137: Understanding Mold and Indoor Air Quality: A Guide to Protecting Your Health w/ Change The Air Foundation

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.

Foreign.

And welcome back to another Change the Year interview. My name is Kendra Seymour and I'm joined today by one of my favorite people, Brian Carr. Brian's with us before offering some amazing insight as an indoor environmental professional who specializes in working with those hypersensitive individuals. So thanks so much for coming back, Brian.

Hey, thanks for having me.

So, Brian, what I absolutely love about you, and I've told you this before, is you kind of have this amazing gift for explaining like these abstract and complicated topics in an easy to understand way. And for anyone listening, if you've ever followed Brian on Facebook or Instagram or listen to his Mold Finders Radio podcast, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. So that's why I wanted to have Brian on today because we're going to clear up some of those areas where we see a lot of frequent misconceptions. So if you're down for it, Brian, I thought we could play a little game today that I'm calling what's the Difference?

I like it. I like games. I also like to win. So something like a winner.

I think you're going to win for sure. So here's how it's going to work. I'm going to give you two separate words or phrases that people use interchangeably incorrectly but actually have some important differences. And then you can tell us what's the difference. So the first one, you ready? It's really challenging. I hear it all the time. Mold versus mildew. What's the difference?

There isn't a difference. That's the quick answer. Mildew. I'm convinced I have nothing to prove this. I am convinced that mildew is made up by big box cleaning corporations to sell products for something. And it does two things. So think like the tile sprays and like all this stuff, but by, by creating like a different word for it, they create a different product category. Again, this is all theory for me, but like, I don't understand why else it would have been made if it wasn't for money because that's why everything is made. So I think what happens, they create a separate product category. They can make a new product for. But then it also diminishes the importance or potential repercussions of mildew because they're downplaying it and saying it's such a simple thing that could be handled. So they create a place for themselves to make more money and make a new product, but at the same time, they're actually doing this massive disservice to people because it's devaluing the importance of what that actually is. When the reality is mold is mildew. Mildew is mold. So if you have a mold sensitivity, a mold issue, or anything like that, when you hear the word mildew, it's like, oh, it's not that bad. I could just spray this or do that or whatever. When the reality is there could be a lot of things kind of going on around behind, hidden in those areas that you don't know about, but you've sort of dismissed it.

Yeah. So if you're a landlord or contractor or spouse, like, it's just mildew. Don't worry about it. Sounds like it's the. It's the same almost hazard, and, you know, moisture is involved, and you need to take the same steps to correct it. So. Interesting. I love that. Thank you. All right, number two, IEP versus remediator.

I mean, technically, they're two very different disciplines in theory. So an iep, which is short for Indoor environmental professional. It's funny, I don't even really like that term, but that's the term that gets flown around. But regardless, think of those as, like, your inspectors, the people that are kind of finding and guiding a process. Right. And then your remediator is more of an executor. They come in and they execute a plan that was developed by your iep.

So your IEP comes in and say a mold in this spot. This spot, this spot. In order to remediate them, you need to do X, Y, and Z. And then a remediator comes in, and really their job is to execute the plan that the IEP put together, how to remediate it, the process, the steps, the order, like, all of that stuff. Remediators are not inspectors. They don't know how to find stuff they like. They just don't. That's not their area of expertise. It'd be like asking a brain surgeon to come in and diagnose cancer in someone's body. Like, they are very specialized. They go into your brain and they handle it. Right. But you need the general practitioner or the cancer specialist, let's say. Was that an oncologist? Yeah. You need the oncologist to come and say, hey, you have a tumor in your brain right here, and maybe something else. So you need this brain surgeon to come in and execute this plan in order to get it out. And then the brain surgeon comes in and executes it. So think of it like this doctor relationship of diagnoser and surgeon. That's really kind of what the two are. I don't like IEP because it takes away the consulting part out of it. Where, when you say indoor, environmental professional, like, what the hell does that even mean? Like, like it's some random, like, very vague, like, description of something for someone to go. We call all of our, our team. We're, we're consultants. And so when you apply the word consultant to what you do, your job is to consult, right? Your job is to understand the whole process, is to give advice, is to give recommendations, provide plans, roadmaps, all that stuff. So on our end, we, we don't call ourselves IEPs, we call ourselves consultants.

Environmental consultants, indoor environmental consultants, whatever, you know, however you want to phrase it. But then the remediators are more the executors.

That's, that's good because I, I wanted to explain. IEP is kind of just this general blanket term. It's not like, you know, you go to school and, you know, or you get like a little certificate that says you're an iep. It kind of can mean a lot of different things. And the skill sets among IEPs can vary greatly too, right?

Yeah, they're incredibly different. I mean, some, some IEPs are actually hygienists and they can, and they call themselves IEPs. So hygienists, industrial hygienists, they typically work for buildings, property management companies. People like that, they'll lump under the umbrella of iep. But their goal, because they're working with larger corporations or property management companies or whatever, their goal is all about risk assessment and basically saying you do and don't need to do something. But at the end of the day, they' paid by the people who don't want to do stuff. So like, they're skewed a little bit. Right? But they're technically an IEP if you want to lump everybody under that stuff. The truth is you don't go school for any of this stuff, right? So it's like very hard to even have a name for it because there isn't a standardized name for it. Right. And IEP has become this thing, but it's so broad. Like, like, just, just be careful when you're thinking through this, don't say, oh, I'm an iep, I know what I'm doing. That if somebody tells you they're an iep, it doesn't mean anything. Right. You actually have to dive into them and understand like what the area of focus is, who they work with, what they do, how they do it, all that stuff.

Yeah. And if you're listening, we'll link to it. Brian was on a while ago and we actually had a two parter and we talk about how to find a good indoor environmental professional, what that looks like. We have a great article@changetheirfoundation.org called Three Key People in your, your remediation project. Because really is this relationship. I know early on our first couple remediations we didn't even, I didn't even know what that was, that I should be having this other person kind of come in and, and inspect my home and consult first. And, and as a result we missed a lot and we ended up trusting the wrong people. So definitely check out the resources there. We're going to link to them here below too because there, there's some important differences and we want you to have the best possible chance at a healthy home. All right, next one. I see this sometimes. Gutting versus remediation, what's the difference?

So there's an inherent difference in them. Now you can gut something as the process of remediation, but gutting is not remediation. Right. So that's, that's kind of the relationship. Gutting is more of a construction term. Going in a room, ripping all, everything out until you're down to the structural surfaces. So you're gutting a room. So if you walk in a room, drywall, ceilings, flooring, whatever, you're ripping it all out until you're left with your studs and your subfloor, basically. And that's what you're doing. That's not remediating anything, that's just removing a bunch of stuff. Right. Remediating is the actual process of removing mold or bacterial growth or biological contamination, whatever it might be to get back to what's considered a normal fungal ecology. Like that is what remediation is. So if you, if you like, look, there's, there's the industry standard guide, it's called the IICRCS 520.

And there, I forget the page off top of my head. But if you go in there, they actually kind of define sort of like what remediation is. And, and you have to remove things that are contaminated so that's part of it. So gutting could be part of it. Right? But then in addition to that, you need to actually remove the mold growth from any structural surfaces that are left over. And you need to do it in a particular way. And that's where remediation comes into play. Think of it like this. Everybody knows asbestos now. Everybody's freaked out about asbestos now, right? Because of everything that went down in the 70s and the 80s and mess with the yeoman, all the stuff. So now if you walked into a space and you're like, oh, we got asbestos. I'm just going to rip out all the ceilings and then walk away. Like, would anyone think that's acceptable? Like, no, they freak the hell out. Like, that's not what you do. Right? And it's the same thing. So you can guard a space that has an asbestos problem, but then you have to actually remove properly the asbestos problem. Cleaning. Do everything. You have to do an abatement for that. Mold's no different. And I mean, comparing what mold can do to you versus asbestos is like a whole nother conversation. But if you just go like, way high end mold can be producing chemical toxins as part of it. You literally have biotoxins floating around in your house. Right? So you have to do both. A lot of times when people say gutting, they're thinking like an entire room or space too. So, like, if I was in a room and I just need to remove like, let's say a single wall where there's a mole problem or something like that, they don't usually refer to that as gutting. Right. So gutting is usually kind of a wide spread. I'm just ripping everything out of here. Just have to make sure that you're actually remediating afterwards. So. So remediation doesn't require gutting, but it can, but you still have to remediate afterwards.

I'm glad you brought up something, too. You mentioned like, the connection between like, asbestos or even you could say lead. You know, the important thing to keep in mind with mold is it's not well regulated. That's something we're working, you know, to change at the foundation. So I live in Virginia, where there are zero, and I mean zero regulations. So, you know, you could have someone come in and literally just gut your moldy bathroom with zero containment or, or precautions or anything. And. And that flies here. And. And if you're familiar with some of the work that we do and you're listening, you'd be surprised at how many states don't Regulate remediation or only have, you know, minimal things in place. So that's a good clarification. Thank you so much for that.

All right, and just to expand on that real quick. So like in that scenario that you said they got a room with a mole problem with no containment or anything else, it's not that you're just not remediating the room. Like the, the, the repercussion isn't only that the room still has a mold problem. The repercussion is now when you gut stuff, you're creating a massive disruption. You're. It's like you're setting off like a little microbiological a bomb in your house. When you do that, if you're not contained and you rip everything out of the place, it's not only I just didn't remediate the room properly, it's now I've literally set off a mold bomb in my entire house and cross contaminated the whole thing. So it's so important to not say, oh, we're going to go to space. And then the repercussion isn't just, oh, we didn't remediate the space properly. Like now. It's a much bigger problem that's moved throughout.

Yeah, I love that. I want to. At some point we need to do a whole episode on cross contamination because there's a lot to unpack there and what that looks like. All right, next one mold spore versus mycotoxin. What's the difference? And feel free to throw in those great analogies you always come up with.

I mean, there's a really big difference. So you have a mold colony. The colony can create spores. Spores are basically little seeds. Think of it, that come off of the colony, get up into the air, they float around. Most people are familiar with the, with the word spores. That's kind of what they know. Then they land somewhere. And if the environment in that area where they land is right, then it can grow another colony or you can breathe it in. Right. So there's different ways it moves around. The toxin is created again from the mole colony. So the spore and the toxin are like completely different things. The purpose of the spore is actually for reproduction. That's what a spore is. In the little microbiological world of mold, it's meant to spread its seed, literally spread its seed and, and repopulate. That's what it's trying to do. The mycotoxin is a chemical agent that's created as a defense mechanism. So that's the difference so instead of it flying out and being sent out from the mole colony on like little reproductive missions, instead you have your mole colony and then think your colony gets covered by like lava over a volcano, basically, except of lava. It's toxic chemical that's coming out, covers the whole colony and creates like a little toxic moat kind of around the whole colony. And now any other mold or bacteria that's coming that, that way is going to hit that toxic moat. It's going to kill it, and it's going to protect its space. So it's a chemical that's literally meant to kill living things. So that's, that's the difference between a spore and a toxin. Now where they can become related and connected is if that mycotoxin had been created and it covered the whole colony and then spores after that start coming off the colony. The spores are now carrying the toxin when they go out to repopulate. So the way that we're really exposed to mycotoxins is very similar to how we're exposed to spores, but they're inherently different things. And mycotoxins are not only spread by spores. If you think about a mold colony, spores is one thing that comes off, but there's also little pieces and fragments of the colony that break off that have nothing to do with this reproductive process. But if the mycotoxin covered everything previously and then those pieces and fragments break off, those two would be covered by the mycotoxin chemical. And that's how it moves around. So, like, connected to this. One of the biggest misconceptions just in semantics that I hear a lot, is the phrase toxic mold and what people mean by it, like, like, oh, we have a toxic mold. What do you mean? Do you mean that you have a mold that's capable of producing a toxin as like we have a toxic capable mold? Or are you actually referring to the toxic chemical that was already produced by the mold? Right. They're two different things. So toxic mold doesn't really exist. Mold in its own right isn't a toxin. Right. So if you're technically saying that phrase, that's not what it means, it's the chemical that's created from it. So, like, when you're talking about it, it's understanding. If I say the word toxic mold, like, just ask yourself, like, what do I, what am I really saying? Am I saying I just have mold that can create toxins, or am I actually talking about a chemical toxin that might be present? And they're very different things.

So I know Someone out there is wondering, well, can all molds produce mycotoxins?

No. So not all of them can. And not even all of them that can do, Right? Again, it's a defense mechanism. Think of it this way. Think you're sitting in front of your front door, you got a table next to you. You got a gun sitting on your table, right? And you're waiting, hoping that somebody doesn't break into your house. And if they break into your house, you may or you may not shoot that gun, right? Like you don't know, but you have the ability to do it, as opposed to the house next door where there's someone sitting there, but they don't have a gun. So if somebody breaks into their house, they just, you know, they got to figure something else out, right? So different molds are equipped with different guns. Some of them don't have guns at all. And then if somebody breaks into their territory and let's say you did have a gun sitting next to you, well, one person, their fight or flight might kick in. They might just leave, they might run, right. Instead of picking up their gun and shooting, somebody else might pick it up and go freaking crazy. Right? So it's just. It just kind of depends on the reaction of the mold and how the invasion is happening. And all these, like, little things are so many variables that go on in that. So just because. And we see this a lot where we'll pick up stachybotry as Catamium aspergillus, species that all have toxin producing capabilities. But then you run a mycotoxin test in the house, and you don't see those toxins present. And then the question is like, well, how can this be possible? Right? Well, it's because they don't always get produced. Right? So good news. They didn't shoot off all their bullets yet. Cool. But they can. Right? So we gotta make sure we're handling that and get all that stuff handled. So you remove the person sitting in front of the door with the gun next to them, and now there's nothing in there.

Okay, good to know. So just because, you know, a mold can produce mycotoxins, doesn't mean it always does.

Correct.

Perfect. How about home inspection versus mold inspection?

Yeah, go back to the doctor analogy again. There's so many connections between how it. How the medical side works. And your body is this complex system with all these different interconnected things in there. Our house is the exact same thing. And there's specialists basically on either side. So this, say this your home inspector Is the equivalent to your like general practitioner that you go and get your annual checkup with, right? They kind of know how to look for stuff, but they're not specialists in one particular thing. So they're looking for the big red flags that stick out. Right? Your general practitioner. Maybe there's something that spikes in your blood test with your red blood cells or something like, oh, this isn't cool, you need to go see this specialist over here to figure this out. That's like their next direct, right? Like, like in the world of medicine it's okay to refer to someone else. It's like expected to do that. But in the world of like your house and your building, that's like not even a thing. It's not a thing. So then the home inspector is like that general practitioner. So they come in, they're looking at your electrical, at your plumbing, at your all, your grading, they're looking at your foundation, they're looking at everything. How could that one person be an expert at all of those things to like expert, expert level. Like, I mean it's taken me like 10 years to get to this point on one thing, right. I can't even imagine knowing other things to this level. Right. So. But they'll go in and. Because there isn't an understanding of water damage being a problem, right. Of even like visible mold being a significant problem, anything like that, they kind of sort of wipe by, they're like, oh, you know, there's something here, whatever. Or sometimes I don't even talk about it. I can't even tell you my home inspection reports I've seen and there's like literally four photos of super water damaged stuff or like mold growing on framing. It wasn't even mentioned like in the report. Right. Because they're looking for the big code things. Right? So home inspectors going in to inspect a house, they're comparing their inspection to building code. Like that's what they're doing. So is the electrical up to standard? Is the plumbing up to standard? Are the pipes up to standard? Like is all that stuff done? Check their box. Why? So they don't get sued. And they have a job and they have a very direct thing that they're checking the boxes against. They come in, they're looking for these things. That's what they do. Mold has no boxes to check from a federal or state level, really. Right. So there's just, ah, you know, mold, whatever, it's not a big deal. So. But with them, they look at it and they don't see it as a Problem. Now go back to the doctor side. The doctor sees something with your, you know, white blood cells or whatever, and they're like, go see an oncologist. Like, this is weird. Right? The mold. The home inspector comes in your house, like, oh, yeah, this thing is leaked over here. Well, just fix the plumbing, you're cool. Where's the referral to the specialist to come in and make sure your count. Your house doesn't have cancer. Right. It doesn't exist. So if you're having a home inspection of a, of a new purchase or whatever you're doing, you have to have the general, like, you have to. Right. But you need specialists to come in to like really dive into what to some key things and then things that are important to you as well. Right. And so we kind of live in that whole specialist world of that. Right. But there's other, you know, there's other people that can be part of that too.

Yeah. And we've had people reach out over the last couple of months about, oh, my home inspector did miss this and whatever. And it sounds like the message is, don't be afraid to bring in experts in the various areas. You're making a big purchase when you decide to buy a home. And you want to make sure that you've covered your bases. Because I will tell you from personal experience, it is far more expensive to deal with these issues after the fact than to catch them up front when you still have the power to negotiate.

100%.

Yep. So indoor mold versus outdoor mold. And I think this gets thrown around a lot probably because of ERMI and how it's reported. So what's the difference when people say that.

Every mold is outdoor mold? We started living in caves and like stabbing saber toothed tigers and stuff. Like, we didn't have buildings and there was mold. Like, literally every mold is outdoor mold. We then built buildings. And sure, mold grows on our stuff inside, but it doesn't mean that it can only grow inside. Like for example, if you look at a durmy panel, group one is water damage mold. Quote, water damage molds. Group two is outdoor molds. Like only outdoor molds apparently. But like Stachybotrys, catalium, Aspergillus, penicillin, that are all on the like indoor water damage panel, all can get picked up in an outside baseline air sample. It's outside. So if it's truly not an outside mold, then why, how is it even possible that I could ever pick it up in an outside baseline air sample which is outside? It doesn't make Any sense. It's. I don't. I feel like a lot of this industry and this just all the information that's out there, it's all very like lab focused and it's. And probably because there aren't a lot of people out there that are getting a lot of data and information to produce more like real life interpretation studies of what's going on. So there's a lot of stuff that's very close environment, lab focused. Right. And so if you're in a lab with literally nothing else going on and you put a piece of drywall over here and you don't put it over here, are you more likely maybe to have stack or ketomium grow on that drywall? I mean, maybe. Maybe you are. Maybe that's why they consider it an indoor mold. Does it mean it can't grow out outside somewhere else? Like, absolutely not. That's not what it means. And so when. When you take real life variables and put them in and take everything out of a controlled environment in a lab and understand that there's way more stuff that goes on than a hermetically sealed little box where you're doing weird tests with petri dishes, then you realize that you can't be so black and white that way. And the truth is, mold has existed forever before there was even before house existed and far beyond. Whenever we're done, it's still probably going to exist. And the idea that indoor molds are somehow like, okay, is. Is also not true. Like, the biggest thing that just really irks me about ermi, which is so frustrating, is the way they do the score calculation and the way that they basically try to summarize it. Your group one, your indoor molds have a total at the bottom, and your outdoor molds have a total at the bottom, which are group two, what they do in the army is they subtract the outdoor mold total, which is the group 2 total, from the group 1 total. So they subt from group 1, they give you a score, which really doesn't make any sense. Not only is it saying when they do that that they think outdoor molds are just not a problem, which in its own right doesn't really make a lot of sense. But then they're saying not only are they not a problem, but if you have more outdoor molds in your house, it actually makes your indoor molds less of a problem. That's what they're saying. That's what the math is saying. And it's the stupidest math equation ever, really, what they should be doing is they should be adding them together.

Yeah.

Indoor mold plus outdoor mold equals total mold in your house. That's your exposure load. Are you mold sensitive? You are. Add them together. You got a whole crapload of mold in your house. Or you add them together, and you're like, oh, actually, it's not too high or whatever. It is. Like, it should be looked at that way instead of the other way. I don't know. I don't know why it was done that way, but it was.

No, that's super helpful because sometimes you'll see people, like, in the Facebook groups or whatever, say, well, it's just out. Just the outdoor mold is high, and you really want to be paying attention to that, because that's what. What's inside your home. I should have called this. Instead of what's the difference? I should have said, is there a difference? That probably fitting. All right, last one. Surface cleaning versus source removal.

Okay, this is what we're playing. What's the difference now? Right?

Yeah.

I mean, surface cleaning is wiping something. Source removal is actually getting rid of the problem in the first place. So, like, think of it this way. You have drywall. Let's say. Let's say you could see some mold on the front side of the drywall. I was looking at a project today that we're at, and there's, like, kind of down around where the baseboards would be. They'd pulled the baseboards, and there was some mold, like, around. So it was behind the baseboards. They pulled it off so you could see it. So surface cleaning would be the equivalent of going in there and just, like, wiping the front of it with one of these magic sprays that the big box companies that we talked about earlier selling you to do. And then everything is fine. Right. But the problem is mold doesn't just grow on a surface. Right. Mold mold has roots. It grows into stuff. Most times, it's actually more problematic behind wherever the problem is that you can see it than on the front side. So use this analogy all the time. That mold is really more like an iceberg than anything else. And if you think about it, like, it wasn't the tip of the iceberg that took the Titanic down. Like, they saw it. They got around it. It was the big, massive thing underneath that they hit that they had no idea that was there, and that's what took them down. And that's what, you know, did what it did. And then, you know, Rose took up the door, which is very selfish.

Listen, there was room for Jack on this Door. All right. I don't know. Anyways, it's what you can't see in these. In these types of situations that are sometimes more problematic than what you can see. And in homes and with mold issues, it's. It's usually that, from what we've seen. So take like, a shower, for example. You have mold in your grout a little bit, right? Oh, it's just grout. We'll clean the grout. Well, grout's porous. If mold is growing in the grout, that means moisture is passing the upper seal of the grout and kind of getting into it a little more. And then what's behind the grout, there's building material back there. There's board that's back there. There's some floor under the tub. There's like, all this stuff. So if water's getting under there, then you could have a bigger problem underneath and just surface cleaning the tile so it doesn't look ugly, doesn't get rid of that other stuff that's under there. And that's kind of. That's, like an example of how a lot of people do surface cleaning on, like, showers as opposed to actually getting behind where the problem is.

That's awesome, Brian. Thank you so much for being here. If somebody wanted to get into contact with you, how would they do that?

Yeah, you just go to yes, weinspect.com There's a big yellow button that says, I don't know, book a consult or talk to me or something. I don't know what it says now, but you can't miss it. And you go there and we have a short info form. Takes a couple minutes. The purpose is just so we can get a good understanding of kind of what's going on with you and your situation. Get prepped for a phone call, then you immediately schedule a phone call after you do that, and then you get on the phone with us.

Easy peasy. And you're on Facebook, Instagram, and podcasts, which are always very insightful. Well, thank you.

And TikTok and YouTube. We're all over the place now. Yeah.

Yes. I love it. So if you're listening today and you found this helpful, do me a favor. Head on over to changethe airfoundation.org Sign up for our newsletter because it really is the best way to get interviews. Helpful tips and tidbits directly to your inbox. Thanks so much. We'll see you next time.

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