A tape lift presses a strip of clear adhesive against a surface, lifts the mold deposited on it, and mounts the tape on a slide so a lab can identify the genus by direct microscopy without growing anything.
What is a tape lift?
The tape lift is the quickest and most common surface confirmation. Because it images the structures directly, it reports genus on the same fast turnaround as a spore trap and, crucially, it captures non-viable growth that a culturable sample would never grow, which makes it the right tool for confirming Stachybotrys on a stained wall. Like the swab sample and bulk sample, it reports a semi-quantitative load (rare to abundant), not a concentration (AIHA, Green Book). It needs a reasonably flat, clean surface to seat well.
Why it matters to a mold inspection
A tape lift turns "it looks like mold" into "it is Cladosporium," or rules it out as a non-fungal stain, with a single inexpensive sample. That is high-value confirmation when air results look normal but a surface looks active. The CDC notes that identifying the exact mold is generally unnecessary for the remediation decision, so a tape lift's job is confirmation and documentation, not gating the cleanup (CDC, About Mold). See bulk, swab, and tape-lift sampling and documenting hidden mold.
MoldMind links the tape-lift result to the visible-growth photo and location, so a surface confirmation lives next to the evidence that prompted it.
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Sources
- AIHA, Green Book: tape lift reports genus by direct microscopy, semi-quantitatively.
- CDC, About Mold: exact identification is generally unnecessary for the remediation decision.