17: A disturbing Facebook post / Slab Leaks / My 1st court case

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

So I was scrolling through Facebook this morning in some of the mold Facebook groups, and I saw this picture that was really crazy. It was. Somebody had just pulled open or pulled up all of their carpeting, and under the carpeting, it was just covered with mold.

And it was on the subfloor, not actually in the carpeting, but like the wood subfloor that was down there. And in her post, she was saying that the remediators were telling her that mold isn't a problem unless it's disturbed, right? So not to worry about it. Well, there's a lot I have to say about that. Here's two really quick things just from super logical explanation. One, you just disturbed it all because you removed all the carpeting, so now it is a problem, right? That's the big thing.

And two, you know, I've talked about this a lot. Dry mold do colonies that are dry can actually impact the living space more than colonies that are currently wet and active. And so for those of you who haven't heard me talk about that before, I'm gonna do a quick overview on that. I tell this story about when I was first starting to date my wife to help illustrate this. So when we first started dating, I used to. I was really romantic at the time, and I would buy her flowers a lot, right? And you know, we go out for a d. Her. A rose would do whatever. I'd buy her a flower, and so she would take all those flowers and she would hang them upside down to preserve them and keep them, right? And you know, a lot of people have done this. And so if you can imagine, like when that gets done, what happens to those flowers, right? The reason they're hanging it upside down like that is because the water is going to dry out and then it starts to kind of like bend and kind of fall apart.

Because the top of the flower is heavier than the bottom. So gravity starts pulling it down and it starts to bend over and it looks dead, right? So, so by hanging it upside down, you avoid that gravitational pull from the top of the flower. And so that's what you do. But what's happening is that the Water is going away. The flower is drying out. And so if you go and touch that flower afterwards, it'll crumble up and start breaking apart in your hand because it's completely dry. So one day I walk into her room and there's, I don't know, like, 13 or 15 of these flowers that are hanging upside down, you know, on her wall. And I just kind of felt like it was, like, super morbid. When I walked into her room, I was seeing all these dead plants everywhere, these dead flowers everywhere. So I was going to remove them, I was going to take them down. And so when I went to grab them, they all, like, started breaking apart in my hand. Because just like I said, when the water goes away, they become really, like, fragile and brittle and they break apart. And so I was like, oh, man. And they're all like. They're all, like, breaking apart and they're falling, you know, on the ground. And she had carpet. They were kind of, like, falling in the carpet. And then it was summertime, and it was warm. And, you know, in California, a lot of the houses that are anywhere near the water don't have air conditioning. Because way back when they built the houses and like the, you know, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, whenever it was, we didn't have this massive, like, global warming problem that is going on. And. And so it really was cool enough to not have to have air conditioning all the time. In the summer. You could open the windows and get the. And get the breeze, and it'll be fine. Well, that's not the case anymore. It gets really hot now, and so there's no air conditioner in the house. So. So what she did is she put a fan, you know, kind of by the exterior door, and it kind of helps pull air in and move air around. And. And anyways, I was standing next to this fan, and it's one of those fans that oscillate. So it moves, like, left and right and left and right. So when I first grabbed the flowers, it wasn't pointing at me. And I just, like. The pieces were falling on the ground. I was like, oh, crap. I gotta, like. I gotta. I gotta pick these up. I gotta set this stuff down. I was getting ready to figure that out. And then the fan, like, moves back toward me the other way, and it hits me and it blows all the stuff out of my hand and it flies all over her room. And seriously, for like, four days, I was trying to find all these little pieces of these broken flowers that had flown all over her room. Right. Well, which was awesome for me, by the way. But, guys, that's exactly what happens to mold colonies, right? When the water goes away from a mold colony, it dries out just like the flower does. And then any change in air pressure and airflow in the house is going to move through the walls, right? It's. It's going to break pieces of those particles off. So here's an example of how that works. And I think I told this story a couple weeks ago, but when I was a kid.

I would get put to bed. I was like, maybe six or something. And so I would get tucked in and put to bed, and they would crack my door open. My parents would crack my door open at night to let a little light in, which was fine, right? But then what would happen is the door would slam shut by itself every single night. And so I thought that there were ghosts in my house. And I was, like, really freaked out. I didn't want to sleep, and I was scared. And. And so my dad one night comes in. He's like, hey, I'm going to show you what's happening. There's no ghosts here. And so we sit in the room, and we do the same thing we always do. We crack the door open. And then he sits down next to me. And then he has. And then we wait. And then the door shuts, right? And then he says, my mom. He says to my mom out in the hallway, okay, do it again. And then we open the door, and then we wait and it shuts. And he does this like three or four or five times. And what my mom was doing again out in the hallway to prove the point, was that she was turning the air conditioning system on. So it was on auto. And it basically turned on when I was, like, laying in bed to go to sleep. And the fan, when it turned on, when the system started sucking air in from the house, which is what an air conditioning system does, it starts to change the airflow in the house. And. And so when the door was slamming shut in my bedroom, it was a visual representation of the airflow forcefully getting moved through the house. Well, this happens all the time. This happens when the air conditioning system turns on. This happens when you turn on your exhaust fan in your bathroom, when you run your dryer for your clothing, because your dryer exhausts out of your house. There's so many reasons why this happens. It also happens just when you open doors and open windows. It changes the pressure of the house, and the air currents change, change. So when you have mold that's behind a wall or hidden in an area. And then you get all of this change in airflow that happens to your house all the time. That airflow moves over those colonies the same way. Like, that fan blew all that stuff out of my hand, all the dead flowers out of my hand, and gets all over the place. And that's how we get exposed to areas that have hidden mold growth. Right? So that's kind of how it all works. And so, you know, the fact that these remediators told this woman on this, that posted in this Facebook group that this stuff isn't going to cause a problem. It's just a joke, right? Like, she needs to just get rid of these guys because they have no idea what they're doing. But so, okay, so all that said, so I want to talk a little bit more about, you know, kind of mold under carpeting and flooring in general. Right. So.

I don't know if this woman was on a slab or not. It was hard to tell, but if she was on a slab. So slab is a concrete, solid foundation under your house. So you hear how I always just bash. Living on top of a crawl space. This is the alternative. The alternative is that they lay concrete under your whole house and they build your house on that. So there's nothing under your house other than this slab of concrete? Well, what they do a lot is that they run piping through the concrete. So it's something that they do a lot. And what happens over time is that sometimes those pipes, they break. And when those pipes break, they obviously there's water that's leaking. And cement is actually really, really porous. Like, if you think about it, cement is just made of water and sand. Basically, it's like a big chunk of what cement is. And so it's very porous because of that, and it soaks up water. And so what happens is if you have a pipe leak in your slab, then.

It basically takes in the water, and the water kind of evaporates and moves up through or vaporizes through the slab and comes upward. And then when it gets to your flooring, because you have flooring on top of the cement, it's creating a barrier, right? Because now there's nowhere else for the moisture to go. And then you have trapped moisture under your flooring, then you get. You can get mold growth under a lot of your floor. When I saw this picture, it made me think that that's maybe what's going on here because of the amount that was there in this picture. And I'm actually gonna. I'M gonna post this picture on Instagram today so you guys can see what I'm talking about. But in this picture, there was.

It was a really big chunk of the room that had, you know, which seemed pretty clear that there was mold growing all over the subfloor there. But if you look really closely. And this is more what I want to talk about when you look really closely at this picture. So I zoomed in, like, all the way kind of to the right. There's a wall there on the right. And if you zoom in really, really close, you can see the darkness is actually at the bottom of that wall as well. Okay.

This is the thing that gets missed a lot when there are slab leaks. So it's not like a water leak where there was a leak in a very exact spot spot. And so the water pools in that exact spot, and it doesn't spread super far. In a slab leak, the water is vaporizing throughout a big chunk of this concrete. We don't actually really know, like, all the time where it came from and how far it traveled. So something that gets missed a lot in slab leaks is the walls that are around the area. And a lot of times there's mold behind those walls, but they don't get addressed because the remediators or the contractors, whoever come in to handle this stuff, they think that the problem's just in the floor. Right. So they just focus on the floor, and they don't look at the rest. So when there are slab leaks, at the very, very least, in addition to removing the flooring and handling and remediating all that stuff properly, you have to be aware of what's happening to the walls, not only in the rooms that are impacted by the slab leak, but you also want to be concerned about all the walls in the. In the rooms that are, like, adjacent to that, like, the next room over. Okay. Again, we don't know how the water is diffusing through the slab. And so we also don't know how long the leak was necessarily in that pipe. So it might have been heavier. In one particular room, there might be a leak that's maybe a little less further on down the way that might not have have shown, like, significant moisture readings and floors and things like that, but you still could get that water diffusion that comes up through the slab, gets under the flooring, and potentially into the walls in a room that's like the next room over from where you think the problem ends. So the thing with this is that we have to extend where we're looking further Than kind of the obvious place, because a lot of things get missed that way. So whenever I go into a house and there's a slab leak that was known, or I'm suspecting there's a slab leak from different moisture readings I'm getting in the ground, what I want to do is, I mean, if I could pull up some of the carpeting, that's great. A lot of times you can't. And if it's not carpeting, if it's hardwood or tile, then you definitely can't. So what I do, in addition to kind of making a note to bring a slab expert out to evaluate if there was a leak, is I also want to test the walls in that room, and I also want to be looking at the walls in the adjacent rooms, too. So sometimes I'll do multiple wall cavity tests in that room and in the next room to understand the. If there's been a mold problem that's basically spread invisibly throughout, you know, a few like a larger footprint than where we expect the slab leak to be, this is something that's overlooked all the time. And the last thing that you want to do is spend all the money to basically, like, break up your concrete and do all this stuff. If you have to handle the leak that way, you know, sometimes they just cap off the pipes and run your pipes through your house, and then you don't worry about it anymore. But even still, you have to remove all your flooring, and then you have to dehumidify this cement, at least to get all the moisture out of the slab. But if we're not addressing the walls, then you're still going to have this big problem that's impacting the house. So when you're dealing with slab leaks, it's really important not only to look at the floor, but also to look at the walls in the same room where the leak happened. And then also in all the rooms that are connected to that room, Right? So you might have two, three, four rooms that are connected to that one room. You got to be looking at all of those rooms. And so you know whether it's testing the walls in those rooms. At the very, very least, you have to remove all the baseboards and things, those rooms, and see if there's any staining or discoloration. When you look at this picture that I'm going to post on Instagram that I'm talking about, you can see that the baseboards were pulled off of this right wall. And if you look down at the very, very bottom of the Wall. You can see this dark black stuff at the bottom of the wall. Looks to me like the slab leak probably moved into the next room. So there's probably something going on in the next room, too. And it definitely looks like it's impacted that wall. So those pieces have to be accounted for. And if they're not, you're still going to have an exposure problem. Even though in your mind, you think that we fixed the slab leak and we handled it and there was no more mold anywhere. Right. So the big thing is to make sure we're not missing stuff, because what it could do is give you this false sense of security that everything's okay and you could still be getting exposure in the house, but you think that it's not coming from that. And when that happens, basically, you just add a bunch of time onto your. Onto your healing journey, because you're kind of not even acknowledging an area that is impacting you, and you start looking in other areas for problems. And when you do that, it adds a lot of time to your journey.

Okay, so I'm going to tell a second story around this idea that dry mold doesn't impact us, basically. And so, you know, right now, I am currently being brought on as an expert witness, and I think I have three cases right now that I'm being brought on as for clients that I was working with who are either suing their landlords or there's some sort of legal thing that's going on. And I want to tell you a story about the very first court case that I did, which was a few years back, and what happened in that case and the flow of it, and kind of what I learned throughout that process. But more importantly, how what we've learned and how what's been proven already is. Is so unknown to not only, like, construction, but also the other, quote, experts in this field that. That are brought on by the defense attorneys. Right. So let me set this whole thing up for you. So my client in that case was the plaintiff, right? So they were suing the landlord. Okay. So that's how this works. So I was the expert witness for my client. The defense, they look to bring in expert witnesses, too. So here's what they do. They look for people that have a whole bunch of certifications behind their names, because they think when you look at that person on paper, that that person's going to know everything. Right? And so there are actually guys out there, guys and gals out there who their whole business is focused on being an expert witness. That's what their Whole business is focused on that. They market to lawyers. They. They get every freaking certification you could think of. They have all these commas and letters after their names, and they look all intimidating. And they come in there and if you, you know, if you don't know any better, you get intimidated by these guys, right? Myself, openly. I have one certification behind my name. And you want to know why that is? Is because the certifications, honestly, guys, they are super, super overrated. When I started seeing what other inspectors were doing that had my same certification and how just 10 terrible they were and how they were missing things and how they were only taking air samples and how they were giving just awful advice to people, it became very, very clear to me that going through the traditional method of education in this, in this world is. Is not where I need to be. Right? And. And that's where we get into the whole timeline of where we are and truly understanding what's going on with mold and how that information has moved. Moved along. I talked about this a long time ago, I think, in one of the first episodes that I did, which I guess isn't that long ago, but I called it the New Mold Truth. And just the quick overview is there is a timeline, there's a flow between when a new idea, a new truth is basically kind of first thought about by someone, and then it gets into the point where then other experts start proving it. And at that point, we all know that it's proven and it's a real thing. And. And then the time it takes from when the experts and the niche experts and the researchers, the time when we actually know that something is real and it's true, until the time where the government even acknowledges it or furthermore makes legislation to actually make changes around it or changes protocols and standards or anything like that. That time can take 40, 50 years for that flow to happen. All right? This is exactly what happened with cigarettes. And so real quickly with cigarettes, they found out in like, in the 1920s, between the 20s and the 50s, there's a whole bunch of kind of people that were. That were associating cancer with cigarette smoking. In 1954. It was proven in a research paper from. A research paper from the British Medical Journal in 1964 was the first time the government even acknowledged that it could maybe be something that. That might have some legs. And then after that, it took them another 30 years to create any sort of legislation that supported that basically limited cigarette smoking. Right? So the first legislation that was created was basically.

Not allowing you to smoke on domestic airline flights. And that happened in 1988. We knew in 1954 that smoking caused cancer, and the government first acknowledged it in 1964. So that's how much time goes by, right? That's where we are now with mold. We are in that place where it's all been proven. And, and nobody in terms of the government or laws or processes or any of that stuff has been adapted or updated or even confirmed and validated that it's a real thing. So that's where we are. So all the information that these, you know, career expert witnesses are working off of are all this old information, and they don't know any of the new stuff, and they think that they know everything. And so I go into this court case, and so I. I had done a deposition before, but I actually. We actually went to court. So sitting in front of a jury, right? There's like 12 people in the jury box, and I was getting asked questions. And honestly, it was like, really stressful, and it was. It was kind of scary because I hadn't done it before. And while I kind of knew what these career expert witness guys were all about, like, still, you know, that guy, that guy had done like 100 court cases before because that's all that he does, you know, and it's like, oh, man, you know, I'm a little nervous. But throughout the deposition process, I actually got to read his deposition. And when I read his deposition, I'm like, oh, man, I'm like, if they ask me the right questions, I'm going to destroy this guy. Because I could just see what he was saying. And he. There were so many things that. That are proven that he was saying that are wrong. And the night. The cool thing about doing expert witness case cases is that.

Is that you get to see the process from start to finish. So, like, when I first started, I was taught by. His name is Mark Levy. He's my father in law. He's literally one of the top mold experts in the world. And he's who taught me, right? So this is how I learned everything. I didn't really learn everything the way that everyone else did. And so when you go through this process, you could see, like, what the other mold inspectors were doing. You see their reports, you see how they were testing, and it just all starts to click. You're like, whoa. You're like, they're just going in and doing, you know, taking a couple air samples and leaving, and they're. And then they're giving recommendations on stuff. And then I look at my report going through this house. And There was like 30 samples, and we validated a bunch of different places where there was mold growing, and we talked about how it's moving through the house. We had all this stuff, and it was all backed by science, right? And. And it really just opened my eyes to the difference in the process, because the process is so.

What this. What normal people are doing, you know, in our industry. It's just. It's really misleading and it's really unfortunate to be just frank with you guys, right? And so anyway, so I'm going. We're going through this case. And so the reason I bring this up is because, again, just. Just backtrack real quick. We just talked about how. How there was mold under carpeting, which looked to be like a slab leak. But the whole point was that the remediators told those people that that dry mold can't impact anything, right? That mold that's hidden can't impact anything if it's not disturbed. So here is the package of research papers that I brought in to support everything. So one was an actual study that shows how air currents move and change through a house and how it actually does pull mold out from hidden places. So that was number one. So there's a study out that we have that shows that the next then is to say, okay, well, just because it got pulled out doesn't necessarily mean that it's that we're breathing it, right? So you have to prove that that's happening. You literally have to prove everything that you say, right, in these court cases. So the next paper is all about how mold and mycotoxins settle in dust reservoirs throughout a house, and then they get resuspended. So there's another paper that's called the human cloud effect. So there's two more papers here. One's called the human cloud effect. Basically, what it talks about is just particle in a house and how just human activity walking through a house. So just walking around, sitting on stuff, turning on your vacuum cleaner, just doing normal things is going to raise and pop all these particles up into your breathing zone. So that's one study. Then the next study we pull out is one that shows how mold and mycotoxins settle in the dust reservoirs and where these particles collect. So now we're telling this cause and effect story, right? We're showing if there's a source in a wall, it's proven that it comes out.

When it comes out, it's proven that that stuff settles in dust reservoirs, and then it's proven that those dust reservoirs get popped up into our breathing zone, and that's how we breathe it in. So we're creating this whole flow of how all this stuff happens, right? We're telling this entire story. Okay, so here's where the kicker was. So their expert basically said that it's not possible for hidden mold to impact anyone if it's behind a wall, which, by the way, this Guy has done 100 court cases. He goes out and his. He only works for like the defendants. That's all he does. So his whole job is to basically try to prove that they're not liable. This is his motivation. I talk so much about motivation and what are people's motivation and.

How you should interpret the information they're giving you based on their motivation, right? So his motivation is to basically say, it's not a problem. And this is what he does all the time. So anyways, that's what he had basically told his attorney. And so while I'm sitting on the stand, the attorney asked me a question and basically he kind of says it like almost like a statement. He says, so.

But isn't it true that if mold is behind a wall, it can't, you know, it can't get out impact like the living space? And that just opened the door for me. And I went off for about five minutes straight about how all this stuff works. The guy was screwed, right? He asked me a question that he didn't know what I was going to answer. And not only did I answer it, but then I actually brought like all my research studies up to the stand with me. I didn't really know how this whole thing worked. So I had like a pile of papers and like booklets with me. And I actually think that it really helped because the jury was watching me point to the research studies, right? They were getting like a visual of me saying, well, no, this study right here, which is titled X says says that it does come out. And this title in this study here titled whatever. And I'm literally pulling out these like, you know, blocks of paper that are bound together. And I think it really helped, like, hone in the fact that this isn't like a one page study or something. Like, these are massive research studies that were done. So anyways, I blow it apart, basically say everything that I just told you guys and we win the case, right? And my attorney tells me afterwards, he's like, you know, we won the case. When he asked you that question, I was like, yeah, I can't believe that he asked me that question. Like, it was just over after that. And that was the deal, right? So the reason that I share the story with you is really to illustrate a lot of what I've been talking about up to now, right? How this stuff moves through a house, how you have to get rid of the sources that are hidden, how you can't just cover them up, right? How you have to do a cleaning process in your house after you remove the sources, how you have to handle your heating and air conditioning system. All of this stuff, it's like a puzzle. And all the studies have been done, and so you got to put the puzzle together, and then you realize, oh, this is how we do it, right? And that's what our whole process is based off. Our testing process, our remediation plans and process, it's all based off of these different studies. And then we go out and we prove it, and then we make tweaks and stuff where we need to in order to make it work. But it's all based on this stuff, right?

And so I just wanted to share that story. One, I thought you might find it interesting. Two, it's good to know that I won. It was exciting. So we got the hero that wins the day, right?

And three, when you're thinking through this stuff, just know that I'm not making all this stuff up, all right? Like, everything I'm telling you, there's a reason why I share it with you guys. And a lot of it is backed in. In not only the.

Thousands of inspections that I've done and all that stuff, but also in the actual research that we're doing. And remember, guys, where we are in the timeline, like in the cigarette timeline, like I said, it took 50 years from beginning to end, or 40 years, or whatever it was from beginning to end to actually get some movement. We're actually pacing behind that right now in mold. It's taking longer. This was first. It was first kind of brought up in the mainstream in 1997 by Dr. Richie Shoemaker. And then we're in the next phase right now. We're still in the phase where all the experts are proving it, but there's been no acknowledgment at all by the government that this is a thing. Actually, they keep acknowledging that it's not really a thing. That's kind of what they're doing right now. They're trying to, like, cover their asses on this stuff. And so we're so early in this process. Like, you don't want to wait 50 years for the government to finally decide that we're going to change the standards and the regulations and stuff. I mean, honestly, a lot of us are going to be dead by then, and the rest of us are going to be too sick to recover, probably. So you got it. We got to be ahead of the curve on this. This is the stuff that I'm trying to share with you guys. All right? So.

Yeah, I think. I think that is my tirade for the day. So everyone have a good one. 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.