11: Mycotoxin Bomb? / Air Sample Next Steps

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.

So we're going to look at a question today from Shelley Bergstrom Mac. That I saw on Facebook. The question was, has anyone used biocide products in their home to get rid of mycotoxins? It comes with a kit. First, it's some sort of balm, which requires us to leave the house and go somewhere for two hours, then spraying every flat surface and then setting up scrubbers. And they assure me there will be no more mycotoxins. All right, Shelly, so I don't know exactly what this product is, but I'm telling you right now that that doesn't seem like it's gonna work. All right, so there's a few reasons for this. First off is the core reason of why mycotoxins are even in the house, and it's because they're being produced somewhere. So by simply just kind of bombing or probably some sort of fog is what this is. So probably like fogging your house and spraying everything isn't going to get rid of the hidden mold sources that are actually creat problem in the first place. So, you know, a lot of times people don't really know what a mycotoxin is, and that's part of the issue. So let's just go through that real quick. So a mycotoxin is a chemical byproduct that's produced by certain mold types. And so imagine this. Imagine the mold is like a volcano, okay? And if when the mycotoxin is produced, it's like lava coming out of the volcano, and it's like covering the entire volcano with that lava, and then it's creating a toxic moat, like, around the volcano. That's kind of what happens when mycotoxins are made, right? So this. This chemical covers the whole colony. It kind of creates this little toxic moat around the colony, and it's meant to protect itself. So it happens only if other molds or other. Not even molds specifically, but anything that's trying to infiltrate its territory, that's when it's going to get created. Okay? So if a volcano is creating the lava, and if all that we're doing is, like, spraying Something in the air to kind of help, you know, with the like pieces of ash that fly off of the lava, then the volcano's still there, the mycotoxins are still going to happen. This is, this may do something which still I will tell you now that I've personally not seen any efficacy on any product that goes out there and says that we kill mycotoxins and have seen that it works. So if you guys know of it and you have all the research and everything that supports it, then I would love to see it because I think that would be pretty amazing. The reality is that it's a two stage process. The whole idea of fogging is not to kill and get rid of mycotoxins. It's all about the particles. If we go back to that volcano example, what happens when like the, the volcano and the lava dries out a little bit is that all these pieces of ash start flying off the volcano and they start moving around. So you know, if you've, if you've ever like been thinking to travel somewhere where there of a, where there's been like a volcano issue or something like that, you know, a lot of times they'll say like, you know, it's not good to go there after this happens because the, the town that's nearby and the air quality gets really, really bad because all the ash that's blowing off of the dried out lava from the, from the volcano, it's going to come through the town and you're going to be exposed, you're going to be breathing that. The same exact thing happens in your house. Okay. So when this happens on a microscopic level with the mold colonies, the, when they dry out, the same thing's going to happen. So the whole colony is now covered in this chemical. And then when it dries out and the pieces of the colonies start breaking apart, flying throughout the house, you're going to start breathing that stuff. That's how you're exposed to it. Okay. So if you're not removing the colony where the problem exists, then the problem is your exposure is just going to continue. The fogging might bring some of that floating particle down to the surfaces. But in this process that you talk about, there's not even a wiping process that has to happen. So you say we bomb the house and then we're required to leave for two hours, probably because this is a chemical. It's talking about using a biocide product, which again, let's talk about that in a second. So you're having to leave the house and then you're spraying everything and then all you're doing is setting up scrubbers, air scrubbers, you gotta wipe the surfaces. So let's think about what's happening when you bomb this place, right? It's like a fog that's going through the house. It's going to attach to these particles, it's to going, going to add gravitational pull to them because the weight of the particles are going to get heavier. It's going to bring them down to the surfaces. Okay, so now they're all on the surfaces. Well, if we don't wipe all of that stuff away, then it's just going to pop back up into the air afterwards. So the second step of this that is not even included in what they're talking about for their protocol is that even if the fog is doing a little something, you're not getting rid of the byproduct that it would, you're not taking advantage of what it's actually doing for you, I should say, which is bringing that stuff down to the surfaces so you can wipe it. So, you know, I look at this, just the short description here, and I really feel like there's no way that you're going to get any sort of long term benefit out of this. The true answer here, and it's probably not the answer that we all want to hear all the time. You got to find where the mold's coming from, you got to find where the mycotoxins are being produced and you have to remove that. So stuff, if it's still there, it's going to continue, it's not going to stop. Okay? So unfortunately there's not this, you know, magic bomb product that you can just poof through your house and, and everything gets fixed. The other thing, so biocide products, listen, if we are mold sensitive, the last thing you want to be doing is introducing yourself to any sort of biocide product because you can have chemical reactions to that stuff. You know, there are other more natural based products that you can use that are going to help achieve the same goal. And again, if we're fogging, thinking it's going to take care of everything, then you might in your head think, I have to use some sort of harsh chemical so it'll work. The problem is it's not going to work anyway. So if we look at the fogging process just as a phase of an overall remediation plan, so phase one is getting rid of the sources and actually removing the contaminated building materials. So the factories and the volcanoes are gone. And then after that's gone. Then we do a fogging in the house to basically bring those particles down to the surfaces. And then after that, we wipe all the surfaces in the house in order to actually extract what was pulled out of the air. Then it doesn't really matter what product you're using to fog with, right? Because the purpose of the fog isn't necessarily to kill anything. The purpose of the fog is to just bring it down to the surface so you can actually get rid of it. Because if you think about it, like, if you're in a room and everything's floating around, there's no way for you to grab all that stuff, right? Like, think when you. If you, like, blow a book, right? Or blow a book. If you pick up a book, like in an attic or something, where it's been sitting for a really long time and it's super dusty, right? And so you blow on the book, and when you blow on the book, all of the dust, like, pops up into the air. And what happens is you can see all that particle floating around, right?

But there's still a bunch of dust left on the book. So now let's say we want to grab all that dust out of the air again. Well, you can't. You can't get all that stuff out of the air, right? And that's the challenge. Like, you can wipe it off of the book, right? So if you saw it on the book, you could just take a. You know, you can even just spray, like, a cloth with, you know, some, like, Myers cleaning solution or something, and you can wipe the book, and you'll take a lot of the dust off, but as soon as it pops up in the air, there's no way to get rid of that stuff, right? You got to wait till it settles down to the surfaces again. So this fogging process is basically a way to speed that up, right? And that's ultimately what this whole thing is. It's. It's speeding up the gravitational process so you can bring this stuff down, but it's also eliminating the. The process of everything getting popped back up in the air. There's this vicious cycle particle in the house that just continuously gets popped up in the air and then settles and popped up in the air and settles. It's called the human cloud effect. And it happens anytime you walk around your house or do anything in your house. So the reason that we're fogging is to grab all the stuff that's currently in the air, bring it down to the surfaces, and then there's a process for wiping and getting rid of all that stuff. Okay. So when it comes to biocides, we don't want to introduce harsh chemicals because if we're mold sensitive, like I was saying, then a lot of times we're going to develop a chemical sensitivity. And so the reason they're telling you to leave the house for two hours is because there's something going on in this chemical that's going to make you react. And they think that in two hours it's going to off gas. I would imagine that if you have any sort of chemical sensitivity as the result of mold, that you're probably going to have some sort of reaction when you come back in the house, you know, and so that's something that we want to avoid. So there's other products that, you know, I like for this stuff. You know, you can, you can look and fog with something that isn't like this harsh chemicals, since we understand why we're fogging. Right. So, you know, there's actually a product I really like for this. It's good for cleaning your contents. It's. It's also the same product that you can use for doing a fog as well.

I actually put together, if you haven't listened to the last couple episodes, I mentioned this, but I put together a small little website that can give you information on it. But it's a natural product. It's antifungal, antibacterial, it's plant based, which is really cool. So that's the nice thing. You're not introducing all these harsh synthetic chemicals. It's essentially using essential oils to achieve all this stuff, which is great. You're not introducing this super chemical thing into your house that you might have a reaction to. You could go to moldcleaningproduct.com and just give me your email address and I'll send you an email. I break down the whole thing. I send you some additional information sheets so you can really do your information on the product. Because the thing about people, you know, people like us that are mold sensitive is you have to be careful about what you're introducing and what you're using because you can react to it, right? So it's not just about somebody saying, hey, use this product. The. Like, you got to do your research on the product, right? So I'm going to send you what it is. I'll give you some, some additional information where you could do some research on it. And then, you know, if you have your doctor talk to your doctor about it, see how they think it's going to react with you. And then also that email, I'm going to tell you like what to never ever use to clean mold. Okay? So I'm going to tell you that too, like the biggest mistakes a lot of people make. So if you're interested in that, you can go. It's mold cleaning products dot com. All you do is put in your, your email address and, and then I will send you that information. So it's that easy. No, no hook, no catch, no anything like that. I just want to give you guys some in depth info on that. So, Shelley, I hope that that helps answer your question. And.

Yeah, we're going to move on here to the next one.

So for those of you that are following me on Instagram @moldmasterclass, I told you this weekend that I had a big surprise for you. So this is the big surprise. Okay? So, so I'm sharing it with everyone here first. I'm going to post it out to Instagram a little bit later today. But the backstory behind this real quick is that, you know, I look at my DM feed all the time and there's just so many messages on there. People asking me questions about their specific situations and even people asking to pay me for my time to do consultations. And you know, as much, as much as I want to be able to do that, I just don't have the time to do that. It's just physically not possible for me to do that. And so I haven't really been able to help or respond or be able to make my time available in any way. And so I was thinking, I was like, man, how can I see this need that's here? How can I better serve these people? How can I help them? Because I want to be able to do that. That's what I'm trying to do. And so I had this idea, what if we got everybody into the same room and we all asked questions at the same time and people could learn from the answers from other people that way. It's not a whole bunch of one on one talking, but we are all still going to learn and get our questions answered and that sort of thing. So that, that's what we're going to put together. That's the big surprise. So on Thursday, I'm doing my first live mold Q and A. You can register for it@expertmoldadvice.com it's expertmold advice.com and all you need to do is just put in your email address and register for it. And then I will be sending you the link for the Zoom meeting that we're going to do. So we host on the Zoom platform. So just make sure you have Zoom and you have it downloaded and it's tested and you know that everything works on there. And then we're going to get on there and we're going to answer questions for you guys. And if it goes well, then we may do this again. So if you have questions that you've been trying to get to me that I just haven't been able to answer, or you haven't thought of sending me something yet, but you would love to send me something, then this is the way for you to do it. Okay? So go to expertmold advice.com and you can register for the Q and A right now.

So the next question we're going to cover is from Luis Evans. This one's also from Facebook. It's from the Toxic Molcers and Lyme disease support group. And I mean, the question says, can someone interpret this for me? How bad is it? And what she's showing here is some different screenshots of lab results. Okay, so I'm not going to, like, go over all the lab results because obviously you can't see them, but I'm going to give you the summary of what this is. I'm going to tell you where the limitations are and how these samples were collected and how her question makes a lot of sense because this information actually doesn't tell you anything on what to do next. And this is really the problem with, with what a lot of mold inspectors do. So here's what's going on. So she has, she has five different air samples here. They're all collected for 10 minutes, it looks like. And it looks like they were all collected in the middle of a room. So we have the main floor dining room. We have the master bathroom, the upstairs hall. So these are all just what we call ambient air samples, which means that they just put an air sampling pump up in the middle of a room and they're taking an air sample. So what are the two problems with this? Okay, so I'm just going to kind of review some of the things we talked about before. Problem number one is that air samples, a lot of the time don't pick up the real issue of what's going on. So I had mentioned in a previous episode that we did a very large internal study on air samples that were taken in rooms where there were also hidden sources of mold. And 80% of the time, those air samples came up and gave a false Negative. Okay. So that's the first limitation here. The second thing is that even if you do pick up a problem in these air samples, the next step is, okay, what do we do about it? And because you took an air sample in the middle of the room, you have no idea where the source of the problem is. So ultimately, like, what this guy came out and did for you is a complete waste of time. Because even if we do see a problem, which we're going to get to, we literally have no idea what to do next. And that's a problem.

So here are the samples. So what I'm seeing in these samples, and I'm just going to pick out one thing that I'm seeing in a majority of these samples that's showing that it's causing a problem. And it's two mold types, Catomium and Stachybotryus. So we. I think many of us probably know Stachybotryus here. That's what's known as a black toxic mold. So the stachybotry spore, it's bigger, it's heavier, it's stickier. Okay. So that means that in air samples like this in the middle of a room, you really don't pick it up that often. And so if you do pick it up, it's a huge red flag, even if you're only picking up one spore. And that's what's happening here. So we're picking up one spore of it in the master bathroom on the main floor. And there's one other space here. I believe that we're seeing it too, which is the main floor dining room. So wherever that is. So three of these samples are picking up stachybotchers floating in the air. It's all just one spore. So you're gonna have probably a mold inspector tell you, ah, that's not a problem. It's just one. Right. It's not a big deal. And then what they're gonna do is they're gonna compare your overall spore counts of the sample in its entirety to what the outside baseline is in. In this example, he calls it his benchmark. And the total spore count outside is almost 29,000. Okay. None of these indoor air samples are even close to that. Right. One of them was 801's 501's 501 is 401. So I bet you that this guy just looked at those total numbers and was like, oh, yeah, these are cool. Like, they're way below the outside baseline. Everything is Normal in here, there's no source because the inside is less than the outside. That's probably. Probably how he interpreted this for you, and it's so wrong. Okay? So I'm telling you that right now because when you see Stachybotryus in an air sample like this, it's indicating that there is definitely a problem somewhere. Okay. Because this doesn't just happen, and these spores don't just pop up in the air very easily. There's probably a larger source somewhere where it's coming from. The other mold that I'm seeing here is catamium. Catomium and Stachybotryas are really, really similar. They both require a lot of water. They're both toxigenic, and quite can produce mycotoxins from a health perspective, which I'm not going to dive a lot into because I'm obviously not a doctor, but the doctors hate catamium about as much as they hate saccybotrys. Right. So it has. It's definitely one of the molds that they're not thrilled to see when it comes from the health impact as well. So, again, we're seeing that in 1, 2, 3, and 4. So all four air samples in the house, we're seeing catomium to some extent here. This is telling me that there are some. Honestly, there's some significant issues in this house. If I'm looking at these samples, even though the actual spore counts themselves look pretty low from a total perspective, we're seeing these different mold types coming up again, in an air sample that's in the middle of a big room that's not near any Source. And again, 80% of that time, this sample that I'm telling you is going to show that there's no problem. So we have. All four of these samples that I'm looking at here are showing a problem. Right. So that's like the other 20% of the rule in this scenario for every single one of these four air samples that were taken. So, you know, the question here was, can someone help interpret for me, how bad is this? Okay, so hopefully this helped you interpret that and kind of talk about what the potential issue is. How bad is it? I don't know. Right. And I don't know because clearly there was no investigation to figure out where the source is coming from. So here's the next step for you, Louise. You have to figure out where the actual mold growth areas are, because that's how you're going to know how to remediate something. And a lot of times when someone says, how bad is this? What they're actually asking is how significant of a remediation is this going to be? Right? How much is this going to cost me? How big of a problem is this? And the truth is, from the data that we have in here, I literally have no idea how big this is. This could be, you know, maybe something that's happening in your air conditioning system that's moving throughout the house. This could be maybe something in a crawl space that's coming up. Or you might have 25 different hidden sources of mold in your house that you don't know about. It could be any or all of those things. Right? It's really important to find the sources so you can figure that out. We have to investigate and test the air conditioning system if you have a space under your house that has to be tested and looked at. So what we do here is that we use testing to figure out, so severity to understand where source is coming from and to help you prioritize how to do remediation. And that's what's important here for this next step. So real quickly, you know, how do I figure out where the sources are? So unfortunately, it's not as easy as just getting a mold inspector to come out, because most of them don't do this right. So here's the thing. You got to understand where there has been water damage in your house, okay? This is the big, big driver that tells us what, where mold is hidden. And the big misconception is that like it has to be wet right now for there to be mold. And that can't be further, further from the truth. Okay? So think back as long as, you know in your house, it could be years, years back. Did we have a leak? And we just fixed the leak and we did nothing else. There's a good chance that there's a mold problem behind that wall or in that cabinet. Excuse me. Or in that ceiling. So you got to think through that stuff. What I would do is try to make a list of all that. Then the next thing is go around and just look. One easy, easy thing you could do. I mentioned this a couple episodes ago. This isn't going to be the full deep dive of a house. One super easy thing you can do anywhere where you have a water source. So any sink, pull all your stuff out of your sink. Look under your sink. Is there any sort of bubbling or warping or cracking or anything going on under your sink that looks like it was the result of water damage? If there is, then there's a likelihood that there's a source of a mole problem in the. There a hidden source of mold. Another thing you could do is go around all your bathrooms, look at the baseboards that are next to all of your showers and tubs and also behind your toilets. If you're seeing any sort of, like, bubbling paint or you're seeing the baseboards separate off the wall at all a little bit, then there's a pretty good chance that there's a hidden mold problem behind that area too. You can go through your whole house and just do that, and you could get a good sense of where there are issues. And then the next step that you can do is that you actually call, you know, a mold inspector out, but you tell them, like, listen, I have these areas that I want you to test. And you're gonna say, I want you to test, you know, three sinks and four walls. So question one. Do you do wall cavity air samples? A wall cavity air sample is them actually putting, like, a little hole in your wall. It's about the size of a Sharpie pen. And then they attach a tube that goes onto their air pump, and it. The tube goes into the wall. So basically, you're taking an air sample from behind the wall. Okay. If they don't do that, then don't hire them. Right? Because you need someone to figure out where the source is. And the way to figure out where the source is is to get as close as you can to it. So you have them go through. And any areas that you picked out from you just going through your house, just the two things I told you to go through your house and do, you can have them do that. It's not going to be everything that's going on in your house. Okay. Because it's not that easy, right? Like, we. There's. There's a blueprint, there's a plan, there's a way. We go through an entire house to find everything. But these are two of the most common areas that you can look at. All right? So if you do those two things, that's a good start. If you want to take it a step further, you can actually do an URMI test in your house through the living spaces. You could also do one in your air conditioner unit. Okay? So what this is going to do is it's going to give us a baseline of what really is happening in your house. Because an air sample in your house is not really telling us how significant the is. Problem. Problem is the ERMI is going to be a much better indicator of that. So I would do an ERMI in the living space of the house. And then you could also do one in the air conditioning system. The, the area where the blower fan is, like where the, where the, where your furnace is. If you could just open the front of that furnace and there's a blower motor in there, like with a fan, you could take the ERMI sample from inside of there and then you can send those in. And what it's going to do, it's going to compare. You're going to now see your air conditioning system versus what's in, in the living space of your house. And if your air conditioning system, you know, looks about the same or looks worse, then it looks like the air conditioner might be a source, too. So there's a few things that you can do, obviously, like, you know, I can't give you great advice because I have no idea what's going on in your house, but these are a couple, like, kind of screening things that you could do on your own to get a sense of what's going on. So, Luis, hopefully that's helpful.

And you can try to at least get some direction on what's going on here.

And one more quick thing before I go, guys. Remember this Thursday we're doing the first live mold Q&A, which I'm excited about. So again, you just go to expertmold advice.com that's expert moldadvice.com you could go there, you register, you just put in your email address. I'm going to send you an email with all the information that you need. Is hosted on Zoom. We'll be on there at Thursday. It's going to be at 12 noon Pacific Time, 3 o' clock Eastern Time on Thursday. So remember, expert moldadvice.com go sign up. And I'm excited to see you there.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment, subscribe and give a rating Wherever you get your podcast. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.