I've noticed almost all products for treating mold/mildew say something like "mold stain remover", rather than indicating they can actually kill the mold/mildew.
I'm wondering, are these products generally reliable? I imagine the product is intended to kill mold/mildew, but they have to avoid stating this specifically to avoid litigation for damages.
Or are they misleading shams that do nothing more than remove stain without actually doing anything to treat the mold?
I am avoiding naming specific products, since it seems a pretty common pattern in these products. I would imagine there's a broad reason for this pattern in how they describe their product.
Usually if I evaluate an off brand medicine, I would look at the active ingredient and do some searching on that ingredient to determine its efficacy, and that clears up any doubts about what it actually does.
Best Answer
Products that remove mold stains are generally cleaning products, not designed to deal with the mold spores. Killing the spores, in a meaningful sense, involves specific products to kill spores (like this one).
The reason why you need a spore killer specifically, is that cleaning surfaces (like with bleach) can kill the mold on the surface, however it does not prevent mold regrowth. So you can bleach a surface and still have mold come back and be just as bad as it was before.