171: Is it Past Mold Exposure or My Current Home?

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 you have mycotoxins in your body. And then this question comes up, and it's like, is this from a past exposure or is this from the place I'm currently living in now? It comes up all the time. A lot of times the doctors will say, hey, well, there's a possibility it's from where you used to live before, but, you know, maybe it could be where you live now. And, like, technically that's true. So as somebody who's hearing this, like, what is your next step? How do you figure that out? Right. Your doctor's not gonna figure that out for you. So how do you figure out if it's your current place or if it's somewhere that you used to live? Right. And the reason it could be somewhere where you used to live is because, you know your body holds onto toxins, right? So unless you are able to detoxify them properly, if your body continues to hold them, it can build up in there for a long period of time. So it could be from somewhere else, but you also could be exposed to it right now. And side note, it could be a combination of both, by the way. I don't know if that ever comes up from the doctors, but you could have a previous exposure, and you could be getting currently exposed. And it's not black and white, Right? And so we need to figure out which of these it is. And the way to figure it out is you can't look at a house that you used to live in 10 years ago. So you can figure out your current space and try to understand, is it my current space that I'm living in? Right, so this is where. This is where you do it. So how do you know that? Okay, so there's. There's a couple things to think about here. There are things you can. You can. You can make some assumptions if you want to, or you can do testing that will validate it. Okay, so let's talk through how you get through, like, the assumption process. Uh, it's really almost like building a hypothesis of what's going on. Let's talk about what we know. We know that mold needs water to Grow. We know that mold does not need water to stay. And that is probably the single biggest issue in our entire industry, is that inspectors think that if there's no water right now, then there can't be a mold problem, because mold needs water to grow. Yeah, it does. It does not need water to stay. Think about a plant. You water a plant seed, then the plant grows. You stop watering the plant, the plant doesn't uproot itself and start looking around for another pot that's getting watered. It starts to die, it starts to wilt over, starts to get dry, it starts to break apart. That's exactly what happens to mold. And that's how there are these historic mold issues in homes that constantly impact people's health, health that they don't know about. Right. For example, I had a leak over here. I had the plumber come out. They fixed the leak. That's it. Leak is fixed. Well, where did the leak hit? Did it. Was it in a wall? Was it in a floor? What's going on? There's the possibility of mold issues in those places. Right? And that's. That's what I see. And we see it. We inspect the majority of time and go into a house, and I would say maybe like 10 to 15% of the time there's actual active water issues in a house. The other 85 to 90% of the time, it is old issues that got wet at some point in time that have dried out, yet the mold still remains back there. The mold, the. The growth, the colony still remains, and the pieces of it still break off, and they get into our breathing zone in the house, and that's how we're exposed, and we get this constant exposure. Right? So we have to figure out, like, is that going on? So the first thing that we do is I want you to sit down and I want you to think about every single little water leak, water issue that you could possibly think of that's gone on in your house. This is the first thing, okay? So your doctor says, is it your current house? Is it your old house? And you say, no, my old house is great. I have a house cleaner. It looks really nice. There's nothing going on here. That's what most people say. And then they come back, and then I ask this question when we get on the phone, and they're like, well, no, we haven't any leaks. And then I start walking them through rooms in their house. So that's what we're doing. We're going to play this game. I'm going to walk you through every, you know, not every room, but a couple of the key rooms in your house, and I am going to prompt you to think about if anything has ever happened. Okay, we're going to start with bathrooms. Okay? So walk into your bathroom. What do you have in your bathroom? You have a sink. You have a toilet. You have a shower. Okay, let's go to the shower.

Has water ever come out of the shower just from you taking a shower and water splashing outside of the shower? Has that ever happened? You'll be like, I don't know. I mean, maybe. Okay, cool. Well, then the next thing I want you to do is I want you to go look at the wall next to the shower, and I want you to look at the floor next to the shower. And do you see any staining? Do you see any, like, bubbling paint? Do you see the baseboard warping off a little bit? Do you see a floorboard warping a little bit? Any of that stuff? That means that water has come out at some point in time. Okay? So I want you to start, like, looking as I'm going through and say, oh, if I check this and I see, like, this little thing here, then I know that that's a potential area for there to be a mole problem. Remember, we're trying to figure out, is it possible that there's a mole problem in my house? I'm going to start giving you possibilities of things that might happen right now. You may also say, yeah, I have kids. Kids splash out of the tub all the time. Bam. You have a water source. You have water in your tub. Your kids are splashing it out. That is a water source. That's the equivalent of a leak. The exact same thing. Your house doesn't care where the water came from. A leak. We think of a leak as a pipe leaking. Right? Instead of thinking of leaks, I want you to think of water issues. I want you to think of water going where it's not supposed to go. Like, that's what I want us thinking of as we're going through this. Okay? Your toilet. Has your toilet ever overflowed? Has your toilet ever leaked underneath? Is there anything you're aware of over there? Your sink. Have you ever had, like, a leaky faucet? Has ever. Is there been a drip in the cabin under sink that you had to have a plumber come fix real quick? And it was, like, not a bit. You thought it was not a big deal, like, anything like that. Every single one of those things is a potential for there to be a mold issue. In that spot. Okay, go to your kitchen. Your kitchen. You have your sink there too. Same thing. Has water ever splashed out of the sink and hit like a wall behind there that doesn't have a backsplash on it? For example, maybe you have like, crown molding or drywall back behind there. Bam. That's a water source. Let's hit that. Have you looked at the grout that's in between your backsplash where it meets your counter, or the grout where your sink meets your countertop? Is it damaged? Is there darkness or blackness in there? Those are signs that either water can get in there or there might be mold growing in your ground already. Has your sink ever had a faucet leak or has a pipe underneath ever dripped a little bit and you had to get it fixed? Did your garbage disposal have an issue once that water came out? But it was only one time, and we got it dried really quick and we put it back together. Right. These are all things. Has. Has water ever. Have you ever seen water puddle in the corner on the floor below your dishwasher? And you're like, oh, that's just water from the dishwasher when I open it. Not a big deal. Your house doesn't know that. Your house could think that it's a leak, Right? So has that ever happened? Right now we're getting into your kitchen. We're talking about your sink, we're talking about your dishwasher, talking about your refrigerator, the floor down by your refrigerator. Um, you know, those are all areas where things can happen in your kitchen. Think about your laundry room. Have you ever seen water around, you know, the. The bottom of your washing machine when you. And you're like, ah, I just going to wipe this up. Maybe something like spilled over here a little bit like that, you know, something like that. So these are all, like, little things. So what I want you to do is think historically about every room and be like, oh, yeah, there was this one leak over here, but we got it fixed. And I didn't think it was a big deal, but now that I'm listening to Brian, it's like, ah, maybe that is like, yeah, that's the. These are the things that we do in our calls that we have with our clients before we even go to their house. We walk through every room in their house and say, have you had something here? Have you had something here? What about the ceiling? Do you. Have you ever seen anything discolored? Have you ever noticed a smell over here? Have you had something fixed Historically? How did you have it fixed. Oh, you just had the plumber come fix the leak, but you never tested for mold and never had it remediated. Okay, that's a spot, right? So I want you to think, have you ever had something that actually did get fixed a little bit, yet the fixing required didn't include anything that was like mold related. It was just fixing the water issue and then sealing it back up. There's a possibility there. Okay, so the first thing you can do if you don't want to spend any money, is go through this process with yourself. Go through every room, think of every area where there's a water source. That's the easiest way to do it, right? Or think of anywhere that you're aware of. Sometimes people are aware of things in their windows, right? Like, oh, our windows have condensation and there's like moisture around our windows all the time. Guys, if there's moisture around your windows all the time, that is the source of a potential mold issue in and around your window, right? So like that can happen. So we have to start thinking of all this stuff. So that's the first way to do it. Now the second way to do it is to do something called the dust test. So the dust test is a dust collection sample that you do in your house. And it will tell you if there is mold floating around your house that is settled in the dust of the house. Why do you do dust testing? Dust testing is by far the best way to get a true understanding of contamination in your house of a lot of different kinds, not just mold. And why? Because gravity will bring floating particles down from the surface or from the air down to the surface. It will collect down on the surface in the dust. Think of dust like a, like a spider web. Like stuff just gets held in it, right? And then the cool thing about dust is it could be analyzed in a much more in depth way than an air sample, right? So the reason air samples suck when you put them in the middle of rooms is because all the stuff that's floating around, it changes constantly. You're getting like, maybe I take the sample today and there's extra of this. But if I take it over here in a room I haven't walked in in five days, then I don't get anything. But when you go down to the ground, you're getting a historical perspective of everything that has happened ever since that has been cleaned last. So it can literally be years of buildup in the dust. If you haven't cleaned it for that long, it's going to give you a much better view of. Is there a mold issue in this house? Because if there is, what's going to happen? Let's say there's mold behind a wall, in a sink cabinet, whoever it might be. The spores of particles, they come out from that space. Gravity brings them down to the surface, they settle in the dust. The way you're exposed is as you walk around, the dust pops back up into the breathing zones through something called the human cloud effect. So what's happening is you're constantly popping up dust and particle from settled surfaces, and you're creating this invisible cloud as you walk around your house. And that's what you breathe all the time. Okay. So if your breathing is actually originating, you know, primarily from what's settled on surfaces, and you're constantly disturbing it and popping it up in your space, then you need to go to the surfaces to test at that area and get a feel for what's popping up in front of your face that you're breathing. Dust analysis allows you to grab that historical collection of that, of that information, and it allows us to analyze mold at a DNA level. Right. So it's very similar to ermi. The dust test is very similar to ermi. It's just a different interpretation. Laid on top was a. Which is a way more contextually relevant interpretation. And it doesn't include the ERMI score. That is wrong, like, all the time. So the dust test, you do that, and if you do that test, so let's say your doctor's like, we gotta figure out if it's you or your house. Let's say you don't, or your old house or your new house. Let's say you don't want to sit down and do the inventory of every room you've ever seen. Order the dust test. It's like 275 bucks. And you do a test in your house, the lab results come back, and it will show you all the mold types that are there. It will tell you which ones are elevated, it will tell you how much they are elevated, and it will tell you how your home ranks on a scale, it like a percentile scale between all the homes that were in the study, which is where the interpretation originates. So is your home in, like, the worst of the worst homes? Is your home in the best of the best of the best homes? Is your home in the middle somewhere? And this is gonna give you a screening test. It's not gonna tell you where the problems are, but it gives you a general screening test that lets you understand if you Have a mole problem. And so now if your doctor is like, hey, we gotta figure out, is it your old house or your new house? Or who knows? Maybe it was both. You can't test your old house, but you look at your new house and you think through and you're like, wow, I've had, like, three kind of leaks that I just sort of dismissed and didn't think were a big deal. And then I did the dust test, and the dust test said I was in, like, the. The, you know, X percentile of all, you know, the. The highest, you know, 50% of percentile in homeless, like, above 50, above 70, whatever it is, Then you're like, okay, there is a mold problem in this house. I now know that there's a mold issue in this house. And so then the next step is, how do I handle it? Right? This. This episode isn't about how you handle it and how you find it. This episode is about answering the question of do I have a mold problem in my current space? That's it. We're just trying to answer that question. That is the easiest question to answer. Do I have a problem? That's it. I don't care where it is. I don't care how. Just, is there an issue? Because once you know that problem, you can start making decisions on what you want your next step to be, right? Do I want to investigate this further? Do I not want to investigate this further? How does that affect how the doctor is going to be treating you with them knowing that you have a current exposure of some kind? This is, like, super valuable information, and it's actually very inexpensive to get that information. The first thing you can do is just go through every room in your head and say, hey, listen, I went through this process, and I could think of 10 things in this house that have had some sort of moisture issue since the time I've lived here. Odds are you have. You have a mole problem in your house, right? Or you go to the dust test, you actually get raw data. You get actual laboratory data, and it tells you if you have a problem or not. So that's it. So that's how you can figure it out. That is the beginning. Question number one that you need to. That you need to answer is, do I or don't I have a mold problem in your house? Then this is how you do it.

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. Sat.