175: How Often Should You Test for Mold After Remediation?

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.

After remediation, do you need to keep getting air tests done? I'm gonna go into this a little bit in this episode here. This should hopefully be a shorter one. This question actually came through an email reply to an email that I sent out a little while ago where I was asking for questions from my community. So if you guys want the ability to submit questions and try to get more of a, an in depth answer on the podcast, I have a link in the show Notes here where you can go and get onto my email community and then you will see those and you can just reply to those emails and then we will see them. So that's how it works. All right, so the question again, after remediation, do you need to keep getting AEHR tests to make sure it's gone? So, short answer, no. Like, that's not how I would look at this. But like to dive into it a little bit more, AHHR tests, even if you want to do continuous monitoring or testing of any way, air tests are not what you should be doing. Air tests are not going to tell you if new problems are arising because an air sample in the middle of the room, and I say this all the time, so if you've heard this before, you can skip forward 20 seconds. Air samples in the middle of the room do not tell you if you have a source mold problem somewhere else. We did a study on this internally a few years ago. There was a 78% false negative rate on air samples taken in the middle of a room when there was actually a source of mold less than three feet away in a wall, in, in a cabinet somewhere like that. So continuous air testing like that. This is why people think they don't have mold problems in the first place. Because the majority of our industry goes in and they do air tests in the middle of the rooms and they come in, they put an air sample up and they say, okay, you have no mold. And then you think, oh, I have no mold, that's great. Yet just a few feet away, there's mold. Right? And the reason is an air test shouldn't be used. Like, right, you're, you're Basically, it's a snapshot in time. It's whatever floating around that air pump whenever it happens to be running. And if the. The mold and stuff isn't particularly airborne at that point in time around that area when you're taking the air sample, then it's not going to show up. And so. So just to hit on that real quick, even if you were going to be doing continuous, like, monitoring and testing of some kind, air tests are not the move. That's not what you should be doing. Now, let's put that aside. Do I think that you need to be doing consistent testing of any kind after remediation? So I think that's, you know, kind of the next question here to make sure that it's gone. And.

I would say. I mean, I would say, no, I wouldn't be doing continuous testing if it was me. We got to think back to, like, well, why did you go through the process in the first place to make sure that you remove mold in the first place, Right? Like, why did you do that? If it's a health issue, then you could actually sort of gauge your body to get an understanding of what's going on. Right. Are you still having reactions? Are you not having reactions? Did it all taper down after a period in time, and then now you're starting to feel like you're not doing well again? Like, that could be a reason. I think that you need a reason to do it. Because the reality is, any type of mold test that you do, the results are going to vary, like, day to day. When you do them right, you want stuff that's more stable, you want stuff that's more consistent. But at the end of the day, there's always variables in indoor air quality testing, right? Where did you collect the sample from? How long did you collect it? Was it from what specific area was it from? Like, if it was a few inches over the other way, maybe there was a few more mold spores that happened to be 6 inches to the right, then 6 inches to the left. Like, there are. There are variables here, right? And you can really drive yourself nuts testing and testing and testing and not seeing the same exact result every time, or one time seeing an increase of 10%, and the next time seeing an increase or a decrease of 20%, you're like, oh, it's better. Oh, now it's worse. Where is it? Where is it? It's not necessarily like that. Right? So the reason that we do this is that we want our bodies to be able to be resilient to external exposures. Right? And so a lot of times the first step is we have to remove a lot of that exposure for us to be able to build up our body's resiliency, our immune system, our responses and all that stuff. And then eventually your body is supposed to be able to live in a place that has something, right? Like, it's never going to be zero, never, ever going to be zero. So you have to be able to sort of live that way. And the first step, a lot of times, remove everything that's triggering you. Let's start building up your body's immune system and ultimately your resistance, your resilience. And then as you move forward, you'll be able to be exposed to something here or there, and it's not gonna be a huge trigger. And all that said, you don't want a constant exposure in your house, right? So, like, you don't want that happening. So here's what I do. Instead of constantly testing, which is expensive, and you know, you can get results that will send you down rabbit holes that are kind of unnecessary to go down if you have a slight fluctuation in, like, your levels from one test to the next. Instead of doing that, I would be way more focused on being hyper aware of water events in your space. And not like big things, but like little things. Like, I would take that time and I would every week, if you're really into it, at least once a month, if you're just wanting to kind of stay up on it. Right. I get how, like, the frequency can be a lot for certain people. But for example, everything. Pull everything out of your kitchen sink or any of your sink cabinets, kitchens and bathrooms and laundry rooms, wherever, once, let's say once a month, make sure that there's no leaks happening. Tom. Right? Learn how to look around the baseboards by your tub, by your shower, behind your toilet for bubbling paint or little water stains or separations or buckles or anything like that. Be aware of when you're washing your hands is water splashing out of the sink and possibly running down the side of a cabinet or hitting a wall on the side somewhere. Right? I'm having to teach my kids about all of this right now. I did really good with the tub. They understand the tub. And now we're at hand washing, and I had to teach my daughter how you actually put the soap in your hand when it's dry first, and then you turn on the water, and then you put your hand under the water, and you always keep your hands in the sink at the entire time Instead of getting your hands wet, then going to the soap that's outside of the sink and then coming back into the sink. These are the things I'm teaching my kids. I'm teaching them the steps of how to, like, wash your hands to reduce water getting out of the sink basin. Like, these are the things that I'm doing.

But I think that is more where you focus, right? You could get water monitoring devices. You know, like, I have simplisafe system. They have little water leak devices that I put. I have under all of my sinks, I have under my water heater, you know, all those areas where water could happen. So I have those. One day, actually, a few weeks ago, one of them triggered under my water heater and come to find out that our house cleaners were in there, and it was actually something they did. But I immediately went down there. I was like, oh, man, is this thing leaking? Right? Like, if you can be on top of that stuff, that's where you prevent all these things from happening. Right. The. The goal here is that when you get through a mold inspection remediation process, that you've handled it right. And so then if you've handled it and you've kind of got a clean slate, then instead of trying to test and see if it's there again, which is a little further downstream, what you want to start shifting your mindset to is, how do I prevent it from happening in the first place? And it's all about water and moisture control, right? So, you know, there's maintenance things that you do, and there's looking around the house that you do right on the maintenance piece, and you make sure that you're having, you know, your gutters cleaned out regularly on the outside of your house. For example, if you live somewhere where trees. You have a lot of trees and leaves fall in your gutters, then water can't flow through your gutters when it rains. Therefore, they're not being redirected. The water stops being redirected from the house because it's not coming out of the downspout anymore. So it's overflowing the gutters. And now you have water kind of penetrating from other areas. Make sure the sprinklers that you have are not spring or not spraying toward the house. Make sure they're constantly being looked at that things are moving away from the house. Make sure you don't have standing water or pooling water outside of the house. That might need to be addressed. Maybe you need to fix your grading or you need to barricade an area specifically to make sure water doesn't get to the house. Right. So it's all about prevention stuff in my mind at that point. And then so it's a combination of like prevention activities, which is maintenance stuff. So like the gutters as an example, pulling things out of your sink cabinets, like, those are kind of like the like maintenance kind of things to look at. And then there's just awareness stuff, which is just as you look through the house, you don't have to like say, today's inspection day at my house. Just like every time I go into my bathroom where my kids are, I look at the baseboards in there, I look at the grout in the shower to make sure it's not cracking so water can't get down, you know, from the tub, where the tub meets the walls. Like, it's just like that sort of stuff is what I would be doing. It's what I do in my own place. I don't test my place all the time. I just keep an eye on stuff. Right. And it's a combination of how are we feeling? Are we seeing any sort of triggers in our bodies that might be a clue of something going on and what am I seeing everywhere? And as long as both of those things are fine, then I'm okay. And even if I see and if I see something, then I immediately try to investigate that further to make sure it hasn't turned into a problem. Right. And then at that point, maybe you do test something there, but you're doing more of a source level test off of an issue. And for that you won't even need a full inspection. Like you could use our mold locator toolkit for that. And that is a completely direct, custom built source level testing where, you know, you would download our app, take a couple pictures of the area that you're concerned about. We will look at it, be like, okay, you need to test that this way. And then we would send you a test kit and you would just test it like that. So the testing that you do do is targeted. There's a reason for it and you can look at it that way. Right? So that's how I would look at it. Be aware of, of things going on. Just be hyper aware of what's going on. Always looking for signs of water damage. So to go through it again, bubbling, paint buckling or warping, you see that in floors, you can see that in baseboards peeling or chipping. Paint is a big one. Staining, obviously, any sort of staining or discoloration and Then things like rust or corrosion, right? Those are the five signs of water damage. That's it. Any one of those things and those, that's what water damage looks like. So as you're looking, look for those. If you see anything like that, then that's a trigger. Then the next thing that I would do is I would, I would use our mobile locator toolkit and I would order a kit and then have the kit customized directly for that space, which we do. Right. So when you order one of our, one of our at home test kits like that, you actually get a one on one coordinator that you work with that helps to construct the kit and helps set up an app that you download where you can take the photos of what you want to see of what you want us to look at. So we're actually looking at your house when we're creating the test kit, which is different than any other test kit that exists right now. All test kits are basically order my kit, it comes to me, I take the same sample as I would in any other house. That's not how our test kit works. I know how houses work. I know every house is different. I'm not sending a test kit out. That's the same test for everybody's house. It's like it doesn't work. Right. So for our test kit, we built an app. Took us like two years to develop an app and a process that allows us to interface with you. You take a couple of pictures. My consultant team then looks at your photos the same way we would look at a regular home inspection. The same exact way. You then have a strategy session with your, with your test strategist, right. So you then get on the phone with one of my consultants and you're talking through a test strategy and then we custom create a kit for you. Say, okay, well, based on everything we've talked about, on what we're looking at and what we're seeing, we think you should test here and here or whatever. And then we send you a kit straight to your house. You can collect the samples right off of that. You just send the samples out to the lab just like you would with any other desk with any other test kit. You know, comes with packaging and stuff that you need. And then we look at the results for you, we analyze them, we tell them, we tell you what's wrong or not wrong. And then we even send you remediation protocols for how to fix something if you need it. So it really is like the ultimate solution for this question, for this concept, which is Like, I've had a, I've had a little problem. I've gone through the process. I want to stay on top of it. How do I stay on top of it? Prevention things to make sure water's not, not going to be a problem in the future. Keeping your eyes aware to, to understand if there ultimately became a water problem, even though you're trying to prevent it. And then if you see something like that, you then go to mold locator toolkit, get that custom built, test the area where you see the problem and see if there's an issue. So that's, that's the play here, right? Not an error test in the middle of your room. And you're not even doing test kits every month. Like that's, that's dumb too. Like, why would you do that? Like, you don't need a test kit from us every month. You need a test kit from us when there's something of concern that you want to test. Right? And so if you're aware of those things, then you can kind of do that. So if you're interested in the test kit, also make sure to drop that in the show notes too. But if you're listening, it's yes. Weinspect.com testkit that's where you can get the my locator test kit and get through that process. It's really, really awesome. I'm pumped about it. It's working incredibly well. It's making this so much more affordable and accessible to people all over the country. You're talking a couple hundred bucks to get custom built test kits for your house. It's amazing. So that would be my plan. Hopefully that's helpful for you guys. And you should go take a look around your houses now and see if you see any of that stuff. I do it all the time. Literally every time I'm in a bathroom, I'm in a kitchen, I'm looking all the time. So should you be testing all the time? No. Should you be looking all the time? Should you be aware all the time? Yes.

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.