ERMI and HERTSMI-2: What Dust Testing Can and Cannot Tell You in Tennessee
ERMI and HERTSMI-2 are the dust tests most CIRS-literate physicians reference. This guide explains what they measure, how to collect a sample that means something, how to read the scores, and the honest limitations nobody selling you a kit will mention.
What Tennessee changes about the picture
Humid subtropical with high rainfall. Crawl-space state: under-floor humidity in summer is the default finding until proven otherwise.
Protocols are national; moisture is local. In Tennessee, the pressure a building lives under comes from specific, predictable directions — and this protocol should be read with those directions in mind, because they decide where the risk concentrates, which assemblies fail first, and what a defensible local scope looks like.
The TN moisture drivers to read this against
- Vented crawl spaces over damp ground
- Heavy rain and drainage failures
- Summer humidity
What never changes — anywhere
Tennessee changes where the risk concentrates — never the order of operations. Moisture gets located, testing characterizes the exposure, the water gets fixed before the mold, remediation runs under verified containment, and an independent third party confirms the result.
The full protocol below covers the national playbook in depth — read it alongside the TN context above.
Read the full protocol: ERMI and HERTSMI-2: What Dust Testing Can and Cannot Tell You →
- What these tests actually measure
- Why dust beats a single air sample
- Collection determines whether the result means anything
- Reading the numbers without panic
- The honest limitations
- When to retest
Tennessee questions
Does this protocol change in Tennessee?
The sequence never changes — locate moisture, test honestly, fix water before mold, remediate under containment, verify independently. What changes in Tennessee is where the moisture pressure comes from: vented crawl spaces over damp ground That determines where instruments go first and which assemblies earn suspicion.
What should Tennessee households check first?
Start with the failure modes this housing stock is known for. Crawl-space state: under-floor humidity in summer is the default finding until proven otherwise. A moisture-focused assessment that ignores those patterns is guessing.
Can I get matched with a vetted provider in Tennessee?
Yes — matching runs in all 50 states. Every provider is vetted on containment discipline, fine-particle competence, and willingness to be independently verified. Matching is free for households.
THIS PROTOCOL IN OTHER PRIORITY MARKETS → California · Colorado · Florida · Nevada · Texas
NEXT IN THE TN LIBRARY → The Mold Inspection, Done Right: A Homeowner's Field Manual in Tennessee