44: Handling mold as a tenant & ERMI results interpretation with Corey Levy

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.

There we are.

Hey, it's Corey Levy, everyone. Hello. Welcome.

Hey, Brian Carr. Thank you for having me. A little technical difficulty. It wouldn't be. It wouldn't be fun if it wouldn't. If it would just work right away.

But, you know, the magic of podcasts is that nobody knows that just happened. Except you. Except you just told them.

Well, now everybody knows. Don't. Well, secrets out.

Sorry, guys. We screwed it up. But we're back.

We're back.

That's the point of the story. Okay, so I've been talking about Corey for, like. Well, in many of the episodes, but for, like, the last week or so, I was asking the question, like, hey, would you guys like to hear Corey come on and tell stories and talk about moldy stuff that's not just me talking? And it seems like that the consensus was yes, which is pretty cool. So for those of you that don't know Corey, first off is my cousin. Right. So I think it's pretty. You know, family's great. I think that's the first thing we should talk about. But then Corey's also the co. Founder. Co owner of We Inspect, which is our inspection company, so you guys are probably familiar with that. I've talked about it a decent amount. The family aspect of our entire, like, this whole business is pretty interesting in its own right. And since it's mostly Corey's family that kind of adopted me in. Do you kind of want to give, like, the weird description of how everyone's connected?

Yeah, yeah. I think it's always a fun story. And then everyone just take a second and get out of pen and paper, because you may need it to follow me. But in the most simplest form, my father is a twin, and his twin brother married my mom's sister.

Okay, so while you went right into the crazy part. I didn't even ease into it.

I didn't ease into it. What's there to hide? And so essentially, my cousins are really the same blood as my brothers and sisters. Actually, we did one of those 23andMe tests. Brian, I don't know if I told you this.

No.

And Nikki matched with me as My sister, I got this notice. You have a long lost sister from 23andMe.

Long lost. So just so we know. So Nikki is my wife. So this is how all this gets connected. So. So he's talking about my wife that is genetically his sister even though she's not technically his sister.

Right. So when Brian and Nikki met and I don't know. Have you told this story yet, Brian?

I don't know. Go ahead, we'll see if I told it.

So Brian and when Brian and Nikki met, they had initially been living in, I guess an apartment together. Right. And Mark came and did an inspection and introduced Brian to the mold world and he took off with it running and is, as you all know, one of the top consultants in the industry when it comes to dealing with individuals with hypersensitivity. So we have adopted Brian into the family in a way. But we're gladly glad that he came along because he's just the best and greatest and is just not only an amazing cousin, but awesome person to work with.

Well listen, that's something. So here's the deal. Now anyone who ever comes on the show has to spend at least a minute just talking about how great I am. So that's. Now that's prerequisite.

Well, that was only a few seconds. You really want me to go off here? I'll go for a full minute.

Let me listen. Selfishly, I think it's fun, but I don't think everyone else probably wants to hear that forever. So. Yeah. Anyway, so the, so the whole family connection is weird. So to sum it up, so my father in law is Corey's uncle.

And, and that's kind of the tie in for everything. So anyways, just, just a quick brief. So Corey didn't talk about himself. So Corey's actually been doing this longer than I have. So this is, this is the family business. But I married into the family. Like this is legit Corey's family business, right. So he's been around it forever. He's been in the field for, I don't know, 10 plus years you were doing in the field. And so now what's happened is when we started Weinspect a few years ago, it was really because we were getting all these phone calls from all over the country and we weren't able to help people everywhere because logistically it wasn't possible. So we ended up creating this kind of traveling company that leverages high end video streaming technology. Corey actually developed a mobile app and a web based platform, actually built an app with a team which is amazing that we could then use to interact with our consultants across the country. And, and so that's kind of how that got put together. So the setup on how we are working together now is that I'm basically. Usually. Sometimes we flip flop, but usually I am the one that is overseeing the inspections that are happening wherever they happen to be in the country. And then we send one of our consultants on site and then I'm kind of working with him virtually through the live streaming and the apps and all this stuff. And we're basically going through a house. Think of it like telemedicine for a moment inspection. So that's basically like what we're doing. So. So I'm kind of on the inspection side of things now. And then Corey has really taken over talking to all the clients as they come in, all the potential clients and really trying to help understand like what. What's the best way that we might be able to help them? And not just for our business, but also for his dad's business and his uncle's business too. So Corey handles the phones for our entire network of family companies across the country, basically. So he hears all, all kinds of stories and situations and everything that's going on. And so that's actually why I thought it'd be fun to have him on because I think it's cool to hear, you know, kind of what people are going through. Right. And some of the examples of some of the, you know, types of calls and different things that you get. So let's just like start there. Like what? Have you had an interesting call lately you think would be fun to talk about?

Yeah, funny enough, right before I came on, I took a call or had a call scheduled and it kind of was perfect for this show because to be quite honest with you, I did not know what I was going to talk about. So I got off the phone and was pumped not for this person, but for the topic. And I think it's a topic that I actually hear a lot and I'm sure you get a lot of questions about, Brian, is the relationship between the tenant and the landlord and the management company and who's responsible for what. And what really are a tenant's options when they're trying to prove a problem within an environment. So just to kind of give this story and background, this person lives in a apartment and it's in a high rise building. There are several other units above and below them. And so there was a really bad storm a couple of months ago and it caused leaks to come down from the roof, down about six or seven floors. And this person. Yeah, they're located on their second from the roof. And so they were impacted pretty bad. Water came in through the bedroom ceiling. It came into their shared hallway with the other units. It seeped in from the hallway into their front foyer area. And within days, his wife starts getting sick and she's getting headaches and nausea. And so they move into living room and start sleeping in the living room. And the management company, after they call them and let them know they obviously found from multiple people that was a problem. And they stop by with a dehumidifier that you get from Home Depot, one of these small little dehumidifiers that's like $80, and tell them to put that in the bedroom. And obviously they had no idea that that does absolutely nothing.

So real quick.

Yes.

Why does that not do anything?

So when you're talking about drying structural materials, you need industrial strength dehumidification. When you buy something that's a small.

Probably about 2 or 3ft high, it's like a little box. It kind of looks like an end table next to a couch. It's not going to be able to dehumidify the air and the structural materials well enough to really dry out. Furthermore, it's the timing in which they brought it in. If you have a water event, you have less than 24 hours to act in and get the appropriate drying mechanisms like industrial strength dehumidifiers, as well as fans in order to dry it and possibly prevent a mold or bacteria issue from forming. Waiting a few days and bringing a dehumidifier in can actually make the problem a lot worse because all we're doing is drying out what's floating in the air and not being able to dry the components where the mold was growing.

Yeah, it's so crazy because I've heard that a bunch too. Right? Like, I even had. I mean, I've told stories of, like, all these other places I lived. Every place that I moved out of out of LA has been because there's been a water issue and a mole problem. Like, that's why I've moved every time. But there was one place in particular was an apartment. I was actually pretty stoked to move in there. And we moved all of our stuff in. And then the second day after we moved all of our stuff in, there was a massive flood that came in from the patio because the patio drain was completely clogged below the grate. So, like, I don't know if they were Just cleaning it and lifted up the grate and then just let all the leaves and stuff fall in the drainpipe or whatever. But then it rained, flooded our whole unit. It's like the second day that we, like moved in. Things are still in boxes, like, whatever. And. And so I go in, I'm like, holy crap. And I moisture map everything. I mean, I mean, stuff is nuts. Like the infrared cameras going off the charts. Like, it was freaking crazy. The answer. It was exactly what you're saying. They're like, okay, so we're going to bring a dehumidifier in here. And, you know, luckily, you know, us being us kind of, you know, you just talked through it. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. This. This is not a thing that's going to happen.

And.

But this is what they do. It's just so funny. It's not like the one person you talk to, right? Like, this happens.

Oh, no, this.

Yeah.

Oh, it gets. It gets worse for this guy, right? And that's. And this happens often too, right? Because what they do, you know, look, management companies hire supers to maintain buildings, right? And in many areas, right? Like in many of the. In many of the locations that we operate out of, you'll have an either on site supervisor or a super that oversees several different buildings. And their job is to go and take care and maintain these buildings. So, you know, it could have been something that he didn't do appropriately on the roof that allowed for the place to flood.

Something that is a building maintenance fault. Sometimes insurance won't even cover this. So then you have a super who kind of messed up and is backpedaling, trying to minimize things, right? So they send in the super who goes, ah, it's not a big deal. Just throw this dehumidifier in here. And so they throw the dehumidifier in there. And as time goes by, Brian, you could probably get. They start to see mold grow on the ceiling in the bedroom. So they call the super back and the super comes in and goes, ah, that's no problem. I'll take care of it. Whips out a bottle of bleach and starts bleaching the ceiling and wiping it down. So at this point, it's now been a few weeks since then. They go away on vacation. They come back, and because nothing has been properly dried, there's even more mold growing on the ceiling in the master. The whole place smells musty and. And moldy. And they can barely spend any time in this place. And so now they're Trying to come up with a route of what makes the most sense for them and where they're going to invest their time and energy. Is it battling the management company for to do the proper remediation? Is it battling the remediator, the management company, to let them out of their lease? What are the long term repercussions of having this type of exposure? So all of this really is, are the main questions that I get when people are going through this process. Because clearly the management company isn't going to take into account and bring in the right people to do the job appropriately. So we need to come up with an action plan that makes the most sense for these individuals. And that's a lot of the talk through that we go.

And so basically, basically it's like two things, right? You said it. They're not going to remediate it properly. So ultimately there's like three paths you go down. One, you remediate it and fix it when you're renting and there's ownership involved and supers and stuff. I've talked about this before, but their, their goal is, bottom line is making money on, on units and when you have to drop tens of thousand dollars on remediating in a unit, you've now gone into the red on your investment. They don't want to do that. So, so that option is pretty much off the table usually. So then that leaves you two other options. It's do you just try to get out of your lease and get out of there or are you going to try to sue them? Right. And there's kind of different approaches for each one, right? In terms of what we do.

Yeah, yeah. And so the thing that needs to be considered too is obviously the occupant, right? This person's wife was reacting. So there's clearly some underlying hypersensitivity that could be going on here. So you have to think of contents and this is an important part, right? Do you want to get out of your lease and have evidence to say, hey, I want to break my lease and I can show you that there's mold in addition to that, my mattress and pillows and you know, some contents within the environment, they need to be thrown away because there's X, Y and Z contaminant here and then furthermore.

Moving the contents to the side. If his wife is reacting, then what does that mean from a longer term perspective? Has she been exposed to something that has now either tipped her over the edge to make her hypersensitive moving forward, or is she already hypersensitive? And this type of exposure has put her in a spiral where she now needs to seek treatment and detoxify because clearly she's reacting to this exposure.

You know, that's. It's such a good point because it really isn't black and white, right? So, like, the two options I laid out are just kind of the first layer of the onion, if you're peeling it, you know, and I get this a lot, too. So, like, when people call us, right, we're going through their house, the first thing that I ask them when it's time to sit down and kind of review what we found is, you know what? Why'd you call us in? What are your goals? What are you hoping to get out of today? What are you planning to do with the information moving forward? Right? And there are times where there's. They want to do two different things. As, you know, the person wants two different goals, but they conflict with each other. So let's, like, talk about what you're talking about. For instance, right? So one goal is we want to get out of the lease. So if you're just looking at that as your goal, then when it comes to, like, the sampling side of stuff, you don't typically have to go as crazy on that end, right? Because you just need to prove that there's mold growing in the. In the unit, basically. And then you have some information that. That hopefully, you know, an attorney, if you even need it, can help you push out. But then that. That doesn't look at the other side. Like, usually people call us. They're not calling us because they want to get out of their lease, right? They're calling us because they're sick, right? This is exactly what's happening here, right? So they were sick. They called in, but they're renting. And so then there's one path of like, yeah, I just want to get out of this place. But then on the other side, when you talked about contents and what do you do moving forward? It's so important because those are. You have to know also, how do I try to, like, maintain my health moving forward? What have I been exposed to? What does that look like? And so when you're building sampling plans, it's not just black and white, right? Like, sometimes you have to say, listen, I know you're just trying to get out of the lease. You don't want to spend as much on the testing. But at the same time, if you're trying to understand if you can bring your stuff with you or what you can give to Your doctor to help understand exposure. Then there's more testing that you would need to do for that. You kind of have to do two things for two different goals.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's so hard on the initial. Right. Because once you're. What I'm trying to show people and talk them through on the initial call. First off, when they're calling us, you know, sometimes they're referred. Right. Sometimes their doctor sent them over. Sometimes their friends said, hey, these guys are great. But many of the times they, you know, saw us in a Facebook room or, you know, they found us online. So first I need to explain to them who we are and what we do, and then I need to talk them through the process of what the testing process plan may look like depending on these different variables. But a lot of times, as you just mentioned, it changes. Once we actually get eyes on a project and we do our inspection. You know, the people who call in, they're so often. We're so focused on what we can visibly see. But what's so interesting, guys, is what you're seeing on the surface is just the tip of the iceberg. So they're talking about a flood that came from the roof, and their ceiling is impacted, and it came in through the front foyer area. But that water is going down. Right. So it's not only traveling and hitting the roof, but it's hitting the interior of the walls and going to the next apartment down below them and so on and so forth down the building. So we're so convinced. Many times we think that it's, oh, well, I see the water damage and the mold on the ceiling. That's got to be it. But actually, when we get out there and we do the infrared cameras and the moisture mapping, we find that there's water all over. Right. And so the scope can be way more significant than initially thought, and that can ultimately change the motivations of how we want to move.

Yeah, it's. It's a fluid process. You know, it's. It's interesting because water travels in weird ways that you can't totally know. Right. And so it's part of why you do different types of testing. But then, like, so the water is fluid, but then we have to kind of be fluid, too, in, like, how we're looking to approach things. And. And that can change when we're there. Just like. Just like what you said. So how did that. How'd that call wrap up?

So he wants to go over it with his wife and then kind of make the decision on how they want to move forward but I think it's important to talk about what really the next action step should be when you're faced with the landlord or the management company kind of pushing back. Because the other side of that coin is many times they've already hired a company to come in. It's not just the, the super, they've hired another company to come in to already do what they think is getting rid of the problem. So they've already had somebody say there's we're dry, there's no mold. Right. And they management slash landlord doesn't want to pay for anything else. So unfortunately you have to come to to an understanding that you're in what's called discovery and you're going to need to come out of pocket. Now at that point there's two options. Option one, you can pay out of your own pocket to have the inspection and then follow up testing based off what's found. Option two, you can do your own self testing to try and further prove to the management company that there is a problem and then maybe get something in writing that you'll be reimbursed.

By the management company if a problem is found. The environment. So I a lot of times will recommend hey, do an ERMI sample. ERMI was created to help homeowners understand if they have a likelihood of a problem within their environment. That's the number one reason why it was.

A problem there through the ERMI sample and at least raised doubt that the other company that said there was no problem may have been wrong or may have missed something. That is gives you another leg up to possibly get the company that you want in the door to do the appropriate inspection and testing. There is one thing that I will I really need to stress here is that you need to be the one paying for the inspection.

I was literally just going to cut you off to make sure that we talked about it. So funny. Yeah, go.

Yeah. So it's extremely important because that keeps the ball in your court. So it's pretty much standard practice in our industry that if a person hires us, the contract that we have with that person is now between the person who paid and the consultancy. So we can't release anything to anybody else besides the person who paid us without written permission from that person or court order to release those documents. Which obviously you don't want to go through the court order process because that takes time and money. So I always recommend to people is try and get commitment in writing for reimbursement whether it's a hey, I'M not feeling well. I know you said, you know, X, Y, and Z testing came out, and they said there's no problem, but I'm still reacting. If I. I pay for an inspection company of my choice to come out and they don't find anything, then I will bite the bullet. But if they do come out and find something, then I want to be reimbursed for that. And so this way you at least know that you could possibly get those funds back. If you need more evidence and don't want to try that much of a gamble, start with an Ermes test. Take an Ermes around the apartment. See how those levels come back. See what species are in the. Are in the sample. See what your score is, and then you can use that for the same process of, hey, I did an army. I know it's not done by a professional, but now I want to bring somebody in. I want it. I want to be reimbursed. I'm willing to pay the funds up front. Can you please confirm?

Okay, so that's. That's awesome. So I kind of want to put. I want to, like, put this more into, like, a narrative. Right. So basically what Corey is saying is that if. If. Because a lot of people want their. They feel like. And it's fair, right? You're like, I don't live here or I don't own this place. I shouldn't be the one that has to pay for the testing, right? Yeah, but the thing is. And what Corey's saying is that you don't own the report if you get your landlord to pay for it. Okay? You need to own the report. So I cannot tell you how many times I've actually gone into a situation, and now we won't do it anymore because it's. It just. It doesn't work. But basically what was happening is that we would go into this situation that Cory's talking about, and then, you know, our. Our client, who didn't end up being our client because they didn't pay for the report, but basically the tenant who kind of facilitated us to come in said, you know, had us go through the house, you know, we. They saw what we were finding visually and everything, right? And then they said, okay, so our landlord is paying for it. I'm like, ugh, you really don't want your landlord to pay for it? Like, you really should pay for it. Like, if I find problems, I can't tell you about it. Right? This is. This is what Corey's saying. Like, even if you're in the House. While we go through your house and you see everything that we're finding, I can't tell you what any of it actually is if you're not technically our client, which is where the transfer of funds comes into play, right? So then what happens is I get the results back. They're bad. I have to send them directly to the landlord instead of the tenant. Right. And then always the tenant reaches out and they're like, hey, how was it? I'll be like, I can't tell you. You have to talk to your landlord. I legally can't tell you what it is. And so what does a landlord do? They just don't tell them, right? There's like, oh, yeah, well, we had somebody else look at it too, and they said that these guys were overboard or crazy or whatever, so everything's fine. Or they didn't. They'll straight up lie. They're like, oh, yeah, everything's cool. Even though our report says that it's not. But you as a tenant have no way to get your hands on it anymore. It's so important to own the data, right? You have to own it all. And so that's. Yeah, that's. That's just kind of the narrative of how. Just explained. But it's so important.

Yeah, yeah, it really. It really gives you the understanding. And then also, you. Regardless of whether you own the physical place, it's still your stuff in there, right? So if you really think about the investment you made into all of your belongings versus the cost of throwing all of your belongings away if it's a really bad scenario, and then the few thousand dollars you may have to come out of pocket up front to understand what you can or cannot take with you and set the appropriate guidelines. Because, look, you never know. You may get the management company to pay for some of the stuff that you need to get rid of, but, you know, if there's clear negligence or a clear problem there, having the data is going to really give you the information that you need to get your goal accomplished, whether it's getting out of lease, getting reimbursement, or unfortunately, in some cases, litigation. So it's important to. To be the one in the driver's seat for that.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm so glad that this was the call that you got before we jumped on, because, you know, a lot of people rent, you know, and it's tough because when you're renting, it's like this whole other, like, how much do I actually invest in my own money in a place that I don't live in, you know, but it's. And we get the calls all the time and it's, it's just a really good one because I'm sure a lot of people listening are renting, which is cool.

Okay, real quick. So you talked about another way to go about it is like do an ERMIE see what it looks like. Right. So the problem is that you can't just look at an URMI score because it's misleading. Right. And, and then also, and talk on this too. I've talked about it before, but it'd just be interesting to hear what you say about it. When the EPA came out and said that the ERMI is for research only and that you shouldn't actually be using it, which my immediate reaction is isn't all sampling for research, but, you know, it's just me. But so, so let's talk about like one. When you're looking at an URMI report. Just let's just give like the top line of how we look at it. Right. And then I just like to hear your thoughts on the ERMI backstepping or the EPA backstepping on the study that they funded.

Yeah, yeah. Well, look, I think it's, it's government rule that they have to back, back step on everything that they initially step forward with. It's just part of the, part of, I think no matter what, there was a lot of pushback, as you can imagine, from special interest groups in the release of this type of study. Right. And so it is very important to note that the army is a study that can help people understand when studying your home, whether or not you have the potential for a mole problem to exist within your house. That was why it was created, was to give people the understanding. That's what the score is. It's an index score. How do I stack up against the 1100 other homes in this study? And then do I have a problem?

So real quick, hold on, real quick. So, so why are the special interest groups pushing back? That's when you think about it, it's like, and you know this too, like, what would you say the percentage of homes that are actually water damaged? Are you?

Well over 80%.

Right. So if you have more, eight out of every 10 homes that are, that exist have some form of water damage. And this is the funny part because like when you've seen like the EPA's throwing out water damage numbers other people have thrown out numbers are usually around like 50% they'll throw out there. Yeah, but that's only like stuff that's reported, right? Like floods, maybe. Like nobody's reporting a leak under their sink or they had a small leak from their laundry that went into the ceiling down below. Nobody's reporting that stuff. They're just trying to fix it. It's not getting fixed properly, probably. And that's why the number is up. 80, 85, 90. And so then if you think about if the URMI study is to show if there's mold problems in your home, and then we know that like 80% of houses have mold problems. This is why the special interest groups are like, whoa. Like, you're basically telling us we have to change the entire way that we build homes everywhere forever. And it's. It's a huge financial thing, obviously.

And that's.

That's where the pushback comes from. Yes.

It's not just the building process. It's the existing structures. Right. It's word, as in. Because, look, at the end of the day, there was a. There was a run. When this first came out, there was a massive run on insurance companies. And that's an important thing to note is that there was literally a mold rush. Just like there was a gold rush. There was a mold rush. And they were.

Oh, no, did we lose you?

Okay, everyone, I think we lost Corey for a second. So I'm gonna get him back in and we're going to talk about the mold rush here. Okay? So we'll be back in one sec.

Hey, so you had a mold rush.

All right, everyone, I don't know what happened. We dropped off, but we're gonna pick right back up. So the insurance companies.

Yeah, so anyways, there was a mold rush yet everybody, they were testing their home for mold. It was confirmed with really any type of test. And you had remediation contractors coming in and taking full advantage of that. So these insurance companies were writing 25, $50,000 checks left and right. So if you look at newer policies, there's caps on all of these type of coverage, coverages that they'll now give out for mold. And it's all now tied to some sort of water event. And we can go on that for another topic for hours. I'll come back on the, on the podcast and talk through that with you guys on another date, only people like you.

And so essentially it created this problem. Right. We can't have people making all these claims. It needs to be more sudden and incidental events that we can go after. So the, the ERMI study, because it essentially is going to be diagnosing all of these houses now with problems. You can't just have 85 to 90% of homes in America running, running Hermes all at once and now needing, you know, $50,000 worth of work in their home after they do a full on inspection and then expect for insurance companies to, to actually cover it. So it's, it's a, it's a, it's a problem. But what's happened now in this time, just because it's being coined as a study doesn't mean that the information is not important. And in the years since IRMI has essentially been released, it's kind of become, I would call it a gold standard. Right, Brian? In the medical industry.

Yeah. And I think partially because for the, for the doctors it's like an easy thing. They could try to look at a score and kind of get some sort of understanding. You know, there are some flaws in the scoring system which is, you know, not the only thing that you look at, but the reason it's the gold standard. Why don't you go and talk about why it is in the technology behind it.

Okay, I think we're back. This is third time's a charm, people. We're going to make this happen.

Again. Technical difficulties, right?

It was hearing it.

Yeah. This time it's actually happening.

Yeah.

So anyways, I was, I was talking about IRMI and how the study, why the study was created and why it's kind of become this gold standard because of the scoring system. But it also gives you species of these specific 36 molds that were outlined in these two types of homes. Water damage and non water damaged homes. And it's done under a method of analysis that's a lot more accurate than what you traditionally see in the consulting community, which is air and surface samples. So air and surface samples are done under a microscope and you have a technician at a lab and they're looking at the type of mold. They're not even able to tell you the species. So in the Aspergillus family you've got thousands of different type of Aspergillus species. Some of them are non toxic, they don't produce any mycotoxins, some of them produce potent mycotoxins. So having the ability to see the species is really important. And so Hermes run under what's called msqpcr, which is a type of DNA formatting. It allows for these machines so take out human error to identify not just spores created by molds, but also fragments of spores or pieces of hyphae, anything really related to that type of DNA from specific Mold species. So it's extremely sensitive, extremely accurate. And so this test was actually created to help even the playing field between the disparity that was happening at the laboratories, because they were taking these side by side tests and sending them to different laboratories and they were getting different results back because there's human error there. And so with this, it was supposed to remove that, and it was so accurate, in my opinion, that they started back stepping. And that's where the theory comes from. But what has happened now fast forward to today and why it's become a standard is because of that accuracy, giving you that data down to the species level. So Brian touched on this before. It's so important to not just look at the score. You need to be looking at more than the score when you're looking at your ERMI sample, because they can be skewed. And so you want to look at the two groups. You got the group one and the group two molds. Group one are water damaged molds. Group two are non water damaged molds. And you want to see how many molds were actually detected. There's 26 molds in the group one side where the water damage is. How many of those are detected? Then you want to also take a look at the number of molds that were considered tenfold the national average when they ran the test. Now, I don't believe mycometrics does this, Brian. I know envirobiomics does it.

Do you know mycometrics doesn't do it. So envirobiomics does it really easily. They just highlight the molds in the report. And so the ones that are highlighted are the ones that are 10 times higher. The study, you know. You know how long it took me to get my hands on the actual Ermes study? I think it took me five years to find it and find someone that would give it to me. So I actually have the original, like the numbers from the study now, but it's not something that's very easily accessible. And so the envirobiomics makes it easy because they show you just. They highlight the ones that are 10 times higher.

Yeah. And not only do they do that, they then also give you the Hertzme 2 score, which was derived by Dr. Richie Shoemaker and helps give another insight into how suitable an environment may or may not be for individuals diagnosed with sirs, Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. And all of this is listed in their report with different scales. So it is really a great tool to help understand what could be going on within the Home. But we take all of these into account. We don't just look at the ERMI score or just the Hertzme 2 score. We look at the species, the load of the species that are in the environment. And so it's really important when you're looking at these tests to take all of this into account because of how sensitive these tests are and the gray areas that exist with them. Right. You know, an air sample's got a gray area when it's collecting samples, but it is used to pinpoint sources of problems. Right. But an ERMI sample is not going to do a good job of pinpointing where molds come from because you're looking at a scaled down version of different types of molds. So utilizing that information appropriately is very important.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's like a whole nother episode of talking about when and how and why to use different testing methods. But yeah, you know, I think this is helpful, you know, guys, like, on the ERMI front, I mean, the, the reality is, if you're trying to use the ERMI for, you know, kind of this renting tenant purpose that we kind of started talking about, I mean, most of them that I see now, granted, the homes that we're going into, we're getting called because people are sick and having problems. So maybe that's skewing my sample set a little bit. But most of the ones that I get back are over the Urmi score 5, which is, if you're just looking at the score now, we've said over and over the score can't be the end all, and it's not. But if you're just trying to do an army in your place and need something to kind of show, you know, landlord, owner, whatever, that there might be a problem if you get a score that comes back. And even if it's in the, the level three range, which is between zero and five. Right. Even that is saying that there's potentially an issue. So if you got something in anything that's basically above zero up to, up to above, it gives you a leg to stand on when you're trying to have that conversation with them. And, and then if you look at the species of moles, I just call out a couple of them. Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus fumigatis, Aspergillus flavis, Tomium globosum, Stachybotrya strata. I mean, those are Penicillium brevicompactum. There's six just off the top of my head. That all produce really potent mycotoxins. So if you're trying to basically kind of create the story, you know, that you have to create to show what's happening, then if you could pinpoint any of those, let's say one of those six are getting the 10 times over, you know, the threshold highlight that we talked about in the lab or in the envirobiomics report. Now you're seeing we've got a few species here with the ability to produce mycotoxins that are 10 times higher than what this study of homes across the country was. It gives you more ammunition, right? So this is just a couple things you could do when you're looking at it. So.

I think. I think for today, before the technology gods really just rip us one, I think we should maybe call it for right now. And if we have. I know we ran a hair long, I don't know if we're gonna do this or not. Maybe we could do like, one. You tell me. But I think we're gonna pop over to Instagram. If we don't do it today, we'll do it soon. But I'm gonna do. We're gonna do like an Instagram live where we answer like a question or two, both me and Corey. So that's gonna happen too. So hope you guys enjoyed the Corey Levy experience.

Corey, thanks for coming.

Thanks for having me. And next time, we'll make this a little bit more fluid with technology.

I mean, I hope so. I don't know. But until then, guys, thanks so much. We'll talk to you later.

Thanks.

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