September 5, 2025

While editing Jessica Lucas’s deep dive into the world of #moldsurvivors, I started to see mold — or rather, mentions of mold — everywhere. Horror stories about mold exposure began showing up on my “For You” page; Instagram repeatedly fed me ads for mold-remediation products. The internet seemed to co-sign what had become, as Jess learned over the course of her reporting, a budding national panic. Could mold be the cause of people’s chronic headaches? What about their mood swings or brain fog? Thousands of self-proclaimed “moldies” seemed to think so. Doctors, though, maintained that for most people, mold wasn’t even an allergen; study after study failed to show that it could produce the kinds of symptoms moldies described. Was this a case of the medical establishment unfairly dismissing a group of people with real, acute symptoms? Or had mold taken on a life of its own?
—Paula Aceves, associate editor, New York

By Jessica Lucas

Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos Getty Images

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