Moldy homes: Toxicity, race, and the geographies of domestic mold

Abstract

Situating household mold within a growing body of critical geography concerned with toxicity and exposures, this paper interrogates the racial logics and temporal dynamics of “toxic” mold. Responding to heightened public interest and governmental intervention in mold in the United Kingdom in recent years, this paper addresses the underexamination of mold in both housing and toxic geography scholarship. The “contemporary mold crisis” is located against a longer international history of toxic mold exposure, revealing toxicity as a multivalent designation through which certain homes, spaces, and bodies are rendered as toxic more readily than others. This paper argues that attuning closely to the materialities of dwelling conditions can produce generative and highly precise work through which one can attain a better understanding of modalities of violence and harm in a housing context. In parallel, it demonstrates the political value of attending to a “mundane” and “banal” toxin such as mold in geography.