Floods, Mold Growth, and What Homeowners Get Wrong

Podcast Intro and Mold Warning 0:00

That's where the black mold scare kind of, you know, enwrapped this country back in the late 1990s when they said stachybotrys was the black mold. And now if you have black mold, you have a big problem. There's also 11 different species of molds that have a black appearance. So just because you see a black mold doesn't mean you have stachybotrys. You actually have to test it to find out. what molds you're working with, otherwise it can be a false, it kind of raises a false alarm towards the hazard related to that particular mold.

You've tried everything. You've changed your diet. You've detoxed. You've even moved homes. And yet, you still feel sick. Headaches, brain fog, fatigue that no one can explain. What if it's not you? What if it's your environment? Welcome to Mold Microtoxins and More. I'm John Bode. Each week, I sit down with experts uncovering how mold, microtoxins, and environmental exposures affect your health and what real recovery looks like. Let's get into today's conversation. The information provided on the Mold Pros podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Listening to the podcast does not create a doctor-patient or professional-client relationship between you and the podcast host, guest, or the Mold Pros. The content shared should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. And always seek the medical advice of your physician or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding the medical condition, potential mold exposure, or health concerns. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast.

And while we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information, we make no representations or warranties of any kind,

Guest Introduction and Career Background 1:51

expressed or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, or suitability of all the information discussed. A guest's experience and outcomes discussed on this podcast are individual cases and should not be considered typical results. Your situation may differ significantly. As always, if you think you have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately. By listening to the Mold Pros podcast, you acknowledge that you understood this disclosure. Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of Mold Microtoxins and More.

I'm your host, John Bodie, and today we have a very special guest, not only a well-recognized peer and expert in the environmental industry, but a guy that I consider to be a good friend. Let me introduce to you Steve Parkhurst with Advanced Building Forensics. Steve, welcome to the show. Thank you, John, that's a very generous opening and introduction. I really appreciate it. I know we've been colleagues and friends for somewhere between 10 to 15 years. Is that an accurate. But at the same time, it just shows how well we've gotten along over the last decade or so and how our synergies between both our personal lives and our professional lives integrate well together.

No doubt, no doubt. Well, we want to share today with our audience, the dozens and dozens of people that are listening today. Steve, we want to teach them a little bit more and talk a little bit more about your company, Advanced Building Forensics. You know, you've built events, building forensics into a powerhouse in Southwest Florida and beyond. Can you walk us through how you got into this field? How did it all start for you? And what led you to become specialized environmental forensics rather than just becoming a traditional mold inspector?

That's a great question, John. Most people do not grow up to be a certified industrial hygienist. It's not on that list. Top career paths that you see in 9th grade that you would aspire to to be an environmental forensic scientist. It's just not on the list. So, my goal in high school and college is to become a biologist, which I ended up with a degree in biology from the University of Cincinnati. After getting out of college, I looked around and thought, what can a biologist do? And I didn't like the career choices.

So I ended up finding this field called industrial hygiene. I fell in love with it because it integrates law, science. unions, corporations, households, just about everything on the planet can fall under this little niche called industrial hygiene, which has a broader appeal in environmental science, which is what I ended up getting a master's degree also from the University of Cincinnati. After that, I followed the path of industrial hygiene and became certified as an industrial hygienist. Probably one of the more difficult examinations known to man, I think it has an attrition rate of somewhere around 70%. And you have to have either an advanced degree such as a master's degree and a degree in the physical sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and or biology.

And then you pass a two-day test, which was a rigorous examination. But after that, you just kind of follow Your, your passions in that particular field, you look what the markets during and back in the eighties as best as tended to be the designer contaminant of that era. So we worked on some of the largest as best as litigation. Projects or cases in the world, there was a W. R. gracious gypsum and national gypsum case that was nationwide. We actually put teams of industrial together. I led a team for about 5 years or so.

And we went across the nation looking at. different buildings, what kind of asbestos materials were in and was there contamination occurring from the sloughing off or the degradation of the asbestos products that were in these buildings. So that's kind of how I got my foot into the litigation support arena. And it was kind of a convoluted, unexpected pathway. I completely enjoyed it and, and thoroughly like the integration of both law and science and how they affect each other. It certainly is multidisciplinary.

You know, you have the, the biological or the, uh, the science side of things and then going back and understanding essentially construction,

Technology for Mold Detection 6:48

right? And how structures are built and that sort of thing. And it's a good combination. Of course you've added, uh, you're an expert witness. for court cases and litigation do a lot of that work. So there's a lot of things. You're not siloed in being really good at one thing. You know, when I was looking at your website, it mentions that, you know, you use tools like DNA analysis and infrared thermal imaging. And, you know, that's kind of the same stuff that CIS investigators use, right? So you've been doing this for a long time.

How has technology changed the game for identifying hidden mold and moisture issues that a lot of traditional visual inspections or standard mold remediation or mold inspection would miss? Well, just in the past 20 years, John, you look at what we had in the 90s with regards to how did we detect mold that was airborne. We used to set up Petri dishes, if you remember that technology. The Petri dishes would sit there for a couple hours, and then you'd send them off to a lab, and the lab would allow them to grow for seven to 10 days.

So that was our analytical method for actually detecting airborne mold. Well, back in the early 2000s, they invented, I think, a man by the name of Dan Baxter, who's now works at EAA. invented the aerosol cassette or the Zephon cassette, and that allows us to measure the spores in the air and actually have a turnaround of anywhere from two hours to 24 hours on airborne mold spore levels. So that really compressed the time from being on site to getting your analysis to understanding the built environments, exposure to mold and not some of the repercussions behind those exposures would be.

So that was a huge technological change. Then we have the advent of infrared thermography. That was borrowed from, I think, the military industrial complex. They used it first. They had it on helicopters, looking for bad guys in the fords, because their body would light up like an orange candle in the middle of the night, so then they'd know exactly where to pinpoint the enemy. While we use the same technology, it's just a little less sophisticated than the military. I think Flair is one of the more dominant epigraphographic companies out there, but they designed one for the built environment, which allows us to look at temperature differentials between a wet environment and a dry environment.

And by doing that, we can see a big picture. Just like the warm body that shows up in a forest at night, we see purple images on our infrared camera that might indicate water impact. with something that's damp that needs to be looked at. Otherwise, visually, you couldn't see anything because it's looking at infrared wavelengths, not visual wavelengths, and we're able to detect things that you make that I can't see, or even a moisture meter isn't going to be able to detect until you get very close to it.

You also mentioned DNA. That's also a very new advent. People don't realize DNA analysis, we think that it's been with us for decades, a long time. Well, it actually didn't become pervasive until about 1984. And that's when I think in 1987, it was actually accepted into the courts. It took a while for it to get that type of veracity that we can count on it. And then it started exploding as a diagnostic mechanism so that we can understand some of the genetic issues that are ongoing in the medical practice.

The way we use DNA is by identifying organisms, just like human beings have DNA, so do biological organisms such as mold and bacteria. And we're able to look at the DNA of it and identify it much more accurately and even quicker than we can under a microscope. So there's more certainty to it and it brings much more bulletproof evidence if necessary in a legal setting. Yeah, we use DNA sampling or testing heavily when we need to understand the species of a bull, right? So there's standardized mold testing, of course, a spore trap or surface sample, anything that's going to be direct microscopic exam or looked at underneath the microscope will take us to the genus level and they'll tell us do we have aspergillus or cladosporium or staccobotrys, et cetera, we understand that certain species of those organisms are capable of producing toxins.

And so oftentimes it's helpful to understand, do we have toxigenic or pathogenic fungal species? And that's where we use a lot of DNA testing. Is that the same for you? Yeah, that's exactly right. If you take, for example, a spore trap sample, it takes a gemera called penicillium aspergillus, and it combines these two mold gemera into one cat figure. And the reason that's both helpful and detrimental, it's helpful in the sense that you can get a bigger picture of aspergillus and penicillium but it doesn't tell you what species.

And among these two different genera, I believe there's 160 penicillium species and 200 aspergillus species. So you have somewhere between 350 and 450 different species that are agglomerated into one number, and so the optical methods just aren't able to discern what their species are.

DNA Testing and Species Identification 13:03

So the DNA comes in, particularly in medical situations where you have Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus flavus, and several others which are highly pathogenic, And if you just do a penicillin and aspergillus screen, you don't know if you're there or not, but if you do the DNA analysis, now you can go, aha, we've got aspergillus fumigatus, which could lead to a very severe fungal infection called aspergillus. There's our approach with inspections and I'd be interested to see if you agree, direct microscopic exam is going to be kind of like that broad net.

If we use analogy of net fishing, you're throwing it out there, what you capture is what you capture. Whenever we're doing DNA testing, they have to, at the lab, they load in that DNA probe to say, okay, how much DNA of Aspergillus fumigatus or Aspergillus ocracius do we have? DNA testing or polymerase chain reaction testing, the other nomenclature for it, much more narrow, but much more sensitive and deeper. So standardized mold testing, we would think is more broad, but more shallow because it doesn't get down to the species level.

And then that DNA testing, narrow and much deeper. Would you agree with that assessment? Yeah, that's a very accurate way of looking at it. I know the The test that the developed back in 2005 by Dr. Steven Vespa. It was called the. environmental relative moldiness index. It's been a little controversial, but at the same time, it kind of paved the way for DNA analysis to be used in the dripped environment. So it actually looks at about 36 different mold species, whereas if you do the optical method, you get about 25 multimera.

So you're right, you get a more granular look. at the data with regards to DNA analysis versus the optimal method. There's uses for both and you just have to know the limitations and the abilities of each method and the purpose of what your data is gonna be used for in order to select which methods is most useful for that moment. You know, if we didn't bore everybody to death, I think a great, if we ever do a follow-up to this, would be actually, what mold test? Each test has its strengths and weaknesses in the proper application.

That's one of the biggest questions I get is, what's the best test? I always say, well, the answer is, well, there isn't one that's simply best. It's what we're trying to understand is plugging in the right test for that. You had mentioned the use of infrared thermal cameras and how it can help pick up moisture issues. You and I are both blessed to live in Southwest Florida, where it's hopefully going to be a nice balmy 80 degrees here in December today. But, you know, we're on the front lines oftentimes when hurricanes or major storms hit.

So I was kind of interested in your perspective. Of course, we have a lot of listeners in the state of Texas as well that gets hit in Louisiana, etc. What are the biggest mistakes, Steve, that you see that property owners make during that critical 24, 48-hour timeframe after a water event? Not necessarily, it didn't have to be a hurricane, but does any kind of water event, and how does that impact long-term mold development? I think the biggest method is they either take too long to start drying, They don't do well on their humidity control.

And to be honest, that's a hard issue to do down here, especially after a catastrophic event, because if you have a flood of anywhere from six inches to two feet of water in your home, that's catastrophic to your home. That's a signal that you need to carefully Understand what's happening to your your home at that moment in time. Some people will turn the air conditioners off, or maybe the energy is not even there because of the storm that that happens in their homes get de energized. But the problem is trying to get the water out of the elevated built environment that's not designed.

To. be water impervious. I mean, everything in your home absorbs water for the most part. So you need to do everything possible to get the humidity down, get the water out. One of the big mistakes I see is they'll start, once the energy comes back up, they'll put dehumidifiers in. Well, if it's past three to five days, there's no value in trying to save the drywall that's on the wall. There's a zero value. I've seen projects where they put these dehumidifiers in for two weeks and the drywall is still left.

There's already mold grown. And I'm going, you just wasted two weeks of time. You need to just cut it out at the four feet mark, get rid of it, open up the wall cavities and start drying the structure at this point.

Water Damage Response and Drying Mistakes 18:30

The other big mistake on a water gun is what do you do with the floor tile? There's always a big controversy between the insurance company and the homeowner about what to do with it. But we also know that the floor tile, we have little instruments that actually measure about three quarters of an inch beneath the tile. And it will tell us if water is trapped in there. The floor may look completely dry. And it may even have a solid feel or sound to it. But if there's water trapped beneath that tile, it really has no place to dry.

It's nearly impossible to dry out. So we usually make the recommendation, once we start detecting moisture beneath the floor tile, to pull it out. Well, some homeowners are in love with their tile. They don't want to pull it out. And I warn them, while it may not detach today or tomorrow, but six months from now or two years from now, The bonding agents used to attach the floor tile to the substrate may often detach, and they'll start cracking, popping, chipping, and now you've got a mess in your home because the floor is now compromised.

and there's still moisture beneath of it, which will harbor mold and bacteria. Most of these losses too, if you want to get a little deeper into the weeds, we call them different categories by the IA COCS 500. You've cleaned, repainted, and replaced filters, and still, you're not getting better. Headache, fatigue, brain fog? The doctors can't explain it, but your environment can. At The Mold Pros, we specialize in uncovering what's hidden in plain sight. Our environmental testing looks beyond surface mold, identifying bacteria, volatile organic compounds, and even microtoxins in the air that you breathe.

Then we correlate those results with your clinical data, showing how your space may be affecting your health. Next, we use our patented remediation process to safely remove toxins, restore balance, and prevent them from returning. It's more than just a cleanup. It's a science-based system designed to help your body heal by healing the environment first. If you're ready to breathe freely again, visit TheMoldPros.com and schedule your free consultation. Because wellness doesn't start in the doctor's office, it starts where you live.

So you have different categories of water contamination or bacterial contamination in the water. Category one is a nomenclature that we use when it's like a potable water release. Fresh water, maybe out of a drinking water. Category two is water that is perhaps from a roof leak or from a can be from a sanitary source like a dishwasher, a washing machine, where there's something mixed in. And category three is, we call it a black water. It doesn't have to be black, but it usually can be discolored.

But that's usually where you get the pathogens. All floodwaters are considered category three. Water that sits for more than several days can now start growing, tearing mold in it. That becomes category three. So now you get that category three water trap below your floor. What are you going to do with it? So we usually test for it. I think every test I've only taken after a flood. So you have category three water trapped beneath the floor. It will actually tip up a piece of tile, a collective sample from the substrate.

And it always comes back with E. coliform bacteria, esteracea, coli. These are all contaminants that indicate fecal contamination. Then you can get salmonella and Bacillus serius and some other very significant pathogens trapped beneath there as well. Yeah, that's what, when we have these events, we get the calls. Everybody, you know, after three or four days, you may see mold growth. You can see it. You can oftentimes smell it if the microbial vulva organic compounds are, are cranking up, but people don't really think about some of the other pathogens as they're the endotoxins.

you know, from bacteria that can thrive in those environments as well. You're not a clinician or a practitioner in that way, but what kind of, since we've kind of gone down that path for some of these bacterial exposures, in addition to some of those biotoxic exposures, are there any health implications that people should be aware of in general when they have these water events? Well, sure. Yeah, you definitely would recommend someone wearing an N95 into that environment that we all became familiar with N95 respirators during the COVID era because everybody wore those as a means to protect against viral components.

They do a much better job with bacteria mold because the bacteria mold particles are much larger than virus particles. So they do a great job at protecting our respiratory system. The other thing you'd want to do is wear gloves and maybe have some disposable shoes on. If you're doing the remediation side of it, then you really want to suit up into Uh, you know, a tie back overall have have maybe even a better respiratory system. That has canisters on it as opposed to Justin in 95. You know, dust respirator.

That's a little bit more of a serious. I think your, your company, the mold pros gets more into. The personal protective equipment for. remediation contractors, the homeowners, especially if they have mold allergies, they should avoid the environment. If they have a compromised immune system, stay clear. If they're on chemotherapy medications, absolutely do not go into these environments. We had a very interesting case several years ago where a very, we'll say high profile person in the Naples area had one mold consultant come in and found

Category 3 Water and Health Risks 25:00

very high levels of mold spores in her unit. And it was about 25,000 was the count, if I recall correctly, which is... about 25 times higher than normal. Her partner was on chemotherapy medication for a brain tumor. And so she was very concerned about what was causing this. Well, she fired her first mold inspector. This is when a CIH may be more appropriate than a typical mold assessor. She fired her first one because they couldn't find a source. I spent about six hours looking at HVAC systems, looking at the water systems.

And on my way out the door, we took all kinds of samples. On my way out the door, I noticed this client had a plethora of fresh water plants in her home. And I looked at the base of these plants, and I noticed a green film that was on top of the water, and I thought, well, that's interesting. So I took a swab out of one of the plants, sent it for analysis, and it came back loaded with bacteria, biofilms, and aspergillus fumigatus. Really? Yeah. So I told my client, she called me a couple of days later, I called her with the results, and I said, man, you need to start thinking like a man.

And she's like, what are you talking about? I said, buy silk plants. And she's like, you're nuts. She's like, well, she goes, you know, I'll consider that, but let me get back with you on that. So I don't know what she was gonna do to consider, but she called me back three days later and she goes, Steve, You don't know this, but I'm on the board of Tulane University's Medical College, and I consulted with three PhDMDs about the problem you found in my house. And they all agreed with you, get rid of the plants.

And she explained that they all said every hospital environment that you go into, they do not permit fresh plants, flowers, anything organic to grow because of mold, pollen, and bacteria that they bring into the hospital environment. So I felt very nervous initially about it that she kind of gave me the consolation that I had some pretty powerful scientists behind me that agreed with my recommendation. So that was kind of one of those moments where you have to think outside the box And a normal mold inspector is just going to check your standard stuff, but someone with.

45 years of experience, the masters degree, they're going to think a little bit more deeper into. More complex problem that you might be experiencing. Yeah, yeah, we call there's a lot of mold inspectors. Bold inspectors and air quotes, right? That come in, we call them pump chockeys. They come in and they're there for 30 minutes. They grab a couple of air samples, do an exterior baseline and leave. And that's always a big challenge because if you're making decisions based to, you know, on your home, arguably the largest asset that many people own.

Or certainly from a health perspective, you know, you're making assessments on potentially bad data. And we always have the mindset that bad data is worse than no data oftentimes. And so that's an interesting case. What are some of the other things, you know, as a certified industrial hygienist, your approach was obviously different. a little deeper than some. But what are some of the other things that you see that oftentimes gets overlooked from a standard mold assessor? Well, just like in any profession, you have different varying degrees of competency.

And a standard mold assessor, maybe they came from the construction industry. Maybe they had a little bit of experience with building. I know one guy in particular that was in the construction industry and then his boss said, we've got a water damage problem, go figure it out. And he got into the field that way and he's actually been very successful. But again, most people don't grow up to be a mold assessor. You don't have that on your resume is something you aspire to. And most people just kind of morph into the field out of cause, necessity or curiosity.

If they're if they're ambitious about what they want to do, then they go into another level of professionalism. And that's where we are where we look at things in the built environment versus just as. You know, a mold issue or water damage issue, we try to take in a holistic. Approach towards what's going on and the dynamics of this environment that are. Not managing the moisture well that are not.

PPE and High-Risk Exposure Cases 30:30

Keeping the humidity levels down or where did this water come from? What's the water source? So we can identify the potential health concerns related to that particular water source. How long has it been there? Because that length of time mold has something called a water activity level. And when you're at low water activity levels, you have certain molds that grow, but when you're at high water activity levels, you have other molds that grow. Such as stacky botchus and catomium and Fusilium. And all of these tertiary colonizers produce more.

toxigenic things such as microtoxins. And that's where the black mold scare kind of, you know, enwrapped this country back in the late 1990s when they said stachybotus was the black mold. And now if you have black mold, you have a big problem. Well, that can be true, but there's also 11 different species of molds that have a black appearance. So just because you see a black mold doesn't mean you have stachybotrys, you actually have to test it to find out what mold genera that you're working with, otherwise it can be a false, it kind of raises a false alarm towards the hazard related to that particular mold exposure.

Yeah, there's a European paper by Dr. Christian Nelson, I believe, that talks about it's a study on indoor molds. And just because you may have a toxigenic species doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be producing those toxins. So you can have stachybotrys chartrum and not have the trichothesines being produced because according to this study you don't have the right environmental conditions that whether it's temperature or water activity or food source or even other microorganisms that contribute to whether those species produce toxins or not.

I'm not sure they have a full understanding on why molds produce micro toxins under what circumstances. I know I saw one study about five years ago that showed about 67% of the time they do produce micro toxins. 33% of the leg on, we don't know why they didn't. So I guess based on that, you can assume you most likely have mycotoxins if you have stachybotrys, at least 67% of the time, the probability to be it's most likely there. But there is a way, I mean, the mycotoxins are a very controversial issue because they're kind of hard to measure.

It seems like the analytical process is both an art and a science, and I'm not a laboratory chemist or technician, but I know people that are, and there was a lot of different methods to do it. The courts have been ambivalent, if not problematic when it comes to working at microtoxin Microtoxin exposure, whether it's a biological specimen or an environmental specimen that's submitted for analysis, I've seen cases where microtoxins are accepted by the courts and I've seen other cases where they're rejected by the courts and the data is actually dismissed.

So if you're going to go down a microtoxin legal pathway for some personal injury or exposure, you better have a CIH, a good doctor, and a strong laboratory supporting your case. Otherwise, you're most likely going to get dismissed or some of your data is going to get dismissed out of the courts. You do a fair amount, as we mentioned earlier, of expert witness testimony. And I think you've been involved with hundreds of cases. And if I remember correctly, you have over a 90% success rate, if that's accurate.

We've got 95%. Yeah, we do very good in the legal setting. I like to tell my clients the majority of our cases settle shortly after our deposition. The reason is when you're doing depositions, the other side is trying to figure out how good of an expert this guy is. Is he going to crumble on the stand? Can he handle some of the back and forth and tension that's created in the deposition? Is he knowledgeable? How good of an expert is he? Like I said, most of them settle shortly after our deposition just because they realize We're not going to crumble on the stand.

We're going to provide expert testimony that supports our opinions. Our opinions are based, in fact, in science, and they're not just speculative, anecdotal opinions that are easily dismantled. So we do very well with the expert witness work. It's not something most CIHs do. I'd say maybe 10% of us actually go down that path. Another only 10%, the C.I.H. is kind of in a category of, most of us grew up in industry. So we had, they call us an industrial hygienist. So we were looking at chemical exposures.

And that's what I did for the first 20 years of my career. And it wasn't until the late 1990s that we started seeing The built environment having, you know, we timed up all the buildings right in the 70s and 80s. We time the buildings up and then all of a sudden we had building syndrome and that caused mold growth and bacteria within the building confines.

Black Mold Myths and Mycotoxin Testing 36:30

And that's where the industrial hygienists kind of morphed into the biological side of the equation more than the chemical side. And so many industrial hygienists didn't make that transition. I was one in the dead. And just kind of followed the industry patterns and trends. And I'm glad I did at this point, for sure. We talk about all the litigation work and oftentimes that involves, especially after storms, what insurance companies want to pay for and what needs to be done for a really proper remediation.

So what have, I guess, what have you gleaned from all the expert witness testimony work that you've done, et cetera, how to kind of bridge that gap? The first advice I give my clients is buy a mold rider. Most of your insurance policies have a $10,000 cap when it comes to mold in your home, and they don't cost too much more to get a $25,000 or $50,000 mold rider. Otherwise they're going to cap here $10,000 and you and I both know my studies alone run anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000 depending on the size of the home.

Remediation usually starts at $10,000 and goes up to hundreds of thousands of dollars again depending on the home. So, depending on the size of the house, we'd say, at least get a bull rider of somewhere between $25,000 to $50,000. Talk to an insurance agent based on the value of your property to know what's a good number for your home environment, same with your business environment as well. Beyond that, And I don't try to disparage the insurance industry, but they don't always look that hard for the damages related to whether it's water damage or fire damage or whatever the issue is.

And so they sit down a guy that may be fairly competent, but they don't spend the time in a home that, you know, such as what you and I might spend because we're actually there not to cover a claim, we're actually there because we know our client has to reside in this environment for the rest of their life, perhaps, and we need to know what their medical conditions are, we need to know if there's infants, we need to know the circumstances of their family, and we're going to take all of that into consideration when we develop a protocol in the standard of care that needs to be applied to that particular residential setting or commercial setting.

So we're going to be far more thorough, far more competent, far more diligent in identifying the water impacted in multi-building materials than what a standard, what insurance might send out to do as a court review just for claim adjustment. So we want to make sure that when you move back into the home, that I would put my own family into that home, not just somebody else's family that I don't know. So I always ask that question. sons and daughters in this house, you know, when I say it's clean and it's ready to go.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I've always viewed you as as, you know, a specialist in what you do, you always have really interesting projects that you're working on. And certainly just a wealth of knowledge. For the listeners today, if you can maybe opine on when is a good time to hire a certified industrial hygienist such as yourself? And I guess conversely, when does it make less sense, quite candidly, to bring you aboard? That's a great question because you don't need a CIH on a little plumbing failure or maybe your washing machine leaked and now you've got a laundry room and an adjacent room.

Probably don't need a CIH, a good competent molding sector, water damage specialist can define that project and do a competent job for you. Where the CIH really comes in is Are there medical issues at stake? Are there legal issues at stake? How big is the claim? The claim is less than twenty five thousand dollars. It's probably not valuable to bring a CIH in because we're going to cost three to five thousand dollars just to do whatever we do. If it's something where there's $100,000 involved, a million dollars involved in a claim, absolutely.

That's when the stakes are high, the medical issues are significant, the legal issues are paramount, and you want to know with certainty Now beyond I guess the legal standard is the propensity of the evidence for several cases. We try to go one step further and go to the preponderance of the evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard that that's a criminal standard versus a. of civil standard, but we try to build the strongest case possible with legally defensible data and opinions that hold up in court and are able to win

Expert Witness Work and When to Hire a CIH 42:00

our cases with far more veracity, far more legitimacy and competency. And if that's what you need, then that's when you need to hire a CIH. But make sure you interview the CIHs. There's maybe 10,000 of us in the world. We're usually an educated group. I think 25% of the CIHs have a PhD. Another 25% have a master's degree like I do. And then the balance of them have a degree in physics, chemistry, engineering, or biology. But you need to have a CIH that understands your specific issue. And if they don't understand your issue, then they're like an attorney.

We kind of niche our markets, and we do phenomenal fire, chemical exposures, and mold. But there are there are cases where I say, I'm just not a good fit for that. You know, please find somebody else see what's the best way. To reach out to you while we have a website. Obviously, they can get a hold of us through the mold process where we've got a great relationship there, but we do have our own advanced building friends. It's website. You can Google us, we've got advanced building forensics. Also, my cell phone number is 239-220-6190 and then we have a hard line that comes in at 239-676-1104.

I think on our website too, you can actually email us through the website and contact us there and we'll respond. We usually respond to everything within 24 hours. We try to sensitive to our clients' demands and help them out. Very good. Yeah, as you pointed out, they could also reach out to info at themoldpros.com and we can help direct traffic that way as well. Really appreciate you carving out time. I think the information is valuable. Man, you and I can always talk for hours around this. We're passionate about what we do.

Our goal should be one of these days on career day that the kids ask their fathers to come in because they're actually mold assessors and it's a. Well, we definitely should do this again. This has been. An interesting format for me, I don't do this very often. I've done over 100 depositions. 12 trials and 500 or more litigation support cases. But the podcast is a new media environment for me. So I hope. I hope we can continue during this particular format again. I think it seems to be very effective and.

And enjoy the enjoy the dialogue back and forth. It's nice being energy by somebody. That actually knows mold and has. Similar experiences and and approaches towards. You know, trying to create a safe. healthy environment for our listeners. All right. We'll get you back on really, really as soon as we can, as soon as the schedules will allow. Well, thanks everyone for listening to mold, mycotoxins and more. I'm your host, John Bodie, and we look forward to talking with you again next week. Thanks.

You've been listening to mold, mycotoxins and more with John Bodie. If you're ready to take the next step towards a healthier home, follow the show and visit TheMoldPros.com for your free consultation. Because clean air is the first step to true healing.