Just last month, “48 Hours” focused its lens on the perils of mold. Prominently featured was Erin Brockovich–whose crusades against corporate polluters inspired a movie that won Julia Roberts an Oscar–and whose own home, she said, has been overrun by mold, making her ill and the house uninhabitable.

Inevitably, insurers have come off as the bad guys in this new exposure drama. Insurers are accused of rejecting legitimate claims or dragging their feet in alleviating mold problems before it's too late to save the house or spare its occupants serious damage.

Insurers have been quick to try to distance themselves from “The Blob.” They have restricted coverage for mold claims or, where able, excluded the risk entirely. Some carriers have left states outright to get away from potentially crippling losses.

In their public statements, insurers have been quick to accuse everyone defending mold claims of ignorance, greed, or outright fraud. They've blamed the plaintiff bar for once again selfishly cashing in at the public's expense (in terms of lost capacity, diminished coverage, and soaring premiums).

They've challenged the scientific authenticity of alleged links between mold exposure and serious health problems. They've accused the media of spreading misinformation, helping greedy lawyers drum up new clients for massive class actions.

Isn't there a more productive way to respond to this perceived crisis? Or are insurers doomed to be forever typecast as the villains of these horror stories?

Instead of reacting defensively, it would be refreshing to see the industry take on the mold challenge. Why not work with consumer groups, independent scientific think tanks, and government agencies to set a study in motion that gets to the bottom of the mold problem? Is there, in fact, a widespread crisis? Why is the exposure exploding now? How can the risk best be controlled? How can it most economically be insured?

Is the creation of a government mold pool–an idea endorsed by the Policyholders of America, and proposed in Congress by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.–the answer?

By tackling these questions instead of just bailing out, insurers can be part of the solution, instead of just being another part of the problem by creating a coverage vacuum.

In “The Blob,” the authorities ended up freezing the title creature and flying it off to the North Pole for a permanent deep freeze. Solving the mold crisis is not going to be that simple, but getting the facts straight would be a good start so we know what we are up against.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, August 12, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.