43: Q&A - Does remediation work? / Best samples to use?

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, it's Friday. Week's almost over. We're gonna answer some more questions today, and then.

Yeah, then we're gonna stop. So that's. That's the plan. It's currently. What is it, 6, 13 in the morning, and I am sitting outside and there's a bunch of birds flying around, which is kind of weird. Oh, there's two more. Doesn't happen all the time. It's happening right now. It's kind of strange.

As exciting as that is for you, I'm sure you're more interested in the questions. So let's get into those. All right, so I'm going back through some of the questions from the last round that we had submitted. I think it was at the end of last week that we did it. And so the first one was a really simple question, and it says, have you seen remediation work? And the short answer is yes. Have I seen it work? Yeah. Have I seen it not work? Yeah, I've seen that too.

You know, it depends. So remediation, it's not just one thing, you know, it depends on how it's being done. It depends on how significant the problem is. Or are you addressing all the other areas that may have been impacted by a source of mold growth, or are you just remediating the source? How are you handling your contents and your stuff and your belongings and all of that? Right. So remediation, it's a process. And I think the reason that a lot of times it doesn't work is because.

It'S not really implemented and executed properly. And so what happens then is that people say, well, I. I tried remediating and I'm still not feeling right in my house. So remediation doesn't work. So we just had to burn the whole house down or we just have to move or something because it doesn't work.

That's definitely not true right now. There are some cases, I would say it's on the few side where things have been done properly or my clients have really done properly the remediation the right way. And, you know, they still had some sort of reaction when they went into the home. And this is after the whole homes have been like, everything's been pulled out of their houses, they've been completely empty, they've been source remediated, they've been cross contamination remediated, all that stuff, Right. I could maybe count that on one hand that I've heard that from people and I've been doing this a long time. Right. So usually if we're able to follow the plan and kind of get everything done the right way, then your success rate is going to go up a lot. The problem is just that if you think of remediation, you say, okay, there's five things you have to do to get remediation done and we're only going to do two of them and then we're going to expect everything to work properly. Well, there's still three things you didn't do, right? So when you come back in, there's still going to be some things that are there and because of that you're going to have exposure still and there's going to, and then you might still have your health reactions. Now for some people, if you don't do everything, it might work. And it goes back to that concept of the immune funnel and the idea that you have a specific toxic burden that you're dealing with in your body. And so some people, you know, their funnel is overflowing significantly. Other people, their funnel is just barely overflowing. And other people, it's just kind of hovering towards the top. And so if you can reduce your exposure a little bit for those people, like let's say in the third bucket of things where they're not totally overflowing, like every now and then it kind of kicks over and then it stays in and it kicks over again. For, for those people, if you reduce your exposure, let's even say by like, I mean even say by like 50%, right? 40%. Then their body's processing stuff relatively well. They're just kind of getting beat down by the overexposure over and over again. So if you cut that overall.

Exposure down, then they might be able to deal with that, right? So then they're not going to have as significant of reaction in a home that might not have had every step of the remediation process done. Whereas if you're somebody who's dealing with a multitude of health issues, your, you know, your immune system is shot, you're, you got inflamed, you know, inflammation everywhere. You might need to do every step. And if you don't, then there's still going to be exposure issues. You're still going to have problems. And so that's, that's really when I see that remediation doesn't work, is that when you're not able to actually fully remediate and you know, some people are not able to. Right. And a lot of times it's not because you don't want to. You probably really do want to. There's usually two things that are working against you. One is that you don't know what to do, and whoever's guiding you to get it done doesn't know what to do the right way. And so, you know, you're, you try and you just.

You'Re just missing things that you don't know you're missing. Right? And it's because the direction that you're probably getting is from remediation companies, remediation, you know, experts that are relying on standards that were created 30, 40, 50 years ago. And so, you know, they're only going to be so good because we've learned so much since then. The big, big mistake is that they only focus on addressing the source and they don't actually clean the rest of the house, or they don't address the heating and air conditioning system, or they don't even think about, well, what about all your stuff? I mean, if that got contaminated and you bring it back in the house, then isn't that going to spread it all over the place? The answer is, yeah, there's a pretty good chance that's going to happen. So you got to adjust all this stuff. So a lot of times the first reason that it doesn't work is that it's just not being executed to the full extent that it should be. The second reason is money. Maybe you know what to do, right? Maybe you're one of my clients and you have the full breakdown and process and the order that everything should be done. Or you purchase Mold masterclass and you have the entire remediation plan, which is included in there in its entirety. And you know, everything that can be done, but you don't have the money to do it right. And so then you're trying to prioritize what's what. For some people, that's okay, right? I know I've talked about prioritizing, and that's okay. This, it's not about you're doing it right or you're doing it wrong. It's just, you know, you do what you can do. You just have to keep in mind that if you're not getting everything in terms of you know, remediating and removing the source and removing the cross contamination and all that stuff. And if you're only getting a portion of it, is your body going to be in a place where just by removing a portion of the exposure, it's going to allow it to kind of catch up and kick back into gear? Or is your body so shot that even by doing that it's just not enough? And I don't know the answer to that. Right. That's why, you know, that's where your doctor really comes into play. And it helps you understand kind of where you are.

And there are some doctors out there that won't even treat you if you're exposed to mold. Honestly, like, those doctors come on, like, it's almost like the easy answer. I don't know, like, they understand mold. They understand treatments and process and things to kind of get you off of it. But then they tell you, oh, sorry guys, I'm not even gonna see you or start treating you until I know for sure you're 100% out of mold. Like, give me a break, guys. Like, help, help some people out, you know, like, yes, the goal is to get them out. And yes, we're trying to do that. Right? But it doesn't happen overnight. And like, so you're just gonna let someone suffer because, because they didn't, they haven't spent a bunch of money or haven't been inconvenienced a lot, or they literally just don't have. They can't get it done at the moment. And because of that, you're not gonna help them start trying to diminish their reactions and, and they're like, how they're feeling. I don't know. The whole thing is just silly to me. When I hear, when I hear someone tell me that about their doctor, I'm like, you should just find a new doctor. Like, I get it. They're like a mole doctor. They, they understand what's going on. But there's like two sides of that, right? There's, there's being a doctor that understands the, like, what's going on and technically how to do stuff. And then there's being a doctor that, like, is actually going to try to help you. You know what I mean? And those are two different things. I know I just went down a little, a little tangent here, but have I seen remediation work? The answer is yes, it typically works when you are identifying all the sources. Here's the third thing that I bring up real quick. So I said one, you don't have the full plan. Two, you don't have the full money to execute the full plan. Three is that you haven't had an inspection done. That's actually identifying where all the sources are. So one of the bigger reasons that remediation doesn't work is that you have an inspector come in. They, you know, do what most inspectors do and they miss stuff and there are still sources of problem going on in the house. And then you go in and you pay to have remediation done and all this stuff. But you didn't get it all. But you don't know that you didn't get it all, right? So then you come back in the house and you're like, oh, man, we spent all this money and we're out of the house for like a month. And, you know, it's a big headache and it sucks and it's stressful and yeah, all that stuff, right? And then we come back in and there's still problems. And when I go into houses like that, it's because they're. A lot of times they're just our sources that were just missed, right? So if you're sitting in a room and there's a little fire in the room and you're. Or there's multiple fires in the room, right? And so you're. You're choking on smoke and you're like, oh, I got to get the smoke to stop. So the way I get the smoke to stop is that I put out the fires and let's say there's four fires in the room and you only put out two of them. And then you think that you're going to come back in the room, there's going to be no more smoke than you that you're breathing on your nuts, right? Like, there's still two more fires putting off smoke. You're going to walk in, you're going to start choking on smoke again, except you don't know where the fires are. You just. And you thought you put all the fires out, so as far as you're concerned, there's no more fires. And so now you don't know what to do. And then you fall into this umbrella, that remediation doesn't work. Then you start going on the Facebook groups, and the Facebook groups start saying, oh, remediation doesn't work. You just have to move, you have to throw all your stuff out, you have to burn your house down, you have to hit it with a wrecking ball. You have to do all these things. And.

Most of the time that's not true. All right, so the keys are you have to have an assessment that's done the right way so you really find all the sources. If you don't find the sources, doesn't matter how much remediating you're going to do, there's still going to be problems. Remediation has to be executed the right way, which means they actually have to remove things properly, they have to surface, clean things properly. They have to take into account how has contamination moved throughout the house, how does it impact your heating, air conditioning system, what's going on with your furniture, your clothing, your belongings, all that stuff. And then the third piece is.

Executing as much as you can. Right? That's the third piece. If you can do it all, then you want to do it all. If you can't do all of it, then you need to test and sample, figure out what areas are the worst of the worst and focus on those and try to apply the 8020 rule. So those are the three things to keep in mind on remediation.

Yeah, thanks for that question.

Alright, so our next question is from Lula Kim and it is best test.

It's not that simple. It's not that just one of them is the best test.

It'S what are we trying to find and what information is that test giving us? Every test has strengths and weaknesses. Okay. There isn't one best test. And if we think about it that way, then we're never really going to get all the information that we need. And if we don't get all the information that we need, then we can't execute the remediation plans properly. And so we can't think about it as we're doing one test. You need to think about it as.

We'Re trying to identify a variety of things. And so what is the best test to identify each of these things? Right. And so if we do that, I'll kind of break it down that way. So if we're trying to identify where the source of the problem is, there are certain types of tests that are better for that. Now, before you test anything in that way, you have to have an inspection that's looking for the right things in order to figure out the suspect areas. So there's not even like a source identification test that you could just do. Right. You have to know where it's being collected from and it has to be done. Typically those should be done by an actual inspector or environmental consultant because they're going to have to do.

You know, little holes in a wall potentially to get an Air sample from back there. They might need swabs or different things for that. So best test for source identification. Step one, figure out where the suspect sources are. For me, that usually takes around a four hour inspection of a normal sized house to even figure out where they all are. Then I sit down with the client, I'm like, hey, here's all the places of suspect that I think there could be a problem going on. Here's what the sampling looks like, right? And so let's talk about it. So let's assume we did all that. Alright? So there's really like.

There'S really three types of samples really for source identification. There's surface testing. This is for where you see things that actually look like mold, right? If you think that you see mold physically growing on something, you want to do a surface test of it, because that is, that's the closest you could get to it. The goal is that you actually want to find the mold growth and sample it. That's the goal. The challenge is that most mold is hidden. So a lot of times you can't actually find the growth. So instead what we look for are the clues that there's mold hiding somewhere and that's water damage, right? And so that's, that's where the other samples come into play. But if you see something that physically looks like mold, for example, you look around your window and you see darkness around your window, that could be mold growth, you would want to swab, sample that. If you look under a sink and you see some dark spotting on like the cabinet floor below a sink, that might be mold growth. You might want to swab that. Those are a couple examples. Okay, so that's the easiest part. That's surface testing. Anybody could do that, right? You could do that on your own too.

The next two require air sampling pumps. They're not cheap, you probably are not going to buy one. And so that's when bringing somebody in makes sense to get those done. The thing is, you have to make sure they're collecting stuff from the right place.

Future spoiler alert, I'm putting something together to teach you guys that. So check it out. Around October, I'm gonna have something really, really awesome for you guys that's gonna help you with this. Anyways, so the second step is, is so we're getting into hidden sources, right? So sources that are hidden, there's kind of two pieces of it. There are small.

Kind of compact areas. So that's what we'll talk about first. So areas that are small and compact, these are Think kitchen cabinetry or any cabinets. Under sinks.

Crawl spaces. Attic spaces are usually compact and tight. Not usually. Sometimes they're compact and tight.

Access ports under your tub. So if you have a tub and you, like, pull the access panel off, not every tub has an access panel, but some of them do. And it allows you to get under the tub and, like, where all the plumbing is, that's a compact, isolated area. Things that are. Things that are small that you can fit the pump into that are isolated. That where you think that there's something going on, that's this type of sample for that. You actually put the air sampling pump in there and you shut the door. That's basically how you do it. So that that's the best way to figure out that. So, for example, you have a kitchen sink. There's some bubbling or buckling on the cabinet under the sink, which is one of the signs of water damage. There's not mold visibly growing anywhere. But we know that where there's water damage and mold, you know, can be hiding. And so you want to see if there's mold hidden in, like, the cabinetry that's, like, you know, underneath the cabinetry or in the sidewalls that you can't see. So you put an air sampling pump in there, and you shut the door and you sample the cabinet. And that's the way that you do that. The third type of source test is called cavity sampling. This is where you actually put, like, a small hole in a wall. It's like maybe the size of a Sharpie pen. And then you connect. You stick a tube through that hole, connect it to an air sampling pump, and then you're collecting air from behind a wall or above a ceiling or an area, again, where there's water damage on a wall or a ceiling. And we need to check to see if there's mold growing behind the wall or above a ceiling.

Most of the sampling that we do in a house is one of these three types, right? It's surface testing. It's some sort of isolated air area, or it's a cavity test. It's one of those three. The whole point is to figure out where the mold is hiding. So if the question is, how do I find where the mold sources are, Then the answer is that these are the three best tests to do that with. And each one actually has its own strength. And so you would use each one in each of those cases. So that's the answer to that question. Now, the second is, what if you're not trying to find source, what if you're trying to figure out what has moved throughout the house, just kind of what the cross contamination looks like, then we're trying to understand mold fragmentation, and we're also trying to understand mycotoxins. And then really, we should be trying to understand bacteria and bacterial toxins as well, because it's just such a big part. I sent an email out to the Mole finders email group this week, yesterday, and it was talking about some quotes I got from one of, like, the, like, more respected doctors that deal with this stuff. And basically they said, listen, if we think that bacteria is not growing or I'm old, then you're nuts, is basically what she was saying. And you need to be looking at all that stuff. And so.

You know, those are all things that we want to be looking at. So let's talk about your living spaces, right? We want to know what you're being exposed to in your living spaces. What does this tell us? It tells us what you're actually breathing, right? This is your. Your closest pathway to exposure. What's settling in your living spaces? It tells us what's settling on your stuff and your belongings, too, right? So if you have gravity pulling particles down onto your belongings, sitting on your belongings, that's how they get contaminated. Those same particles get popped up into the air. That's what we breathe, right? So this is your occupied living spaces. This. This is like the living room, the family room, the bedrooms, the kitchen, all the areas that you spend time in the house. Dust testing is the best method for this. So this is what you asked. You said Ermie or Emma, you would use those tests in this situation.

I prefer to use ERMI and then to do separate mycotoxin testing on the side. Emma limits the amount of molds that you're getting on the panel. So I prefer to have a larger panel. ERMI gives me a larger panel.

And for the short answer. So I prefer using ERMI for that reason, so I can get more of a look at the molds. It's not always just what molds have the ability to produce toxins, right? Sometimes you have really high counts of molds that aren't like, quote, toxic molds, but, man, they're super high counts. You're being exposed to it all the time, right? And so if you're only focusing on molds that have the ability to produce mycotoxins, and we're not looking at that other set, then you're missing a part of the story. And so for me, I'd rather have more information than less. And I would rather be doing an ERMI in that case to understand the mole piece. Then you could also do mycotoxin sampling in the house, too, both dust collections. And you could also do endotoxin testing and actinomycetebacteria testing. All dust tests throughout the house will show us all that stuff. You literally collect dust from the living spaces of the house. So the best way to understand what you're being exposed to and what's settling on your stuff is dust testing. And then the different types of dust tests are ERMI for molding, mycotoxins for mycotoxins, actinomycete and bacteria testing to understand that, and then endotoxin testing to understand the bacterial toxins that could be present. All four of those things. And that's how you understand.

Exposure throughout the house and what's settling on your stuff. Okay, so now we know. How do we get to sources we talked about those tests, how to understand what you're being exposed to and what's happening with your stuff and if it's contaminated and how significant. So we got that stuff handled. So now the third piece is what's going on with your heating and air conditioning system. Right. We gotta understand that we have to test that. It is a combination of surface testing and dust testing. So the swab that we talked about from source you can use in the H vac system. And then the dust testing that we talk about occupied living spaces, you also use in the air conditioning system. So what happens? You open up the air conditioning system so you have an air handler unit. This is where all your ductwork connects to you. Usually it's in the attic. Could be in the basement, could be in a crawl space. I hope it's not in a crawl space or a basement, because it's the worst place for them to be. But they could be there, or they could be a closet in a closet in your house somewhere. That's usually where they are. Some homes actually have a unit on top on the roof, and they live on the roof. But basically that's usually not where they are from for most residential houses. So there's usually some place in your house where they are. All of your ducts connect to it. So you can easily pull off the panels that cover this unit and you can see inside. And this is what we do when we go in houses. We open them up and we investigate them. If you're seeing stuff that looks like mold, physically mold, then you do a swab test. Right? The first type that we Talked about.

If you're not visibly seeing mold, we still need to test the system because it could be contaminated from things that are going on in other areas of the house, which means you're not going to have mold growing in the system, but you'll have fragmentations and pieces that have broken off the colonies and maybe toxin byproducts that are moving through there. That stuff doesn't look like growth. You know what it looks like? It looks like dirt, looks like dust because it all settles in the dust. So if you open your H Vac system and there's a dust buildup in there, then if you have other things going on in the house, there's a possibility that that dust buildup is containing mold and toxins and other things. And so you need to test that. And so the way to test that is the same dust test that you would use in the living spaces of the house, Right. Ermie. Mycotoxin, actinomycete, bacteria and there. And endotoxin. Right. So you could do those same tests in the H Vac system. If you are visibly seeing something that looks like mold growth in the system, maybe on, like, some of the sticker labels or on the insulation, there are places in there where you could see darkness sometimes and there's growth happening in there, then you would swab that, and that's how you would check that out. Right. So it's not about, like, which test is best. It's about which test is best for which piece of the equation we're trying to figure out and what the goals are that you're trying to do. Right. So if you get all that done, and we understand kind of that source identification testing is different than occupied living spaces, testing is different than how you're looking at a heating air conditioning system, and you combine all those things together, now we're getting a holistic view of the entire house. And now we're actually understanding what's going on. Right. If you just go into a house, if I told you ERMI is best, you just go in and you do an ERMI in the house. And it says, yeah, we got a mole problem. Then they're like, cool, what do I do next? And the answer is, well, you got to figure out where it's coming from. If you just give me this lab result, there's nothing to do next, right? You could try to clean the house, but there's sources that are contributing to this, and it's just going to come back. So you have to figure out where the sources are coming from? Well, how do we figure that out? Well, you have to do an inspection and then you have to sample those separately. Right. So, like, it's kind of the sequence of events that have to happen. It's not just one test. That's going to be the end all, be all. But if you're just trying to get a sense of is something going on in my house? Right. What does my exposure look like? I would be doing an and a mycotoxin separate, at minimum. And then ideally I would also be doing an actinomycete or bacteria test and endotoxin test. I'd be looking to do all four of those. That package of all four of those is really going to show you kind of your water damage exposure potential in the house, and that's going to give you your best overall idea of what you're being exposed to as you're moving around. So if that's really where the question was coming from, then that's my take on them. And.

If that was where your question is coming from, I just gave you a whole lot more on other stuff. So hopefully that worked out for you, too. All right, thanks.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in.

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Sam.