ABSTRACT
American law was influenced through several millennia and cultures. The initial underpinnings endeavored to discover truth. American law now pursues justice to ensure all parties’ rights are preserved. Around 2000, there were several high-profile mold cases with multi-million-dollar settlements or verdicts favoring plaintiffs. In 2002, the American Academy of Occupational and Environmental Medicine published their indoor mold position paper, concluding it was very unlikely that sufficient mycotoxin would be amassed in a water-damaged space to cause serious human health effects. The mathematical model leading to this untested hypothesis was highly flawed, with numerous inaccurate assumptions and constants employed, underestimating the human effect of mycotoxins by ≥9 orders of magnitude. Twenty years later, defense medical experts still cite this paper (and/or papers that relied heavily upon it) to defend landlords, contractors and insurance companies. In 2020, a systematic review was published surveying all epidemiological articles published, from 2011 to 2018, referencing indoor microbial growth/dampness with adverse human health effects. The near-consensus reached demonstrated that chronic exposure to the interior of water-damaged buildings led to single- and multisystem illness (98.2%). The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published an outstanding article, validating visual contrast sensitivity (VCS) changes and multisystem illness from chronic mold exposure. Curiously, the CDC has been quiet on the subject since then.
