23: Can’t trust the CDC on Mold / How many people are actually impacted by mold?

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. Happy Tuesday. I am in my car on my way to an appointment in Mission Viejo, California, which is like in Orange county for those of you who don't live anywhere near here and, and could care less. Anyways, my morning got a little tied up today, so I wasn't able to do my recording in the house, but I wanted to get something out for you. So I'm gonna be recording in my car. So please forgive any maybe like little rattles or anything that might be going on. My ladder's in the back, you know, just. Just the sounds of driving. But anyways, there was. There's two things that I was thinking about chatting about today. The first one is really about understanding, like, how many people are actually impacted by environmental issues.

In February, I was invited to come do a presentation, a training seminar for the Indoor Air Quality association, which is the biggest association for like the indoor air quality industry. So it's the biggest one. They do an annual meeting every year. And this year they asked me to come out along with my. With my friend and my cousin, actually Mike Rubino, who runs remediation company out of the New Jersey tri State area. So we were basically coming to talk about, or asked to come in to talk about remediation specifically for hypersensitive people. What the process looks like, how it's different than maybe some of the normal remediation practices and that sort of thing. It was really cool because, you know, this is like a training weekend, right? So there's multiple training sessions going on at every time. So think you have like an hour time block, essentially, and then there's three rooms that are running different presentations in each room. And so the attendees essentially register for whichever one that they're going to go to. And so, you know, whenever you go to these conferences and these shows, same thing happens at medical conferences. You see which doctors are talking about, which topic that's interesting to you, and you kind of plan out your day. It's almost like when you go to Disneyland and you know that you only have a day. And so you say, okay, what's the first ride that I want to go on? What's the second ride? Where am I going to get a fast pass and then kind of skip that and go over to the next thing? So you're kind of like planning out your day and mapping it out for me. Side note, for Disneyland, it's always start with Space Mountain. That's always number one. But anyways, so that's kind of what happens at these things. And my training session ended up having the most attendees of any session throughout the entire long weekend of the whole event, which was pretty awesome. So I was pretty excited. It definitely looked like that it was something that people were interested in, which is good. It means that from the industry perspective, that people are at least open to learning about this, about a process that works for mold sensitive people. And that's a good thing because I guarantee you, five years ago, if I wanted to do this presentation, nobody would even be in there. Nobody would care to learn about it. They would think it was all crazy. They would think that none of it is relevant for them. So just the fact that it was the most highly attended course of the whole session is a good sign from the industry perspective when it comes to you guys, right? So when you're trying to find people to work with you. So that's a good thing. Anyway, so when I was putting this presentation together, I was trying to think, I wanted to frame things, I wanted to set up the whole presentation in a way. And that really showed the need for what I was going to be talking about. See, a lot of people in our industry, they think that when they're working with someone who's mold sensitive or hypersensitive, because they're not really tapped into that network of people, you know, they might just get one or two clients that might fall into that boat every now and then, just because they're not, you know, kind of a typical reference source for the doctors or whoever, you know, whoever found them. And so because of that, they think that this one or two clients of theirs, they think that they're a hassle. They think that they're crazy. They feel like they're being asked to do things that aren't necessary. And because of that, these remediators on the industry side, a lot of times, specifically the ones that don't focus on hypersensitive people, they kind of think that it's not a big issue. They think every now and then, like, I found one client, I've had another client that was a nut job, that was crazy, whatever. And they made me do all this stuff, and it was annoying. And I never want to work with those people again. Right. That's kind of what they think. So I knew my challenge at the beginning of this presentation was to figure out how to show them that that's not the case. Right. If you're listening to this, you know that's not the case. You know that there's a much larger need for this, but our industry doesn't necessarily know that. So that's what I was trying to figure out to do at the beginning. So what I did is I went through just four of the kind of major health conditions that I'm aware of. And I'm sure there's other ones that I don't even know of that I know are sensitive to mold. Right. And I know that create a sensitivity to mold exposure. It doesn't have to be toxic mold, it doesn't have to be mold toxins. Just literally mold exposure, environmental exposure can trigger this stuff. And so that's where I wanted to start and I wanted to see how many people that actually was. Right. So the four that I looked at were sirs, which is Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, Lyme disease, autoimmune diseases, kind of lumped together, and then pans and pandas, which is pediatric Neurological issues. So I looked at those four things. Those are four of the big ones that I know of. And there are different associations that are kind of tied to each one.

Or ways for me to find general population estimates. So that's what I did. So I went through all of them, I added them all up, and then I took that and I divided into the entire US population to see what the percentage was. And I'm gonna give you like a two second pause. I want you to just guess to yourself, what do you think that percentage is? Okay, so here we go. We're gonna pause right now.

Okay, so I'm gonna tell you in a second. I think a lot of you probably guessed around 25%. That's what I think a lot of you guessed. And I think the reason that we guessed that is because that's the number that was really publicized from Dr. Richie Shoemaker specifically for SIRS, which is chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. So we know that 25% of the population, I think it's actually 24%, has a genetic predisposition due to the HLA gene that makes us more susceptible to environmental exposure. So that's something that we knew probably more easily. Then I went and I added up all the other stuff. When you put it all together, that's 40% of the entire US population has some sort of health condition that falls into just one of these four categories. And believe me, there's other things, right? I'm definitely not to claim to be the expert on the health side of things, but I know that these four, some of the four big categories, and that is 40% of the U.S. population. Think about that. I mean this isn't a minority of people. And this is what I was trying to get across at this presentation. And so the way that I did this first I showed the numbers, right? So I had one slide and it showed Sirs another slide and showed Lyme disease. I did that for all four and then I did a total. And the total, I think I want to say was 139 million. I don't totally remember, I haven't looked at it in a while. And then I showed what the percentage was and it was about 40% of the U.S. population. And then to really hammer it home, I showed a picture, it's like really high res picture of.

What'S the name of the Boston Red Sox baseball stadium. I just totally blanked on it right now. But anyways, I showed that baseball stadium, there's a cool picture of it. And I said, alright guys, so now we know all these numbers, right? So look at this picture. 40% of the people at this baseball game are susceptible and more sensitive to mold exposure than your quote, normal person, right? So we have to change our mindset that it's not like normal people versus people that aren't normal. Like this is a very normal thing. It's basically half of the entire US that has sensitivities to mold. Now the problem is that a lot of them don't know about it, right? So just because you have certain, maybe you haven't even been diagnosed yet, or if you have been diagnosed, you haven't found the doctor that's, that's kind of put the pieces together and connected the dots for you to let you understand that mold exposure and these health conditions are a problem, right? So not everyone of the 40% of those people in the baseball stadium knew about it, but that doesn't mean that it's not an issue for them. And so this was really the visual I used to set it up. I probably took about 10 minutes at the beginning of this presentation. So I only had 60 minutes. So you know, I spent a good chunk, almost 20% of this presentation literally trying to set the stage for why what we were going to be sharing was so important and why they needed to be listening to it. And at least be considering it. And I think that that ended up working out pretty well because after the presentation, a bunch of people stayed. There was a line of people waiting to ask myself and Mike questions. And it was cool because they were questioning some of the items and the specific steps in our remediation protocols. Which is great, right? If they're questioning it, that means they're trying to understand why you're doing it and the effect that it has and what order you do it in. And that's awesome. Not everyone agreed, but at the end of the day, everybody was open to it and there was a lot of interaction. I think with that said, one, I feel like it was a success in terms of the presentation, but two, I wanted you guys to understand the true breadth of how many people are truly impacted by this stuff. I think a lot of you have a good idea just from the different social groups that you're in and that stuff. But when you see it just kind of put together in numbers like that, and you have, I mean, 40% of the U.S. the point of this is to let you guys know that you're not alone in this. Okay? There's a lot of people that are dealing with this and, you know, not all of them know it, but don't think that you're, you know, a weirdo or there's something wrong with you or whatever. The reality is that just the mass population has a variety of different health conditions and things impact those health conditions. And we just have to understand that and then, you know, make the good decisions that we need to moving forward off of that. So anyways, yeah, that was. That was just the first piece of this stuff I wanted to share with you. So hopefully you found that kind of interesting.

Okay, so now that we have thought through just the sheer number of people that are impacted by this, I wanted to share something else with you guys. I sent this out to my Mold Finder subscribers via email. I think last week I sent out an email about this, but it just, you know, just kind of tied into what I was talking about. So I'll talk about it here too. And that is, I think the title of the email is you can't trust the CDC about mold or something like that. I forget what the title of the email was, but here's the deal. So we just talked about how many people are impacted by this stuff, right? If you listen back to one of the very first episodes of the show, I talked about the new Mold Truth adoption model and where we are in terms of, like, the information that we have at hand the research that's available versus where we are in terms of the mainstream population and the government actually acknowledging that type of information. And we're in this weird spot right now where there's a whole bunch of information out there talking about the health effects of mold, talking about how it moves throughout the environment and how testing should actually be handled and inspection should be handled. But none of that is actually being recognized, really, by the government. And so there's this disconnect there. And if you go back and listen to that episode, I talk through, like, every stage of how, like, a new idea becomes some crazy idea, from some crazy dude to just the accepted kind of norm and how long that process takes and the ups and downs that happen in that process. And I use the example of cigarettes. And essentially the process took, like, close to 100 years or something like that to become a mainstream truth. And at the end of that, if you want to dive into it some more, but I posed a question, like, do we want to wait basically from where we are right now, which is phase two, to get to phase four, where there's actually any action that's being done? It's like 50 years. Like, do we want to wait 50 years for this stuff to happen? No. We know the research is out there, so why would we keep doing things to ourselves? Just because the slow feed of the government hasn't actually created any sort of legislation or laws or regulations or standards or anything around it. Right. The reality is that the CDC and the EPA and all these governmental entities, they have to be really, really careful about what they say. Right? They have to have, like, you know, they kind of have to cover their asses. They have to have outs in what they say in case somebody pushes back on them or there's a legal issue or whatever. There's just a lot of that that has to happen. And so because of that, it's really hard to just look at what they have to say blindly and take it as truth. And I used to do that, too, for a lot of stuff. But I know mold so well, and I know the stats so well that I can look at this stuff and I can see what they're saying, and I just know that it's not true. And it just kind of makes me question everything, which is a topic for a whole nother conversation. But I want to talk to you specifically about this, about molds. So I was going through the CDC website, pulling some information for a different presentation I'm working on, and one of the comments that I Saw on the website just kind of like, I don't know, it didn't really blow my mind, I guess. Like, I knew it, but it just. It just really solidified everything. So here is the comment. I want to get the quote right. So it says, quote, large mold infants infestations can usually be seen or smelled. End quote. Well, guys, that's like 100% wrong. So.

The. The reality is that most mold issues cannot be seen. Right? This. And we've. I've been talking about this for a long time because the key that we're looking for is water damage, right? And the problem is that one mold is microscopic in general. So if you have more of a minimal issue, it can still create an exposure problem in the house, but it's not going to be a massive visual.

Growth all over the sides of your walls and stuff like that stuff that you see on the Internet when you're looking for mold. And the reason you see it is because how do you show pictures of mold when it's something that most of the time, it can't be seen? So what you do is you take the worst of the worst and you take those pictures and it helps you kind of get your point across. And that's why those are the pictures that you find. But those pictures are the equivalent of like following an influencer on Instagram where all they do is post the highlights of what looks to be their amazing life. But you don't see all of the normal that happen, Right? It's just the highlights. That's all that it is. And so that's all you're seeing in those pictures. But anyways, so that comment that large mold infestations. God, I can't say that word can usually be seen or smelled is totally wrong. So, first, most mold is hidden. Usually what's happening when I'm in a house, very rarely am I seeing more than 25% of the potential issues being visible issues. Most of the time, it's water damage that's hiding something behind it.

And I've pulled all these numbers as well for this additional presentation. I'm working on that, hopefully. Side note, I'll be able to start sharing with you guys maybe in like a month and a half or so. I don't know. We're working on it. But anyway, 75% of those samples that I take from water damage places where there's no visible mold, but there's signs of water damage, 75% of them find hidden mold. That's just off the last 200 of those samples. That I've done. I went. We went back and pulled them up. So the first thing of what they said is just completely not true. Large mold infestations are not something that's typically visually seen. The other piece of what they said is that it can usually be smelled. That's not really true either. So the smell that you get is essentially like an enzyme that the mold creates when it's breaking down its food source. That's the odor that you're getting. What it means is that mold is growing right now. If you smell that smell, it means it's actually eating, it's actually feeding, it's using the enzyme. It's doing it at this exact moment. That's what the smell is. And maybe it kind of lingers for a little bit afterwards, just kind of like any smell, like if you cook in a kitchen or something. But the reality is it's an issue that's happening right now. So when you say that you can usually smell it, that's only for something that's happening currently, and that doesn't even mean always. There are times where there's mold growing and you can't smell the odor, and because it's trapped in different places and the odor's not really getting out. So when we think about the first piece of the episode where we talk about the 40% of people that are impacted, we know that that number is big, but that number is based off of health conditions that. Where there's still a lot of mainstream questions on whether or not they're even really health conditions and how you treat them and what impacts them. Them. So, you know, the. The governmental, you know, kind of guidelines and standards haven't really been put in place even for handling that stuff. So as far as they're concerned, that 40% isn't real. Right? That is not a true number as far as, like, the CDC is concerned. So then when they say something like this, you just kind of get the idea of the lens that they're looking under. Right? They're only thinking of the worst of the worst. When they put out these statements like this, that's all that they're saying, and it's not really true. So I just want you to keep in mind where we are in the process of understanding the new research and how long it takes for that research to get adopted by mainstream authorities, governments, even just like thought leaders takes a long time. And then there's not a lot of, you know, the mold research that's out there, that's actually being used by these governmental agencies. It's all dated. I mean, the standard industry guidebook was written tens of years ago, and they do updates and stuff to it, but it's still leveraging the same concepts that were put together a long time ago. It's antiquated. There's nothing really about mold fragmentation and how to clean that and how to deal with fine particles. There's nothing about mycotoxins and any of that stuff. There's a lot of stuff that it's missing, or if it is there, it's really minimal.

So I just wanted to.

Share my opinion on some of the stuff that you read. Right? We're reading a lot of stuff right now about a lot of different things. And one thing I've said a lot on this show, I say it a lot to my clients. I think about it throughout. Kind of every time I'm getting information or consultation from anyone is what is their motivation? Whoever's telling me the information, whether it's an entity that wrote it or a salesperson that's trying to sell me on something, what is their motivation for giving me the information they're giving me? Because the truth is, guys, everything that we read and everything that someone talks to us about is a sales pitch, right? It might not be a hard sale, but ultimately, if somebody is sharing information with you, they're trying to sell you on the fact that their information is correct. They're trying to sell you to believe their information is correct. Otherwise, why would they be writing it? Think about it. Why waste your time if you don't want people to believe what you're writing? Even if it's a CDC writing a blog post about something, it's a sales pitch to get you to believe what they're saying. The news is a sales pitch. Everything is a sales pitch. If we know that every interaction that we have in life is ultimately some version of a sales pitch. Even if you're talking to your friends and you're having.

Like, a friendly debate on something, it's a sales pitch. You're trying to get them to believe your side, they're trying to get you to believe their side. If you're telling your friend of a story of somebody you ran into at the store or something and they were kind of a jerk and they cut you in line, well, you're selling them on the story so that they agree with you. Right? It's all a sales pitch. So with that in mind, you got to take everything that you're reading with a grain of salt. I'm not going to get into everything that's going on these days and, and how we need to interpret it and whatever. All I would say is your research should not just be one place. Right. The same thing. Think about if you were like getting bids for work on your house, right? So you're researching contractors, let's say, to come out and do work on your house. You're not just going to take the bid of the first contractor. You're probably going to get three or four contractors to give you their opinion and their bids and you're going to see if they align with each other and you're going to pick the one that makes the most sense for you. It's the same thing with the information that you take in, so you gotta do the same thing there, too. So anyways, that is.

Yeah, I think that's kind of all I wanted to talk about today. So if you, you know, if you enjoyed my rambling, let me know. I know this wasn't necessarily a Q and A type of episode like I do, like I do, but hopefully these types of episodes to understand where we are in the scheme of things and all this stuff is also helpful for you and your mindset as you're dealing with everything and on your path getting back to health. So thanks so much, guys. I'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.

Sam.