02: Typical Mold Journey / New Mold Truth

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Hey, guys, guess what? The journey that you're on right now, it's so normal, all right? I know that it might seem like you're. You're getting all these, like, false negatives and false senses of security, and it's taking years. And mold inspectors or scam artists and remediation companies don't know what they're doing. And, yeah, some of that's true, but what you're going through is actually the old normal of this process and how it goes for people who are trying to figure this out and create healthy environments for themselves. And so here's what I mean by that. So there was this. There was this old way of. Of how this process goes, right? And this is basically how it breaks down. You think that you have a mold problem, so maybe you're feeling sick or something's not right. Something comes to your attention, you're like, man, I got to figure out this mold issue. And so you hire a mold inspector, and they come in, and maybe, you know, they cost like, $800 or something, right? And they're going to come in and they're going to spend a short amount of time. They'll take an air sample from a couple rooms or something like that, then they're going to leave. And maybe they're in your house for like a half hour or something, and then the results come back. And 80% of the time, those results come back, and they say that there's no problem. And then you say, okay, well, there's no problem. And so in your mind, you don't think that your house is an issue anymore. And so now you're trying to figure out, well, what's causing me to feel the way that I'm feeling. It can't be my house. I just had a professional come in, and they just told me that wasn't it. So that's not it. So you start looking down all these other paths, right? And then some time passes. Maybe that's six months, maybe that's a year. And finally you kind of get back to the idea. Maybe your doctor keeps telling you, or you just intuitively feel that, man, I really Think the house is the problem, right? And so then you need to get another inspector out, because maybe you thought just the guy that you had out just wasn't very good. And so you. You're going to bring in another inspector, but you're like, wait a second, I need to make sure that like. Like this guy is good, right? So you think I'm going to pay. Let me pay more money for him, because if I pay more money, then that's got to mean that they're better. And so maybe instead of 800 bucks, maybe pay like 1200 or 1500 bucks. And now you have that guy come in. The difference with this guy is you tell him your story. So you tell him, yeah, you know, about a year or so ago, I had a guy come in. He didn't find anything. I'm still not feeling well. I think there's something going on. So the new inspector that comes in now has this history where he's like, man, I gotta find something, or at least tell them something to do, because if I don't, they're gonna think that I'm scamming them, right? So they come in, and they probably don't really find what's going on, because the truth of the matter is that mold inspectors don't really know what to look for. And that's a big, huge problem in our industry. And so they come back and maybe they spend a little more time, they take a couple more samples. Maybe, maybe they find, like one area, maybe even they find two areas where there's something going on. And they come to you and they say, okay, so we found. You know, we found it. Here it is. This is going to fix everything. You just have to handle it. And then you say to them, well, how do I do it? And they're like, oh.

Well, if you just fog the house. If you just fog your house, everything's going to be fine. Right? What does fogging your house mean? It basically means that. That theoretically they're saying, well, as long as you get rid of whatever mold is floating around, then the problem is just going to stop forever. Which is completely not true. Right? So let's think about. Let's think about mold and what it is. Mold is like a little factory that's creating toxins and mold spores and all this stuff. And from that factory, they're coming off the top of the factory. So if you've ever driven by a factory, you know, they're making whatever they're making inside, and smoke is coming out of the top, right? So. So Mold is the same way. So it's eating and doing its thing. The smoke coming out of the top of the mold factory is the toxins and the spores and the particles and all that stuff. So.

If you just try to clean the air, right? So if you just try to address the smoke, the factory is still working. The factory is still in operation. As long as that factory is in operation, it's going to continue to produce the smoke that's coming out of it, which is the particles and the spores and the toxins, and it's going to continue to fill your space, and you're going to continue to be sick. And so what happens is that you may fog your place, and maybe for like a week, it feels okay. And then you start not feeling right again. Okay, well, in the process, you've paid this other inspector another 1200, 1500 bucks. And then you've paid for some form of remediation, which is usually like 10, $15,000, right? And now you're like, I fixed my house. Everything's cool. We found it. This guy found it, right? And then we did remediation, and we got it. So it's definitely not the house anymore. And then the fogging wears off like I talked about. And now in your head, you're like, it can't be this. It has to be something else. Maybe my body is just detoxing, and because of that, I'm feeling the effects. Cause it's detoxing too quickly for my immune system to support. Or you start rationalizing in all these different ways, and let's say, like, another year goes by. And then you're like, ugh, I still don't feel good. What's going on? And then your doctor's like, I'm telling you there's mold in your house. And you're saying to your doctor, no, there's not. I've gone through this twice. I've spent, like, 17, $18,000. It can't be there. And the doctor's like, honestly, I don't care how much you spent. It's there. I'm seeing it in your test results, in your body. It's there. It's happening. It has to get fixed. This is usually when people find us. And this is the story that I hear over and over and over again. And in fact, I was just at a inspection this week, and I told this story to my client, and I kind of described this journey that everybody goes on. And he looked at me. He's like, how did you know that? I was like, well, I Just hear it all the time. Like, this is the typical story. It's unfortunate, but it's a path that happens. He's like, not only did you know that I hired one inspector who found nothing, then I hired a second inspector inspector who found like a little something. And then he told me how to remediate something which didn't work. He's like, not only did you get all that right, he's like, but you told me exactly how much I paid for all of it. He's like, I paid 800 the first time. I paid 1200 for the second inspection. I paid 15,000 for the remediation. Like, literally what you just told me. He's like, it's insane. It's crazy. And this is why I'm sure with you guys, like, this is not just you. And I know it sucks if you've been this far down the road because you spent this money and it hasn't worked. And you really, really, really want in your head to think that you got it figured out. Right? If your doctor is telling you that there's still an issue, if your body is telling you that there's still an issue, there's probably still an issue. Okay. So I just wanted to share that story with you because it's so common and hopefully you're not all the way down that process yet. Hopefully. Maybe you've only had like the first inspection and they told you everything was fine, and you get to save the year and a half to two years that is going to be on average, on the end of everyone else's journey. Who's going down this road. I want to save you this time. Right. And I obviously want to save you this money too. Like, if we can save the amount of time that you lose from not. Not feeling well, and we can save you the money that you would have spent on inspections and remediation that just don't work and they're not being handled the right way, then you're going to be such a better place to actually handle this moving forward. Okay. All right. So yesterday I talked about the mold journey that most of my clients and a lot of the people that are dealing with, with this have gone on and, you know, the. It's like, cool. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for telling me that. That's all the mold inspectors out there are not really helping me. And I'm going down this long journey in this path and spending all this money and nothing's going to come of it. And that's not really the point. What I wanted to do though, was to kind of set the stage for you to understand, like, where we are currently. Okay. And so now I want to talk to you about what a true mold assessment really looks like to help you down that path. And so before I get into this, there's this idea that I had I was trying to figure out, like, how do I explain this process where people really understand what's going on? And what I wanted to do was look back at something historically where now, like, today, current, we look at. We're like, yeah, of course that's terrible. We know that that's awful for you, but not that long ago, we didn't know that. And actually we were all doing it, right. Because we thought it was. There was no problem with it. And so the first thing that came to mind was cigarette smoking. And I was like, ah, yeah, that's perfect. Cool. So I started, like, researching and diving into cigarette smoking, and I was looking back at all these things. What I did is I kind of saw, like, the timeline of how all this worked. And then in my mind, I was like, oh, cool. I'm going to create, like, a model to help people understand this. And so I call this the new truth adoption model. Okay. And I think it's pretty cool and pretty smart. So if you guys like it, feel free to tell all your friends and tell them that it came from me. But anyway, here's the idea behind this model. There's basically, like, five stages that an idea has to go through until it's. Until it's adopted by the masses. At the beginning, it's like this crazy idea that nobody believes. And by the end, it's like this thing that. Of course, this is a problem, right? So for cigarette smoking at the beginning, there was a few researchers that were like, wow, this looks kind of weird. Like, it kind of seems like cigarette smoking is tied to cancer in some way, right? There was this crazy idea that was happening by the end. You know, I walk out on the street, if someone is smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk, I'm like, what are you doing? Get that gross thing away from me. Like, that's. That's like the. Where we are now, right? Can't smoke in restaurants. You can't smoke on planes. You can't mess with the smoke detector in the lavatory on the plane, or you're gonna go to jail. Like, all this stuff, right? So that's where we are now. So I want to walk through this process with you, explain it with cigarettes, and tell you where we are with mold, and you can See kind of what's happening. And in the process, I'll explain to you a little bit about, like, what we've been learning on the mold side. So there's five stages to this process. Okay? The first stage is what I call an unproven theory. And this is just, you know, the guy with a crazy idea, right? So, like with cigarettes and like from 1920 to 1950, there was multiple researchers that were associating cigarette smoke with cancer. But there wasn't like any real studies that were put out. And it wasn't a large group group of experts. It was a few of them that were kind of noticing it and they were putting out like mini papers, basically talking about it. And then in 1954, it came from an unproven theory to a proven fact. And so in 1954, there was a article published in the medical journal, or the British Medical Journal that confirmed the link between smoking and lung cancer. So we know it. We knew in 1954 that smoking caused lung cancer. That's it. We knew it. It was there, right? It had been peer reviewed, it had been agreed upon by a bunch of experts. All the research was there, all the correlations were there, and all the data was there. And we knew it in 1954, right? So think about that. Think about all the advertising that happened after that and all the stuff that got kids into smoking and all these things after we knew for a fact that it caused cancer, right? Crazy. This is the proven fact phase. Fast forward just a little, a little sneak peek. This is where we are in mold, okay? We are in the proven fact area. For cigarettes, it took from 1920s all the way up to 1954. It took 30, 34 years to get to this point where it's a proven fact, okay? After this, there's a couple more stages. Mainstream acceptance really just kind of means that the government acknowledges that this is something, but they're not putting any sort of like laws or legislation in place to really do anything about it. That's what mainstream acceptance means. And then mainstream adoption is the next phase. And that's really where the government's kind of like forced to have to create some law for something because there's such a swell of this undercurrent that's pushing this idea around. And then the last stage is what I call mass adoption. And. And this is. This is when it just becomes a generally accepted new truth. So, like for cigarette smoking, we are in mass adoption, right? That's where we are right now. The stage before that where the government Started making legislation that was actually kind of significant laws and rules and stuff against. It started in 1988, and then it spanned into 1998. So in 1988, they started banning smoking on, on domestic flights. And then in 1998, California was the first state to ban smoking in restaurants and bars. And then there was this massive.

Lawsuit with the tobacco industry where there was this big settlement. And with 46 states that the tobacco industry had to pay out like billions of dollars to all the different states to basically try to supplement all the medical costs that had to get paid because their smoking was causing cancer and all these people and increased medical costs a lot. Right. So there's like this big settlement that was done that's all the way up to 1998. So if we look at like the flow of this timeline, the 1920s is where we first started realizing that this, this was a problem. It got proven in 1954. And then go ahead and add just another 45 years onto that before anything gets done about it. Right. So we are in, like I said, the proven fact phase. We're in the point where there's a lot of experts, there's a lot of research papers, there's all kinds of stuff that show not only from the medical point of view from mold, but also from the environmental side of mold. So from medical perspective, it's pretty known now that this isn't just some weird thing some crazy guy thought of.

The mold exposure has a real impact on people. The.

The beginning of this process started with Dr. Richie Shoemaker, who, some of you may know if you found my podcast, he was really the one that started to try to correlate the environment and its impact on health. And that happened in like 1997 to 2000, and then fast forward a few years and between 2002 now all the way up to 2020. So we have almost a 23, 24 year window here where it's gone from idea, some guy with a crazy idea, to the point where now there's hundreds of medical papers, environmental peer review papers, all this stuff talking that mold is a problem, right? From the environmental side. It has completely shaped the entire way that we do mold assessments, and we call them a true mold assessment, because this is really the way to figure it out. The problem is that our industry is not like they're not up to date with it. Why? Because the industry is kind of run by the government. And so the government hasn't gotten to the point where they're really even acknowledging this yet. So. So for a Lot of these mold inspectors that are out there, they're not going to change the way they're doing things because the government hasn't told them that they need to and they're kind of afraid to do it. Right. Like, what happens if you go out and you do some weird, like, progressive sampling method and you find that there's a problem and somebody does has to do remediation to fix it and like, it doesn't work? Am I going to get sued? I can't do that. I need to have the government to, like, give me rules that I could rely on to protect myself for all that stuff. Right. And so it's like this fear of the mold inspectors, of learning new things and being progressive about it and really just truly trying to help people instead of looking out for themselves that is causing this massive problem that's going on. Right. So we are in this proven fact stage. It's been about 25 years for us to get here. Now, if we look back at the cigarette model and how long it took for them to get from proven fact all the way to the point where there's been at least mainstream adoption, where there's been legislation that's been put into place that will affect the general public, you're looking at like 55 years, 45 years. I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to wait 45 years for the government to finally figure this thing out. And at that point, it's too late. You know, some of us will be dead already. Other ones of us will be so sick from everything that it won't even matter. Do you want to wait that long? I don't want to wait that long. Right. And so we've really adopted all of these new technologies and the new research is being done and all this stuff. And I can't, like, go into all of it on this podcast. But the idea falls into two different ideas. The first one is you have to understand where the source of the problem is coming from. If we don't know where the source of mole growth is, there's no way that we can actually fix the problem and get somebody into a house where they can feel healthy. And that involves a really deep, thorough inspection. And you have to understand the current truth that mold inspectors have is that mold can't be growing anywhere if it's not wet right now. And that's like the biggest thing furthest from the truth. All right. If we think about when I was a kid, I had to move to Mississippi for a year. My mom and my dad split up. My mom moved to Mississippi. She met a guy down there, and so I had to move there for a year. And it was like, terrible, right? And I was from Las Vegas, and there's not like big yards and stuff in Las Vegas. It's different. You go to Mississippi, like, you. You live on like two acres or something. It's crazy. So the yards have to get mowed, right? And it's this. It's this thing that I never even thought of because we always had a gardener. But when I get there, it was like my stepdad was like, well, you have to mow this lawn and you have to keep this lawn looking good, right? I was like, okay. So he's like, part of that is cutting it, and part of is making sure there's no weeds growing and stuff like that, all right? And I look at this big yard and it's just this big daunting thing, and it just seems terrible. And so I go mow the yard. And then I'm like looking around for like weeds and stuff. And he gave me this weed killer. He said, just spray this, you know, spray this on the weeds and then you can get the weeds out. I was like, okay, cool. So I went and I like sprayed all the weeds with this weed killer. And then I came in and I said, okay, I mowed the lawn and I killed all the weeds. And he goes out and he looks at it. He's like, the weeds are still here. He's like, you have to pull the weeds out. Like, I don't want these weeds here. And so then I had to go back out and pull all the weeds out. And that's the only way that the yard became a healthy yard, right? There's the only way. When you take out all these little things that are making it unhealthy, that's the only way I did it. When I sprayed the weeds and they just laid there dead, the yard still looked unhealthy. And that's the same idea with mold inspections and mold remediation. You have to find the weeds and you have to get rid of them. If you don't get rid of them, then the problem is still going to remain, right? And so that's like the biggest problem with mold inspections is that they don't actually find all these sources and they continue to stay, you know. And so the true mold assessment is all about figuring out where the sources are. And we have like. I just can't even go into, like all the in depth pieces of it, but it's understanding, like, where they are. It's understanding the big key to that is water damage and not just areas that are currently wet. Right now, that's the current truth that the mold inspectors have. But the reality is when an area dries out, the mold doesn't just disappear and disintegrate magically. It's there and now it's dead, like that weed. But it can still impact the living space. And there's. We're in this proven fact era, right? And there's research studies that support all of this. When you have mold that's dried out behind walls, it gets pulled into the living space through air currents and a lot of different things that we could talk about another time. This is all proven. All of this stuff is based on fact that's already been decided. And so that's. That's the first step is really honing in on, like, current or previous water intrusion. And most of it is previous, figuring out where those areas are. So understanding what to look for and then testing them in the appropriate way to validate the problem and then putting the remediation plan together, that's going to help get rid of that stuff, right? So that's the idea. And so what I want to do with you guys is kind of get you to think about where we are in this new truth adoption model. Okay? So we talked about the current journey for people. We talked about how it takes them years and multiple inspections and failed remediations and all this stuff that just sounds terrible. And it causes stress on people's relationships and their finances and all this stuff. And then we kind of look at, okay, so if that's how it was, then it doesn't have to be that way now. Like, there's a new way, right? There's a new way. It's been proven. And we can just do that, or we can wait 45 years and then maybe do it later, right? So, guys, be part of the early adopters on this, all right? If you're feeling a certain way, if your doctor knows that you're being exposed to this stuff, just trust them. Just believe them and understand that there's a way to do this and it's not the way that your local Yelp mold inspector guy is going to be able to do this, right? And so, you know, you have to. You have to understand their process and talk to them about what their what. How they go through a house. If them going through a house is the equivalent of putting up some air pumps in different rooms and taking samples from air samples in different rooms. Don't hire them. They're going to be the equivalent of the first mold inspector you brought in who didn't find anything. All right, you've got to get to the sources. You've got to figure out where they are, and from there, you figure out how to fix the problem.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a.

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