33: Case Study: “How do I have a high ERMI, but no mold sources...?”

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.

All right, guys, so I was gonna do some Q and A today, and then I yesterday was working on a report that I was sending out for an inspection I did a couple weeks ago. We got everything back in. I was putting it all together and it was just really interesting and not normal for what I typically see. And I thought it might be cool to actually talk through that a little bit. So I'm gonna do that today and then we'll do some Q and A next week. So that's gonna be the plan. So this house that I was working on, it's. It was a pretty new house. I don't have the exact date of when it was built, but I would say it's probably like maybe 10 years old or something at the most.

It was really nice actually. Actually really like the house on a side note. But anyways, so I went going through the whole house. So the history before we start. Basically there's some health issues from some of the occupants in the house, which is really the only reason that I ever go to anyone's house and they had said that there was a historical like leak flood issue that came out of the powder room downstairs and.

Impacted the powder room. Kind of went out into the adjacent, like, hallway and like open area. So the, the way this house is laid out, you walk in the front, it's pretty open. And then you walk towards like the kind of main great room. And, and on the walk there's like a little section on the left where it's just basically the powder room and the bathroom. And then on the right side is like a formal dining room. So you're kind of walking in a more like narrow hall sort of thing until you open up into the big great room. So that's kind of what it was. The house is on a slab. So there's no crawl space, there's no basement or anything. And it's a two story house. So that's kind of the layout. And so as you walk in the front door and walk towards the great room, this powder room is on your left. There was a historical water leak, water event that happened there. And the owners said it was like an inch to 2 inches of water that ended up kind of filling up in that powder room and extending out, like, into the hallway area and wrapping around a little bit to where the kitchen starts in the great room. So that was the historical water event.

But they said that it was all remediated. All the walls were removed. So this is what's interesting. Yeah, it was all remediated. I said, okay, so what was actually done with the remediation? Because, like, when things are, quote, remediated, there's not a specific single black and white way that gets done. Right? Like, depending on who comes in and who's given the direction, remediated can mean a lot of things. And so when someone tells me that, yeah, it was remediated and everything was good, I always ask, I'm like, okay, so what was remediated? What happened? What was removed after was removed? Did they actually, like, clean everything that was inside there? Did they just take the drywall off and put it back on? Right. These types of questions. And so we said that it was all contained up. All the walls came off in the impacted area. So all the drywall came off, which included some cabinetry in the powder room. So that came off.

And basically all the walls that were. The water had traveled was all removed, but none of the flooring was removed. So they had, like, wood flooring. And right there on the spot, I was like, okay, so that, you know, we'll see what happens here. But that might be an issue because if you have water that gets trapped under flooring and you're on a slab, but it wouldn't really matter if you're on regular subfloor either. Basically, you have your flooring, and then your flooring sits or your. Like the floor that you walk on, right? So the wood flooring you see in the house and then that sits in and it's glued on top of a subfloor or on top of concrete or whatever. So there's a layer in between that, Right? So think of it like a sandwich. Right? So the floor that you walk on is the top bun of the sandwich, the subfloor or the concrete or whatever the foundation is, that's the bottom layer of the sandwich. And the middle layer is really what we can't see, Right. You know, you can't see any of that stuff in there. And so if water gets under there, you could get mold that grows in the bottom of the. The wood flooring, you could get mold that's growing on the adhesive and the glue that's keeping the floor to the subfloor. So that was the first thing. And so when I go through a house, I write notes to myself as I'm going through the house and I write notes of what the worst case scenario remediation is going to be. The reason I do that just on the side. So you guys know, like when I go through homes, sometimes I'm taking, you know, sometimes I'm there for 11 hours like I was two days ago. What a rough one that was the other day. That's why I haven't recorded in a couple days. I was recovering and I found 42 potential areas of mold growth in this particular home. And you know, if I sit there and try to write the report after that, I'm not going to remember everything. I mean I'll remember what the house looked like, but specifically like how far do I need to remove, where did the water actually spread to? Because all that stuff's super important. So while I'm on site, I actually keep a separate note on my phone and I'm writing each room and what's going on and what I think might need to be remediated based on what the results look like and that stuff.

Anyway, my note when I looked back at this place said if the home screen ERMI or mycotoxin testing or bacterial testing is bad, then we'll want to remove this flooring because there's a possibility there's still a problem down there. So that was the note that I wrote to myself.

And then I continued on. So we went through the rest of the house. What was interesting is that there was in this particular house, I think I took 10 different source tests. So 10 potential areas of source issues. There's a couple cabinets, a couple walls.

Actually in the grand scheme of things, really not that many issues. And just to touch on that for a second because I know obviously you guys don't see all the houses that I see.

Every house I go into. Very rarely am I walking into a home and not finding water damage of any kind. Even if the home is, is pretty new, right? I mean if it's like a super brand new home, then I might not be finding, you know, many things. But if the home has been lived in for, you know, three, four, five, six, you know, three years, five years, whatever and beyond, there's usually some water damage in the house. And I know the stat gets floated around that like that. I think, I think the EPA put it out or OSHA put it out or somebody has a stat floating around and then you see it quoted a lot on Instagram from different people that at least 50% of houses are water damaged. I gotta tell you guys, that number is so low. That number is really more like 90%, 80%, 90%. It's the truth. It just is from all the houses that we, that I go into. And it's because a lot of these water issues, they just don't get thought of as like water issues. Like who's reporting on the 50% of water damage that the EPA is putting into the statement? Right. I mean they're probably going through and looking first off, are they relying on homeowners to report it or are they going through homes? Like I don't even know how they're putting that number together, but I know that I've been in thousands of homes and that number is super low. So anyways, those side tangent. So I go through this house and find like I said, About 10 areas I think. So we test them, I get all the results back. I'm going through the results and putting the report together yesterday. And I usually like to look at the ermia, mycotoxin and bacterial testing first and then I look at the sources because the, it just kind of gives me a feel for, I don't know what I'm going to find in the source results. I guess like there's really no, like there's no benefit of looking at them that way. It's just kind of how I look at it. So anyway, so I look at the, the URMI home screen. It picked up like 18 of 26 water damage molds. 10 of them were 10 times higher than the actual ERMI study that was done. So I actually have access to the individual study, or not the individual study, but the actual study the EPA put out and all the individual mold species in that study and what the averages were for everyone.

The labs don't report on that usually, so they basically just show you what it is and they give you the score. As we've talked about in different episodes, the score can be very misleading. But I really like to look mold to mold and see where they are, how many molds are we picking up, what are the levels of them? And so I've been able to finagle my way to access the original data from the army study. So I have that. So I look at that too. And anyway, so 10 of the moles that we picked up in the water damage molds were over 10 times higher than what the original study was. So I'm looking at this and the ERMI score was like, I don't know, 8 or something. I don't really remember. But anyways, I'm looking at this, I'm like, yeah, okay, there's gonna be problems. There's going to be something going on in here, basically.

So then I start going through all the source tests, and they're all fine. I'm going through. And every now and then a couple of them might come back like, oh, this one's okay, Cool, that's good news. This one's okay, Cool, that's good news. And then I keep going through and I'm page, page, page, turn, turn, page, turn. And not one of these source tests are really a problem. And I sit there afterwards, I'm like, what the hell's going on? Like, and then I tested the H VAC systems also. So my next thought is, okay, maybe it's in the H VAC systems. Maybe something happened in these systems and it's spreading it all throughout the house. And that's what's going on. Then I look at the systems, and the systems look really good. I'm like, okay, so the H vac systems don't really have a mold problem. There's not mold sources really anywhere in the house of any significance, really. And the ERMI is bad. Like, what is happening? And I hadn't looked at my notes that I wrote yet, you know, So I mentioned I write notes as I'm going through the property, like the day I'm doing it. So I hadn't looked back at that stuff yet. And then I text Corey, who, for those of you who don't know, Corey is my partner in Weinspect. So he and I are cousins, actually have been doing this for a long time. And anyway, so I text him, I'm like, hey, man, look at this stuff. What do you think? And he's like, is it the H VAC systems? I'm like, no, that's what I thought, but no, it's not. And so, like, okay, we're kind of talking and then I pull up the notes. I'm like, oh. I'm like, hey, dude, There was this historical water event in this powder room. It impacted the adjacent areas. They took out all the walls. They didn't take out the floors. And I don't obviously really know how well the remediation happened behind the walls either. Although, with that said, I did do two different wall cavity tests, by the way. And I do this often when I come into a house and there's been remediation done. And I wasn't the one that got to oversee it and make sure that it cleared and everything. I'll actually do cavity testing in the walls that were remediated as a. The best way that I could do a post remediation check is to do that because I can't open the walls, but I will check those areas and I'll tell people, like, listen, you know, it's not uncommon for remediators to come in here and actually not clean stuff. So I think that we need to test these areas even though you have them remediated. And a lot of times people are totally on board with it. So those even came back fine. I basically picked, I think, three, two or three walls of closest to the epicenter where the water event happened. And then I went like three walls out. So I was kind of moving away, you know, as like the water traveled to see if anything came up. And all those came up okay too. So I tell Corey this, I'm like, but you know what? I had this note that said if the ermi or any of this stuff was bad, that I wanted to pull up the flooring. I'm like, is it possible that the flooring, like there's still a problem under the flooring? And. And we're like, I mean, yeah, it's possible. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to read you actually what I wrote in, in the report as of what's going on. So basically what I. What I did. When we think about what's happening, there isn't really any source remediation that needs to happen in the house, right? So I've gone through. We do the assessment the way I always do it, right? So I'm there for hours. I'm looking at everything I did find. I think like I said like 8 or 10 or however many different areas that I thought could be a problem. None of them were really a problem, right. So there isn't any remediation that's happening from a source perspective. But we have what the ermi that's elevated. So a lot of consultants or inspectors, what they would say is they're like, okay, house is great. You just need to do a home cleanse. You just need to fog the house and wipe it all down and everything's going to be fine. And maybe, right. So there's two things in this scenario that I think could be happening. So I'm gonna read you what I wrote and that way you can see how I kind of write this stuff up and think through things. So I have a Part that says interpretation. I'm just gonna read this for you. So minimal source areas of mole growth were detected throughout the home. However, the ERMI home screen collected from within the home detected multiple molds indicative of water damage, many over 10 times the levels of the original Ermes study. It appears that the accumulated in the settlement of the home.

Excuse me, it accumes. I never read on this. It appears that the mold that has accumulated in the settlement of the home may be impacted by another source outside of the suspected areas identified in this report. Basically what I'm saying here is that I went through the house, I didn't find a whole bunch of source stuff. The ERMI is high. I think there's something else that's contributing to it. So that's what I'm saying. So here's the next part. Per client, a historical water loss impacted the downstairs powder room and extended into the adjacent common area. All walls in the powder room and adjacent walls in the hallway were removed and remediated. This is what we talked about. However, the flooring throughout the area was not removed. Okay, so I'm setting the stage here for where my thought process is going. And then it's possible that the historical water loss could be contributing to the elevated mold levels in the settlement dust testing. So that's the ERMI testing and I have two ways. First, it's possible that cross contamination occurred at the time of the water event, which was never properly cleaned and removed from other areas of the home. Second, it is possible that there is still mold growth beneath the floors that have been or that were impacted and they were never removed or remediated. So there's two things here. So let me talk about both of those real quick. So the first one I said is that basically maybe when they did the remediation, they cross contaminated the house and it was just never cleaned. So you know how I talk about a lot how mold is a factory and there's like smoke that comes out of the factory and that smoke is what our pollution is. And so if you shut a factory down, the smoke that came out of the factory top, it doesn't just magically disappear, it stays there. Right. You have to. We have to actively try to clean our air all the time, you know, and so the same thing happens when there's a mold issue. So if there's a mold issue and if they cross contaminated, when they did the remediation, again, I wasn't there, so I don't know what it looked like were the containments, they may have Been up? Were they thick enough plastic? Was there negative air pressure inside? Was there air scrubbing happening? Was there dual entry points? So you were not cross contaminating. When you're coming in and out as easily, there's a lot of things that go into making a proper containment. And I don't know if they did that. Right. So if the area was cross contaminated when they did the remediation, meaning that when they removed everything, if, you know, mold particulate basically spread throughout the house as a result of that, and then the house wasn't cleaned in a way to actually remove fine particles, which no typical like water restoration or remediation company ever does that. They usually just focus on the source and they don't really worry about the rest of the house that could have been impacted. And if they do, all that they would do is like fog the house and that's not really going to get rid of the particles. All it does is bring the particles down to the ground. Right. So if that happened, then it's possible that all that particulate is still in the house and it's settled in the dust reservoirs. And that's what I picked up in the sample. So that's one thing that could have happened. The other thing that I'm thinking could have happened is that there is still mold possibly under the flooring and that it's working its way out and it's impacting the house. So those are the two things that I'm thinking. Okay, so.

I'm going to now read what I had for my recommendation. It says further investigation beneath the flooring in the powder room and adjacent areas is recommended. However, that can be a significant financial burden. I just want to note that for a second. It could be a lot to do that for an area that I don't know, there's a problem. If I know that there's something going on. If we've tested, if it's been validated, if we know that's an issue, then.

I don't really mention the financial impact of what that can be because it's not my job to understand what a client's financial situation is. I have no idea what their financial situation is. And I just talked about this the other day. It's my job to tell them this is how it gets done and then we can have a conversation about it. If it's not feasible, then we can talk through options or whatever. So I don't typically mention stuff like this in the report, however, because this area, there's no definitive like proof that there is a problem down here. I'm basically telling them, like, listen, guys, I went through the house. I found things that I thought were an issue. They all came back and everything looked pretty good. I know there's this historical thing and we have an ERMI score that's elevated here, I think, or an ermi, you know, DNA result that's elevated. I think that there's a possibility there's something happening down here, but I can't tell you 100% that there is. So I want to be really clear that this is a conversation we need to have and.

It'S not like a guarantee there's going to be a problem down there. So that's why I'm saying this. So I'm saying, Howard, this could be a financial burden. I propose implementing the below cleaning plan, which is in the report, but it's basically just the home cleanse cleaning plan. You could find it in Mole Masterclass. I have the same plan in Mold Masterclass. When I give all the protocols out. We propose the below cleaning plan in the home along with.

So I had a couple spots in the house that like, the results didn't look bad, but I was like, for example, one of them was under a sink cabinet. The results came back fine, but it was still really water damaged. And I was like, hey, you know what? I know the results are fine, but I still think we should pull out this floor cabinet in this. In this sink, just to make sure it didn't spread anywhere else. So I have like two little things like that in here, basically. So again, I'm saying we propose implementing the below cleaning plan, which is the home cleanse, along with the above recommendations, which is these tiny, you know, small things of removing like cabinet floor panels prior to the removal of the flooring, then retesting the home using the ERMI MSQ PCR method to validate its effectiveness. What I'm saying here is basically I'm trying to address the first option that I put out there. So the first option that I said was that I think that there's a possibility that there was just cross contamination that happened when the initial remediation happened. If that's the case, then we need to clean the home properly. And so that's the first thing that I'm going to recommend here in kind of the flow is to clean the home. Let's assume that it's just cross contamination. Let's clean the home and then retest right afterwards. Let's make sure that the testing was effective. So we have, we see basically like an acceptable ERMI result afterwards. And then we're going to make that our new baseline reading. And so after I said that, so I'm saying once all areas have been.

Sorry, I skipped ahead.

So then we're going to retest the home with ERMI and validate its effectiveness. So that's what I just said. So we're going to do the home cleanse. We're going to retest it. We're going to give ourselves a new baseline after the cleaning. Okay. So the next thing afterwards, we recommend waiting a period of one to two months to allow any potential mold contamination or fragmentation below the flooring to work its way back into the living space if it's there, and then retest the same areas with another ERMI test. So here's what I want to see. One, I want the house to get clean so we have a clean slate to start from. That's what the first home cleanse is doing. So if there was cross contamination, we're going to get rid of it in the home cleaning process and we're going to give ourselves a clean slate and a new baseline. Then I want to wait a month or two and then I want to see is the army getting elevated again. Like, is the, is the, is the smoke filling the house again from the factory? Right. If that's happening. And I know now that I've already gone through the whole house and there really isn't any sources going on. And I have one area of suspect and I come back in a month or two later and it's elevated again. Now I really feel like it warrants removing the flooring and doing more investigation and spending the money it takes to do that. And so that's my thought process behind here. And so what I'm saying is that if those results are seeing a significant increase at that point, then I'm recommending removal of all the flooring throughout that impacted area where the water damage happened from the powder room flood. And so that is the flow and the order of what I'm recommending here. So see how this, like thought process works. This isn't like a black and white thing, you know. And a lot of times consultants or mediation companies or whatever, they come in and they say, this is how we do it. And we remove this and we do this and we put it back. And then, and I've seen this so many times, the post testing comes back and it's a problem. And they say, well, there we have everything, there's no problem. And sorry, you know, and you have to think through these things, you have to think like conceptually and in theory as well as what the data is actually showing you. Right. Understanding how airflow patterns move, you know, understanding the history of the house. If I never asked the history of this house, I would never know that this water event happened. And furthermore, even if they did tell me, because sometimes people are like, oh yeah, we had a leak and we had it remediated. That's all they would have told me. And so I had to ask them, well, what does remediation mean? And they said, oh, well, the walls all got removed, but we didn't remove the flooring.

If I didn't push on that and try to get what that information was. And then I got all of these results back and I looked at all the different tests that I had of the air conditioning systems and the house and all the different source areas and I basically saw that nothing was a problem except an elevated ermi. I would have been completely stumped because I wouldn't know where it was coming from. And I probably would have said at that point, like, listen guys, I don't really know what's happening. All I see is that there's nothing happening right now. So I'm not sure where it came from. But I think we need to clean everything, do a home cleanse, and that's all that we can do. And that's what I would have said. And that's really what the first step of this recommendation is. But because I know that there was a history, it gives me another place to go. Right. And I don't know. Right. I don't know what's going to happen if this Ermie comes back elevated after the home or you know, after the, the time period, the one to two months passes and then we remove the flooring. And you know, I'm. My guess is that that's going to be where the problem is and we're going to find out.

But, but that is. That's the overview on, on this report that I was working on. And I just thought it was really interesting because it wasn't straightforward. There was kind of a different plan that I put into place here than what's typical. What's typical is, is there's a bunch of source problems in your house or at. They need to be remediated. The air conditioning systems may or may not be impacted. They need to be addressed properly. And then we need to clean the whole house appropriately based on whatever we're finding. That is kind of the typical thing that you see. But when you see something like this, where you're going through and you're not finding a lot of sources but you're still finding elevations and what's moving through the house, it makes you sit back and think about it and say, okay, so what's going on? The cool thing about, you know, that I feel really fortunate about is that. And some of you, if you listen back to like the first episode of the show, the one that's called My Mold Story, you'll hear how I got into it. How my father in law is actually.

Like one of the top mold people in the country. Easily, right? And mold experts in the country. And he'd been doing this forever. He's the one that really taught me, you know, most, most of what I know. And.

I have basically a network because we're a family business. There's my father in law and then he has a twin brother on the east coast who has another company. And then myself and my cousin who is the son of the person on the east coast. We started our company, we Inspect. But we all still like collaborate and work together. And so when I have things like this come up, I have a network of experts that think of things the way that I do and understand how history impacts a house and understand how air flows move throughout a house and how water travels and the different progressive testing methods. And we all work together to develop these. Remediate the remediation protocol that is now being implemented across all of our business units for removing mycotoxins and biotoxins in houses. So I have support and. But it's great when you have things like this and we all do this when there's a project and we're like wow, man, this just doesn't look normal. Hey, can we all get on the phone and talk about this real quick?

It's very fortunate to have that because you can get other input. I'm never going to be the guy that tells you that I know everything because I don't. And I know that I don't. And I know there's still a lot that I need to see and I need to learn, but we know a good amount and it's helping. So we're continuing to learn as we go. To have people to bounce stuff off of is pretty fantastic. And.

Maybe a benefit maybe that we have that maybe some other people don't. Anyways, that is everything that I wanted to share on this project with you guys that takes us through I think the full time for today. Hopefully you guys found this interesting. The thought process, how we would approach stuff, how I think through things, what can be impacting areas.

What are the contributors, and how do we think about addressing them. So that's what I got for you guys today. I think that's going to be all for the week. Today's Friday, right? Yeah, I think so. Today's Friday. Yeah. Hey, today's Friday. Hey, it's July 31st. Hope you had a good July. We'll see you in August.

So that's it 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 podcast. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.