Who's Responsible for Mold in Your Apartment? (VIDEO)

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Imagine your own home making you sick. When mold -- and we mean more than that stuff growing on your month-old sandwich in the fridge -- starts taking over your apartment, it can cause serious health problems, such as nausea, fatigue, rashes, hemorrhaging and asthma. So if you've got a mold problem in your apartment, what do you do?

Click2Houston.com recently fielded several questions from viewers complaining about mold in their apartments and asking what to do about it. One such viewer was Paul Bloom, who says that he was getting sick from all the mold inside the walls of his apartment. He had black mold growing up the apartment's walls and on the floor. "I've had the fatigue, joint pain," Bloom told Click2Houston.com of the effects of the mold.

Unfortunately, there are no federal guidelines outlining acceptable levels of mold in apartments. And only a few states have rules on the books pertaining to such a problem. California, for example, allows tenants to pay outside professionals to remove mold from their apartments and deduct the cost of services from their rent. However, in most cases, landlords protect themselves by providing tenants with information on how to remove mold with soap, water and a little bit of scrubbing, Click2Houston reported.

Here's what landlords are responsible for: maintaining habitable conditions for tenants. If the mold in an apartment has occurred because of a landlord's failure to fix leaks, for example, then you may be able to hold the landlord liable for the mold problem, according to legal site NOLO.com. But if the mold grew because of something you, as the tenant, did, then you could be held liable for the costs of damage. See what else you can do to battle mold in your apartment in the video above.

See more about mold:
More Than 100 Tenants Evicted Due to Mold
Mold: Where It Can Hide in Your House
Dealing With Mold in a Rental Apartment

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