145: Mold Policy Reform & Advocacy with Brandon Chappo of 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.

Hey, everyone, what's going on? Today's really cool episode. It's not me just talking for an hour about where to find mold in your house like I do all the time. It's actually me talking to somebody else who is doing something else that will hopefully be beneficial for all of you, some of you, sooner than later, but continuing to kind of push that along. And it has nothing to do with inspections or health might be a first on this, on this show, but it actually has to do with legislation, public policy, laws, why states aren't doing stuff, what we can do to try to get them to do stuff, and all of the things in between. So my guest today is Brandon Chapo. He's the co founder of the Change the Air foundation and the director of public policy there as well, and someone who I know quite well from kind of being around the beginnings of the foundation as well. So everyone, Brandon, Brandon, everyone, How's it going?

It's going great, man. Thank you so much for having me, Brian. I can't wait to get into the discussion today about, you know, a really important piece of the foundation, which is the policy prompt. So thanks for having us.

Yeah, yeah, I'm super excited about it too. You know, there's. There's kind of two things that we got to do to fix all this stuff. The first thing is learn how we can kind of avoid these situations that we're almost like forced to go into because there's like no one looking out for us, basically. So we have to become our own experts on how to go through a space, how to finally how to remediate properly so we can control our own individual space and kind of look at it as a one on one. But that doesn't change the world in any way. In a grand scheme, it can from bottom up pushing, but hopefully from top down as well. We can meet in the middle. We have enough people that are getting educated, that are forcing builders and landlords and things to make changes because all of a sudden there's not enough people to buy their houses and go into their homes. And then on the other side, from the top, you've Got all of a sudden there's now laws and there's regulations and there's codes and there's things that also forces them to do things. The point of the story is that none of this stuff is changing without anybody doing something to make a change. And it takes a couple, you know, pushing from a couple different directions to kind of make that happen. And so Brandon is one of the people that I know that's, that's really like leading the, the top down.

Brigade, trying to, to figure this stuff out. So, Brandon, why don't you tell us just, I mean, a little bit about sort of you, how you got into this, you know, and, and then we can kind of talk about change the air and what it is maybe right after that.

Yeah, absolutely. And I couldn't agree more with everything you said. Basically, my story is, is not unique. It, it starts out just like many of your listeners and, and, you know, people within our community, which is, you know, I was, I was 30 years old. It was back in 2019. I started to have severe health symptoms that pretty much came out of nowhere. And I kept going to the doctors about it. I kept getting referred out because nobody could quite figure it out. And after a year of basically feeling the worst that I'd ever felt, stroke of luck. I was able to see a functional medicine provider at the Cleveland Clinic. And she asked me what my living environment was like. She was the first physician to actually do that after countless of appointments. And so I'll never forget the word she asked me when she's looking at the slew of symptoms on my medical chart. And she said, so, you know, so tell me about the place you're living in. You know, any musty odors, leaks, any areas of water intrusion. Of course, this is the first time I have any physician even ask me this. And I said, yeah, you know, down in, down in the basement. And, you know, it was quite often. And she stopped typing her notes and she put her glasses down to the ridge of her nose and she said, tell me why this isn't a good story for mold.

That sentence changed my life. Previous to that, I wasn't familiar that mold could cause such severe health issues for people. And chronic exposures, acute exposures.

My life had imploded because of it, and I wanted to try to do something positive and impactful from it, not knowing if I could or not. And so I endeavored to start reaching out to my state representatives and staff, because when I looked at, you know, of course, this was in Cleveland, Ohio. I looked at the state laws. And there was nothing, no, no protections in place, no regulations regarding mold exposure for folks, nothing on the Ohio Department of Health either. And so I talked to my state representative at the time, his name was Joe Miller, and it turns out his legislative aid had been affected by mold exposure and off campus housing at Ohio State. So that was a bit serendipitous, but it immediately made him want to do something about it. And he asked me to help him with the bill.

And my journey and path in the advocacy realm and in indoor air quality started there. And so we got a bill up and running in Ohio, House Bill 251, the Ohio Indoor Safe Air Act. And that started my journey as an advocate. And so I haven't looked back ever since. And now seeing how much opportunity there is across the country at the state level and at the federal level, you know, this is really a wide open space to make a lot of progress. And so we're going to hope to be able to do that at the foundation, not just us as an organization pushing for this, but to also help volunteers and other constituents in the community use their voices and experience to make a change.

What was in that bill that went through in Ohio?

Yeah, so the bill didn't pass. It got proposed and then it went to the health committee. And, you know, getting into politics, there's a number of different levels that needs to be pushed through to be able to get signed into law. So just getting, just getting a legislator on board to say, I want to champion this is a mission in and of itself. Then it has to go through committee. Then it has to go to the Florida to get passed, and it has to go to the other House to get passed, and then the governor has to sign it. So there's a number of different levels for bills to go through, but we have to start somewhere. And so the bill was primarily a public health awareness campaign and program. It would have established an indoor mold program through the Department of Health in Ohio. It would have asked for firmer disclosures for all building types, residential, commercial and industrial. And then it would have asked for increased funding and for, you know, the Department of Health to kind of review the new technology and the new information every five years to make sure that Ohioans were getting the most up to date and reliable information for themselves and their families. So it was a foot in the door. It was cracking the door open trying to get the public health aspect of this out front and center, because we felt that if that was in the spotlight, more certification and licensure requirements would soon follow. And so that's kind of the track that we're following now when we're pushing for this.

I was going to ask that, like, how do you frame these? Right. So.

We know a lot about how mold works. Right. Way more than general government does. Or maybe they just don't care. I don't know. But, like, the listeners of the show, you, the foundation, we all get it. Like, there was a leak 10 years ago. There's a problem when we talk about, like, disclosures, for example, you're like, you know, disclosures have to be more solid, let's say. And that was one of the things of there. How, like.

In that one in particular, just because I'm curious, it's like, how do you define, like, what a disclosure is? How was something, you know, that happened a long time ago that we thought that we fixed? Like, how. How are they held accountable for that? Like, I just feel like there's so many very, like, minute things and specific details on how, like. Like, if I was writing a law, man, it would be so specific. Right. If I just had the. Give me the pen. I'll tell you exactly what your house has to look like. Right.

And.

And obviously, with all of the steps that you just described, like, there's no way that's getting through. And so is it where. And maybe you just touched on this and that's what you were saying, where you just try to get something in that's super broad, that doesn't scare anybody, and then you're like, well, this thing's already in here. So now we're going to add to this thing that you already approved, and then the plan is to continue adding to this. It's almost like putting a Trojan horse in the door or something like that. It's kind of how I'm, like, understanding what you just said.

Yeah. And so there's two different trains of thought there. And I think. And I think you're thinking of this the right way, Brian. Honestly, the concern, though, with that is if it's too ambiguous and vague, the bill becomes weak. And so it doesn't really protect the consumer. So words matter when you're writing bills. The other side of that is you have to be careful that if the bill is too weak or vague, that the legislators at the time would say, well, we've already dealt with that issue, and we've got 100 other issues behind us that we need to take care of. And then they kick the can down the road for years and years, you know, and then People continue to needlessly suffer. So it depends on the state, it depends on what laws are already in existence over this, which frankly, there's really none across the country, or there's very few. And it depends on the political climate, you know, what's. What, what party is in the majority in each state, you know, who, who's going to be more open to public health protections or who's going to be more business forward. So those variables need to be taken into account. Unfortunately, it would be really nice if we could have one template that worked for all. But you have to just look at the situation in front of you. And so that's what we help to do at the foundation is to say, what state are you in? And then we look at all those different variables and factors to be able to find the best path forward. But I will say, just like you said, is opening the door on the issue is the most important thing. So however we have to go about that, to start those conversations in those legislators offices, we think is a positive.

Yeah, I mean, at least give something where you're like, well, you, you agreed that this is a thing. Cause you already approved this. So now like. But it's kind of vague and how it's handled. But we know it's a thing. Cause you said it was. So now we have to like get into the next piece. It seems like a, I mean, it seems like a long process if that's the, if that's the flow to get in. I mean, you're. In my mind, you're worried. We're talking years and years and years to, to try to get the thing in there that you feel like is like, yes, this is truly like now every House that's had X, Y and Z has to do this. And we know this one thing is going to individually like fix a lot of problems.

Yeah. And my, you know, Representative Miller told me early on, he said, you know, Brandon, government was made to move slowly. You know, that they're supposed to be deliberation and they're supposed to be compromise. And so, you know, we have to give credence to that process. But at the same token, there's no reason that if we can put a really reasonable bill out there, especially if we can get bipartisan support, which, which we're having some success at recently, which is the gold standard, is to have people on both sides of the aisle coming together.

We think that that could bear a lot of fruit. And so, yeah, so it just, again, it just depends on the situation in the state. It Depends on what. What's already there. And we will navigate it no matter what.

The ones that are having success on both sides, are they framed just around general health or like, how are they framed?

Yeah. So just recently in Ohio, the former bill that I talked about in the opener, 251, we've now gone into a new General assembly session. So the new version of that bill actually has bipartisan support now. We just learned of that. So there's going to be a Democrat and a Republican that are putting this forward as joint sponsors, which is huge and still finalizing the verbiage on that. But it's primarily going to be a public health awareness program. And I do feel that they're going to be looking into certain certifications as well for inspectors and remediators, from what I understand. But still waiting on that language. But they see the merit in it. You know, I go into these meetings and I say, look, I say, you know, we all spend 90% of our time indoors somewhere every day, and I see the light bulb go off because they never thought of it in that context. And you know what? I didn't either before I got sick. So it's really just getting in there and spreading awareness and saying, look, silver lining to the pandemic, to the COVID 19 pandemic, if there could be one, is that there's more attention now paid to what's in the air. The things that we can't see, we might not be able to sense how is that affecting us. Right. And so, you know, there's some synergy there, at least when it comes to pitching this, that, that I found that most of these offices are very open minded to the issue and would like to do something about it.

Yeah, I use the analogy a lot, too. It's like we couldn't. We couldn't see Covid. All of us got sick.

Right.

Because you couldn't see it doesn't mean it didn't exist. No, it was just very rapid and very immediate. And you could see it. Right. You can see it in the reactions that people were having. This is longer, it's chronic, it can be mistaken for allergies, like all these things, and just makes it so much more complicated to get people to wrap their head around that it's a thing.

Yeah, I completely agree with that. And you know, just going back to the point about that, this is a lengthy process because I think I'd like to touch on, on that again, which is, you know, we have to start somewhere. We can't just, you know, we can't afford financially and physically, emotionally, psychologically to continue to just allow this to happen without any, any protections or without any emphasis placed on this. So I really, truly believe that we can get bills proposed and it might, they might get passed on the first session, it might take a session or two to get it passed. But I don't think that we're looking at a decade's worth of work here before things move through. I think that there's a lot of momentum behind this issue. Just based on all the conversations I've been having in these offices and all the organizations and constituents that are kind of rallying behind this as a community. I really think we're going to see some success soon. Yeah.

And to your point, like if nobody starts doing anything about it, it's just nothing's ever going to happen. Even, even if it doesn't happen in two weeks and it happens in two years, well, you're still going to be alive in two years. It'd be nice if some things happen that were better in two years from now. Right. It's like a longer term investment. It's so funny, like people are so over focused on the immediate return on stuff. Even if it's like a smaller value of return than on a longer term return on something, even if the value is 10 times what the immediate return is. Because we live in this world with all this immediate gratification right now. We have social, we have phones and we're like hit, hit, hit. And then tick tock, like blows up in your face and you're like, I can't even like think without this thing looking at me.

Right.

And it's their dopamine hits that we get and it's like, oh, if I'm not getting the immediate gratification right now, I mean just the brain chemistry of it, then it's not as important, which is like completely not true. Frankly. It's probably more important than all the immediate things that you're looking at right now that you think are important.

Yeah, right, right.

The nice thing about it too is that, I mean, we could get into this a little bit is if you are someone who's trying to, you know, who kind of wants to follow a path or something, like you did or do something to help.

Yet you're not trying to make it your full time. You know, this is like my passion, my going just support like things that are in place or like, you know, kind of add value in that way. It doesn't seem like it's an incredible time investment to do things like that, which can have a much bigger impact.

Am I, am I on the right path here?

Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think a lot of people get into this. Well, I usually hear two things. They go, I was really affected by exposure to mold and living in a water damage building. My family was as well. Our lives were offended. I love the advocacy work, but candidly, I really don't know what I'm doing to interface, but I love the idea of being able to do that. And that's where I can step in, Brian. I mean, you know, I learned this all on the fly a couple of years ago, and candidly, I kind of grew up, you know, I have a bachelor's in history, and I kind of grew up.

Having a liking for politics for some reason when I was younger, but it uniquely placed me to be able to navigate this and to help other people navigate it. So what we do is we say, look, if you want to get involved, go To ChangeThe Air Foundation.org, go to the volunteer tab, go to the policy page, which there's another link there. Sign up, give us a little bit of backstory, who you are, what state you're in. Let's set an introductory meeting, very high level, no pressure, and I'll start to explain the process to you, and we'll get you set up and we'll get you a template to interface with your legislators. We'll help you look up who those people are, and we'll set up a meeting and we'll just do an open, open conversation because that's all that it takes. You know, the one thing that I've learned over, over doing this for over a year and a half now was that these staffers and these legislators want to hear these stories. They want to hear about these experiences. This is exactly the reason why they're in office and why many of them ran for office. So really, it is up to us to, to. To have some courage to, to try something new and to learn something new and to really put your voice out there and to feel empowered doing that because you can make such an impact for people by doing that. And what you'll find is that the minute that you do that, so many others will start coming out of the woodwork to support you organizations and individuals. And I can't tell you, I mean, I've already been doing work with volunteer state leads in a number of states, and we've already seen some success getting some proposals up and running. So this is what I say, if I can do it, you can do it. So let us help you. Let me make this a little bit easier for you. And just candidly, Brian, you know, one thing I always tell people is, you know, I. I personally want to make democracy reachable again for people. I always felt that there was a divide there. You know, people always felt, you know, I just have a vote. But other than that, I really don't have a say. I don't believe that. And especially when it comes to this issue, and we have so much room that we can make progress on. And the best part is, is that once you learn how to do this, for this issue, for indoor air quality and mold, long after I'm gone and maybe down the road, there's another issue that become. You become passionate about. You've got the tools and the empowerment now to go interface and do it all over again for something else. How great is that?

No, it's awesome. You know what? There's a lot of people who, like, for me, I got out of my thing and I was like, I'm just gonna start this. Right? And then it turned into we inspect. Right. Like, you had your path that went. There's a lot of people that have their story. They all every shares on social media, this and that. You're trying to help people on social media here. They're like, like people are taking time out, like going in these Facebook groups and like reading all this stuff and responding to things. Like, people are putting time into that. Right. And the.

The feeling that you want to, like, make a change in something when you realize that it's like, impacted you. And I almost feel like it's just kind of like a human kind of thing. Right. To be able to help other people. Most people want to help people, and most people are not the bad people.

Yeah, right.

And there, there are other ways to do it. And like you're saying, I just think, like, the easiest way is I'm going to go into a Facebook group and, you know, talk about what happened, which isn't bad or anything. But what's happening there, though, is that if we talk about this top down and then there's pushing up from the bottom, there's not a whole lot coming top down. And if we shifted some of the effort that individually we're doing into getting into a Facebook group or going comments on Instagram on pages and stuff like that. So you know what? Instead of that, I'm going to maybe try to go on this side. And if you think of, let's just say you have 100 people and 95 of them are at the bottom of this, pushing up, trying to just help individual people. And there's only five people at the top pushing down. That equilibrium meeting point is going to be so much longer to get there because you, like, the top doesn't move and you got to move the bottom all the way to the top, right, in order to get there. Whereas if you took 50 of those people at the bottom and you stuck them on the top and had them pushing down at the same way, the difference in the change would happen a lot faster. I think it's just really cool that you guys are offering like, like conversations to figure out how to navigate that stuff, because frankly, like, I don't understand legal anything like government at all. Like, if you told me, hey, I want to go do this, I have no freaking clue even where to start. And you know, if it's not easy for people, people don't do it. It's just human nature, right? It's. It's less friction, easiest path. The easiest path is open my phone and type a couple things and feel like you're giving back. And it's not that you're not right? You're sharing your story and that's good. But there's other ways to do it. It might require an extra step or two, but if you think of like the exponential value that you have at the top, where nobody is currently at the top pushing down, it's very few people. And you add 10 more people up there, that's 10 times more pressure coming down from the top when you still have a bunch of people like myself and everyone else is pushing from the bottom to come up. And I just think it gets us there a lot quicker. So if any of you are kind of feeling that like, do this call thing right, like, get on the site, do everything he just said with the tabs and the links and the clicking to the public policy page and just do it like set a call, right? Because if you are feeling like you want to contribute, it's just a different way to do it. I know it's not for everybody. And to your point, there's a lot of other things have been going on in the world and.

We don't. As you're so right about this. We as society are not taught how to actually use our government system right at all, right? It's here's government, you live down here and government does everything. And one day a year you come out and vote and you're doing your. Your thing, right? And we can say that we're A democracy. But are we really, you know, debatable. Right. You're not. If everybody isn't contributing at all points. Right. And so the reason I think that a lot of that doesn't happen is we, you know, whether it's on purpose or not, are not educated on how to actually use our government the way that we're probably supposed to be using it. And so we don't know. Right. And then like this, the ability for this is, is very, very cool.

So let's talk about you mentioned a little bit, I think earlier on. You know, are there current laws, regulations, standards, I don't know the, the word to throw it out here with you, that, that do exist in particular states. Now I know I've seen a lot of questions like I live in X state, what can I do? You know, my landlord isn't doing whatever and what are the laws here and like that sort of thing.

Yeah. So unfortunately, especially at the federal level, there are none when it comes to mold. The epa, even states that, you know, not just mold, you know, there's no standards for airborne mold, contaminants or regulations. But indoor air quality is not regulated at the federal level. There are a few laws in place when it comes to mold licensures in a few states for remediators. California has passed Toxic Mold Protection act, which beefed up a little bit of their public health information. But again no certification requirements for inspectors or remediators there. So that's what I mean to say. It's kind of wide open. We have had success getting four proposals up and running since embarking at the foundation in Ohio, Hawaii, Florida and just recently Pennsylvania. And I've been working with a few volunteers in a few of those states and there's a few others that we have lines in the water that we feel very good about. But overall there's really not when it comes to mold and just in general indoor air quality. So again, you know, talking about that top down approach, even if it's not interfacing with change the Air foundation, which we would love to interface with you to be able to make this easier for you. Just take your story and find out who your local legislator is. Go to the website, go. Go to your state's assembly website or your legislature's website and it'll say who represents me? You throw in your address and it gives you your representatives and there's contact forms for those folks. You can call them or you can email them and that is a great place for you to be able to spread your story and Use your voice if that's all you'd like to do. But just that alone can make a huge impact.

We realized when we got in at the foundation trying to make a societal shift, that policy was a huge prong, and there was a ton of opportunity there. And so we've been doing work at the state and federal level because, frankly, Brian, there's just. There's just not a lot of protections in place when it comes to this, and there's not a lot of funding. And so we're trying to change that.

Yeah, there isn't. I mean, that's why every story that you hear is every story that you hear, just like I always say, it's like the wild, wild west out there when it comes to this stuff. And then, you know, let's even say that. That some places are a little more forward about it. Then it's like, well, where do you go to find the right people to figure out what's happening in a space? And where do you. Where do you draw the line? You know, it's interesting. You talk about, like, the indoor air quality.

Regulations. There are, like, substandards for different things in your house that contribute to air quality. Right, Right. So like, ozone and formaldehyde off gassing and, like, things like that. So there's like, individual components in homes that have, you know, again, forgive me on the phrasing, if it's a standard or whatever it is, that they have to be under X amount of level. Right. Like, that is indoor. Like, that's why you're doing that. And it's almost like trying to kind of get all that sense of me thinking, like, how do I get all of these things that have been, like, kind of proven in a way, say, okay, we. You wouldn't have said that there's a limit here if there wasn't an airborne contamination issue here. And you add that formaldehyde plus this, plus this, plus this, it's in the house, and then it goes up to the next level, which is indoor air quality. So they. They have, in some places, kind of done it, but indirectly on individual items. And to try to look at, like, the. The entire collection of things together is. I mean, that's what we're breathing. We're just breathing one thing. Right. We're breathing everything that's added together. It's awesome that you guys are working to try to try to move that forward.

Yeah. And, you know, when we're. When we're making these conversations, we're like, look, like asbestos radon. There's been Legislation passed for increased public health awareness on that state programs a heck of a lot more funding than there is for mold. Lead based paint is another great example. Right. You know, there need, you know, any, any homes that were built before 1978, if there's going to be any remediation done that, that needs to be performed by a lead safe certified contractor. We feel that this is very similar to mold and, and, and a mold remediation so, and inspection. So you know, when, when I'm in those offices and I'm making the pitch for this and I'm saying how serious that the health ramifications are and not just speaking from all the community members that come to us with their stories, but from my own, I say we're already doing this. We're already pivoting towards these other indoor air pollutants and these bad players. Why not mold and water damage? And it's tough for them to argue against it. It really is.

Well, it is when you put those things there and it's interesting. So, but like those didn't change until there was enough health data to show that it was a problem. Right. And then all of a sudden mesothelioma is a thing and now asbestos is like, you can't have it. Right. And so it seems like it's. And, and I know there's a lot more health studies that are coming out on like the mold mycotoxin front.

There are.

So is that part of the plan of like curating all of that stuff to just kind of further sort of establish the need for this as a health risk?

Yeah, absolutely. And actually another prong at the foundation is our research prong and we plan to try to fundraise for some of these research projects. And we already have some. We're basically laying some groundwork already, working with some physicians in the space to be able to provide more of that data. That's hard to argue against. To be able to help make that case not just to the medical field and medical organizations and researchers, to show merit and value in increased funding and research here, but also to help us out with advocacy and with policy reform. And so there are more studies coming out, just as you say. We've compiled many of those. We use those to our advantage when we're having these conversations. And it's really nice. We're going to be building out some more professionals and practitioners that might align themselves with the foundation to be able to even come into some of those.

Meetings with legislators and staff to be able to back the claims with Everything just from their own medical expertise. So that's all in the recipe for us to move people. And so we're using every bit of it. Because you know what, Brian? We need every bit of it to be able to do this. But things are really starting to come together. We're very excited.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, what you've been able to do in just a short period of time, it's more than has been done in a long time. Right. And so it's, it's. It shows. You don't have to be doing this. Like, you don't have to be working forever and ever and ever. You just have to, like, try to do something.

That's right.

So I'm curious about this. I don't know if you've gotten feedback on this or whatnot, but, like, when you start talking about we need some sort of standardization or law or something around water damage, the repercussions of that for the landlords, the landowners, the building owners is like massive, like, like hundreds of millions of dollars, like, if things like that happen. So, like, when you're going through and doing stuff like this, I don't know if part of. Is there any part of places me asking curiously, is there any part of planning when you're like, putting bills out and doing this, like, understanding where the pushback is going to come from and trying to, like, figure out how to like, n navigate that before it occurs?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you basically have to be able to think ahead to say who's going to be against this. And as Representative Miller, who I've learned a lot from just when I was a constituent, has, even before the foundation and all that he taught me, you know, those are the people you want to interface with. Almost immediately, you want to start having these conversations with them. Where's your weak spots? Where. Where are they going to have issues with this? One of them so far was the real estate industry, which is not that surprising, you know, because, you know, being able to say that there's a disclosure that there was known mold or water damage could affect a sale. But we felt that it's important to just give people information.

So that, you know, one of the biggest investments of your life and you know, what's supposed to be your castle and your safe space for you and your family is going to be just that when you're moving in there. So we think that's a reasonable stance. But we do look at the financial ramifications of this. That's typically been where we've received the most Pushback.

But it's always in politics. I think that's where it always comes down to. It's public health over profit and which one weighs more. And so we just, we, we do our best to make the case that the costs and the ramifications of the costs physically, emotionally, right. Financially, to people not having as much money to spend economically while trying to deal with this problem far outweighs what it would cost to try to deal with this properly and appropriately. And so I can say this. One of the projects that we're actually endeavoring and programs at the foundation is to put together a policy brief to talk about a cost benefit analysis of dealing with mold and water damage appropriately because nothing like that exists. And so we feel that that'll be really impactful and powerful to have those numbers and to be able to go into these legislators offices, especially the ones that are more business centric and economic centric, and say there's real data here and there's real gains to be made if we were to tackle this head on, once and for all.

So to ask into that when you're putting that together, because I'm just like super curious about all of this. Is it, is it showing the.

Your. Not the governor, who are you talking to? Who's the person we're talking to here? Your, your, your legislator. Oh yeah.

So any senators or represent. Yeah, right, right.

So is it showing them like the big picture macroeconomic information or is it because like if, if I'm a building owner that gives no Fs about this stuff and I just want to look at my bottom line, right. And there's currently no laws that are making me have to do anything about my place. Then there's literally nothing that you could show me that's going to tell me that it's better for me to be proactive in this stuff than not if I don't care about people and all I care about is bottom line. Right. So I mean, and then you said like, you kind of go to the people that you know will be your biggest sort of, you know, people that are pushing against you on this. Like, and then you mentioned the real estate industry, which I understand. So I just like, how do you, how do you navigate a conversation with an industry? So like I, real estate agents hate me. I've literally been screamed at by more than one real estate agent because I had a client that was trying to find a new house and I would walk like, no, no, no, no. And the real estate agent starts getting pissed off because they've Shown five houses and I walk in like, no, you're not moving here. Right, right. And this is what will happen. This is what will happen. Exactly what you said. So what does the cost benefit analysis like that look like? I mean, is it, is it some more macro version of like, where the dollars are going because they don't have them and they're dealing with issues here and you're trying to show like, like mass impact on like localized gdp? Like, like, is that kind of the idea of when you build one of these?

Exactly. And to be, and to be frank with you, Brian, this is the first time that we've ever done this. And again, it won't be just be us working on this. You know, we'll be working with a consultant firm, we'll be working with other subject matter experts to put this together, other entities that have actually worked with government agencies before and nonprofits and academia to put these types of studies together. But we are looking at that at the macro level. I can't answer how it's going to turn out. It'll take maybe a half a year to put together. But we have all the data right now to be able to give them and guide them appropriately to put that together because we really believe that the numbers are going to be stark and alarming. And to show the benefit of taking care of this, I'll give you an example. I was looking at a document that came out early 2000 and tens, and it was by the EPA and it was discussing the Clean Air act of 1990 and up to 2020. And it was looking. It's a cost benefit analysis of that. And what they found was that. And now that's ambient air, that's outdoor air quality. Right. They found that it costs annually $65 billion per year to continue to have that enacted.

Right.

So that's a lot of money. Okay. Yeah, candidly. But, but what it also found was that the benefit of having that in place was $2 trillion. It wasn't even close what was.

And that what was that benefit like outside of the money? Like, what was the action that was creating more money?

Right. It's reduced mortality rates, it's reduced disease burden, it's increased product activity. Right. It's, it's, it's, it's more dollars in people's pockets. It wasn't even close. So what we felt was that, well, geez, if we can try to emulate it as best as we can, and again, nothing's going to be perfect. But even if we can get on the right Path and the right track to it with where we're all spending 90% of our time.

Right.

And the exposures that we're having in those environments.

Finance.

What could be the impact and the benefit there if we were to tackle this? And we think, we think it's, it's, it's going to be substantial.

I love this idea.

Yeah, it's.

It's so much easier, just like, theoretically, to get somebody to buy into a concept like that because they know they're going to get pushback from the building owners and like, frankly, like the wealthier people that have the attorneys and the this and that to go make their lives kind of not as fun. Right. So to like, frame it this way, it almost makes it like they can't ignore it at that point. Like, what if this report got out and they voted that they wanted to? They didn't like the idea of generating an extra $10 trillion for wherever they lived or something like, nah, that's cool.

Right?

So.

And you're right on the money, man.

And that's exactly what's on it. Yeah, it's such a good idea. It's such a good way to frame it because, like, in my mind, I'm like, how do you frame this in a way that makes them want to do something when the reality is that it's just going to cost more money for the people that own the buildings and the real estate and stuff. We know that's like tax codes and all stuff are built around that. Like, the government wants to incentivize you to create housing. They want to incentivize you to do this stuff. So they want to take care of those people. Right. Because they're doing something that the government can do and that's kind of like the code in the tax or whatever, but like, to, to. So you're kind of fighting that natural like, like governmental sort of incentivized program for the home builders and the people that are creating living. So coming at it from this way, I like it. Not that it matters if I like it, but I like.

Well, I, I actually regard your opinion very highly on this man. So. No, we appreciate it. And again, we're going to do our best. Is it going to come out perfect? There's not a lot of data on it. So we're going to do our best. And you know, they're trying to incentivize building. The government is just like you say, but we want to add an extra layer on that. Let's incentivize building safely to show even more impact.

Right, right. And if you do that, you're getting the best of both sides because you're. You're doing what the government can't do, which is creating housing. But then at the same time, you're increasing productivity and you're increasing, you know, revenue and money spent and like, all that stuff at the same time.

You got it. You got it.

All right. I'm sold. I'm sold. If I was in charge, it'd be fine.

Right. It's. It's. It's a done deal. Right.

So you were just in D.C. a little bit ago?

Yeah, yeah. Last October. I had a great opportunity with two of our allies in this space, the Armed Forces Housing advocates and the IICRC, and they were going to D.C. last fall to push a bill called the Military Housing Readiness Council act, which would have been an oversight mechanism for privatized military housing. Now, I don't know if you've seen in the news, Brian, and you may have, but a lot of our privatized military housing is not in a great state. It's actually very much affecting many of our military families and service members that are being run by some of these contracted groups, and they're not dealing with maintenance issues quickly or maybe efficiently, and people are getting sick. And so this would have put an oversight mechanism in place to be able to drive that a bit better and to make sure that our service members and tenants concerns are being heard and dealt with appropriately. That bill was a bipartisan bill. Now, again, this is at the federal level. This was in Washington, D.C. that we were advocating, and we met with nine congressional offices to advocate for this. And the great thing was, is Armed Forces Housing Advocates and ICRC said, change the air. You're an ally in the space. We do focus a little bit more on the civilian side of the equation, but we care about all military and civilian alike, and vice versa. So we were able to go there, talk about how this is a civilian side issue. I got to spread the message to many staffers there on that, share my own story, and kind of get the foundation's name out there and just the issue overall as a whole. So that was a great trip, and it made me very excited about future trips there and just continuing to raise awareness on this and to try to get these congressional offices and. And folks to really want to do something about it.

Yeah, I've, I've seen the military housing stuff firsthand just on clients and things that that have come through, and it's not good. It's not Good. No, it's not. And it's really. It's actually kind of crazy, like how we treat those individuals specifically and their families with everything else that they're doing. Right. It's like, ah, we're not going to take care of this stuff, sweep it under the rug, whatever, whatever. And it's.

I don't know if. I mean, I can't say I've seen a whole lot of them, but I've seen a few and all of them were in very bad shape of the.

Few that I've seen. So. Yeah, well, you know, the executive director at Armed Forces Housing Advocates, Kate Enum, she. She went back and looked because I asked her, you know, when we were getting into these conversations that, you know, how many, you know, because they don't just deal with mold and water damage at the housing. I mean, there's a lot of safety aspects to military housing that they advocate for. And I was curious, I said, how many, you know, homes or how many folks that, that you're currently interfacing with to help are dealing with mold? And she said, I'm not sure. I'll go back and look, Brian. She came back and said, it's 80% of the people that we're helping. 80%, you know, so I just, you know, and I have a lot of family members that served in the military, so it's very near and dear to me. I think it's disgrace what's going on. We can do better than this. We must do better than this. How can we expect these folks to be mission ready if they're sick or if they're worried sick about their loved ones? It's not reasonable. And so we need to do something about it. And.

Thankfully, a new version of the Military Housing Readiness Council act is coming to light now, and we will continue at the foundation to push, push for that, as well as other pieces of legislation and different aspects that we're going to be working on as well.

Yeah, it's needed and amazing that you guys are. That you had the opportunity to get in front of all of those people. We spoke with some, I don't know if we spoke with some of the same people or some different people that were in the same realm that we inspect. Also trying to figure out, is there a way that we can donate something or help sort of figure out, validate that there's issues, maybe give some proof, things like that. So we had been working on that side, too.

All right, so we're in, we're in June. So what's coming up for the back half of the year for Change the air.

Yeah. So actually, just to stay on the Washington D.C. conversation, I'm heading back in July, we're going to be going with the IICRC and we're going to be advocating for a new bill, which can't really speak too much on at the moment because it hasn't been formally proposed, but it should be in July to tackle this issue. Right. So it's going to be putting mold and water damage front and center. It's going to be focusing on HUD standards, regulation, increased research, increased funding. We've been one of the players involved in those conversations with those congressional offices and we hope to have more on that soon. We will announce it and we will be advocating for that in July. And then beyond, you know, to continue to get into offices because, you know, the way I look at it, Brian, is every conversation you have, whether it goes the way you want to or not, you're still planting seeds, you know, you're still educating somebody. They're still remembering you. Oh yeah, that's right. Change the air. They're that indoor air quality or they're that mold group or that one guy, Brandon is that one mold guy. And inevitably, I can't tell you how many, how many people have reached out to me down the road and said, hey, this came up, we remembered you. We didn't do anything at the time, but can you help us? And so it's all worth it. It's all worthwhile for us to be able to continue to go and advocate. And it's not just going to dc, but it's also doing virtual meetings. It's doing some in person meetings. So we're going to continue with that. We got a couple of other cool things going on. This month is actually our, at the foundation. It's our one year anniversary is in June. So we're actually going to be doing a fundraiser which we're going to announce soon and we're hoping to raise about $15,000 if we're able to do that. And it's going to help fund a couple of programs and one of them is our doctor outreach program.

And if I can go a little bit into that, if that's okay, just, just to give you the 10,000 foot view.

Yeah.

You know, when I got sick and probably a lot of the people that you have worked with and helped, Brian, you know, how many doctors did they go to before they figured out what it was? You know, so many.

And multiple years usually before it gets.

Multiple years.

Yeah.

Right, right, exactly. And so I often think back to my story. I said, geez, what if within the first couple of appointments or the first month or something, that my physician would have known even a little bit about this issue.

And how that would have changed my life if that would have been the case? As opposed to going to doctor after doctor after spending all this time and money and being no further down the road than you were before and continuing to get worse. Right. Living in the space that was making you sick. So the Dr. Outreach Program, we're just beginning, you know, building the framework on that now. But what we're looking to do is to raise awareness to healthcare practitioners about the poor effects of indoor air quality, to basically reduce the amount of time that it takes to connect their patient's symptoms to what's going on in their homes and buildings. And essentially, if we can get it down to, you know, within the first couple of appointments where they're finally going, okay, I've tested you for all the low hanging fruit. You're not getting better, we're not flagging anything. Let's start to ask the question that my doctor said. Tell me about the place that you've been living in.

A goal of ours would be to reach about 1,000 health care practitioners by the end of 2024. If we could do it, reduce the amount of time for them to make that connection. And we hope to be able to build momentum on that and to continue that. So that's one of the programs. And then of course, it's to continue to fund the policy side. Right. So that big policy brief that I, that you and I talked about that we think is going to be a game changer, that's pretty expensive and you know, flying to D.C. and some of those expenses, you know, not just once, but maybe a few times, getting to some conferences, you know, we're trying to raise money to be able to help fund those because, you know, as much as we do our best to use some of the resources we have at hand, it takes some money to be able to make the types of impact that we think our community needs. And so anything that any, any viewers or any listeners, if you can go to the website and no amount is too small, if you can donate, we would so appreciate it to be able to continue these programs and to continue our work. And even if you can't donate, follow us on our social media pages like reshare content, free education and resources. That goes a long way too, to continue to spread the message. So yeah, you know, one more Thing, Sorry, this would be big if I didn't mention this. We have a virtual summit, which you're actually a part of, Brian. It's the Change the Air Summit and that. So. Right, so it's the Change the Air summit. It's our first one. It's going to be all virtual for free. And we're doing it Netflix style, which is going to be super cool. So I think we're going to be launching it September 18th, so everybody be on the lookout for that.

And it's going to be a bunch of episodes that drop all at the same time. And we're focusing on health focused action, home focused action. And we're not just talking about mold, but all the other players. And we're trying to give people reliable information and actionable steps to be able to take. And the cool thing about this is that, you know, a lot of these summits, sometimes they're only available for a few days. Not ours. Ours is going to be available for the entire year and it's going to be completely free. So we hope to see you there and to share it and to benefit from it. But we're really excited about that. We have a lot of big names and players that are going to be involved with that, like Gwyneth Paltrow and Deepak Chopra, Dr. Will Cole, Steven Gundry, Christina Perry, the singer songwriter. All these people have either been affected by mold or indoor air quality or their indoor environments and they wanted to pitch in to start to speak out on this. And so we're very excited. And of course, you know, yourself and Corey, you know, we're just, we're just over the moon about it, man. Like, we really think this is going to be a game changing type of assignment. We hope this is the first of many.

Yeah, I'm really excited about this. And the people that you have involved in this is awesome. And you know what? Sometimes it takes. There's a reason that companies started getting spokespeople to, to talk about their stuff, right? Because people like celebrities. So hopefully with Gwyneth Paltrow and Christina Perry and Deepak Chopra and these people, I don't know if myself and Corey necessarily qualify on that level, but at least hopefully with some of these other people, maybe like that's the thing. Oh, it could happen to you. I mean, just saw stuff. Tori Spelling just went through a bunch of this. She was posting all this.

That's right.

On her socials, right. Brittany Murphy is, was in a place like this. And that's what's suspected that caused you know, her to be gone so early, and there's just like so many people that. That have been impacted by this stuff. So I'm really excited for this, excited to be a part of it. I'll obviously share it when it comes time to share.

Thank you. We appreciate it. Yeah, you guys have been so supportive, honestly. Thank you so much. I mean, you're just a wonderful group to work with. You support us, you know, giving us some scholarships for folks to benefit from Mold finders method. It's just fantastic. So really, thank you for having me on and talking about the advocacy work and positive work, because I'm real passionate about that, but just in general about the foundation, all the really great things that we have ahead, ways you can help us and hopefully we'll all make an impact on this together.

Yeah. I mean, to wrap it up, what I said earlier, this is why we try to do what we can for you guys. It's. You push from the bottom up, but you also got to push from the top down. We can't push from the top down. We don't know how. We're not set up. That's not what we do. You guys have the ability to do that, so we try to help that. Right. And. And try to meet in the middle. So anyone can do that too, right? Anyone can. Can honestly switching sides, but it's just put a little pressure on the other side of Absolutely. Equation. You know, anyone can do that. And even if it's not through time, like Brandon mentioned, even small donations that. That are. That you think isn't that much, it adds up. When a lot of people do something like that and enables Brandon to go get in these rooms with these people, for them to call him back two years later and be like, oh, hey, this thing is up now. Like, we're ready for you guys to do like that stuff happens.

That's right.

This is all a business at the end of the day, and that's how businesses work. It's networking, it's remembering people, it's understanding. Oh, man, I really like to work with this person because they were passionate about something and an opportunity comes up a couple years later, and if you weren't in that room having that conversation two years ago, then that opportunity doesn't come up for you two years later. Right. And so there's.

That's right.

There's a lot of that. So there's a lot of value in that and what you're doing and the inroads that you're making. So thank you for coming on sharing a little bit about this. I clearly, anyone listening knows that I don't know anything about this and the way I'm asking questions. So hopefully, hopefully I asked stuff in a way that probably most people listening would, would also understand stuff. And, and we learned something because it's, it's a whole other side of this. St. So thanks, Brandon, for everything you guys are doing.

Thanks for having me on. Brian Cheers.

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