Is citric acid made from black mold?

Yes, but so what? That organism - Aspergillus niger - has been used to safely manufacture citric acid for about 100 years. It's also used to make most of the 'fungal enzymes' that are vegetarian-friendly. People consuming citric acid are not eating black mold; just as you're not eating bees when consuming honey. 

People worried about the fermentation process have failed to distinguish between the mold and its purified byproducts that have a long history of safe use.  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00253-002-1032-6  

The fungus produces materials outside of its body that can be easily isolated and purified, so people are not inhaling or consuming mold when they use a material produced by fermentation. In fact, companies using citric acid perform their normal microbiological screening to assure that there are not concerning levels of mold in that material..

The mold itself would release spores that would be toxic to inhale if it were growing in your house. It may be mildly allergenic if you were eating the actual mold. But that's not what we are exposed to or are consuming when we eat citric acid, which is widely distributed in the processed food chain and has an important role in acidifying and preserving many foods and beverages. Look at your labels!

Isolated Aspergillus-derived products, including citric acid, have been sold for about a century and are considered safe. These also include common plant-derived enzymes such as protease, amylase, and lipase that are not pancreas-derived.  https://fungalbiolbiotech.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40694-018-0054-5 

"Microbial citric acid has high economic importance and widely used in beverage, food, detergents, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. The filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger is a work horse and important cell factory in industry for the production of citric acid."   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33044884/

"Aspergillus niger has a long tradition of safe use in the production of enzymes and organic acids (Soares de Castro et al., 2015)."  https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/aspergillus-niger#:~:text=The%20Aspergillus%20produces%20different%20types,et%20al.%2C%202015).

 

Aspergillus Niger Safety

Fermentation is a process where a microorganism is utilized as a factory to produce certain nutrients or other biologically useful substances for humans. The culture, environment, and feed can encourage production of various products including enzymes and organic acids that are commonly used in foods and supplements. Some molds are benign; think of Saccharomyces boulardii (related to the yeasts in bread or beer) or blue cheese. 

While Aspergillus niger is a black mold, it is not the black mold that contaminates homes. As with the enzymes produced by A. niger, inhalation of mold or enzymes is not healthy for the lungs, and precautions are taken during production. In addition, A. niger is considered GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the FDA and has been used for a century to produce citric acid and enzymes. Enzymes produced by A. niger do not contain significant amounts of the culture after isolation and purification to USP monograph standards of purity. Just as milk does not contain a cow, enzymes produced by A. niger do not inherently contain black mold. 

The U.S EPA has reported: 

“Exposure to Aspergillus must be nearly universal but disease is rare. The physiological condition of the exposed individual thus appears to be of paramount importance. Patients exhibiting aspergillosis are generally immunocompromised, and thus susceptible to otherwise common and usually harmless microorganisms. Factors that may lead to immunosuppression include an underlying debilitating disease (e.g., chronic granulomatous diseases of childhood), chemotherapy, and the use of supraphysiological doses of adrenal corticosteroids (Bennett, 1980)…A. niger is not a significant human pathogen. Throughout years of use and widespread exposure to A. niger in the environment, there are only several reports of aspergillosis with A. niger, and in Nigeria, one report of a number of cases of otomycosis. There have been only several reports of allergic reactions, which are not uncommon for aspergilli in general, and not unique to A. niger. A. niger is capable of producing several mycotoxins. However, mycotoxin production appears to be controlled by the conditions of fermentation.”  

EPA’s Final risk assessment for Aspergillus niger https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-09/documents/fra006.pdf

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12172605/