Where to Start: Mold Testing and Remediation

Michael Schrantz

Thank you, Nafysa, glad to be here.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Yeah. So can you start by introducing yourself to our audience?

Michael Schrantz

Absolutely. Michael Schrantz, the owner of Environmental Analytics. I’m an indoor environmental professional, which is kind of a broad sweeping term to cover a variety of all things environmental. Got my start back in 1996, dealing with general indoor air quality concerns, mold being one of them, and migrated into other fields, chemicals and radon and asbestos and found myself loving the trade, loving the disciplines, found the proper education to kinda grow. And probably the biggest shift in my career was around 2010, maybe 2015, where I started to just work with more complicated clients. 

These were the people that weren’t calling you up because they were selling their home, and somebody noticed a water stain on the ceiling, and it was more of a transactional issue. It was more health related and really found new terms like CIRS, and what’s this lime thing people are talking about and SIBO, and the list goes on. And really just found that I was resonating, I was doing the type of testing that was detecting things. If we think about mold, for example, I was doing a lot of the more forensic types of sampling for years, even before even people knew what an ERMI sample was or that sort of thing. 

And found myself with like-minded professionals to where probably since 2015 ’til today, I exclusively work with clients around the world with various forms of chronic illness, where really my role is education and providing direction, these are individuals that may just be getting started and their doctor said, I think exposure in your house or building is occurring, or somebody who’s gone through so much already. Maybe they’ve done it two or three times and they’re getting conflicting answers. And so they’re looking somebody who not only has a critical eye and forensic eye with the environmental piece, but has an appreciation for the health piece, because so often that part is missed from your common inspector.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. And what’s going on in the house, as you said, it’s so often missed. So it means that because that’s missed, people are gonna keep having the insults just thrown at them in their home. And they have no idea.

Michael Schrantz

Right.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Very often I might see it in someone’s bedroom, close to where they sleep and little do they know they’re resting their head every night, right by where there’s mold behind the wall or in their bedroom. So let’s start by talking about testing. Can you tell them about what an ERMI test is?

Michael Schrantz

Right. So back in 2006, the EPA came out with a test called an ERMI, environmental relative moldiness index. It’s been a while since I’ve actually spelled it out. And basically the idea behind it was, it was a dust sample, right? So somebody collects a dust sample, they send it off to a lab for analysis. It speciates 36 mold species. It gives you a score and through all of that, you’re supposed to look at this graph, this chart, and go, okay, well, based off of my score, I have this percentage of a mold index problem or an issue in the home. And so that’s kinda where it started from. I’ll set you up for additional questions, but just to say that this has been a sample or a type of sample that many professionals and homeowners or occupants, patients, have been using in a DIY format to get a general idea of exposure in their home, which sometimes can be an useful tool for their doctor when trying to figure out how much further should we go down this rabbit hole regarding all things mold exposure.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. So I use it just to put us in the ballpark. Well, does it appear that there is a problem in your house with respect to mold or oh, maybe that’s not really the case, but lo and behold, most of my patients with complex chronic illness that come to me with symptoms that are unexplainable. Fatigue, joint pain, gastrointestinal issues, brain fog. It’s very, very often that they do have a mold issue in their home. Yes, they’re gonna also have typically tick bites and a high viral load and high parasites and everything. But it’s very, very often that mold sets the stage for everything else in the system to flare.

Michael Schrantz

Right. Environmentally mold is kind of our surrogate when you think about all things water damage, there’s certainly other things that can happen, right. We can get at bacteria growth, we can have chemicals off gassing from building materials, but a lot of times, mold, if it’s not the direct contaminant is the surrogate for other things, because people don’t wanna spend $50,000 testing for everything under the sun in their home.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

It’s a great way to start for sure.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. So let’s talk about beyond doing an ERMI. This is where you would come in.

Michael Schrantz

Yeah, absolutely. So in the event that somebody reaches out to us, whether they’ve done their own initial sampling or they haven’t, a lot of times we’re doing kind of what you’re doing to start, we’re doing a client intake, we’re trying to learn from them, why are we here in the first place?

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

You don’t just show up, a good IEP, again, indoor environmental professional, is not just gonna show up blindly or tell you over the phone how much it’s gonna cost. That would imply that they have the ability to detect what is the issue, and at that point you might be asking, well, do we even need a sample if you’re that good? A good IEP is gonna listen to why they’re there, you’re there because probably there’s a health complaint. And you probably, as a client or patient, have maybe a couple few areas where maybe there’s been some water events.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

Damp crawl space, a toilet that overflowed a couple years ago and you’re trying to figure out whether or not these could be areas or sources that could affect the normal fungal ecology. That’s a term for everybody. Our goal is normal fungal ecology. That’s what we’re looking for. We’re not looking for mold free, because we don’t live on a bubble in Mars, we live on Planet Earth. And even looking at your background, you have plenty of sources behind you outside, where there’s gonna be molds and bacterias. This is your normal fungal ecology that’s getting into that building. So what do we do? After we kind of get an idea of an assessment of what’s the scope, here are the areas of concern, a good IEP is still gonna walk the whole house. 

We’re gonna put some special focus on the areas you, the client, have mentioned. But a good pair of eyeballs and a flashlight are probably the most powerful tools, that and knowledge and experience of what to look for. Signs of water staining, swelling or separation of the baseboard next to the exterior walls, underneath your vanities or cabinets, kitchen sinks, and water heaters. All of these, you’re seeing a theme of maybe where moisture can get into, that sort of thing and trying to provide a non-numerical value to these areas, is this an obvious area that should be remediated? Or is it more of a question? How many of you listening have had a case where, well, yeah, we got water staining under the kitchen sink cabinet, but we don’t wanna spend $6,000 or more to replace that because of an assumption. 

So the inspector will then sit down with you and say, well, what are the remaining balance of our questions that we can’t answer visually? We know that’s an area over there that needs to be remediated, it’s actual growth on your actual cabinet, this is more of an obvious issue. But what if it’s not obvious? What if it’s just staining or it’s this whole debate about, well, do we really need to fix the crawl space? I’ve heard that that can be really expensive. That’s where sampling comes in. And we can dive deeper into that depending on where you want to go. But a good inspector will sit down with you and talk about a host of different types of samples, typically around mold or bacteria, but all for answering different types of questions. 

If you’re doing a dust sample in a home, for example, we talked about this ERMI before, that will be good for giving you average exposures, kinda the ballpark discussion you mentioned earlier, or maybe even zoning the house down like, oh, did you notice that we did two or three in the home and noticed the master was higher? That’s weird, what’s going on in the master that’s not going on in the other parts of the house? It’s not gonna tell you where the mold’s coming from. So a good inspector will have the ability to inspect. And here’s a new term, interstitial cavities. Wall cavities, the cavity underneath a kitchen sink or a vanity that little, if you have a bottom shelf, there’s a underneath there. Up in the attic, down in the crawl space, these are areas that you don’t get to see without usually opening up or being destructive. 

So what are those tools and techniques that a good inspector can have while doing things like cavity sampling, where they literally sample the air from these cavities. It’s minimally destructive, it’s about a little three eighths inch of a hole with a special tube that goes into this cavity space and takes a sample. Or if they don’t have that, they can do a thing called Mycometer, It’s a well known test that does, it’s a swab sample looking for fungal enzymes. Is it higher right here? Oh my gosh, we did a swab sample and there’s a mold source we found here. There’s a number of techniques, but you wanna know that your good IEP has the ability to locate the source because if all they do is tell you, you have a problem in the home based off of your dust sample that you took earlier, that’s not gonna really help you know where you need to remediate or what you need to focus on. And finally, a good IEP, this is the 30,000 foot perspective, believe it or not, is gonna be able to give you report with findings and recommendations. Now, what do I mean? Okay, so findings are probably self-explanatory. 

We saw this visually or historically you’ve given us this information, here’s some sample data, here’s what we found. But what about the interpretation of it? Believe it or not there are companies out there that will not interpret the data for you. In fact, they’ll leave it to the lab to interpret. And I always found that silly because usually, the person best able to interpret these samples is the person that’s been out there with you involved understandings the unique part of your environment that could help explain whether or not this particular sample is elevated or not, in fact. ‘Cause keep in mind, these same mold species that could be growing in your home are right behind Nafysa’s window behind her or other locations outside that could affect what is normal for you. And that leads me to the recommendations.

What are they recommending? If I tell you, you have a problem in your house, if I say, yep, your air samples or dust samples indicate contamination exists, and I think it’s coming from the crawl space. What do I do about it? Is it, good luck? So a good IEP is going to be able to write protocol for you and literally say, you need to contact this type of company and in this specific order, and there might be five to 10 steps. Basically give you a game plan, an action plan that when you get done spending all that money to have an inspector come out to do a thorough inspection of the home, you have what it takes to walk, to do the next step. 

Maybe if they do need, you do need remediation, you need to contact a remediation company, you do need to contact a crawlspace company. You shouldn’t have to expect that you need to figure that out on your own, a good IEP in this climate, with these types of patients that we’re working with should help provide that information for you because it’s going to be overwhelming when you realize that you might have two or three problems, but you don’t know who to call next.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

I’ve had many patients go through what you are referring to right now, they’ve seen somebody that had an IEP come into their home to get it tested, and then they say, now what?

Michael Schrantz

Right.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

I don’t know what to do next.

Michael Schrantz

80% Of the patients that I work with virtually are exactly those situations. Either they were left with, I don’t know what to do with this, now I actually have more questions.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

Than I started with, or it’s more, this person’s recommending spraying a chemical that I’m worried about being exposed to, or they’re recommending $50,000 in cleaning my home. I’m wondering if there’s another way because my budget’s $5,000. So yes, it’s unfortunately for many people and probably most of you listening who have experienced this, odds are, this is something you’ve gone through.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Absolutely. I’m so happy you’re here discussing this. Yeah. Now one thing that I wonder about, well, I wonder if people are thinking about right now is, well, if it’s in a cavity space, isn’t that space contained? How does it get to the rest of the house? How does it go from that casual space to my bedroom? For example.

Michael Schrantz

Yeah. It’s a very fair question. And I love that question. So our houses, let’s just start from what it’s not, our houses are not hermetically sealed, meaning that if there’s something in a wall, it’s going to guaranteed to stay there. If our houses, were hermetically sealed, every time you shut the front door, your ears would pop. And so we get that, most of us are like, yeah, I get that. But I mean, still, it’s behind a wall. How much could possibly come through here? Well, let’s nerd out with some information and I’ll tell you how easy it can happen.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Great.

Michael Schrantz

On average, a mold spore’s about five microns in size. About 250 mold spores of that size can fit on the top of a needle pin head, the kind you sow with, side by side, without falling over. For every one of those mold spores, depending on what study you read, there’s anywhere between 300 and 500, some would argue even up to like 1,000 or more fragments. So every one mold spore, there’s another, there’s a, let’s say 500 to split the difference, fragments from the same source, same mold. So picture a mold spore busted up into 500 fragments or other parts of the mold, the root, the branches that we often refer to hyphae, conidia spores, those sorts of things. That are also in the vent, and they’re much smaller as well. 

Well, now think about this. You have your outlets, you have can lights up above. You have multiple penetrations on your wall, even where your wall meets the floor. In many cases, it’s not hermetically sealed. So there’s plenty of pathways for the mold, or let’s just say loosely contaminant to go from location A, which is like an interstitial cavity to the living spaces. You might ask, well, how does it do that? Yeah. Okay, fine, there’s a pathway, you’ve convinced us, but does it have legs on them? No. Not for the purpose of this conversation.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

What we’re talking about now is driving forces, pressure differentials, it’s windy. Sorry to be picking on your background video, it’s beautiful. It’s windy right now, if you look at the video and some of those winds are hitting the side of the building that she is in, and that’s creating a pressure in that wall cavity right behind her. And that pressure may tend to push stuff from that wall, not in any sort of huge mold monster nightmare type capacity, but push things from those interstitial cavities, into the living spaces. Temperature differentials, that wall’s hot ’cause the sun’s on it right now, but inside it’s 60-something degrees. 

Heat goes from hot to cool. There’s a multitude of driving forces that will allow things to come in, and oftentimes that is, it’s never really static. So your house is kinda bringing stuff in at times and sometimes it’s pushing things out and it’s this relationship that’s constantly moving. It’s like a house is a living or breathing organism. So it’s ironic that, ’cause again, that’s a great question is like how can it get in? It’s ironic that a lot of the folks that I work with, the mold, not obvious. I’ll tell you, I would love it if my, the most technical aspect of my job was walking into a building where the mold was 20 square feet on a wall and I could just point out and go, there it is, that’s your problem? 

I wish was that easy. I think the luckiest I ever get is when someone goes, “oh, you know, I never looked underneath my kitchen sink cabinet, let’s see what’s in there.” And there might be a little bit of mold there that we see, but for the most part, the piece of the sources that we’re seeing, that people are being exposed to aren’t necessarily the obvious ones that you might read in a textbook or on a Google online search. It’s the stuff that is hidden in either interstitial cavities, attics, crawl spaces or something we haven’t talked about yet, even inside of the duct work or the HVAC system.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

So this gonna happen in any house.

Michael Schrantz

Oh yeah.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

I think that a lot of people might think, oh, it’s because I’m dirty. That’s why I’m moldy.

Michael Schrantz

Yeah.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

And absolutely no, it’s not that, has nothing to do-

Michael Schrantz

You might have an issue with a total net buildup of things that are airborne and settled out because maybe you don’t clean the house as much, or you have carpeting, or-

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

For sure.

Michael Schrantz

Yeah, there’s a multitude of reasons of why that’s the case. But at the end of the day, why is it an issue in the first place, if your doctor or you are suspecting or knowing that mold is kind of like the core exposure concern, then the idea is we need to figure out whether or not your home reflects normal fungal ecology. And by the way, a good IEP will take those considerations when interpreting the data, like, well, the house is not really kept that well. There’s a lot of carpeting, there’s contents everywhere, and that will affect the numbers. So not always straightforward, but obviously something to consider. There’s lots of ways you can have exposure and it doesn’t have to be 20 square feet of mold growth growing on your ceiling to constitute an exposure.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. And so in your experience, what are the most harmful indoor molds?

Michael Schrantz

Yeah. So another great question. I get this one a lot too. Let me say it this way. We know that there are are different types of chronic illness, Lyme, SIBO, CIRS, chronic inflammatory response syndrome, for those who aren’t familiar. We do not have a cheat sheet or a list of molds that we understand to be more of an inflammatory concern. There are some literature out there about certain molds that can produce toxins. That depending on what lens you wear may be considered to be worse neurologically or from other sorts of standpoints than others. But we treat mold all the same. If you have mold growing in the, underneath your kitchen sink cabinet, and it’s a species of cladosporium versus a species of aspergillus or penicillium versus stachy versus chaetomium, we’re gonna remediate those all the same way because we can’t look at that and say, well, this is less harmful, so you can leave that there and just keep on living your life.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

I will tell you though, if we switch the question a little bit and say, are there more useful or better indicator molds as from an environmental perspective to help the IEP suspect that there is an issue? Yes, there a lot of people know, in fact they know it so well, I just assumed, I said, stachy earlier, stachybotrys chartarum. This is the blackish, kind of greenish, blackish mold that everybody knows about. Even if they don’t know that name, they’ve heard black toxic, it’s kinda like the Tom Cruise celebrity mold-

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

It is.

Michael Schrantz

that everybody knows about. And that’s it. And it’s had a lot of notoriety, it’s been around. Okay well, that’s what we call a hydrophilic or water loving mold in plain English. It needs a lot of moisture to grow. And there’s another one, chaetomium globosum. These two molds are well known, trichoderma there’s, these two molds that I’ve mentioned are very good indicators when their quantities are elevated to indicate that there might be some ongoing or existing issue where there was major water saturation. There are many species of aspergillus and many species of penicillium that can be good indicators of a problem. 

But the challenge with that is that a lot of those good indicator molds for a water damaged building are very common outdoors as well. So again, with the interpretation of the data, you really need to have a qualified IEP who can look at it because you don’t want this conversation for some part has been the concern and the worry of being exposed, and that’s important, of course, but we also don’t want you to be misled down a rabbit hole. God knows we need more hope and positive information and just something that’s pragmatic. And so you don’t just wanna start making assumptions just because you have some given quantity of a mold species of aspergillus or penicillium in your home that you have to have a problem, that might be your normal fungal ecology in your home. And that might be good news.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. I’m finding a lot of people allergic to molds themselves. So I’m the mold IGG allergens on just Labcorp. And I’m also testing allergies to mycotoxins from Mymyco. Very often, I’m seeing people highly, highly allergic, but perhaps their home isn’t as toxic as the next person’s who is, who’s not as highly allergic. And, I think it’s important to take into account what’s happening with the person’s response in their immune system as well.

Michael Schrantz

Oh, there’s no doubt. I mean, most of the people that when we talk about the inflammatory response, we’re getting into like the innate immunity, the innate immune system versus the adaptive and-

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

That this is not just an allergy that’s seasonal and it will go away if you have like scars or Lyme, but it’s, yes, it’s taking a more forensic look so that the clinician, not you, of course, or that your typical mold inspector, who’s not the person we’ve been inscribing doesn’t just dismiss it because it’s not allergy season or it is allergy season, and they just blame it off of that and not the fact that you might have a source in your home.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. So there’s one particular strain of mold that I see a lot in California on the ERMI high and it’s Wallemia. I wonder if you could tell us about that one.

Michael Schrantz

Wallemia sebi is a very exophilic, one of the most dry loving molds. It can be a decent indicator mold for a water or damp situation, but it’s also very common outside. I personally do not use that as I’m obviously looking at the numbers, but a lot of times when I’m working with clients, either directly or virtually, we’re typically taking an outdoor control sample to get a better idea of what is your normal background of Wallemia sebi because if you go online, unfortunately, you’ll read a lot of things like, oh, this is something that we commonly see in HVAC systems and things of that nature. It’s like, okay, possibly yeah, sure. But it could also just be normal background. So definitely can be a good indication, where that mold may end up popping up a lot too, is when you’re having moisture humidity issues, period.

So condensation issues, that sort of thing. You’re not keeping the house dry enough. Maybe not an issue in more or deserty, dry climates, but in your warmer East Coast, like think tropical or even in the Bay Area, marine climates, which probably to your point is why you see it more, this is gonna be a mold that’s more prevalent. What I would advise the listeners is that either they work with a professional virtually or boots on the ground locally and ask them if we’re focusing on Wallemia sebi to get a control sample outside. So we have some appreciation of what sort of baseline should we be expecting here.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. So, Michael, how do they know when it’s appropriate to get remediation done in the home?

Michael Schrantz

Well, I guess the simple answer is if somebody has found an area that needs to be remediated. I mean, here’s the thing, unless somebody has invented this, I don’t know of any formula that says, well, okay, we have identified a problem here, a source, if you will. And, but you know what we’ve scored, we’ve given it a score of a 7 out of 10, or a 4 out of 10, so therefore it’s an issue, but you don’t need to remediate it. Here’s what we’re normally doing to justify fixing, repairing remediating areas of concern is why are we here in the first place? We’re here because you and or your clinician thinks you’re having an exposure. And because we’ve been picking on mold, mold is the focus. Okay. 

So we found the mold source and it’s your crawlspace and the molds that we’ve identified in your crawl space, by the way, we were actually able to correlate with molds we found in your home on the main level, ironically, not so much on the upper floor, ’cause you have a two-story home in this example. So yes, we do believe there’s communication. That’s about as deep as you can go from an IEP’s perspective to show that there’s exposure occurring. I don’t know of any doctor and I’ve worked with hundreds of them that would look at that and say, ah, don’t worry about it. They’re, they’re trending towards recovery, although a bit slower than I would like them to. 

Every doctor I know has said, well, that sounds like it needs to be remediated then. So if the question is around that model, yeah, you should remediate it. I think what might be useful to listeners is that, well, what about when I need to prioritize? We have, we had an IEP come out to our house and they said that we had to literally sand down, remediate, clean and our entire attic, replace the insulation and do our crawl space and redo our duct work and remove our carpet. And we got an estimate to do all that and it was a hundred thousand dollars or more. And they’re like, we can’t do that. So how can we prioritize that?

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

And that becomes a more challenging conversation because now what you’re looking for is review of what they found, kind of like an orders of magnitude. Was it like a couple isolated areas that they’ve just said, well, we found a little bit of mold on a couple areas in your attic, so therefore you need to remediate the entire thing. And we’re like, well, time out. Of course I’d love you to have an attic that you could perform heart surgery in, but maybe, then maybe we don’t need to be so extreme or so proactive if we wanna use a nicer term up front, maybe we can focus on the mold that was identified in your crawl space, where half your house smells musty because of it. And maybe the mold that you found in your kitchen sink, and we’ll get to your carpeting later. We’ll get to your attic later. That to me Nafysa is 90%, 95%, when we’re dealing with mold remediation issues of what we end up looking at. Everybody wants every part of their house to be remediated at the same time. I find that probably 20% of the people can afford it, all at the same time.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. What you’re saying is just so important because there aren’t too many IEPs like you out there, Michael.

Michael Schrantz

Yeah.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

There just aren’t. And so what I mean when I say that, I mean, they’re not giving people those step by step pieces of advice for the-

Michael Schrantz

We need to be more pragmatic, sorry to interrupt you, Nafysa. We need to be more pragmatic in the world we live in. I think if we’re talking about even the professional that means well.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

There’s a general model of extremeness, or a lack of communication. So it’s they didn’t mean any ill will, but they want you to remediate all this, and that is just overwhelming. We can talk about it. Right? We can talk about anxiety and fear if we wanted to.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right

Michael Schrantz

And I see this, in fact, this has literally been a growing conversation. It’s been such an issue that I’ve interviewed a couple of people that work with limbic system stuff on my IEP radio, because what I’m realizing it’s that we need to do a better job as professionals holistically to say, listen, come on, you’re human, you’re resilient, you’re strong. You have some to topics, some issues, some health issues that we wanna focus on and we want you to be able to be responsible and pragmatic and honor your health. But the model kinda feels like it’s that plus everything needs to be extreme, and if you don’t remove every mold spore, your arm’s gonna fall off.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

And for those of you that are listening that can unfortunately relate to that, let me just tell you historically, with what we’re doing it’s not. Historically, what it is is it’s breaking down fact from fiction, fear, from hope, and then giving you a realistic game plan that meets your pocketbook. And there are so many options you might imagine, well, Mike, if there’s so many op- it’s because it’s always about risk management. It’s like, well, you could do this yourself, then help clean this and do this in a certain way, and you could maybe save $10,000 dollars or $15,000, or have some friends helping friends type of thing, where people are getting together. 

If you have a local church or whatever you’re involved with, there’s so many ways that you can deal with this that isn’t the, what just feels Nafysa, is like the classic remediate your whole house. And yeah, just need to do that because we found mold and there’s just no explanation. We have people that raised their hands up and said, my inspector came out, identified a few good areas, but they identified so many areas on the outside of the home. It’s like, I don’t know whether I need to reclad my exterior house with new vinyl, or if it’s just more of a, hey, a general impression, we’re just not doing a good job putting things in perspective of what needs to be done. And again, even to your question that you asked before, we psych to weigh it out. 

We’re here about exposure, and no, we can’t look at your kitchen sink cabinet and say, you’re having 70% exposure there. Remember that has the mold in it. And 20% exposure from your master bathroom vanity that has a little bit of mold in there, and the remaining balance is X. It doesn’t necessarily work like that, but you can use reasonable rationale as an IEP and go, quantity does play a role here. A square inch of mold has way less significance in terms of exposure than 20 square feet. 

All of us would agree with that in terms of everything else being the same. And then the other thing is its ability to get into your environment. If it’s mold growing in your grass, I’m a lot less worried about that than if it’s mold growing in your crawl space, where you have attic, or crawlspace accesses throughout the home, and you can smell the mustiness. The numbers are showing that the relationship and you can look that person realistically in the face and go, I know you’re having mold coming and contaminants coming from this location. Based off of your health, based off of your storyline, I think that this is your priority. We can worry about cleaning and replacing your carpet with a hard flooring alternative later, but let’s focus on getting the main source outta the way so that Nafysa or whomever else can get on with treatment and you can get to the finish line a lot quicker.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Exactly, because it’s true until they’re out of the mold in the best way possible, then they’re just gonna keep getting sick.

Michael Schrantz

And you see this so much.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

I see it all the time. And then I tell my patients, now you can’t be bleeding money. If you’re bleeding money, it’s gonna cause more stress. That’s gonna cause more immune dysregulation, it’s as bad as having the mold. So that’s where, I mean extreme stress, I believe, is as bad as having the mold because there’s so much research that shows the correlation between stress and the immune system. So this is where I think you come in, because you’ll be able to guide them towards where should I spend? Where should I not spend? So-

Michael Schrantz

You end up being an educator and kind of a quarterback, yes.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. So Michael, how do you work with people in say California when you’re all the way in another state?

Michael Schrantz

Sure. Well, I do travel and back in the day, I was doing quite a bit of that. There’s a growing number of good professionals out there, but to answer your question, my main primary business has been virtual. I’ve seemingly had the most impact helping people that are either in remote locations, they don’t have the local talent or tools to get the job done, or they question the talent or the tools or they’re getting conflicting information. So I literally work with people around the world and it’s been an amazing experience. Virtually what I’m able to do is similar to what we doing now, being on Zoom is we’re able to, client takes photos, they fill out a questionnaire, we get some background, about their health and about the home, we never play doctor, but we just wanna honor the pieces and use it as kinda like that fulcrum of, okay, here’s what we’re gonna go first towards. 

And then we just go through the home and by going through home, I mean talking about the home. You might get off your seat and go show me an area of concern, but realistically, what we’re gonna talk about is, what’s appropriate? Is there some sort of a DIY thing that you, the client, can do first? Maybe it’s some better rounds of cleaning or testing I should say. Or maybe there’s, maybe they’re based off of what you shared, it’s better to get an actual mold inspector out there first. And even though you don’t have a local talent of tools of people, you can, we can write specific things for them to focus on. So now you, remember the quarterback, we’re saying here’s what needs to be done and then you hire that individual. 

Or maybe you need a remediation company, is such an obvious issue you skip the inspector, we just need to get an estimate of what it’s gonna cost to fix those things. So doing this virtually, and we’ve obviously evolved over the years, have been effective ways to help people who don’t have a Michael Schrantz within driving distance to do local work. And unfortunately that’s the vast majority of people. And there are a number of growing professionals that, heck, probably some that are better than me. But I think again, it’s not just about somebody has a good flashlight. Understands CIRS, it’s the critical thinking. It’s the being pragmatic. How do we prioritize this in a way that honors the health, but doesn’t break the pocket book or the bank kind of a thing. And that is really a unique skillset. 

And so fortunately for people like you and me, we’re involved with organizations that are building in the ability of finding professionals like the International Society for Environmentally Acquired Illness, they have a get help page, and there are others, but trying to find people through there first, maybe you do have a local inspector that’s driving distance, start with them. But if you find yourself just not sure where to start, or you’ve called five professionals, and you’ve gotten 10 different opinions on what to do, do the math on that, is reach out to us and we can figure out a way to consult with you. 

It’s not some sort of multi-hour, $1000 experience for a relatively affordable amount of money, we can get you well on your way and potentially save you not just many thousands of dollars, which is pretty common, but your sanity. I can’t tell you Nafysa, last point, how many people end up breaking down, crying at the end of our consults with joy and happiness and relief because the assumptions that were made were so off. And when we are able to show them the science and take their unique situation and apply the specific sciences of those things together, it’s like they were reborn. So you need that in your life.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Yes. So then if they have a report from another IEP and they’re just not getting the answers they need, they can send you that report and you’re gonna analyze them and then look at the pictures and just.

Michael Schrantz

Probably 70% of the time, that’s what we’re doing with that approach, absolutely. That’s pretty straightforward. Usually people have questions, they found this problem, but they want, the classic one is the severity of the remediation. It’s yeah, sure, we’ll get a lot where an inspector goes out and finds nothing, but it doesn’t agree with everything clinically you’re seeing or the DIY sampling, that kind of classic story. But we’re also getting a lot that comes through our office where it’s, they found mold on the grout line in the shower, so they wanna remediate your entire shower. In fact, we had one recently where the inspector found mold in a toilet tank and they were recommending full on remediation. 

And I’m just sitting here going, this does not makes sense and you’re asking these people to spend thousands of dollars to do something that could be included in the whole house clean for less than $200. So it’s being pragmatic with them. And I don’t think that just in case any of you are wondering, I don’t think it’s this whole conspiracy theory, everyone’s out to get you. These can be tricky to navigate from a liability perspective on the remediation side. Well, this was cross contaminated and we’re not gonna pay for it. There’s a lot of politics. There’s a lot of concerns, but that’s why it helps to have a third party quarterback because if you know the language and you’re like, well, just say this, or have them do this instead, maybe they’d be willing to deviate from their particular area of concern. We had one lady who after talking with them, the professional agreed that the $28,000 remediation estimate for the attic did not need to happen.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

I love it.

Michael Schrantz

So this is what I’m talking about, it happens all the time.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

That’s great. Have you noticed in California and Colorado after the fires, that there’s been more of a mold issue? I sure have.

Michael Schrantz

Yes. That’s a wonderful question. So a colleague of mine, if you don’t mind me mentioning, John Banta who’s done a lot of work out there in the Bay Area.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Yeah, we work with him a lot in our clinic.

Michael Schrantz

Yeah. Okay. Very well. Good. Ever since the wildfires were happening, there were general concerns about what are these wildfires doing to contribute to our indoor air quality? Now I’m not just talking about soot and ash. That’s obvious. I’m talking about what kind of molds are coming into your house. What we were finding, especially John, was elevated levels of molds that you would normally, as an IEP who’s versed with these mold species would go, you have a problem in your house, only to find out that it was coming from the wildfires. Literally all of the common species, including our Tom Cruise stachybotrys.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Uh huh.

Michael Schrantz

Making its way into the home and the person doing a DIY sample, or even the professional doing sampling, thinking that there was an issue. So yes, wildfires can be, absolutely something that needs to be taken into consideration when it comes to could this just be wildfire, could this be a problem in my home? The other thing that I’ll just mention real quick is landscaping. So I’ve heard from my colleague, John, that a lot of people in certain parts of California will use cardboard where they plant their flowers and their gardening as a way to promote growth in that respect for the plants and the life and all that. And they’ll stick it on the top. 

And I remember looking at a picture actually very recently with John, where it was covered with mold. And so the short version of this longer story is we’re trying to figure out where all the stachy was coming from in the house. They could not find a problem in the house that could justify this, they couldn’t even find stachy, but they found it outside. They tripped over it, so to speak and realized that this is where it’s coming from. So our environment’s not just about what your normal fungal ecology is because you have bushes in your backyard or a tree, or it’s windy on this side of the house. 

It’s also what is the environment doing? Have you experienced wildfires? Do you have a next door neighbor that’s using some unique gardening with cellulose-rich cardboard boxes, AKA mold food, and that stuff is coming into the home. Definitely needs to be taken into consideration. I think what you you’ll realize is the theme here, it still can be an exposure concern, Nafysa. There’s no argument that if it’s elevated in the home, it’s elevated in the home. But the difference is where do we focus? Are we ripping out walls in your house? Are we changing how the stuff from the outside communicates to the inside of your home? Those are night and day difference topics. And obviously no one here would wanna waste money going down a rabbit hole, trying to find mold in interstitial cavities, a term we used earlier, when in the end of the day, it was really just a temporarily thing, a temporary thing from wildfires or your next door neighbor’s garden.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. That’s a big deal.

Michael Schrantz

Oh, it’s the difference between someone worrying about their home and having to move versus, well, we can change the way our home communicates. We can change the way we live in our home. Do we want to keep the doors and windows open? Do we wanna modify the landscaping? Maybe we can just reclean our house and resample, maybe the numbers were just temporarily bad because of that wildfire we had a couple months back. To be determined, but these things are possible.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right, and there’s so many different variables.

Michael Schrantz

Oh yeah.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

I think people are just not thinking about, yeah.

Michael Schrantz

They think it’s as easy as a mold test that you can go buy at a large box store and if you have mold growing on a plate, you must have a problem. If you don’t, you must not. And there are so many things wrong with what I just said.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

Mold’s complicated. And it’s complicated, folks, because it’s a normal part of our ecosystem. We wouldn’t be here without mold, ironically, and we have normal exposures. Our body depends on normal exposures. I understand that there’s nuances with genetic susceptibilities and temporary chapters in your life where even normal may not be enough for you. I get all that, we deal with that on a daily basis, but I just want you to know it’s not mold free and it’s not running from a mold spore, because if that was the case, the only option for you would be a bubble on Mars, and clearly that’s not what you need. 

I think it’s just that sanity and that education and knowing, okay, I get it. I need to be reasonable. We may have to tweak our environment a little bit to help me with my health goals. But I don’t need to feel like the mold is gonna get me one spore at a time. You typically are looking for appreciable sources that are causing something that’s different than, say, if you just walked out your front door, assuming you didn’t have the garden with moldy stachy cardboard on it and that kind of thing.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

And so Michael, tell them what steps they can take for prevention in their homes.

Michael Schrantz

Keep the house dry. Mold is kind of like a fire, right? Like fire needs three things to start, whereas mold needs three things minimum to start. You gotta have a viable spore. Well, you can’t really prevent that. That’s everywhere. We’ve all been breathing in as you’ve been listening to us, you’ve been breathing in viable mold spores from the outside, same species too, that can grow in water damaged buildings. Needs nutrients, that’s the second thing. Well, nutrients are everywhere. How many of us haven’t seen mold growing on glass? Well, it’s not growing on the glass, right? It’s growing on the nutrients, the dust, the debris that are on the glass. So that’s everywhere, you can’t really control that. 

The third and final thing that you need as a minimum is moisture. Now there’s something that we have some control on most of the time. So if you keep the house dry, like for example, if you live in a hot humid climate, you’ll hear different numbers, I get it. Some people say less than 60%, some people say less than 65%. Some people like me say less than 50. Why do I say 50? Not because I think you’re gonna have mold growing on your walls if it hits 53% relative humidity in your home, it’s ’cause I want to give you some wiggle room. Common sense, right? Maybe it’s 50% at the moisture meter, but what if it’s 59% in that closet that doesn’t really get a lot of air movement by an exterior wall? Now molds going in there, but not the rest of the home. It gives you some wiggle room to keep the levels low enough.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Uh huh.

Michael Schrantz

Dampness. Okay, what about that crawl space? Well, maybe, we keep picking on crawl spaces, I know I do. It’s because it’s like a large Petri dish underneath your house. It’s not some small little, I spilled four ounces of water in a corner of the house, and there’s this huge thing that came of it. It’s usually the footprint of the home and so many feet high. This is a huge, perfect dark, typically poor ventilating area. Typically with no improvements like moisture barriers, that sort of thing, rat slabs, concrete to minimize moisture buildup, and so it turns into this Petri ditch. If you address that, if you control the moisture, you mitigate areas that you can’t deal with. You’re like Mike, we can’t, we have a high water table, and even if we ventilate the crawl space, we still seem to get mold in the crawl space area. 

Well, you have options. You can seal up the crawl space more from the home, do a better job. You can, there’s more robust options that we probably could get into later, but the point is keep the house dry. And usually, and I’ll tell you one other thing is I don’t have them up on a screen or anything, but you can buy on Amazon or anywhere nowadays, a very cheap moisture alarm. I’m talking a moisture alarm that probably has a footprint similar to this, probably takes a couple AA 9 volt batteries. I have five of them in my house, that has saved me from two legitimate potential water problems that if it wouldn’t have gone off, the alarm, very annoying, very loud, it would’ve been a $3 to $6,000 mold remediation project. 

Keeping the house dry, checking your plumbing sources, it’s not a bad idea to get a home inspector. If you haven’t had your home really looked at it in a while, have ’em do an inspection to look at the integrity. Wanna spend a little bit more money? Hire that mold inspector. But what does the condition of the roof look like? What does the condition of your siding and your windows look like? These are gonna be the areas where the water’s gonna want to come in and it doesn’t always present itself on the inside. So if you want to minimize that, take the time, think of like an annual or maybe every two or three years, having a home inspector come out and take a look at your home inside and out, just like you would do if you were buying a home. Doesn’t cost that much more for the peace of mind you would get, or the potential to prevent issues. And that in keeping that house dry. 

And people who live in California and the marine climate area closer towards the ocean, dehumidifiers are huge. Portable, whole house, you need to keep it dry. If not, you’re going to have issues, one way or the other if it starts creeping up typically above 60%, 65% over the long term, we’re talking weeks or months. The crawl space, if you let that go, and most people don’t have improved crawl spaces, you will have some microbial growth. It would be silly not to expect that in that environment. Look at the crawl space. If you’re having health issues, get a crawl space company. There’s a company out there Nafysa, they’re nationwide called basementsystems.com, basementsystems.com. 

Look up people in your area and have ’em come out and take a look at your crawlspace. They can give you an estimate for what it would cost to truly keep your crawl space, I’m trying to use simple terms here, dry so that you don’t have future mold issues in that home. And also last but not least your HVAC system. Have that checked out. Probably the first place that every inspector in warmer tropical climates will look is an air conditioning system. Even in hot, but dry Arizona, where I live in, we can have mold and bacteria biofilm issues in the evaporator coil. This is the part of the system that cools the air if you have air conditioning, where mold will proliferate.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

And so many people, even myself, 20 plus years ago, didn’t really think about it as much of how common it is, but yet this is the lungs of your home. If you have a forced heating and air conditioning system with duct work throughout the home, and you have a mold problem in your system, you have the perfect transport mechanism to transport contaminants from that location of the evaporator coil or nearby throughout the home. Have that inspected. How often? Well start with before the summer hits this year. And keep an eye on it. If your system doesn’t show signs or evidence of microbial growth or otherwise, then maybe you don’t need to do it every year, but it would be smart for an annual check because things break down, things get clogged up and things change.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. I think all of these that you’ve mentioned are not super expensive. It’s not gonna break the bank.

Michael Schrantz

I realize that everyone’s got a different budget situation, but when we think about the cost of remediation, we threw out a couple indirect examples, including thousands here, thousands there. Having your, you can find a local air conditioning company that has a customer service program where maybe they come out twice a year for anywhere from $75 to $150 each visit to check the functionality of your system. You can ask them to take photos. A lot of times, that’s what I recommend is to have them take photos, don’t just rely on their opinion. But of the evaporator coil. I mean, that’s cheap maintenance compared to do I have to replace my ductwork now because there’s mold going in it. 

Now, all of a sudden we’re talking real numbers. And then the next thing you’re gonna worry about is mold contamination in your house. And then you’re gonna have to talk about that cost. The home inspection. I’d love it if you could find a home inspector who is also well versed with CIRS, who’s a mold inspector and knows everything, but likely you don’t have the perfect thing. You probably could do a home inspector though, that might charge anywhere from $4 to $800, depending on the home and the demographic, who can come out to the house and look for areas like did you know that you had a crack in your roof or a flashing that does not have any caulking where points of entry could be identified and addressed before it becomes a big issue and you find out not because you were looking outside, but because all of a sudden, now you have a mold problem inside of your house and you didn’t realize it until it was too late. It’s like prevention. 

These things, even the basement systems to check the crawl space, finding a local company in your area are ways that could not just provide you with an idea, some prevention, but also give you a realistic cost of what it would take to fix these things because most of you that are listening are trying to figure out, can we even afford this, do we even wanna open this book up? The other thing that people look at is you need to find a line in the sand where you’re willing to spend X amount of money before you wanna sell.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

That’s right. 

Michael Schrantz

And that’s something that I don’t like talking about it, ’cause I know it can be uncomfortable for a lot of people, but if it’s gonna cost you legitimately $50,000 to remediate a host of issues in your home and you have $10,000, the math is not adding up. And minus any sort of exterior help and reaching out to friends and family, a lot of people will just want to sell and disclose what they do know about the home and just take that hit because nothing is worse than the continued health problem. That’s number one, that’s always gonna be priority one. And if you’re not getting better, and this constantly is coming back to your home, sometimes you have to make those decisions and it’s not an easy one, and it’s all the more reason for you to work with a professional who can weigh those out with you.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right. So Michael, how can they reach you?

Michael Schrantz

If they’re looking for consulting work, you can go to environmentalanalytics.net, and just go to our contact page and fill out the form there. There there’s an email too, if you wanna do that and just let us know what’s going on and we’ll help you out for sure. If you’re looking for education, maybe you wanna learn a little bit more, I really invite you guys to go to IEPradio.com. The letters IEPradio.com. There’s a host of various topics, including mold remediation, different types of sampling, what you would expect with a good inspector in way more detail than we were able to cover today. It’s all free. And for those of you that are into the, well, what’s the evidence, what’s the references? A lot of people talk, but how do you know? I have a separate references section, so you can kinda see where a lot of all this is coming from to educate yourself if you kinda have that inquiring slash engineering background mindset.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Fantastic. Thank you for doing that.

Michael Schrantz

Absolutely.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

You are such a wealth of information on this. I mean, every time I talk to you, Michael, I am just so happy that you’re out there doing what you’re doing ’cause there are not enough IEPs out there who have your knowledge base. I mean, that’s the truth. I not just saying that.

Michael Schrantz

No, I appreciate it. It’s really tough out there with, the good news is, for those of you listening, is that yes, if we can be of service for you, great. Love to have that relationship, but don’t forget that for those of you that might wanna look, we mentioned earlier, the International Society for Environmentally Acquired Illness. And I want you to know there are others, but this is a quick and easy one to tell you the letters ISEAI.org. If you go to that, ISEAI.org, and go to the get help page, you will find on the left hand side of that screen, a map and a way to look for people in your area. People like me. And even on that same page, you’ll see a document called finding the right IEP, it’s a free PDF. 

Look at at it and read it because at the end of the day, while this has hopefully been enlightening for a lot of you out there, you’re probably not gonna remember every little thing, or you want to have something that you can kinda re go back to. And the IEP committee, which is a group of a lot of professionals like myself, have taken the time to write this paper for you so that you have a way, if you don’t have the quote unquote perfect IEP, but you have, you want to be able to have some discussions and talk and ask the right questions to kinda screen these individuals. That’s a great place to start.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Great. Well, thank you so much, Michael.

Michael Schrantz

You’re welcome. Thank you, Nafysa.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Is there anything else you wanna share with our audience?

Michael Schrantz

The hope piece. I’ll tell you folks, I’ve, offline I was talking with Nafysa a little bit about my own challenges in my own life. And I’ll tell you that I think the biggest thing that’s missing, beyond the good education and the background and the perspective is just that there’s like legit hope out there. If you go online, if you go on social media sites, I’m sure many of you can resonate with this. It’s usually doom and gloom and fear.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Right.

Michael Schrantz

And that is such a horrible way. The times are, it feels like our world’s upside down to me at times with the COVID piece and all of that. But, when you do this right, there are way more success stories than there are failures. And the failures are typically not so much like, oh, we did and it didn’t work. It was more like, we just can’t afford this. And so you look at the challenges of getting through that piece. So even those can turn into a modified success. Just feel relief that it’s not so ominous. 

A lot of people have the tendency to post negative stories, we’re not apt as a human species to post positive stories. So just know that there’s a lot of hope and there’s a lot of great resources out there. And the vast odds are that one way or the other, you’re gonna get to the finish line and move on with your life a lot sooner than maybe you even were thinking.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Exactly. Both Michael and I see this all the time.

Michael Schrantz

Yeah.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

That people’s lives change, and there indeed is hope.

Michael Schrantz

Yeah.

Nafysa Parpia, N.D.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Michael.

Michael Schrantz

Thank you, Nafysa.