Case Study: Preschool mold treated before children returned

When staff at a St. Louis County church found mold spores behind a baseboard in a children's preschool classroom, they didn't wait. With little ones in the building every day, they called Claro for immediate testing. The results in the pre-K and preschool rooms came back alarmingly high—clear evidence of active indoor mold growth in the very rooms where children spend their days.

Claro's testing revealed extreme contamination in the preschool area: a MoldSCORE of 300 (at the very top of the lab's scale) with catastrophic airborne mold at 1,800,000 spores per cubic meter versus 11,000 outside. The critical finding was the presence of massive marker mold contamination—1,451,600 spores of Stachybotrys, Scopulariopsis, and Chaetomium—the specific types that signal active, water-driven indoor growth. For a building hosting preschool programs with young children, this represented a serious health risk that required immediate action.

Claro moved with urgent speed. The team treated the affected classrooms (pre-K, nursery, and side sanctuary) with its patented dry fogging process, reaching mold spores and residue throughout the rooms rather than just the spot where the baseboard showed visible growth. For a space used by young children, clearing the entire environment—not just visible spots—was essential.

Afterward, Claro performed post-treatment retesting through an independent lab across all affected spaces. The classrooms came back clean: pre-K at 13 CFU/m³ with only trace non-sporulating fungi, nursery at less than 13 CFU/m³, and side sanctuary at less than 13 CFU/m³. All indoor-growth markers were gone. The church had documented, lab-verified proof that its classrooms were safe for children before anyone returned, backed by Claro's one-year guarantee.