113: Let’s Change The Air! w/ Kendra Seymour

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. What's going on? Really excited to do this episode today because I'm doing it with a friend of mine who is also super passionate about all of the things that I am, at least in the mold world. There's other things I'm passionate about. She might not be as into, but at least as far as this goes, she's really into it, and so much so that we're actually working together on a nonprofit that just recently launched. And so I wanted to bring her on and introduce all of you guys to her, because you'll probably be seeing her more on my feeds in different places anyway. So now you'll know what the connection is, and there doesn't have to be conspiracy theories floating around or anything like that about how everyone's connected to everyone, and we could go from there. So, everyone, this is Kendra Seymour. This is the vice president of the Change the Air Foundation.

And I'll actually let you just sort of say what that is real quick. And then if you want to give us a, you know, kind of give us a little background on who you are and all that fun stuff, that'd be great.

Sure. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. Change the Era foundation is a new nonprofit, and we want to help make that connection between our health and our homes and buildings. I became passionate about this about a decade ago when I bought our first house with my husband. It's just the two of us. We hadn't had children yet, and it was a big purchase for us, and we had saved and saved, and we're in an expensive area in Northern Virginia, and we found this house, and the house was a flip. And I'm sure you already know where I'm going with this, but it was beautiful. And we couldn't believe that this was in our price range. And we beat out other bids, and we thought we were doing our due diligence. We got an inspection, and they found some sort of moisture in the basement. And so the sellers agreed to open up the wall and fix it. And I got a phone call one day after work, like, listen, they opened up the wall. They want you to swing by and take a look. So my husband and I go by after work, and we're standing there. My realtor is standing there, Their realtor is standing there, and the guy opening up the wall. And the wall has a bunch of mold behind it.

This is after you bought it or when you.

This is still in the inspection period.

Okay.

And I remember thinking, like, should we be standing here? Like, is this safe? But I'm thinking, my realtor, she's a pro. She wouldn't be standing here if this weren't okay. Like, all these people wouldn't be here. This is what they do, so it must be fine. And I said, okay, how big of a problem is this? And, you know, I knew mold is not something you want in your house, but I don't think I realized, like, the full extent of what that meant. And like, no, this is an easy fix. They think it's from a bush out front. The Roots foundation will take care of it. No big deal. And I remember the other realtor saying, if you're not happy, there are two other bids who would be thrilled to see your offer fall through. And that's not what we wanted. We wanted this home. We were excited. We were already having images of bringing our children home in it. And fast forward, we close on the home, and it's one thing after another. You know, the electrical, other issues. Months go by, another year goes by. We have to tear out another bathroom. And again, I'm doing what I think is my due diligence. I have a licensed contractor. They're tearing out this bathroom, and they're like, don't worry. The government says if it's under a certain number of square feet, we can just take it out. And I'm very pregnant at this point. I don't want to be thinking about it. Great. Whatever is the rule or whatever is the law. And I'm thinking this whole time that there are policies or regulations or licensing in place to protect me. So I'm trusting the professionals. Fast forward a little bit longer, and we bring home my second child. And I notice in the kitchen that there is a quarter size stain in the ceiling. And above that is a bathroom. And I'm like, well, you know what? Before we just open this up, I've got these young children. I want to be really smart about this. And I call the plumber and I'm like, what should we be doing on the phone? He said, you know, what if we open it up and there's mold? Don't worry about it. We'll just work around it. We do it all the time, and then you can bring it home. There's so many red flags that I should have been stopping, but I am trusting the professionals. But in my mom gut, now is kicking. And it's like, you know, I'm not so sure about this. So I happened to call a local remediation company who ended up being really great. And the woman who answered the phone said to me, honey, I am not your first call. You are going to call an IEP before you do anything. And I said, great, what's an iep? And that was my crash course into.

All things mold and water damage. And we ended up being able to handle the situation well, going back and fixing the other areas. And this whole time.

I'm still kicking myself for not making smarter choices earlier on. And I still was struggling to make the connection between some of our symptoms and what was going on in the home. I was a slow learner the time when it came to this. Eventually, we fast forward and a long laundry list of symptoms from my family. Like many families out there, no doctors making the connection that our environment could be playing a role in what's going on. I became adamant about research, about finding out as much as I could about what my children were diagnosed with, what we were experiencing in our home. And I realized that no one will care about my health or my home as much as me. And since then, I've become a huge advocate for myself and my family and helping other families do that so that they don't make the same mistakes that we did. Because there are significant financial, emotional, physical.

Consequences to some of these choices that we make. Um, so that kind of brings me full circle to where I am today. It's been over 10 years, even in our current home. You know, we've had water coming into the back door. We had a pipe burst. I tried to get something fixed in the attic, and I thought I hired the right people. And I'm going through with the crew the day of, and they're up in the attic. They're like, all good. The next morning I go in to check the attic, which they didn't think I would, but I am that anal now about my home. I went up in the attic every month and now there's water in the attic. So now in an attempt to fix one little problem, they've created a big one. And so it's just one of those things where I realized as a homeowner, I think you've talked about it, we spend so much time maintaining our cars and Making sure we change the oil. But no one talks to us about what we need to be doing in terms of prevention and intervention for our homes.

That's crazy. They created a leak in the attic and then left and said everything was.

Cool and said it was my fault.

Yeah, it was your fault. Yeah.

They blamed it on like the. We had a new event run from the dryer and they blamed it on a faulty vent. And I said, respectfully, that's not the case. And, you know, I'm not getting off the phone until you send someone to my home to look at this. And as soon as they got up in the attic, he's like, oh, you know what? Yep, I'm going to have a crew out here tomorrow and we're going to fix this. And they realized it was their mistake. It was probably some brand new crew who didn't know what they were doing, but it was bringing air in every time the dryer turned on and causing condensation to form on the underside. And had I not gone up there, we would have had a huge mold problem.

So there was so much, There was so much air seeping out of your vent that you were getting condensation, like dripping from the joists and stuff up there. Holy crap.

Yeah.

I gotta tell you, I've never been in an attic where that was happening. I've been a lot of addicts. I've never been in an attic where that was happening.

Oh, and I have pictures because I, you know, I was. No one's gonna say, you know, I didn't know if it would evaporate in time. I. I wanted them to know, like, this is what I saw this morning. And all I can say is, thank God I am anal because prior to our experience, I never went in an attic.

You know, you said something a minute ago that I say that I've said before. No one's going to care about this stuff as much as you do. Right. And you know, that's why, that's why things like this organization, this foundation, this organization. That's why things like Molefinder's method that, like teaches people and kind of, you know, all of the stuff. It's because, listen, Most inspectors and IEPs are not great. Most professionals, like you said, I mean, heck, they don't even think it's a problem. Right? So, like, and honestly, it's not really in their best interest to say it's a problem because now it's like more time they have to spend, more money they have to spend to fix it. You know, now they can't do somebody else's project or job because they have to come back and do yours because it goes completely against their business model and what they're doing. Right? So like, like for them, you know, it's not in their best interest, so why would they call it out? You know, and unfortunately, if you're, if you're in like the mold world, you kind of get the health thing. And if somebody is, is already dealing with it and then they start doing the deep dive on stuff, you're like, oh, it's like obvious. There's connections, there's research, there's all this stuff. But if you're not, which a lot of people are not, right? And then this happens. So the reason these companies act like that is because they don't think it's a problem. Right? Because the EPA says that you can remove X amount of feet of drywall or whatever if it's small enough, even if there's a mole problem. I did a whole podcast on that thing.

It's crazy. So, so tell me, what were some of the symptoms that you guys were having? Because you mentioned you guys had a lot of symptoms. What were some.

So I have a child with pandas and we have, you know, mold related illnesses and thyroid and Lyme and hormone and food allergies. And these are things, some of which we have, you know, a family history of. And.

So I don't want to say it's entirely because of that, but I'm a firm believer in the saying that talks about how genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger. And so for our family, we spend a lot of time thinking about our environment, our air, our food, our water, what's around us to try to lessen that burden. Because like many families, getting the right help and doctors is hard to come by. It's expensive. You have to pay out of pocket a lot of the time. And it can be a very lonely and discouraging.

Journey. And I'm fortunate. My husband was very supportive. Our family was. But there are instances, and I know you've probably come across this, where one family member is having symptoms and the other isn't. And then it creates some animosity because they don't believe the other person or, or it's not. They don't believe it. They think, well, if there was a problem with our home, everyone would be sick, right? We'd all have symptoms. And that's just not how exposure to some of these things like mold necessarily works. You can have varying symptoms for a variety of reasons. And I think it makes it that much harder to diagnose and get to the root cause of the problem.

Yeah, I think sometimes we as like people are too logic driven sometimes. And, and, and when you. And you're making assumptions at the same time. Right. So I don't know anything about how the body works, but logically it seems to make sense that if I'm fine and, and you're not fine, then like, I don't know, there can't be something going on in the environment because I would not be fine too. Like, in a weird, roundabout way, it completely makes sense if somebody thinks that way. But like, the caveat in that is that you literally have no idea how human body works. So how could you make that logical connection? And it's, you know, people aren't doing it on purpose. Right. But like, if you take a step back and you just like, think about that. Well, I mean, I can't if you are, and I can't be the house, like, what do you know about how the body works, how things move through the system, how genetics work, how all this stuff works, you know, and, and sometimes I think that we all need to kind of check ourselves and the assumptions that we make, because these assumptions, they're like ingrained into our, like, being essentially right. We don't even realize that we make assumptions about stuff every single day, and it just becomes part of the fabric of who we are and what we think. But all of that comes from somewhere. I think we were just talking before this, you know, you have kids, I have kids. Like, where are these kids learning stuff from? Right? And then you put a kid in one environment and they think it's okay to do something, and you put them somewhere else and they don't. And now that's ingrained in the fabric of them, and that's now an assumption they're going to make forever. And all of their logic is based off of that one fork in the road point, right? Well, the older you get, you know how many fork in the road points you have that like, then, Then now trigger what your entire logical, like, thought process system is. It's insane. Like if you, if you like butterfly effect, this thing, like, it's actually kind of crazy to think about it, and it can like, make your head explode. But it's interesting how we as people shape our opinions and our thoughts on what's going on, and we don't even know that we're doing it, you know?

And you want to believe. I wanted to believe the professionals, right. That I, I Didn't. I didn't have the expertise. And I think part of it is, you know, people, you're scared to find out the truth or, you know, it's going to be expensive.

And it's easier just to believe them. And in some cases, you're just flat out trusting them because they're the professional. And you know that. My advice sometimes to people is trust your gut. Like, at the end of the day, if you think there's something going on in your home, despite what the test tells you, despite what the inspector tells you, trust your gut.

Because it's a powerful indicator that there's something going on. And I wish I trusted my gut earlier on. I got there eventually, but it was some hard lessons learned in the meantime.

You know what? I've said this before too, somewhere about your gut, because I'm a big believer of that too. When you get that gut feeling, that's your body's way of telling you that your brain isn't really wrapping its head around something that's going on properly. Again, what I was just talking about, like, we're getting too into, like, logical this and that. And your brain's like, like thinking of it in this. When your gut is like, yo, simplify this, stop doing that. This is a problem. And it's a feeling that you get. Right. I'm so big on gut feelings. All that stuff happens for a reason. And I actually think it's our body's way to protect us from ourselves. Overthinking things or thinking about things in the wrong way and almost being too smart for our own good. Like, if you think about animals, they don't think like us. They have a gut, somebody's coming, they freaking take off. They know what to do. Us, we would look at it and be like, well, should I, like, stop and, like, pretend or should I? Well, I mean, I read this thing and it said that these don't attack you if you're still. So maybe if I'm still like. And our brain is doing this, meanwhile your whole body's in fight or flight, and your guts, like, get the hell out of here. Animals are such a good example of this because they get a gut feeling, they act on the gut feeling, and that's how they survive stuff. And we. Obviously, there's benefits for being humans and smart and stuff. But on the flip side, there's the other side of it. So it's just like the whole gut feeling thing. I'm big into that. I think it's very important to listen to that.

Yeah. And not get stuck in that. I call it analysis paralysis. Sometimes where there's so many choices and you don't know what to do and you don't want to make the wrong choice, so you end up making no choice, which is in and of itself a choice.

A wrong choice.

Yeah. And, you know, it's hard. And I get it. You're overwhelmed and you're scared. And that's one of the things that the foundation. We want to do. One of our initiatives. Can we pivot? Is that okay?

Yeah. I was going to go there anyway, so go ahead.

Okay. So one of our. We have four major initiatives, and one of the ones I'm most excited about is our education initiatives. Now, I was a teacher by training, and I think that's why it appeals to me in addition to what my family went through. So if you are someone who, you know, maybe you have heard things like, mold is just an allergy. Mold behind a wall can hurt you. One of my favorites, if I can't see it, I can't smell it, I don't have a problem. All things you talk about, I know you have, like, the most educated listeners out there, so they all know. Where I'm going with this is that it can be hard to know what's what. And part of the problem is in some cases.

In Virginia, for example, mold remediation is not regulated at all. So this is what it takes to become a mold remediator in the state of Virginia. I can go to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow and print off some business cards and call myself a mold remediator. Like, it's crazy. We have. We have very little. There's no licensing requirements. And so it's hard for people to know who to trust. Right. You know, I want to believe that you can come in and just spray that or fog it and make my problem go away, because that's a lot easier. But we want to empower you to feel confident when talking with professionals and making decisions for your family, so that when you hear things like this, you can make an informed decision going forward. And so we're going to have. If you go to our website, it's changetheairfoundation.org or you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook @ChangeThe Air FDN because we have great information. We're going to be putting out on our newsletters, on our blogs, our articles. We have great partnerships. Like, with you guys. If you had signed up in our first two weeks, you got an amazing content cleaning guide after mold, which I know is a huge thing for people. How do I get deal with my possessions? And we're going to have more great partnerships and things like that going forward. So we really want to empower people to feel confident when making those choices because there's marketing and there's a lot of technical language that's overwhelming for people, and we want to simplify that. Much like you do on your amazing podcast and the, you know, Instagram and Facebook that you put out for everyone.

Yeah, it's cool because as a nonprofit and as an organization where that's like your core goal, you're going to have a lot of ability to even go beyond stuff that we've had the bandwidth to do. Right. We're obviously trying to educate, but we're also doing inspections and we're also consulting with people and we're also doing these things. So there's only so much that you can try to do. So the education piece I'm really excited about. You know, when it. When it comes to. On our end, we're fleshing out exactly how it's going to work out, but we're going to be donating scholarships to some of our training programs that will be available through Change the Air Foundation. Right. But then.

Amazing. Thank you.

You're welcome.

So many people.

You're welcome. But it's cool because, like, the education piece, it's obviously, you know, kind of. Kind of our end is what you look for and all that stuff. There's health. There's going to be health pieces to it. There's going to be stuff about, well, how do I put my house back together in a healthier way once it's remediated, different, what do you do? What kind of products? Or should I stay away from remediation stuff? I mean, there's going to be a lot of things here. I see this being. Everybody looks around for this stuff. You're like searching, I found an Instagram account of somebody who talks about something, but then where do I find it? Imagine, guys, if you could just say, okay, I'm in this mold journey at some point in this journey, and I need to figure out kind of like, what's next or what do I need to do next? Or whatever. And just imagine you could just go to the Change the Air foundation site and it's there. And you don't have to search for it. You don't have to get on Google for it. Like, this site is now going to be your Google for everything. It's very specific to what you need to know. At the time that you need to know it. And that's why I'm really excited about it. On our end, Kendra, like I mentioned, is the vice president, one of the co founders of the organization, Corey, who some of you know is my partner with Weinspect, and my cousin is on the board. Michael Rubino, who a lot of you guys probably know is on the board. He's the president. I'm a strategic advisor for everything as well. There's another guy named Brandon who's awesome, who's hedging, who's heading up. And we can like, transition this really quick. The legislation initiatives that are in place. And this is one of the big things that we want to be able to affect change in. It's not only educating, right? But it's actually changing the law, changing what the new standard is. So when someone like Kendra just described calls so and so professional and they come in and they're like, oh, yeah, I can remove that if it's so small. What if that legally just wasn't allowed anymore anymore. What if the law actually protected us from some of this stuff and we're actually able to do that. And Kendra, I mean, if you want to talk through some of the wins, I wish we had Brandon on, he could talk about it. But if you want to talk through, like, just like overview some of these legislative wins, I mean, there's already things happening and it's amazing.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. Brandon Chapo is amazing. I tell him that all the time because he. Without getting too much into his personal story, you'll have to have him on and he can talk about it, but he was impacted after he moved into a rental and young guy in a great neighborhood and restaurants at the prime of his life. And his life got turned up upside down. And as he struggled and was finally able to connect the dots and he began to heal, he was so empowered in what happened to him that he's like, I never want this to happen to anyone. So in Ohio, he actually, I can't tell you how many news reporters and representatives he called and he actually got legislation started in Ohio and.

And he was able to bring together people from all over the state of Ohio to share their stories and to make this case about why the people of Ohio needed better rules and regulations in place. And then he went down to Florida and he's like, we want to do something here. And so he got stuff started down in Florida. And as the Change the Air foundation kind of came together over the Last six months plus months. We have stuff coming, putting together in Virginia and Iowa and so that's one of the things we need your help with. If you're not sure what your state laws are, you can go to our website and go to the Stay informed.

Section and policy and advocacy and you can actually click on the link and you can look up and see exactly what's in place for your state, which is amazing. I think you'll find that it's not as much as you think.

Not good.

Maybe you're not surprised. Maybe I was the only one ten years ago who was, you know, bushy eyed and optimistic and kind of, you know, clueless and. And the other piece is, is we need your help. So if you're interested in becoming, we call them state leads and you can work alongside Brandon and myself and the Change the Year team and we can help walk you through that process of getting legislation going even if you're not able to commit that level of time sharing your story. Because it really is a bipartisan global health effort and it's going to take all of us to come together to make this change. At Change the Air foundation, we're doing grassroots initiatives, we're doing direct lobbying at every level of the government. And what you said before, it's so right we can change it on the small scale with who we hire and who we give our business to when it comes time to fix our homes. But we also have to be thinking bigger. And that's where the policy and legislative piece comes in.

Yeah, this. Honestly, I was blown away talking to interpreter. I have no idea how like, like we've always talked like, how wouldn't it be awesome to be able to do something like this? Like, oh, how, how the heck do we do that? I don't know how to do that. You know, and you're just kind of like, Brandon literally is like changing, changing the world one state at a time. It's freaking incredible the way that he's going in here and doing this stuff. And it's amazing as we talk about this stuff, guys like, yeah, hey, it's a nonprofit, it's foundation. This isn't just like one of these little silly things that somebody starts a nonprofit and it's like, whatever, like there are like real goals in place. There's already real wins. There's real big players that are involved on the back end in terms of advisory panels and stuff like that. Like this, this is gonna, this is gonna do some things right. And you know, anybody who's followed us along the way kind of knows that if I say something that's gonna, like, happen, it typically happens. And. And so I'm like, so. I'm so happy to be a part of it. So let's talk through some of these other pieces. So we talk. I feel like we're kind of talking in order, which is kind of nice. So we talked through education. Right now we're like, hey, let's change some of these laws. So maybe the education. While obviously we need to know stuff, maybe it'd be nice we didn't have to know every single thing if the laws were just changed. I think the next piece of this then talks to the third thing that's really wrapped up in the organization, which is research.

This is a foundation that a lot of these things get built off of. Let's dive into this a little bit.

Yeah. What I love about this initiative is their third initiative is that we are going to be putting together a scientific advisory panel, and they are going to be looking to answer questions that directly impact those of us who live in buildings, which is just about everyone, and how our environment ties into that. They're going to be answering these key questions. We're also going to be working with various organizations and partnering with them to fund studies that can help answer some of these key questions that are out there. Then because we know how important it is for that research to translate from academia out into the general public, we're going to be working on that, too. I don't know about you, but I don't have time to sit down and read a research paper. Right. So we want to make that accessible to you. I think one of the neat things is we're also going to be down the road providing grants. So if there is a scientist or.

Organization out there or a researcher who has a really great idea, we want to be there to help you. So we're going to be tackling this with some of the best and brightest minds that are out there and really looking at our indoor air as a whole, because I know, I think you've talked about this before. You've heard the stat that we spend on average, 90% of our time indoors, which is crazy. So I just read this book by Joseph G. Allen and John D. McComber, and they're out of Harvard, and they frame that stat in a really interesting way. They said by the time you turn 40, you will have spent 36 years indoors. Now I'm turning.

That's a cool way to do it.

Yeah. I'm turning 40 this summer. So it made me feel old. And then I thought, 36 years, like, wow, I really hope the air that I'm breathing is clean. And you and I know that just because we can't see it or smell it doesn't mean that it's safe for us. And there are other things besides mold and bacteria. There's VOCs and formaldehyde and radon and carbon monoxide. And we're spending more time than ever in these buildings. And our kids, we were talking about our children earlier. It's crazy to think that the time, by the time our children graduate high school, they will have spent 15,600 hours in schools. I can tell you as a teacher that the way those buildings are designed, I had one tiny window when I was a teacher and it was at the back of the building. And so there was no window and some of my colleagues had no windows. Eventually I was working in an office with zero windows. And the ventilation system isn't great. You know the school ceilings where you see the little stains in the tile. Yeah. I don't know if you know about this. In our area, at 4 o' clock when the students leave, they shut off the heating and air. So in humid Virginia, and you have a long weekend, the relative humidity in those school buildings.

Wow, I didn't know that that happened. Oh my God. The school situation is an entire different situation. And maybe something we could try to like, figure out how to focus on, on the legislative side of things because we don't have control over our kids schools really. Right. We could control our house. But to your point, they're spending that much time in schools, it's not about like trying to free people out. But listen, if you could handle your house, that's a big chunk of the time during the day that they have less exposure now. Right. So their body has time to catch up and hopefully kind of coexist with everything else that's going on. But yeah, the research stuff.

You said so that we don't have time to read research papers. I can't tell you how many nights I've been laying in bed on like Google Scholar, looking at like PubMed and like all of that stuff. Just reading stuff.

I joke. I'm the same way when we have our meetings, you know, as a board, like, oh, I just read this research paper and you know, that's just. You laugh like, that's my life now. I'd rather read a nice romance novel, I guess. But you know, it's cool too. I love reading about mold and damp indoor Spaces and, you know, books like the one I just referenced. I'm underlining it. This is really interesting. I can't put it down. But a little.

A little. A little research study reading hack. You don't have to read the whole thing. You read the intro and the abstract and then you read the conclusion at the bottom to just understand how it is being set up and what the. And what the result is. You know, I don't need to know every method and how things were tested and the amount of air that was going in. And I, like, whatever. Like, sometimes I dive into that. But, like, if you're just trying to get a sense, like, you're looking and you're trying to find research papers on how, like, mycotoxins impact something or other, like, do the search again. You can literally go to Google Scholar, do the search there, they pull up, like, all these, you know, all the research studies, and then you look for the title, right? And you're like, oh, this might be it. And read the abstract, which is usually a paragraph, and read the conclusion, which is like one or two paragraphs, and you'll kind of get like your Cliff Notes version of what's going on. So that's a little secret. How to read research paper hack from me. So there you go.

That's fantastic. Yeah. I mean, give me the Cliff Notes.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so the research stuff is cool. So listen, guys, this. This stuff is cool because this is the foundational, like, data that you could point to. To. Then when you go starting to try to push legislative change, you're like, look, here it is. Right? So, yes, there's things that you could go in and do and just try to push change right away, obviously. But, like, if there's like, a real, like, major goal that we want to figure out how to affect, then what we can do and what the plan is to do in some way is say, okay, how do we. How do we create a research study that's put together properly? That's why you have a scientific advisory panel that nobody could poke holes in that then supports the change that we want to make. So there's a reference point to it, Right? So that's why this piece is really cool. And I've always wanted to. I've always wanted to be a part of this and that. I've always wanted to be doing research studies. I've always wanted to be doing these things. So I'm really happy that you're basically running show and all that stuff. It's very exciting. All right, so the Last piece here.

This is probably the piece that most people are going to be most excited about, I would imagine, although all the other things are really great. Something else I've also talked about with Corey for years, about trying to figure out how to do financial assistance for people that need it for remediation, for the process for all this stuff that's going on. Listen, not everybody can afford this stuff, right? So if there's a way that we can create some sort of, I don't know, you talk about, you'll talk about it better than I can. Sure.

So we are very aware. I know firsthand what it means to go through this and it takes a significant financial toll. And insurance for your home coverage is often limited, if not non existent altogether in some cases. And then finding treatment for you or your loved ones often requires going out of network to an alternative type practitioner, a functional medicine, integrative, mesh medicine type doctor. And, you know, the bills add up quickly. And so for those most in need, we want to find a way to support you.

Because this is a long journey and we don't want you to feel like you have to do it alone. So we want to, we're here to help.

Yeah. So listen, we're. Like we said, we just launched like a month ago.

There's already been a lot of progress. There's already been thousands of people who have already kind of signed up to be in the, you know, in the system to be aware of everything that's going on. We've already gotten donations in the tens of thousands of dollars from people in order to help support stuff we did on the back end of this. Obviously there is, we're lobbying for donations and like all these other things. So if you're someone who understands what's going on, there is a donate button on the, on the site. If you go there, you don't have to donate a lot. You don't donate anything, honestly. But if you do and you have a little bit extra and you want to donate, this is telling you where all that stuff is going, right? Like, this is how you know, what we're doing with all of that stuff. Actually wasn't the purpose of this podcast. Sorry, guys. This wasn't a whole thing to like ask you to donate. I swear that's not what this was. But if anyone's feeling that they might be into it, feel free to do it. All right? You know, the traction that we've made in just like three weeks is pretty, pretty, pretty insane, I would say. But if nothing else out of this you hear everything that we're doing. Like I said, anyone who's listened to me for a while knows that if I say I'm going to do something and it's going to happen, that I do it and I make it happen. And whether it's creating a product or a tool or this or that, next thing you know, it's out. And generally the feedback's pretty good on all of it. So what I would say is, if nothing else, if you're following me on social, if you're listening to this podcast, everything that Change the Air foundation is going to be doing is going to be of interest to you. Like, it's. It's that simple, right? Because it all lines up. So go there. Change. Changetheirfoundation.org Just join the. What does it say? Join the community. Is that the button that's on there? Join the community. It's free, Right. And there's just going to be more free stuff that's beneficial. Right. And we're going to be doing more collaborative things directly as well on our end from the we inspect side to help sort of bolster up the education portion and some of the other things that are going on. So there's going to be some cool stuff there.

I feel like that you should probably just do that right now. Like you're listening to podcasts. Keep listening and then flip up the screen, right? Because you could go to your website like while you're listening, right? So keep listening and flip up the screen and then just put in the website and then just do it while we're talking. Do that right now. We're going to keep talking. All right?

Yeah, it's easy, I promise. I know you're busy, but the content, the information is things that I would have wanted when I was going through my journey. It's stuff I still that find interesting. And you know, as Brian alluded to earlier, we really want to be a one stop shop. We want to help take you through that journey and have it be a little less overwhelming. And I want to mention this because I think it's important. We want to give you hope too, because I think one of the things that so many people struggle with is that it can feel hopeless. And I understand that feeling deeply. And we want you to know that what you are going through, people across the world are going through every day and we want to make that journey a little easier on you. So definitely sign up for our newsletter. Find us on Facebook and Instagram. We will be sharing great content there. I forgot to Mention. Do I have a minute? We are going to be having a great annual event where we're going to be bringing in all these great speakers and thought leaders and.

Individuals who are going to talk about these great things that you can do today or turn around tomorrow that can improve your indoor air quality. And I think it's going to be really.

Kind of a changing event for people in their homes and in this indoor air quality space. So definitely you don't want to miss an update. So sign up for the newsletter.

Yeah. And just like piggyback off that real quick. It's obviously there's like kind of core concept, larger scope education stuff that goes on, but it is really important that there's stuff that you can do that can have immediate impacts on things. So this isn't all about like, well, you have to remediation. It's going to cost this and take this amount of time and oh, you have to do this this way. But it takes this like stuff is not attainable. Like sure, that stuff is there, that's like the best way to get things done in certain cases. Right. But there are definitely like things that you could be doing to improve what's going on in your house and have immediate improvements in what's going on. Right. And so that's going to be included and sort of rolled into it as well. So you kind of have like short term things that you can learn from and kind of implement long term things in terms of strategy, on how you move through the process, situational, you know, uses on how you do X or how you do Y and things like. Like that. So it's gonna be a lot of that stuff. And yeah, I'm excited to keep contributing when it happens.

So yeah, I mean this is like I used to lay, I'm like, oh, if only I could create this foundation that could reach people on a large scale and educate them and empower them and you know, help them through this. And then suddenly this opportunity arose and all these great people came together who are insanely passionate and when we have conversations, I know we get off on tangents about things and it's just so exciting that, you know, we are finally here and able to share what we've started. And I'm super excited to see where we go with all of this because we have some great things planned.

Yeah, me too. And side note, Kendra, you're amazing. This whole thing wouldn't have been going on if it wasn't for you. So thank you for making sure everybody does what they need to do. And putting the plans together and all. It's amazing.

All right, so that's all that I got. Do you have any final parting thoughts for any. For the people?

I don't. Other than just to say that, you know, we're here for you, so. Changetheairfoundation.org I hope to see you there.

Awesome. All right, thanks, Kendra. Thanks, everyone for listening. We'll talk to you next time.

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 rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.