Data Sources

Mold Compass uses different source types for different page categories. General guidance leans on public health and remediation standards, legal pages use state and local authorities, and risk tools use the climate and housing datasets listed below. The existence of a link is not enough: the source must be specific enough to support the nearby statement.

Public Health, Cleanup, and Standards Sources

• Environmental Protection Agency mold guidance Moisture control, cleanup, and homeowner guidance.
• CDC and NIOSH mold testing and remediation guidance Testing limits, visual inspection, remediation, and workplace health framing.
• CDC and NIOSH damp-building health guidance Respiratory, allergic, and asthma-related health context.
• OSHA mold resources Worker safety and remediation hazard guidance.
• ANSI/IICRC S520 standard Professional mold remediation standard referenced for remediation planning.
• WHO dampness and mould guidelines Health literature review for dampness, microbial growth, and respiratory risk.

State Legal and Agency Sources

State guides are built from current statutes, landlord-tenant agencies, attorney general or consumer-protection resources, health departments, court materials, legal-aid resources, and state licensing boards where mold-related licensing or remediation rules exist.

A general landlord duty is not rewritten as a mold-specific law unless the authority actually names mold. A statute that requires premises to be habitable or kept in repair may be relevant to a serious moisture problem, but the page must preserve the distinction between what the law says and how the rule may apply to a particular set of facts.

Local Government Sources

City pages add official city or county resources when available, such as code enforcement, housing, building, rental registration, stormwater, emergency management, historic preservation, or public health pages. Those local resources supplement state law; they do not replace it.

A city or department homepage can help identify the responsible agency, but it is not used as proof of a precise complaint process, flood frequency, housing count, neighborhood pattern, or enforcement rule unless the source itself contains that information.

Climate, Housing, and Risk Data

• NOAA NCEI US Climate Normals Station-linked temperature, precipitation, and climate context based on long-term normals.
• US Census ACS 5-year data Housing-age data, including median year built where available.
• US Census geocoder ZIP and coordinate lookup used by the risk tool.
• US Census TIGERweb ZIP Code Tabulation Area geometry used by the risk tool.
• Open-Meteo historical weather API Recent weather signals used by ZIP mode in the risk tool.

How Climate Data Is Interpreted

A climate normal is a long-term regional reference, often tied to an airport or nearby station. It is not a measurement inside a home, and it does not prove that a property has mold, high indoor humidity, or a current moisture defect.

Mold Compass does not infer cooling-season demand from annual average temperature. HVAC condensate risk is discussed in relation to warm and humid operating periods, drainage defects, equipment condition, and actual moisture evidence—not a single annual mean.

How Housing Data Is Interpreted

Median year built is a citywide Census indicator. It does not state when a specific home was built, whether it was renovated, what foundation it has, or whether it contains a moisture problem. It helps readers identify questions to ask about roofs, plumbing, drainage, crawl spaces, basements, ventilation, and past repairs.

Programmatic Geographic Content

Mold Compass uses structured data and reusable page components to publish consistent state and city guides. Each city route is assembled from its own location record, climate station, risk values, source-backed local sections, state legal context, and page metadata. Automated checks reject missing sections, duplicate metadata, weak research URLs, unsupported high-risk phrases, and pages that omit the boundary between regional data and a building-level diagnosis.

Source Availability Audits

A scheduled repository audit tests the live URLs used across all state and city content. Results distinguish successful pages, redirects, access blocks such as 403 or 429 responses, dead 404 or 410 links, and network errors. Dead links are actionable failures; blocked or unreachable pages require manual review rather than an automatic conclusion that the source is invalid.

Link availability is only one layer of verification. A page can still be reachable while failing to support a particular claim, so substantive source review and live-link monitoring are intentionally separate.

Ask Scout Sources

Ask Scout draws from Mold Compass pages that have been added to the site, including public guides, tools, state pages, and city pages. When it answers, it points readers back to relevant Mold Compass pages so they can review the underlying guidance and links.

Source Limits

External source pages can move, change, or be superseded. Climate stations may represent nearby rather than exact neighborhood conditions, Census estimates have margins and geographic definitions, local agencies vary in enforcement, and legal outcomes depend on facts and procedure.

Mold Compass links sources where they support a claim, but readers should verify urgent legal, medical, insurance, structural, or remediation decisions with the appropriate professional or agency.