Mold Testing & Remediation for Home Healing

Brian Karr

Hey, how’s it going? Thanks for having me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It’s so good. I brought you onto this summit because we’re having a big discussion about mycotoxins and mold and how they just sabotage your cells, your mitochondria. I mean, mold seriously, if it’s in your body, it’s trying to kill you. And this is something that is really, really relevant right now. We know that, Erin, you’ll give me the statistics, but you’ll gimme the statistics on how many buildings are actually infected with mold. So you are an indoor environmental consultant, you specialize in working with hypersensitive people with complex medical conditions, and you help ’em understand if mold mycotoxins or other indoor pathogens exist in their homes, and those things may be contributing to their health conditions, and then you show them how to remedy those issues. So this is a really big deal to have you here.

Brian Karr

I feel like I need you to be like my hype man that like introduces me to everybody. I’m pumped to talk now.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Happy to do it, but I have even more information about you. You’re the co-founder of We Inspect. I do send my own clients to your Instagram. You’re the creator of a program called moldfinders. And the program teaches students how to identify and remove mold and mycotoxins from their homes. Hallelujah, this is what people need to do. This is so they can get healthy again. So we’re gonna get into it deep. You are part of the solution, sir .

Brian Karr

Honestly, I just need you to talk to me every morning and get me pumped for the day. This is amazing. Thank you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

All right. So first off, where I want to start with this and I hear this all the time from my patients, my clients, I’ll suggest to them, “I’d like to do some mold testing on you, I’d like to see if you have mycotoxins in your system, ’cause you could have been exposed to them at any point in your life and they’re still in your body and they’re hurting you.” And the thing that I hear the most is, “I don’t have mold in my house. I’m positive I don’t have mold in my house.” I cannot tell you how often I hear this. So let’s talk about that statement and let’s shed some light on how common this problem is and how it might go missed.

Brian Karr

Yeah. I think when people get this idea like, oh, we think you might have mold in your house or something like that, this happens a lot when a doctor tells the patient like, “I think we should look into this.” The first response is this defense mechanism. And in their mind, they’re like, “Oh, mold must mean I don’t keep a clean house or there’s something wrong with me or I’m doing something wrong, and they’re like attacking the way that I handle my house,” which is not at all what you’re doing, right? But that’s like the first thought that a lot of people get. So the immediate response is, “I don’t have that ’cause that’s gross and that’s whatever,” that’s how they come in. Then the second thing is that most people, most mold is invisible, right? So the only way for us, you know, for people, whether it’s marketers or this or that or the mold cleaning tile spray companies, all these people, is to show images of mold in like super microscoped ways to make it seem super massive and gross. Or you see pictures on the internet, randomly you just type in like mold in my house, and you’ll see like this whole wall is just black all over it. That never happens. 

So a lot of us are like, “Well my walls aren’t covered in this stuff so I don’t have it.” And the biggest thing to wrap people’s head around is that you can’t see this stuff. And most of it, literally most of it in every house we go into is hidden behind a wall, above a ceiling, in a cabinet somewhere, and visibly you can’t see it. And the thing that I tell people a lot all the time is the secret to finding hidden mold in your house is to actually not look for mold, it’s to look for signs of water damage. Because those are the things that our eyes are capable of seeing. Mold is so small that microscopically we can’t see it. And so for us to think that we can see it, we can’t. Think of it like a virus. We’ve obviously had this huge virus thing happening, but there’s been people getting sick forever. You can’t see this stuff floating around, but you know that if it gets you, you get sick. And so to think that like mold hiding behind places, you have to see it to impact you, it doesn’t work that way.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. So it’s invisible, it’s oftentimes odorless, it’s hidden, we don’t know it’s there. So give me some statistics. How many buildings in the United States, and let’s just say North America, we’ve got a lot of Canadians watching, you’ve got all Australians watching too. So how many buildings are infected with mold? I’m scared to hear it.

Brian Karr

I only have US stuff in my head, so I don’t know other countries, I’ll roll off of that. EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, US, they estimate that 50% of watered buildings have some sort of water damage, that’s what they say. So here’s the thing. Mold needs a couple things to happen. It needs a food source, your entire house is its food source. Like literally everything in your house is food source for mold to grow on. So you can’t fix that. It needs the right temperature for it to thrive. The temperature that we are comfortable living at is the temperature that mold is. So unless you’re gonna like burn yourself out at like 100 degrees in your house and not live there, you can’t do anything about that either. Those are two things that we can’t address. The third thing is water. So just think of it like watering a seed, that’s what’s happening. Now, that’s the piece that we can control. Now one of the biggest misconceptions in the mold world and like local inspectors and all these people that will come in, they’ll come in and be like, “Oh, well everything’s dry, so there can’t be mold. There’s no active water anywhere. Mold needs water to grow. The formula is this plus this plus water, and that’s how you get mold.” And they’re like, “Well, there’s no water, there can’t be mold.” It doesn’t work like that. It really means that water just has to have been there at some point in time ever.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, it doesn’t have to currently be there.

Brian Karr

Correct. So think of it like this, you have a plant in your yard somewhere, you stop watering the plant. Does the plant like pick up its roots and go run away looking for new water? No, it grows, it gets all brittle and it basically folds in half and it’s dry, but it’s still there. Now the problem with that, think of this like if you ever got a flower. So whoever’s listening, if you either received a flower from somebody or you gave someone a flower, you’re dating, it’s like my wife, I bought her all these flowers. So when she got them, she would hang them upside down on the wall. You know how like you could do that, you would like save the flowers. Well, what happens to those? They dry out, that’s why you do it that way. If you do it the other way, they break when they fold over and they dry out, right? So you hang ’em upside down and preserve them. Imagine your mold colonies are like these flowers. So one day I go into her room when we were dating and there’s like freaking 15 of these things and I’m like, feels kind of like death in here, there’s like all these dead flowers. I’m just gonna go get rid of them. I’m like, you know what? I think I’m in. 

We’re good, I think we’re in a good spot now. I go grab the flowers, they shatter in my hand. Pieces of flower petals and all this stuff flies all over the room. It’s in the carpeting, it’s in her bedding, it’s in like all this stuff, it took me forever to try to get this stuff out of the house. Take that microscopic size, I had a leak 10 years ago, mold grew, the water went away, it dried out like the flower, and now anytime an air current flies by that colony, anytime you bump the wall where it is, anytime you turn on air conditioning or any of these things that changes your airflow in your house, it breaks pieces off of it the same way that I did when I grabbed that flower. So this is the biggest thing that people need to wrap their head around this myth is that the water thing isn’t right now, the water thing is ever. And if something grew as a result of that leak, I had to leak under a sink, we fixed the leak in the sink. Well, the cabinet was all water damaged, we didn’t do anything, we just dried it out. You have a good chance that there’s mold in your cabinet underneath the bottom.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, big question. This is what’s coming to mind now. So the mold colony is no longer growing because it doesn’t have a water source, however, what I’m hearing, I think if I’m reading between the lines here is, it’s still toxic. If you inhale that dried out mold, it’s still toxic to you.

Brian Karr

Yeah, and actually the phrase toxic is interesting. So a lot of people hear toxic mold, and that’s kind of where we wrap our head around. We’re talking, mycotoxins. What it means is that pieces of that colony, even though it’s not actively growing, can break off and we can breathe it in. And that can trigger immune responses. And whether or not it’s toxic depends on whether or not that colony at some point created the mycotoxin when it was alive. So the way mycotoxins work, say it’s you’re colony, it doesn’t like spit them out like that, it covers the colony like lava over a volcano. Kind of creates like a toxic moat, it’s a defense mechanism, any other mold or bacteria kills it to keep its territory, that’s what it does. So let’s say this whole thing got covered in toxin, water goes away, dries out, gets super brittle, now the pieces break off of it like we described, those pieces are covered in the toxin ’cause the toxin doesn’t go away, it’s a chemicals, it’s not a living thing. The toxin has nothing to do with active water, the toxin is a chemical spill that happened, and those chemical spills can last for years and years and years and years. So as the particles break off, if the toxin was created, it’s wrapped those particles and the toxin, comes off, that’s how we breathe it in and that’s how it gets us.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. Got it. We have lots of experts coming in here on this summit, talking about what happens when mycotoxins get in your body, what happens to your mitochondria, what happens with chronic illness, inflammation. So go watch those interviews ’cause right now what we’re focusing on with Brian is how to get rid of it. How to find it and how to get rid of it. ‘Cause this is what everyone wants to know. We’ve established a lot of myths right now about what mold is and where it lives and how it’s there that you might not know it’s there. So now can you talk about what can you do to find it? Because there’s a lot of tests out there. What tests are worth it, what tests are not, what should you steer away from, what’s a money trap?

Brian Karr

We got a lot. We might go more than a half hour here.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So Brian, here’s the deal, high level overview because we’ll make sure everybody knows how to get ahold of you and find your stuff by the time they’re done watching this video, okay?

Brian Karr

All right. So the basics. One of the biggest myths is somebody coming in and saying they’re gonna do an air quality test with an air sample in the middle of a room somewhere. This is what pretty much every local inspector everywhere is gonna do. They’re gonna come in, they’re gonna take an air sampling pump, stick it in the middle of the room, about breathing height, they’re gonna be like, “Oh, it’s about breathing height, ’cause this is where you breathe, and this is how you do this, right?” And they’re gonna take this air sample and this is what they’re gonna do. I ran an internal study on this for a year in every house that we went into. To fast forward, you get a 70% false negative when you do that. So the thing with air samples, the further away from the source that you get with air samples, they get exponentially less effective. So the way I did this is like, if I was in a room and let’s say this wall, I thought that there was a mold problem in this wall, I’ll get to why I thought in a second, I thought there was a mold problem in this wall. The way that you test this is you do what’s called a cavity test in this wall. A little hole in it, put a tube in the wall, connect it to an air sampling pump, you collect air from behind this wall. That’s where it’s hiding. You get right to the source to figure it out. Air samples are the best for that. That’s what they’re good for. The further away you move from this, the less and less and less effective they get. In these things I came and I stood two, three feet away from this wall, took this sample, took this sample. 70% of the time this said there was a problem, this said there was not.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay.

Brian Karr

So what’s happening is that a lot of these local companies are coming in and they don’t understand how all this works, and they’re taking air samples and do a air quality test. If you’re spending money on this, you’re getting false negatives, you’re getting false senses of security, and you’re paying these guys eight, nine, $1,200 to come in and do this, and you’re just burning your money on fire, okay? So that’s the big thing, we can’t rely on air samples in the middles of rooms to tell us, do we have a mold problem or not? So the thing that we have to think about when we’re talking about, do we have an issue? There’s two questions we’re really trying to figure out. Do we generally have an issue at all? And then secondarily, where’s it coming from? Those are kind of the two big things we gotta figure out. Do you have an issue at all? You can start before you dive into doing inspections and stuff, you can start with dust sampling in the house. So dust sampling is effective because what happens is all the particles come down and settle in dust reservoirs in the house. And you’re getting a historical long term picture of whatever’s been circulating in that house when you swipe up a dust area.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Is there a particular dust area that’s better than others? I bet you there is.

Brian Karr

Not really. I mean, when we do them, the goal of that sample is not to isolate like this room is worse than this or this or that, it’s just to understand what’s moving through your house in its entirety. And so like when I go into a room, if I’m doing just a normal sized house, we’re not talking like mansions with wings and stuff like that, you’re just doing a normal house, I’m including the entire house in the sample. ‘Cause again, it’s not about which room, it’s just about what’s here, what’s moving through the airflow. It’s literally like a sweeper cloth. If you’ve ever dusted your house, like that’s what you’re doing, you’re just collecting. So you think like on tops of door frames and pictures and like baseboards and shelves and things like that where dust collects. And that’s done in like an ERMI sample. So people ever heard the word ERMI, that’s kind of what an ERMI sample is, a dust collection, and it’s testing for mold species that are present and you get… Not dive in, but how many are there overall, stuff like that. From that sample, you could get an understanding just do I have a problem in general? So that’s kind of like the starting point for a lot of people before we dive into inspections and deep dives. Someone like you would be like, “Hey, I’m looking at the labs and I feel like that you may have a mold problem going on. 

Let’s do the first step, run an ERMI in your house, let’s just see what it looks like, let’s just see what’s there.” The ERMIs could be a little misleading in results, so we created something called the ERMI Code that can help kind of interpret that for people. ‘Cause a lot of people they see it and it’s like, all these mold names with species and stuff and then there’s like weird numbers and colors, nobody really knows what it means. So we created something called ERMI Code, it’s based on the last three years of the inspections we’ve done and all the testing we’ve done. Long story short, you could plug in your ERMI info and it will tell you, we’ve figured out like an algorithm to go through all of our data, it will tell you like what you can expect on average in terms of how many mold sources are in your house potentially. The frequency of mycotoxins being present in a house that had an ERMI that looked like this and so on and so forth. So you can get like an interpretation like that. And now we’re like, okay, here’s kind of where I’m sitting. I have X number on average, 12 sources in this house, this, this, or that. And you can decide at that point, do I wanna dive deeper and inspect this place? Or if I know that there’s 12 samples or areas of contamination, source level issue in this house, is maybe moving an option? And you kind of walk through that. So the report that comes out of ERMI Code breaks down how to think through that whole process and how to help that. 

So let’s say you do that, you’re like, “Okay, there’s a problem here, we’re deciding we wanna try to figure out what’s going on source wise and what’s happening.” So then the next steps you have to figure out where those are coming from. I use this analogy all the time, that molds like a factory. If you’re driving down the street, see a factory on the side of the road, you can’t see what they’re making inside, there’s walls everywhere, you can’t see what’s inside. Just like in our house, we can’t see behind all this stuff. But out of the top of the factory, there’s smoke stacks. And the byproduct of whatever they’re making in here is getting out into the air and creating air pollution. Say we live down the street, we walk out in our front yard, we breathe in this air pollution. Some people would be like, “Oh, I live in a place with an air pollution problem.” No, not really, I mean, you kind of do, but ultimately you live in a place with a factory problem that’s creating the air pollution. Same concept of like root cause medicine. This is what’s causing air problem, this is how it’s manifested. Like that kind of deal. Then the goal is where are these factories? And so this is kind of the next step. So like I said earlier, the secret to finding this stuff is not looking for mold. If you go through a house looking for mold and you only go through a house looking for active moisture, you’re gonna miss so much, you’re gonna miss it all. So the key is understanding that water was the third part of that equation, and we know that water is what will allow a mold issue to grow. 

Well, in a house, there are signs and clues that there’s been a water issue that’s impacted something. Think, you look up and there’s like a stain on the ceiling. That’s an easy one, right? But also think like maybe bubbling paint or something like that. You’re looking under a window and like, why is this paint bubbling under here? Like this stuff doesn’t happen for no reason. So there’s things like that that we do. These are the things that we could visibly see, these are like little red flags waving out of a wall or a cabinet or something like that that says, hey, there’s a good likelihood that there’s a mold issue here. This is where we need to test to see if there is or there isn’t. And then secondarily, how significant is it? Maybe compared to everything else, so you could start thinking through prioritizing remediation. So the way that we go through the house, we’re spending four or five hours in a house. We’re not coming and taking air samples and leaving in a half hour, 45 minutes. Every room, every closet, crawl space, attic, air conditioning systems, everything, looking for these five signs of hidden mold growth of water damage as we go through. So you have like buckling, which is like a floor’s warping or something like that. 

That’s a sign that maybe water gone in. I’ll just run through them. So there’s that, there’s staining, which is obviously obvious, a water stain, something like that. Bubbling paint, there’s another one that we just talked about. Cracking and separating. So think like if a baseboard is like pulling off of a wall like why is it pulling off? Typically if water gets in the baseboard, it starts to swell and it causes it to pull off. So like if you’re seeing things that are looking like that, that’s another clue. And the last thing is like mineral deposits or chemical reactions. So think like rust. Think that white powdery stuff that you see in your basement on the wall, on the sides of the concrete walls, that means that water has gotten in there at some point. This is it. These are the five signs of water damage. If you know what these look like, you can literally walk through your whole house and look for these things. And that’s how you pinpoint where you think sources are. Then we source test directly at source to figure out if it’s a factory or not, and now we’re building out like a blueprint of what’s happening at a source level, how it’s migrating and moving through the house, which is what the dust collection stuff does, and now we can actually put a plan together to remediate it and fix it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so let’s talk about remediation. So let’s say you’ve identified mold. Now what happens? Can you actually clean up someone’s home? Do they have to move out of it? What do they have to go through?

Brian Karr

Yeah, can it be done? 100%. I’ve seen it done a bunch of times. Now, there’s only two reasons that remediation doesn’t work. The first is you didn’t find all the sources. So a lot of times, and this is usually the biggest problem, so we didn’t find the factory. So you’ll have remediators will come in and they’re like… Somebody just sent me an email with this, it’s a client, “They said they have some no demolition process of remediation, what do you think?” Like if they’re not demoing anything, that means they’re not remediating and removing any sources, they’re coming in and they’re fogging and spraying some magic solution that’s gonna fix everything. That’s what they’re gonna do. So many remediators will do this. So the biggest thing you need to be on the lookout for, because it sounds easier for one, you don’t have to leave, you don’t have to open a wall where there might be hole behind the wall, you don’t have to do any of this stuff, and then these people will sell you on the fact, it has all this amazing technology and the enzyme does this and that or the other. And a lot of people fall for it, ’cause it just sounds like there’s technology and it’s easier, and they do that. The problem with that is this stuff doesn’t get behind where the sources are. So you’re basically just spraying the inside of the house. What typically happens in that scenario is that people might feel better for a month or so because you kind of cleaned up all the smoke that was there, you got rid of it, but then the factory is still pumping smoke out. 

And then the smoke builds up and then they start getting sick again. The one biggest reason that remediation doesn’t work is that you didn’t find all the sources. If you don’t find the sources, it’s gonna keep coming. So that’s the first one. The second one is that the process just isn’t good. What they’re doing, it just isn’t good. And so there’s a couple reasons for this. The biggest thing in process that’s the problem is that remediators, for whatever reason, don’t actually wanna remove the source. They don’t want to do it. Probably ’cause it’s more expensive for them and it takes more time, they can’t do as many projects if they’re doing more work. But the reality is, if I have a mold problem that’s behind this wall and there’s nothing on the surface, how do you get to it? You have to take the wall out to get to it. And then secondarily, the other big mistake that happens a lot, and by the way, I won’t go through all of ’em, but I have this free download called Remediation Mistakes, it’s 10 most common remediation mistakes, so it’s like a list of these things to make sure your remediators aren’t screwing stuff up. So people can like grab that and they can go through all of them. But the other big thing that happens, let’s say they remove the wall and they’re like, “Okay, all good, put a new wall on.” Well, there’s wood framing back here, there’s stuff back here, so mold grows on like the structural stuff and then they don’t actually clean that, but you put new drywall on and all of a sudden there’s no more water damage on it, it’s a new piece of drywall and people think, “Oh I got it removed and replaced.” But they just kept all of the other stuff back here and it continues to pump out and it’s another factory.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Let me just ask real quick, so let’s say it is on the framing of the house. I know I’ve seen at Home Depot and stuff, something called Kills, does that work? Do you paint all the wood with this?

Brian Karr

Good question.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

How do you do that?

Brian Karr

So some remediation companies will want to do that. They’ll come in, they’ll be like, “I’m just gonna spray this magic stuff.” Listen, anytime somebody says I’m spraying something that’s gonna fix everything, just immediately be like, no, that doesn’t work. So basically what you need to do, you don’t have to replace framing most times, the only time you ever need to replace it is if it’s like structurally damaged, like the integrity of it is damaged. As more of like an engineering type of problem. But most times really what you need to do first is you’re gonna need to like sand it or wire brush it. When mold grows, if this is your wood, mold has roots. Roots go in, okay? So even if you just clean the surface here on this front side, all the roots are still in there and there’s still a problem there. So what you need to do is basically sand and wire brush it down to where you’re getting down and you’re getting all the roots out and it’s gone. And so you’re getting rid of the growth that’s in a piece of wood. You can sand a decent amount or wire brush a decent amount out of wood and not impact its structural integrity. So that’s the first thing. You wanna get rid of the growth out of it. Then you can do a wipe down with an antimicrobial like disinfectant afterwards. Benefect Decon 30 is my favorite. It’s a botanical blend so there’s not a lot of synthetic chemical in it, it’s an essential oil kind of focus type of thing, antimicrobial, antibacterial. So you basically get rid of the growth by sanding, wire brushing, abrasive action like that, then you wipe it down with like an antimicrobial like that. And then if they want to put it in a capsule and spray over it, more power to ’em, you can do that. But you can’t do that first because if you do, the problems will still stay there.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So what comes to mind here is, people who do this for a living are seriously in danger. You’ve gotta wear respirators and protect yourself. I mean, geez.

Brian Karr

Yeah. Listen, I’ve been doing it for a long time. I got mycotoxin issues, I’ve got issues, I have skin issues, I have all the things that happen.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Ryan, I know some people. There’s some good people on this summit who can help you.

Brian Karr

I know. Listen, there’s people way worse than me. But it happens and there’s like variations of it, and obviously am working through it with some of the people that I know as well. But the reality is, I’m wearing full coverall suits every time I’ve been in a house for all these years, wearing respirators, wearing this stuff. It’s not 100%. So it is dangerous for people that are going in. And honestly, if you’re interviewing a remediation company and they’re like, “Oh yeah, we just come in and blah, blah, blah,” they like don’t care and they give no Fs about it, then you know they’re not gonna be cleaning your house the right way, they don’t even care about themselves.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Sounds like it’s some pretty detailed, intense work to get behind the wall and find the source, get rid of it at the source. So let’s say you do get rid of it at the source. What about all your stuff? What do you need to do with your belongings that have mold spores and dust all over them?

Brian Karr

So that’s the next thing. Actually by the time that we’re ready to do this, I’ll have it done, so maybe I’ll include this with everything, but I just created a whole How to Clean your Stuff document that we give out to our clients. I’ve been giving out to my clients internally forever, but it’s the biggest question that’s next. You could talk a lot about it, I’ll talk just big picture about it, and if anybody wants it, I’ll just make it available to anybody here for you guys so you guys could look at it. But the way to think about your stuff, you kind of have three categories of items. Anything in your households in one of three categories. Solid, semi-porous, porous. These are the three categories. Everything falls in a variation within here. So solid stuff, you’re talking glass, metal, things that aren’t porous, that can all be cleaned. Semi-porous stuff, some can, some can’t, just kind of depends on what’s going on but for the mold-

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Like wood furniture, is that semi-porous?

Brian Karr

For the most part, semi-porous can be cleaned. The thing that really can’t be cleaned is porous items. But then a subset of that, there’s cushioned porous items. Those are the things that you can’t clean. Think a mattress, a couch cushion, things like that. Now the reason is if you think about what’s happening in your house, you have particle that’s floating around, it settles down on surfaces. Cushioned items, when you lay on your bed or sit on your thing, the pores of the cushion open, particles get into it, closes up when you get off. You could vacuum and wipe and clean the top of that thing as much as you want, but you can’t get into the cushion. So every time you sit on it and every time you do that, it’s gonna constantly pop the stuff up.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, God. I’m having visuals right now. You know what I’m thinking of? I’m thinking of hotels. Ugh.

Brian Karr

Hotels are rough. I was just in a hotel for the last two days, both nights waking up, throat’s bothering me. I knew there were things going on in there, but I was just like, it was an older hotel and I was just limited, and I just found the best room I could. But like this stuff happens. Anyways. But on items. Everything that’s not cushioned and porous, there’s the potential to clean. What you do is you look at what is made out of on this side, solid, semi-porous, porous, and then you look at the value of that item here, think of it like a scale. You look at the value of it on this scale, inexpensive, expensive, sentimental value. So what you do is like, you know that this can be easily cleaned and if it’s something of sentimental value, then you’re like, oh, okay, this is something that’s worth trying to clean. And you plot things out on the chart. So even if something is like semi-solid, let’s say, semi-porous and technically you can clean it, but it’s super cheap to replace, maybe you just wanna replace it. In this document, I have this chart broken down that kind of helps you break stuff down, and then there’s a whole bunch of descriptions on cleaning process, where you do it, when you do it, what products do you use, like all this stuff. That’s something that I can like make available to everybody who’s watching this.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, amazing. So let’s say you go through all this, how do you know remediation was successful?

Brian Karr

This is called post-remediation inspections and testing. So this is super, super important. Some people don’t do it, some people do. I feel like if you’re investing the money in remediation, you need to make sure that it worked before you kind of let them go. Let’s use this wall behind me, for example. Let’s say I did a sample in here initially, this wall was a problem, the remediation was remove this wall and clean everything like we talked about. Here’s what most inspectors will do in a post-inspection. This room would be contained. They would have containment up, they probably have an air scrubbing machine on in here or something cleaning the air. They’ll come in here and they’ll put an air sample right here and they’ll run it. And that air sample almost every time it’ll be like, “Yeah, this room’s great, cool.” It better be great, they have a freaking air scrubber running over here, and it’s still contained and like nothing… Yeah, it better be great right here. The problem is that mold doesn’t grow in the air, mold grows on the surfaces. I don’t know why other people don’t do this, it makes complete logical sense to me, but they don’t do it. Actually I know why, because if it fails, they don’t know how to tell them how to fix it. That’s why they do it. So they do this sample, it’s gonna pass, and then you leave, and you’re like, “Okay, everything’s good.” The problem is, did they actually remove the mold from the framing the way that we talked about before? Is there stuff that’s still there? You do need to do this inner sample by the way, because when you rip stuff out, you’re creating a big aerosolization. So you do need to make sure that all of that got cleaned up. But with these air scrubbing machines in there, it usually does. Now the thing here, these don’t get picked up in this air sample. Again, the further away you are, an air sample, the less effective it is, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Brian Karr

So what you also need to do is swab like surface testing over the remediated framing materials to see if there’s any growth that’s still left there, ’cause again, we can’t see this stuff.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So don’t close the wall up until-

Brian Karr

No, everything has to be open for . Containment still in place, inspector comes in full covers and everything, and they do this, and they do surface testing in here. And I can’t tell you how many times the surface has come back, and it says there’s still a problem there. A client was just doing this the other day, her air sample was fine, surface test. And this is like everything we just talked about. Air sample is fine in the post. What they did in here is they just sprayed the magic spray on everything. So that’s what they did, came in, I’m like, “No, this area that’s dark down here, we gotta test this down here.” Like the way that they did this, swab over that area comes back, there’s Stachybotrys and Chaetomium, both on that swab sample. They’ve magic painted everything, so they think everything’s fine, the air sample comes back fine. And now they’re trying to say, “Well that’s normal, we’re okay with that.” No, like that’s not how this works.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Who regulates this stuff, Brian? Is there any regulation or you just have to trust your remediator?

Brian Karr

There are. There’s language in like the industry standards, which is the IICRC S520 for anyone who wants to go do a very boring read at any point. So there’s stuff in there, but the language is kind of broad. So it talks about mold conditions, and basically there’s condition one, two, three. One is normal, three means there’s a source problem, two means there’s an elevation from a source somewhere else. So that’s kind of what they are. Let’s just focus on one and three. Normal, source problem needs to be fixed, okay? So what has to happen in remediation is if you have a two or a three, it has to be returned to one. So this is how it’s written, it has to be returned to normal. But the definition of normal is not defined. So that’s where people start going back and forth and they start saying, “Well, having two scores of stack is okay, that’s normal.” And you have to like go back and forth on this. So a big piece and something I coach my clients on is that you have to understand what you’re putting in the contracts before you bring in the remediator. Here are the standards that we are going to judge if this is successful or not. This will not be there, this will not be there, this post-testing is gonna happen in this way. If you have all of it in the contract upfront and it’s signed off on, and then they say that they’re basically gonna guarantee their work to get back to condition one, now you can go back and forth and like push that. But you have to do it, you have to be on it and you have to be aware of that, yeah.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, this has been so eyeopening. So as we wrap up, I know we could do a part two. We totally could. But as we wrap up, can you give us… For our viewers who are thinking, “Oh, I might have mold in my house after listening to this,” and especially after they listen to some of the other talks where we’re talking about symptoms of mold sickness, how you know you even might have mold in your body, go listen to those interviews. But what are your tips? What are the top few things that people should do right off the bat? And then we’ll wrap up with you telling us how to get ahold of you.

Brian Karr

The first couple things to do. First, think back on the history of your place. Some of you might not have lived in your place for very long, some of you might have gone to your house for 20 years and some of you are in the middle. Think back over the time that you’ve been there. Has there ever been a leak that you fixed? Has there ever been something that happened that you just kind of dismissed at the time? My garbage disposal was leaking in my cabinet, oh yeah, my dishwasher overflowed that one time but we wiped it out and it was fine. Just like little things that you don’t think was a big deal. Those are all potential spots where there are problems because if there was water once and mold grew, it doesn’t go away. So that’s the first thing, just try to take inventory in your mind, how many of these things even are there that have happened? That’s kind of the first step. The second thing that I would do, if you need some more maybe like visual validation for yourself, open up every sink cabinet that you have in your house. Look to see if there’s any bubbling or warping or peeling paint or anything like that under there. Odds are at least one of the cabinets in your house are gonna have that, it just happens all the time. That’s a visual validation that there’s a potential problem of something going on. So that’s a super easy thing that you can do if you still need like a little extra proof for yourself that there might be something going on. I’m basically telling you where to find something in your house without ever seeing your house or knowing who you’re. So that’s the second thing. Then the third thing that you can do is then do that ERMI sample. So that’s gonna give you an idea of just like the significance and maybe the load of what’s going on in the house. And then if you run that through ERMI Code, it’ll break it down on like what it might look like and how many hidden source factories and stuff that looks like. And now you have a good idea of where you are in your starting point. Now you’re talking to your doctor and your doctor’s like, “I think that you have this, this and this going on,” and then you do this over here and you’re connecting the dots. And so then the next step is to decide, do I wanna move forward and really investigate this or do I maybe want to think about looking for something else? And that’s where we could kind of get involved and sort of help like through that process.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, so good. So now tell us how we get in touch with you and we’ll make sure that that information is viewable for our viewers as well.

Brian Karr

Our website is yesweinspect.com. There’s an application button that says, Apply To Work With Us, just need to learn some info about you, and there’s essentially a consult that we do with you guys and kind of figure out how we can help if we can help what’s going on with you. That’s like the easiest way to figure out how to sort of handle this. If you’re not like, “Oh, I don’t wanna commit that much yet and get on the phone with somebody yet,” our Instagram is @moldfinders like you were saying earlier, we post all kinds of stuff. You can dive into that a little bit and just get a feel for sort of a lot of these concepts and a bunch of other stuff that we didn’t touch on and see if that resonates with you. And then that last thing was the ERMI Code piece. So that’s ermicode.com. So if you do do an ERMI, go to ermicode.com. Super cheap to do it, it’s like 27 bucks. Put in the information from your ERMI and it takes out our algorithm of all of our data from the last three years and tells you like kind of expectations of what-

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

How do you spell ERMI? So people know how to get it.

Brian Karr

E-R-M-I.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. Thank you so much, Brian. This has been so eyeopening. I’m just thinking of all the houses I’ve owned. There’s been water damage in every single one. To a massive level and to small levels. It’s like, water happens. Like, water happens. It’s everywhere .

Brian Karr

It does. And it’s a good point. I mean, people will say like, oh, this happens. And because something happens all the time, I think human nature is you start normalizing it. And we’re like, well, because it happens all the time, it’s like normal. And then normal means okay. Normal doesn’t mean okay, normal just means it happens a lot, right? So things like sinks and stuff like that, we shouldn’t be normalizing those and thinking it’s okay, we should actually be looking at things like that and be more concerned about stuff like that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, our ancestors didn’t have sinks and water pipes. I mean, this is a thing that we created with modern lifestyle. And with that comes the danger. Yes, we want the modern conveniences and that’s something that I talk about a lot. We wanna live with our modern conveniences, we want to have our cell phones, we are exposed to EMFs, for example, we’ve got lots of people talking about EMFs on this summit. We want the modern conveniences, but be responsible to know how to have those modern conveniences safely, and that even includes your home, your modern conveniences in your home.

Brian Karr

Can I say one more thing in closing?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yep.

Brian Karr

A lot of times when we talk about this stuff, people just start getting freaked out, and it could create like anxiety and stress and like fear and this sort of thing. And that’s not the purpose of this. It’s to understand what might be impacting us and to be able to take action on it. And what I will say is, a lot of folks are like, “Oh, this is everywhere, there’s no escaping it, you can’t get around it, you can’t get better.” I have so many clients that get better. So I don’t want you to think that it’s like this thing, “Oh, now every building I’m in has water damage and this and that, there’s no escaping it, I’m just gonna be sick forever and that’s how it goes.” It doesn’t work that way. As long as we have a path and we understand how to get to where we need to go, you can get better. I mean, I saw a kid that was in a wheelchair on a feeding tube, within nine months, be out playing flag football from that. And that was like a dramatic thing, but it was all tied to a massive mold problem in their HVAC system.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And also what I would tie onto that is, yes, and don’t be afraid to travel because you can work with a practitioner who can give you a travel protocol that can support you. If you’re staying in a hotel and you’re getting exposed to mold, you can put binders on board and support your liver detox and glutathione production while you’re traveling and be just fine.

Brian Karr

Yap.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Thank you, Brian. This has been incredible. I really appreciate your time and expertise today.

Brian Karr

Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, you take care. Bye now.