For decades, real estate agents have been educated about environmental factors that can affect the habitability and resale value of residential properties as well as the health of their occupants. Since the 1990s, real estate professionals have been required to disclose the possible presence of lead-based paint in most residential properties built before 1978. Radon gas testing and disclosure has been an issue for real estate agents since the 1980s. Costly litigation in the late 1990s made brokers nervous about the possible presence of mold.

Real estate professionals are compliant individuals. If there is a statute or rule that requires that they must disclose something that may affect a seller’s decision to sell or a buyer’s decision to buy, they will do so. But they often to do not know the reason or the background for the disclosure. In some cases, particularly with mold and radon, it is in the interest of multibillion-dollar industries to make sure that real estate agents disclose the possibility of environmental hazards. In some cases, there is poor or dated or no science behind the statutes or rules governing a real estate broker’s disclosure practice, and in that vacuum, environmental myths proliferate.

This course is an effort to separate the myths regarding mold, radon, and other environmental hazards from their realities.