The newly-enacted regulations titled 18VAC15-60, “Mold Inspector and Remediator Regulations” should be terminated and withdrawn for the following reasons:

1. They offer no measureable benefit to public health –The spores, colonies and species classified as “mold” can be found virtually anywhere a sample is taken, indoors or out. There are no recognized standards to define what levels of “mold,” if any, represent a true hazard to health. Consequently the Commonwealth, through these regulations has not and can not prescribe any achievable level of control which may be defined as either “safe” or “unsafe.”  The regulations are baseless.

2. There was no existing shortage of well credentialed professional expertise knowledgeable in the control of moisture, mold and sanitation concerns available to the citizens of VA.   Prior to these regulations, the Commonwealth already had vast resources of well-credentialed, highly educated professionals who are engaged in the assessment and control of potential hazards associated with the stated concerns regarding “mold.” These professionals include:
   1. Professional Engineers (PE)
   2. Certified Industrial Hygienists (CIH)
   3. Registered Sanitarians (RS)

These professionals typically have many years of practical professional experience and meet rigorous educational standards in problem assessment and control as well as passing nationally-recognized certification exams, maintaining continuing education and adherence to professional ethics codes to only practice in their areas of expertise and competency.  Ironically, the new Virginia mold regulations have excluded over 1000 established professionals from their proven area of practice to require the use of and undefined roster of newly-created “experts” with a 3-day certificate.  If control of mold does warrant competent professional services, imposing this state-created obstacle doesn’t make any sense.

3. The Regulations will create an economic drain on the Commonwealth.  Since the need for the training and licensing services imposed by this regulation is artificially-created, not meeting any recognized scientific standard or accepted enforcement limits, there will not be sufficient sustainable market demand to support the DPOR resources required for program administration. 

4. They disproportionately target and penalize small businesses   These regulations uniquely penalize small, independent consulting businesses.  Our cost to follow this regulation is staggering, requiring 3 days away from work and 3 days of lost billing revenue – and those costs are CUMULATIVE if you are paying employees for their time to attend, plus payment of class fees of $600.  For a senior technical professional who bills project time at $150 per hour that represents a total cost of $7800 per person in pay and lost revenue before you can apply to the state for a license to do the same hazard assessment work you may have done for 20 or 30 years.  That’s a hard reality when your income for groceries, children’s’ clothing, gas and house payment depends on balancing revenue and expenses to make payroll.  People who work for government agencies or large multinational firms won’t experience that hard, painful, personal but preventable penalty.

5. They are vague and unworkable subject to selective and arbitrary enforcement  As written, these regulations expose Virginia to legitimate claims of regulatory buffoonery and ridicule on late night television.  The term “mold” and “mold inspector” as broadly defined in this regulation could impose a regulatory trap to include:

·        Restaurant workers cleaning cooking surfaces

·        Janitors who may encounter mildew in a mop closet

·        Biology teachers and their students

·        Boy Scout leaders taking kids for a campout

·        Bakery and grocery workers checking day-old bread

·        Dermatologists

·        Gardeners and groundskeepers

·        Nail salons working around toenail fungus

·        Air conditioning mechanics checking ductwork for cleanliness

·        Auto mechanics replacing air filters that trap spores, etc…..

If the regulations cannot be enforced on a University Biology Department Chair who leads a graduate-level class on assessment of mold -and good luck with that - they are unworkable and absurd.

6. They create an impression of collusionary intent to use government to endorse restriction of trade in the Commonwealth for the immediate benefit of DPOR and Board Members.  There is no standardized or accepted training curriculum or universally-recognized field testing protocol for the assessment or control of mold; however this regulation empowers the Board to selectively approve or reject firms offering training on this topic. Close examination shows that the DPOR Board who promoted and adopted these regulations is composed of training and testing firms who are first in line to offer these services and determine who and what firms may participate in this work through DPOR approval, rejection or stalling of competitors’ training programs and license applications.  This process gives the appearance of using the state’s regulatory mechanism to create a new training and testing specialty which requires their services in the absence of any scientifically-credible need.  In addition, the field of potential service providers is controlled by gatekeepers with a vested interest. This is a glaring conflict which is ripe for abuse.

I have worked in the environmental health and safety industry in Virginia for 35 years.  I am a graduate of the state’s first nationally-accredited Environmental Health degree program, I have worked as a Health Department inspector and I have maintained numerous VA DPOR professional licenses and nationally-recognized board certifications for over 20 years.  This is the first time that I have been sufficiently outraged at the conduct of DPOR to submit written comments to request immediate action.

These regulations are bad science, bad business and bad public policy.  The Mold Inspector and Remediator Regulations under 18VAC15-60 should be rescinded to preserve the integrity of DPOR licensing programs while meeting their responsibilities to the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia.