call a pro

If you're deciding whether to pull a kid from a house or school, the calibrated-pump friction isn't worth it — a pro (an IEP, Indoor Environmental Professional) does thermal + moisture + cavity sampling in one visit (~$400–600) with a defensible report. The DIY combo that gets you ~80% for ~$250: moisture meter + borescope + HERTSMI-2.

Educational only — not medical or environmental-remediation advice. Prices are ballpark; verify current.