Mold Testing & Remediation for Home Healing

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Okay, here we go. Welcome back to the conversation at the Restore Your Mitochondrial Matrix Summit. I'm your host, Laura, for Ontario. I'm bringing you experts to help you boost your energy and fix your health so you can build the life you love. Today, my special guest is Brian Carr. Hi, Brian. Welcome to the summit. Hey. How's it going? Thanks for having me. It's so good. You know, I brought you on to 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, is 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 give me 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 them 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. I feel like I need you to be like my hype man. That like, introduces me to everybody. I'm pumped to talk now. 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, and you're the creator of a program called Mold Finders. 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 going to get into it deep. You are part of the solution, sir. Honestly, I just need you to talk to me every morning and give me a pump for the day. This is amazing. Okay. Thank you. All right, so first off, where I want to start with this. And I hear this all the time from my from my patients, my clients. I'll do I'll say 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, because 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. Yeah. You know, I think 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 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 because that's gross and that's whatever, right? That's I think then the second thing is that most people, most mold is invisible.

Why Mold Is Often Hidden 3:00

Right? So the only way for us, you know, for people, whether it's marketers or this or that or the, you know, the mold cleaning tile spray company is always people is to show images of mold in like, super microscope ways to make it seem super massive and gross. Or you see pictures on the internet randomly just type in like mold in my house and you'll see, like this whole wall just has black all over it. That never happens, right? So a lot of us are like, oh, 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 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 right.

And so for us to think that we can see it, we can't. And you know, think of it like a virus. We've always 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 if it gets you you get sick. Right. And so to think that like mold hiding behind places, you have to see it to impact you. It doesn't work that way. 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. I've got a lot of Canadians watching, the Australians watching too. So how many how many buildings are infected with mold? What is this? What is this? Oh, I'm. I'm scared to hear it. Yeah. So I only have us stuff in my head, so I don't know other countries a little off of that. So EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, US, they estimate that 50% of water buildings have some sort of water damage. That's what they said. So here's the thing.

The mold needs a couple things to happen. It needs a food source. Your entire house is its food source. Don't think that you're like, literally everything in your house is food source. All right. 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 this. So unless you're going to like burn yourself out at like hundreds of 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. Okay, so just think of it like watering a seed. That's what's happening right 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. No, there's no active water anywhere. So mold needs water to grow. The formula's this plus this plus water. And that's how you get more in.

They're like, well there's no water. There can't be mold. It's not it doesn't work like that. Right? It really means that water just has to have been there at some point in time. Ever. Oh, it doesn't have to currently be there. 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? Yeah. 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 happened. My wife, I bought her all these flowers. So when she got them, she would hang them upside down on the wall. You know, I like you could do that, right? You would, like, save the flowers, right? Well, what happens to those? They dry out. Okay. That's why you do it that way. If you do it the other way, they break when you when they fold over and they dry out. Right?

So you hang them upside down and preserve them. Imagine your mold colonies are like these flowers. Okay. So one day I go into her room when we're dating and there's like frickin 15 of these things. And I'm like, it's like, feels kind of like death in here. There's, like, all these flowers. I'm just going to 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.

Okay? 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 ten years ago. Mold grew, the water went away. It dried out like the flower. And now, any time an air current flies by that colony, anytime you bump the wall where it is, anytime you try an 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 grab 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, right? I had a leak under a sink. I would fix the leak in the sink. Well, the cabinet was all water damage. We didn't do anything. We just tried it out. You have a good chance that there's more than your cabinet over at the bottom. 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 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. Yeah. And actually the phrase toxic is interesting. So like so a lot of people hear toxic mold. Right. 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 in it, 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 micro toxin when it was alive. So the way mycotoxins works is your 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.

How Common Water Damage and Mold Are 9:00

So let's say this whole thing I 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 because the toxin doesn't go away. It's a chemicals, not a living thing. So then 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 pops off.

That's how we breathe it in and that's how it gets us. Okay. Got it. Now 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. Because 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, because this is what everyone wants to know. So all right, so can you. We've established a lot of myths right now about what mold is and where it lives and how it get, how it's there.

And, that you might not know it's there. So now can you talk about, well, 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? We got a lot we might call 1.5 hour here. High level stuff. Right? Here's a 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. All right. So, so the basics, one of the biggest myths is somebody coming in and saying they're going to 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 going to do. They're going to come in and take an air sampling pump, stick it in the middle of the room about breathing height. They're going to be like, oh, it's not breathing high because this is where you breathe and this is how you do this. Right. And they're going to take this air sample. That's what they're going to do. I ran an internal study on this for a year. And every house that we wanted to 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. This wall gets a why? I thought a second I thought there was a mold problem on this wall. The way that you test this is you do it what's called a cavity test in this wall, the little hole in it. Put a tube in the wall connected to an air sampling party.

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 you get. So in these things I came and I stood two, three feet away from this wall, took the sample, took this sample 74% of the time. They said there was a problem. This said there was not. Okay. 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, indoor air quality tests. If you're spending money on this, you're getting false negatives, you're getting false sense 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 now on fire, right? So that's the big thing. We can't rely on air samples and middles of rooms to tell us, do we have a mold problem? Right. 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. Right. And then secondarily where is it coming from. Those are kind of the two big things you've got to figure out. Do you have an issue at all. You can start before you dive in and do an inspections and stop. You can start with dust sampling at 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, is there a particular dust area that's better than others? I'm betcha there is. Oh, 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, you know, 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 and it's not about which room, it's just about what's here, what's going through the airflow. And you just take it's literally like a Swiffer cloth. If you've ever dusted your house like, that's what you're doing. I'm just collecting. So you think like on tops of doorframes and pictures and like, baseboards and shelves and things like that where dust collects, right? And that's going to and that's done in like an early sample. Right. So people ever heard the word hermit.

That's kind of what an early sample. It's a dust collection. And it's testing for mold species that are present and you get to dive into it. But how many are there over all those like stuff like that. From that sample you can get an understanding, just do I have a problem in general? Right. 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 will be like, hey, you know, 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 running our meter house.

Testing Methods and Common False Negatives 14:00

Let's just see what it looks like. Right? Let's just see what's there. Now, the premise could be a little misleading in results. So we created something called the Army Code that can help kind of interpret that for people. Because a lot of people, they see it. It's like all these mold names with species and stuff. And then there's like weird numbers and colors and nobody really knows what it means. So we created something called Army Code is 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 Army info and it will tell you we 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. Right. The frequency of mycotoxins being present in a house, they had an army 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, you know, 12 sources in this house, this, this or that.

And you can decide at that point, do I want to 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 me code breaks down how to think through that whole process and how to help that. Right. So let's say you do that, you're like, okay, there's a problem here. We're deciding. We want to try to figure out what's going on source wise and what's happening.

Right. So then the next step is you have to figure out where those are coming from. So I use this analogy all the time that most like a factory, right. 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, right? There's walls everywhere. You can't see what's inside. Just like our house. We can't see behind all this stuff. Right? But out of the top of the factory, there's smokestacks and the byproduct or whatever they're making in here is getting out into the air and creating air pollution.

Right. So we live down the street, walk out in our front yard. We breathe in this air pollution. Okay. So 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're going to place the factory problem that's creating the air pollution, right? Same concept of like root cause medicine. This is what's causing your problem. This is house manifesting, right? Like that kind of deal. So 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 going to miss so much. You're going to miss it all. So the key is understanding that water was the third part in that equation. And we know that water is what will allow the mold issue to grow. Well in a house. There are signs and clues that there's been a water issued its impact.

It's something think you look up and there's like a stain on the ceiling. That's a suit. That's an easy one. Right. But also think like maybe bubbling paint or something like that. Right. You're looking under a window and like, why is this paint bubbling under here? Like this stuff doesn't happen for no reason, right? So there's things like that that we do. These are the things that we can 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 make, to see if there is or there isn't. And then secondarily, how significant is it maybe compared to everything else. So you can start thinking through prioritizing remediation. So so the way that we go through the house, it's you know, we're spending 4 or 5 hours in a house, we're not coming in and taking our samples and leaving at a half hour or 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 warping or something like that. That's a sign of maybe water down and it's run through them. So there's that. There's staining, which is obviously obvious, a water stain, something like that. Bubbling paint. Right. 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 for something like, why is it pulling off? Right? 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 that are looking like that, that's another clue. And the last thing is, like mineral deposits or chemical reactions. So think like rust. I think that white powdery stuff that you see in your basement on the wall, you know, on the sides of the concrete walls, that means the 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. Okay.

And that's how you pinpoint where you think sources are. Then we source test directly at source to figure out where 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, what the dust collection stuff to us. And now we can actually put a plan together to remediate it. Fixed. Okay. So let's talk about remediation. So let's say you've identified mold. And now what happens I mean can you actually clean up someone's home.

Do they have to move out of it. Do what do they have to go through. Yeah I mean 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 this is usually the biggest problem. So we didn't find the factors. So you'll have remediate errors will come in and they're like hey we I just somebody just sent me an email with this. Like a client. Hey 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 remediate and removing any sources. They're coming in and they're fogging and spraying some magic solution that's going to fix everything. Like that's that's what they're going to do. So many remediation will do this. So the biggest thing you need to be on the lookout for, because it sounds easier for one, right? You don't have to leave. You don't have to open a law where there might be a hole behind the wall. You 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 because it just sounds like there's technology and it's easier. Right. 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, right? You got rid of it. But then the factories are still pumping smoke out and the smoke builds up and then they start getting sick again.

So the one biggest reason that it doesn't that remediation doesn't work is that you didn't find all the sources. If you don't find the sources, it's going to keep coming. Right. So so the first one, the second one is that the process just isn't good. What they're doing is just isn't good. And so there's a couple reasons for this. The biggest thing and process that's the problem is that we're mediators for whatever reason, don't actually want to remove the source. They don't want to do it, probably because it's more expensive for them and it takes more time.

They can't do as many projects if they're doing more work. Right? Right. But the reality is, if I have a mole problem, it's behind this wall. There's nothing on the surface like, 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 them. But if, I have this free download called Remediation Mistakes. So ten most common remediation mistakes. So it's like a list of these things to make sure your mediators 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 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 this 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. Now, let's say it is like, let me just ask real quick. So let's say it is on the framing of the house. Now I know I've seen at Home Depot and stuff something called kills or is does that work? Do you paint all the wood with this? Good question. How do you do that. So some remediation companies will want to do that.

Finding Hidden Sources in the Home 22:00

They'll come in and be like, I want you to spray this magic stuff. Listen, anytime somebody says I'm spraying something that's going to fix everything just immediately like, no, that's not that's fine. Right? Yeah. 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, right. As more like an engineering type of problem. Right. But most times really what you need to do first is you're going to need to like, sand it or wire brush it when mold grows it.

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 Santa wire brush it down to where you're getting down and you're getting all the roots out and it's gone. Right. 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 of wood or not impact structural integrity. Okay.

So that's the first thing you want to get rid of the growth out of it. Then you can do a wipe down with an anti-microbial like disinfectant afterwards. Benefactor. Econ 30 is my favorite. It's it's a botanical blend, so there's not a lot of synthetic chemical and it is an essential oil sort of kind of focused type of thing, anti-microbial, 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 an encapsulated spray over it, more power to them. You can do that. But you can't do that first because due to the problems or something, etc.. So what comes to mind here is people who do this for a living are seriously in danger. You got to wear respirators and protect yourself. I mean, sure. Geez. Yeah. I mean, listen, I've been doing it for a long time. I got mycotoxins issues. I've got issues. I have skin issues. I have all the things that happen. Right? And I know some people.

There's the good people on this summit who can help you. I know, I mean, I've been listen, I there's people way worse than me. Right. But it happens and there's like variations of it and I've obviously I'm working through it with some of the people that 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 the stuff, it's it's not 100%. Right. 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 F's about it.

Then, you know, they're not going to be cleaning your house the right way. They don't even care about themselves. Yeah. So 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? So that's the next thing. So I just 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 going 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. If anybody wants it, I'll just make it available to anybody, you know, here for you guys so you guys can look at it. But the way to think about your stuff, you kind of have three categories of items.

Anything in your household in one of three categories. Solid, semi porous for us okay. These are the three categories. Everything falls into variation within here. So solid stuff. You're talking glass metal. You know things that aren't porous that can all be cracked. Got semi porous stuff. Some cans some cat. Just kind of depends on what's what's going on. But for like wood furniture is that for the most part semi porous can be cleaned. Yeah. The thing that really can't be cleaned is porous items.

But then a subset of that that'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, a house, you have a particle that's floating around, right? It settles down on surfaces, cushion items when you lay on your bed or sit on your thing, the pores of the cushion open particles get into it. Yep. Closes off. When you get off, you can vacuum and wipe and clean the top of that thing as much as you want, but you can't get into the cushion right?

So every time you sit on it and every time you do that, it's going to constantly pop the stuff on, right? Oh, God, I'm having visuals right now. I you know what I'm thinking of? I'm thinking of hotels. Okay. 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. It's it's anyways, but on items, on items, everything that's not cushioned.

And for us, there's the potential to clamp. Now, what you do is you look at what it's made out of on this side, solid, semi porous for us. And then you look at the value of that item here. I think of it like a scale right. Look at the value over on this scale. Inexpensive expensive sentimental value okay. So what you do is 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, right? 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. And to replace maybe you just want to replace it. Right. And and so there's a 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 to use, like all the stuff. So that's that's something that, that I can, like, make available to everybody who's watching this. Okay. Amazing.

And then how do you know? So let's say you go through all this. How do you know remediation was successful. So this is called post remediation inspections and testing okay. So this is super super important. Some people don't do it. Some people do. I, I feel like if you're investing the money in remediation, you need to make sure that it worked right before you kind of let them go. So here's let's use this wall behind me for example. Or let's say I did a sample in here. Initially this wall was a problem.

The remediation. Let's remove this wall right. Clean everything like we talked about. So here's what most inspectors will do in a post inspection. Now this room would be contained right. 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'd 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.

Remediation, Cleaning, and Post-Testing 29:00

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 that. Fix it. That's why they do it. So they do this sample is going to pass and then you leave. You're like, okay, everything's good. The problem is like, do they actually remove the mold from the framing the way that we talked about before or something. So they're so this you do need to do this yourself by the way.

Because when you rip stuff out you're creating a big air association. 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. Right now, the thing here, these don't get picked up in this air sample again the further away you are. Right an air sample the less effective it is, right? Yeah. 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. Because again, we can't see this stuff.

So don't close the wall up until you know everything has to be open for containment. Still in place Inspector comes in for, you know, 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. The client is just doing this. The other day for air sample was fine surface test. And this is like everything we just talked about. Their sample is fine in the post. What they did in here is they just sprayed the magic spray on everything.

Right. So that's what they did came in. I'm like, no, this area, this dark down here, you got to we got to test this down here. Right. Like the way that they did this swab over that area comes back. They're stacking batteries and ketamine both on that swab. So they've magic painted everything, right? So they think everything's fine. The air sample comes back fine. And now they're trying to say, well, well, that's normal. We're okay with that. Now. Like, that's not how this works. Regulates this stuff.

Brian, is there any regulation or. You just have to trust your mediator. So there are there's language in like the industry standards, which is the ICRC. It's 520 for anyone who wants to go do a very boring read at any point. So there's, there's, 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 allegation from a source somewhere else.

So that's kind of what they are. Let's just focus on one, two, three normal source problem needs to be fixed okay. So what has to happen in remediation is if you have a 2 or 3 it has to be returned to one. So this is how it's where it has to be returned to normal. But the definition of normal is not informed. So that's where people start going back and forth and they start saying, well, having you know, two spores of stack is is okay. That's normal. And you have to like go back and forth on this.

So a big piece is something I coach my, my clients on is that you have to understand what you're putting in the contracts before you bring in the mediator. 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 going to happen in this way. If you have all of it in the contract up front and it's signed off on, and then they say that they're basically going to guarantee their work to get back to condition one.

Now you can go back and forth and push that, you know. So but you have to do it. You have to be on it and you have to be aware of that. Yeah. Okay. This has been so eye opening. So as we wrap up, I mean, I know we could we could do a part two, I totally could, but as we wrap up, can you give us, so 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, you know, how, you know, you even might have mold in your body?

Go listen to those interviews. But what are your tips? What 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 a hold of you. Yeah. So the first couple of things to do, first, think back on the history of your place. Okay? Now, some of you might not live in your place for very long. Some of you might have owned your house for 20 years, or some of you were at the mouth right? 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, right? The second thing that I would do if you need some more, like 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 going to 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, because you are right. So that's the second thing. Then the third thing that you can do is then do that. Very simple. Okay. So that's going to 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 Army code it'll break it down. Like what it might look like and how many source hidden source factors and stuff that looks like. And now you have a good idea of where you are and your starting point.

Now you're talking to your doctor about, just 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. Right? And so then the next step is to decide, do I want to 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 in sort of help like through that process. Yeah. So good. Okay. So now tell us how we get in touch with you. And, we'll make sure that that information

First Steps If You Suspect Mold 35:00

is viewable for our viewers as well. Yeah. So, our website is yes. We inspect.com. There's an application button that says, you know, apply to work with us. Just need to learn some info about you. And there's essentially a console that we do with you guys to kind of figure out how we can help. If we can help, what's going on. That's like the easiest way to figure out how to sort of handle this. If you're not like, oh, I don't want to commit that much yet and get on the phone with somebody yet our Instagram is at Mole Finders.

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 can touch on and see if that resonates with you. And then that last thing was the Army Code piece. So that's Army Code comm. So if you do do an Army go to Army Code A.com super cheap to do it. It's like 27 bucks for put in the information from your army. And it takes out our algorithm of all of our data from the last three years and tells you, like, kind of expectations for you.

How do you spell army so people know how to get it? Army I okay, thank you so much Brian. This has been so eye opening. 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. 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 you're like, well, because it happens all the time.

It's like normal life. 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. Yeah. Our ancestors didn't have sinks and water pipes. I mean, this is a this is a thing that we created with modern life style, and with that comes the danger. Yes, we want the modern conveniences.

And that's that's something that I talk about a lot. We want to 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. Can I say one more thing in closing? Yeah. A lot of times when we talk about this stuff, people just start getting freaked out.

Yeah. And I could create, like, anxiety and stress and, like, fear and this sort of thing. And that's not the purpose of this, right? It's just 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 like, oh, this is everywhere. There's no escaping it. You can't get around, you can't get better. I have so many clients that get better. Yeah. And 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 going to 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 with the nine months be out playing flag football or so, and that was like a dramatic thing, but it was all tied to a massive mole problem in their tracks. Yes. And also what I would tie on to 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 blinders on board and support your, you know, liver detox and glutathione own production while you're traveling and be just fine. Yeah, yeah. Thank you Brian. This has been incredible. Really appreciate your time and expertise today. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Yet you take care. Bye now.