Structural Home Defects Are the Leading Cause of Mold in Buildings: The Housing and Health Service Experience
Open accessAbstract
The study aimed to evaluate the contribution of building problems to mold proliferation in dwellings. We investigated 503 dwellings of patients suffering from respiratory diseases, whose attending physicians had requested a home inspection if the area of mold was equal to at least one square meter. After careful visual evaluation and basic environmental measurements performed by a trained technician, environmental issues were classified into building defects, accidental water damage, and condensation. Data analysis demonstrated that building defects were the pre-eminent cause of mold proliferation. Among the building defects, water infiltration through leaks in roofs or walls was the leading cause. These results highlight the need for health professionals managing patients with respiratory diseases to be able to request a home inspection, and for city health authorities to commission professionals who can focus on building problems and find ways to address them.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Homes with structural defects can have higher levels of indoor air pollutants, and homes with many occupants per square foot of space can also have higher levels.
“Homes that have structural defects can have higher levels of indoor air pollutants [3], as can homes with many occupants per square foot of space [4].”
From Prevalence of indoor air pollutants from First Nation homes in North Central British Columbia, Canada (2024) · cites this paper as [3]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Garrett, Rayment, Hooper, Abramson, M. J., & Hooper (1998) · Clinical & Experimental Allergy · doi:10.1046/j.1365-2222.1998.00255.x · Cited by 408 · see citing works
Zock, J., Jarvis, D., Luczynska, C. M., Sunyer, J., & Burney, P. (2002) · Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology · doi:10.1067/mai.2002.126383 · Cited by 270 · see citing works
Gent, J. F., Ren, P., Belanger, K. D., Triche, E. W., Bracken, M. B., Holford, T. R., & Leaderer, B. P. (2002) · Environmental Health Perspectives · doi:10.1289/ehp.021100781 · Cited by 161 · see citing works
Respiratory Symptoms and Housing Characteristics
Spengler, J. D., Neas, L., Nakai, S., Dockery, D. W., Speizer, F. E., Ware, J. S., & Raizenne, M. E. (1994) · Indoor Air · doi:10.1111/j.1600-0668.1994.t01-2-00002.x · Cited by 155 · see citing works
O’Connor, G. T., Walter, M., Mitchell, H., Kattan, M., Morgan, W. J., Gruchalla, R. S., Pongracic, J. A., Smartt, E., Stout, J. W., Evans, R., et al. (2004) · Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology · doi:10.1016/j.jaci.2004.05.064 · Cited by 140 · see citing works
Prevalence of Moisture Problems in Finnish Houses
Nevalainen, A. I., Partanen, P., Jääskeläinen, E., Hyvärinen, A., Koskinen, O. M., Meklin, T., Vahteristo, M., Koivisto, J., & Husman, T. M. (1998) · Indoor Air · doi:10.1111/j.1600-0668.1998.tb00007.x · Cited by 120 · see citing works
Norbäck, D., Zock, J., Plana, E., Heinrich, J., Tischer, C., Bertelsen, R. J., Sunyer, J., Künzli, N., Villani, S., Olivieri, M., et al. (2017) · Indoor Air · doi:10.1111/ina.12375 · Cited by 80 · see citing works
Risk factors for mold in housing: a national survey
Howden‐Chapman, P., Saville‐Smith, K., Crane, J., & Wilson, N. (2005) · Indoor Air · doi:10.1111/j.1600-0668.2005.00389.x · Cited by 79 · see citing works
Dallongeville, A., Le Cann, P., Zmirou-Navier, D., Chevrier, C., Costet, N., Annesi-Maesano, I., & Blanchard, O. (2015) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.06.039 · Cited by 69 · see citing works
Characteristics of dwellings contaminated by moulds
Roussel, S., Reboux, G., Bellanger, A., Sornin, S., Grenouillet, F., Dalphin, J., Piarroux, R., & Millon, L. (2008) · Journal of Environmental Monitoring · doi:10.1039/b718909e · Cited by 66 · see citing works
de Andrade, A. D., Birnbaum, J., Lanteaume, A., Izard, J.-L., Corget, P., Mf, A., Toumi, M., VERVLOET, D., & Charpin, D. (1995) · Allergy · doi:10.1111/j.1398-9995.1995.tb05070.x · Cited by 39 · see citing works
Self-citationEnvironmental Relative Moldiness Index and Associations with Home Characteristics and Infant Wheeze
Rosenbaum, P. F., Crawford, J. A., Hunt, A., Vesper, S. J., & Abraham, J. L. (2014) · Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene · doi:10.1080/15459624.2014.933958 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Le Conseil Habitat-Santé dans la prise en charge des maladies allergiques respiratoires
Charpin‐Kadouch, C., Mouche, J.-M., Quéralt, J., Ercoli, J., Hugues, B., Garon, M.-È., Dumon, H., & Charpin, D. (2008) · Revue des Maladies Respiratoires · doi:10.1016/s0761-8425(08)74347-x · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Self-citationInfographic: Mould and dampness in European homes and their impact on health
Grün, G., Urlaub, S., Foldbjerg, P., et al. (2016) · doi:10.13140/rg.2.2.35547.98087
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- [3]World Health Organization Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality: Dampness and Moulds World Health Organization Geneva, Switzerland 2009 226 23785740
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Lessons Learned from Information Sources on Building Defect Studies
Oppedal, L. B., & Kvande, T. (2024) · Buildings · doi:10.3390/buildings14051231 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Kamurasi, I., Bartlett, K., Holyk, T., Rathburn, B., Moecke, D. P., Winter, A., & Camp, P. G. (2024) · International Journal of Circumpolar Health · doi:10.1080/22423982.2024.2389612 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
4D Digital Integration for Nanomaterial-Based Monitoring and Treatment of Bridge Piers Defects
Albaqawy, G. A., Touahmia, M., Boukendakdji, M., Ouazir, A., Mansour, A., Sallam, A., & Sedek, M. S. (2025) · Buildings · doi:10.3390/buildings15030501 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Erikovna, O. G. (2024) · JOURNAL OF MECHANICS OF CONTINUA AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES · doi:10.26782/jmcms.2024.07.00001 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Lessons Learned from Different Types of Building Defect Information SourcesPreprint
Oppedal, L. B., & Kvande, T. (2024) · Preprints.org · doi:10.20944/preprints202403.1266.v1 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Mold Exposure and Mold-Associated Diseases- Does the Public Healthcare System Protect Us? A Comment
Holzheimer, R. G., & Hakim, N. (2025) · Journal of Public Health Issues and Practices · doi:10.33790/jphip1100235
Lv, L., He, R., Xu, J., & Qian, L. (2025) · International Journal of Multiphase Flow · doi:10.1016/j.ijmultiphaseflow.2025.105427
Lima, V., Ildefonso, T. M., Daniels, S. M., & Mullally, J. (2026) · Housing Studies · doi:10.1080/02673037.2026.2653612
- Authors
- Felipo, R., & Charpin, D.
- Affiliations
- French Clean Air Association, 59120 Lille, France
- Aix-Marseille Université (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Charpin, Denis
- ORCID
- Charpin, Denis
- Venue
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2022-12-12
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 24
- Pages
- 16692
- ISSN
- 1660-4601 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9779167
- OpenAlex
- W4312138805
- Cited by
- 9
- References
- 13
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5
- FWCI
- 0.78
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Ministry of Environment, Conseil Régional Région Sud, Ville de Marseille, Le Souffle-13
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Indoor Air Quality and Microbial Exposure
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Building and Construction › Hygrothermal properties of building materials
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Building and Construction › Building energy efficiency and sustainability
- Keywords
- indoor mold, construction defects, water infiltration, water damage, condensation, respiratory diseases, home inspection, housing and health
- MeSH terms
- Fungi, Health Services, Housing, Humans, Respiratory Tract Diseases, Water, Air Pollution, Indoor
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
