Color Tells You Almost Nothing
"Black mold" is not a species. Many molds appear dark — Cladosporium, some Aspergillus species, Alternaria, and others. Stachybotrys chartarum, the organism people usually mean, is one of many dark molds and is far less common than the others.
You cannot identify a mold by looking at it. A dark patch on drywall is far more likely to be a common species than Stachybotrys, and either way the response is the same: find the water, fix it, remove the affected material.
What the Evidence Supports
Mold exposure is associated with allergic and respiratory effects: congestion, cough, wheeze, eye and throat irritation, and asthma exacerbation. For immunocompromised people, certain molds can cause serious opportunistic infections. These findings are well supported.
Dampness in buildings is independently associated with respiratory symptoms, which is part of why the presence of moisture matters even where mold is limited.
What Is Overstated
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Stachybotrys became linked in public discussion to severe systemic illness, including a widely publicized cluster of infant pulmonary hemorrhage cases. Subsequent review found the evidence for that causal link insufficient.
Since then, mainstream public health bodies have been consistently cautious about claims that household mold causes severe systemic disease in otherwise healthy people. That caution is not the same as saying mold is harmless — it is saying the specific dramatic claims are not well supported.
Why the Hype Persists
Fear sells testing and remediation. An industry incentive exists to describe every dark patch as toxic black mold requiring immediate expensive intervention.
This is precisely why Texas prohibits the same company from assessing and remediating the same project. An assessor who cannot bid the removal has no financial reason to inflate the finding.
The Practical Bottom Line
Do not panic about color and do not ignore growth. Treat any significant mold as a signal that water is getting somewhere it should not.
Do not disturb large areas of growth yourself — that aerosolizes spores. If the affected area reaches 25 contiguous square feet, Texas requires a licensed remediation contractor. And if anyone in the home is immunocompromised, asthmatic, very young, or elderly, be more conservative.
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