Ten Steps to Avoid Mold Problems and Lawsuits in the Rental of Residential and Commercial Real Estate

Vancouver, Canada (PRWEB) March 7, 2005

Real estate residential and commercial landlords, tenants, and rental agents in the USA, Canada, and worldwide should take ten steps to avoid mold problems and lawsuits in the rental of real estate properties, according to Phillip Fry, Certified Mold Inspector and author of the books Mold Legal Guide and Mold Health Guide.

Living or working in rental units that contain elevated levels of airborne mold spores and/or substantial mold growth infestation can cause very severe (and sometimes permanent) health problems to the tenants.

Landlords have ethical and legal obligations to tenants to provide an environmentally safe, habitable living space (residential rentals) or workplace (office and commercial rentals). Those obligations go unmet when a rental unit is mold-infested.

Landlords may have potential and substantial legal liability to tenants for such compensatory damages as: expenses for medical mold diagnostic and treatment procedures, loss of earnings, mold damage to tenants' clothing and personal property, higher rent differential if the tenants need to move to a mold-safe place, moving expenses, any tenant-paid expenses (such as mold inspection, testing, and remediation of the rental unit and tenant possessions), and punitive damages (jury-awarded).

A Hayward, California, jury in 2004 awarded $ 4 million dollars in damages because of mold infestation and other substandard living conditions on behalf of 124 past and present tenants of an apartment building whose owner failed to do proper mold remediation and maintenance of the mold-infested apartments.

Take these ten steps for the mutual well-being of both the landlord and the tenants:

1. A property owner or manager should not even offer the property for rent until after a thorough mold inspection and mold testing of the entire rental building or of individual rental units (prior to rental) determines that the property is mold-safe for tenants to live or work in.

2. Hire a Certified Mold Inspector (USA and Canada) for an annual property mold inspection and mold testing, or at least use a do-it-yourself mold inspection checklist and mold test kits for a thorough mold examination and evaluation of the rental building.

3. If there has been a plumbing line break or leak, roof or siding leaks, flooding, storm damage, or other water intrusion problems, the building should be thoroughly and promptly mold inspected, tested, and remediated as part of the water damage repairs and restoration.

4. If mold inspection and testing uncovers visible or hidden mold problems, the property owner or manager should immediately do safe and effective mold removal and remediation. Hire a Certified Mold Remediator (USA and Canada), or follow the recommended steps for safe and effective do-it-yourself mold remediation. Re-inspect and re-test (“clearance testing”) the building after remediation.

5. The building owner or manager should avoid hiding or camouflaging mold problems by deceptions such as painting over mold growth; concealing mold growth behind stored items, furniture, furnishings, and decorations; and masking the distinctive smell of mold growth with air fresheners and deodorizers. The smell of mold is from the digestive gases of the mold eating the building materials.

6. A prospective tenant should inspect and mold test the proposed rental unit (prior to the signing of a rental lease) with a Certified Mold Inspector, or by using a do-it-yourself mold inspection checklist, his sense of smell, a good flashlight, and mold test kits to determine the mold status of the rental unit.

7. In doing such inspection and testing, the mold inspector (or the tenant himself) should do an all-around physical examination of the building for both visible and hidden signs of water damage and mold growth. In addition, the inspector or the tenant should mold test the air and visible mold growths in all rooms, the basement, crawl space, attic, garage, plus the outward airflow from each heating/cooling duct register.

8. Mold testing requires mold laboratory analysis and mold species identification of the collected mold and air samples. In building locations with previous floods or leaks, the examination should also include fiber optics inspection to look inside water-penetrated ceilings, walls, and floors for hidden mold infestations.

9. The landlord or rental manager should disclose in writing to all prospective tenants any previous or present building water and mold problems, and what the owner or manager has done, if anything, to correct such problems. Attach these water damage and mold disclosures to the rental lease agreement so that the tenant acknowledges receipt thereof.

10. In consideration of, and based upon, the landlord’s accurate and complete mold disclosure, and the tenant’s full and unrestricted opportunity to inspect and test the rental unit thoroughly and carefully prior to signing the lease, the lease agreement may include a clause that releases the landlord, rental manager, and the rental real estate agent/broker from all mold liability to the tenant.

For more mold inspection, mold testing, and mold remediation information, please visit:

http://www.certifiedmoldinspectors.com


http://www.moldinspection.com


http://www.moldinspector.com/mold_removal.htm


http://www.bleach-mold-myth.com


http://www.moldmart.net


http://www.ecology-college.com


http://www.mold.ph

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Microsoft Researcher to Receive ACM Award for Powerful New Tools to Solve Today's Computational Problems

New York, NY (PRWEB) April 26, 2011

The ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) http://sigact.acm.org will present its 2011 Knuth Prize to Ravi Kannan of Microsoft Research Labs India for developing influential algorithmic techniques aimed at solving long-standing computational problems. Kannans contributions address the challenges of computation with massive data that characterize todays information-driven environment. His foundational work spans many areas of theoretical computer science including lattices and their applications, geometric algorithms, machine learning, and computational linear algebra. The Knuth Prize, named in honor of Donald Knuth of Stanford University who has been called the "father" of the analysis of algorithms, will be presented at the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), held as part of the Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC), June 7, 2011, in San Jose, CA. Kannan will give the Knuth Prize Lecture to an FCRC plenary audience.

Much of Kannans work has focused on efficient algorithms for mathematical and geometric problems in computer science. One of his research papers, published in 1990, has been called by some one of the most remarkable algorithmic achievements ever. It addresses the issue of easy formulas for volumes of simple three-dimensional objects like spheres and cubes. The paper, written with Martin Dyer of the University of Leeds and Alan Frieze of Carnegie Mellon University, shows how to efficiently produce estimates of the volumes of arbitrary high-dimensional convex sets. The method they developed uses random walks to do geometric sampling, a technique now central to the theory of algorithms. The winner of the Fulkerson Prize in Discrete Mathematics in 1991, this paper also introduced the notion of geometric isoperimetry, a measure of an area marked by boundaries, to theoretical computer science.

In his breakthrough 1991 paper, Kannan tackled the Frobenius problem, which seeks to find the largest number that cannot arise from a combination of certain denominations. For example, it is not possible to make seven dollars from a combination of three and five dollar bills, but every amount eight and higher is possible. Kannans paper gave the first efficient algorithm for finding this Frobenius number. This algorithm also led to important developments in integer programming and quantifier elimination.

Kannan was also cited for his research on algorithms for finding low-rank approximations to matrices, applicable to principal component analysis, which was conducted with Frieze and Santosh Vempala, then of Carnegie Mellon University. In a 1999 paper with Frieze, Kannan introduced the Weak Regularity Lemma, which has become an important new combinatorial tool in areas including sublinear algorithms, streaming algorithms, and graph limits.

A principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India, Kannan leads the algorithms research group. He is the also the first adjunct faculty of Computer Science and Automation at the Indian Institute of Science. Before joining Microsoft, he was a professor of computer science and of applied mathematics at Yale University. He previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A graduate with a B. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, Kannan earned a Ph.D. at Cornell University.

The Knuth Prize is given every 18 months by ACM SIGACT and the IEEE Technical Committee on the Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science and includes a $ 5,000 award.

About ACM

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery http://www.acm.org is the worlds largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the fields challenges. ACM strengthens the computing professions collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.

About SIGACT

The ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory http://sigact.acm.org fosters and promotes the discovery and dissemination of high quality research in the domain of theoretical computer science. The field includes algorithms, data structures, complexity theory, distributed computation, parallel computation, VLSI, machine learning, computational biology, computational geometry, information theory, cryptography, quantum computation, computational number theory and algebra, program semantics and verification, automata theory, and the study of randomness. Work in this field is often distinguished by its emphasis on mathematical technique and rigor.

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