47: Case Study - Volcano Brain

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, guys. So today I want to walk you through a project where I just got the results back, sent the report out to the client, and just wanted to kind of talk through it with you in this situation. I think I may mention it before, but the. The client's daughter is having some pretty significant neurological reactions. So they actually went and they had a brain spect scan and they basically said that. That her brain looked like it was a series of volcanoes that were exploding. So, which is the opposite. Like, it should look pretty calm in these scans. And it was like red and just kind of yellow and orange and different colors everywhere, which meant that her brain is inflamed. Um, and so the thought from, you know, the doctor they're working with is, oh, well, there. There's gotta be some sort of environmental exposure that's going on. And that's kind of where everything stemmed from. And when we went in, we had a long talk, and he had. He had told me that he was suspecting that it was the attic above her room. They had multiple problems up there. It looks like whoever built the house didn't put the proper ventilation into the attic. And so air was moving into the attic. It was stagnating up there. And mold was grow all over the framing. And the decking, which is. The decking is. If you're in the attic and you look up, it's kind of like the ceiling of the attic, basically. So it's right below the roof. So the roof is like sitting on. On decking, basically. And so they originally had a roofer come out. There wasn't a roof leak. Then they kind of figured out that it was this ventilation thing. And they've had multiple people come out and. And remediate it, but it keeps coming back. And so I actually put up an Instagram post about this a little while ago where I showed pictures of this particular area in the attic. And it was where their last remediator said that they sprayed it with encapsulate, which is this white spray paint, basically, and that mold can't grow on that, so everything's fine. And that there's no mold up There, and there's no problem up there. And so my post on Instagram was talking about this amazing magic spray, if only it worked, right? And it was showing pictures or whatever. But.

So I tested that area with a swab and they were concerned, right? They were saying, well, if you swab that, like, is it. Did it kill? Did the spray they use kill everything? Is it going to skew your results? And I was like, no, it's going to show that there's a problem here, if there's a problem here. Side note, I think there's a problem here, so I feel pretty confident in it. Right? So anyways, so that's where we were thinking that, or that's where they were thinking the bulk of the problem was. Okay. And there was definitely a problem there. Side note, that swab sample picked up like over 300,000 count of Cladosporium. So, you know, for. For those, for those out there that think if you're a remediator and listening to this and you think that you can just spray, encapsulate, spray over mold and it's not going to be there, please let this be a lesson to you that it doesn't work. Okay, so it was still there. It was still. Those are very, very high counts, by the way. It's still a very significant price problem. So it's not that that wasn't a problem. It definitely was an issue, and so that needs to get fixed. But there was one other thing going on in the house that was pretty significant, too. It was far away from her room, so they didn't put as much stock into it. And so her room was on the second floor. So this was down on the first floor in the garage. So it's kind of like as far away from her room as you basically could get. This is where her air conditioning unit lived, or the air conditioning unit in the house, I should say lives. So the mechanical unit where all the air cycles through this is where it was behind the air conditioning unit on the wall, there had been a pipe leak. There was a visible black mold on the wall behind the air conditioning unit. And they didn't really put a whole lot of stock into that. They're like, oh, yeah, this pipe leaked. But, you know, we're more concerned about this other area, you know, and.

It was like, okay, cool. So we want to test the system, we want to test the wall, validate what's there. And so that's what we did. And on the wall, there was a Stachybotrys on the wall. So for those of you that don't know, that's what's commonly known as the black toxic mold. That's what was on the wall behind the air conditioning unit. So what did we talk about before? We talked about how we do different testing for different places. So the test we did on that wall was a swab test because there was visible mold growth on the swab test. Okay? Now, the air conditioning unit is right next to it. So what we've learned and talked about up to this point is that wherever your air conditioning unit lives, it can pull in air from the surrounding areas. And you say, brian, how's that true? Like, there's duct lining, and that's how everything goes in. Well, these units are not airtight sealed, right? All you have to do is pop off the front panel of a unit, and there's the blower fan compartment that creates this massive suction that sucks air from throughout the entire house. So if you're creating enough suction to suck air from out through your entire house, then there's pretty good likelihood that if that heavy suction is happening, and all that you have is basically a metal panel covering it that has gaps on the sides that air can pull in through those gaps as well. And that happens a lot. And so what we found. So the way that we tested that system, we did an ERMI dust test inside of the blower fan compartment. We did a mycotoxin test inside the blower fan compartment compartment, and the ERMI came back. See, now, here's what's interesting. So we. A few episodes back, I had Corey on, and we talked about interpretation of ermi, right? It's not just the score. It's the different mold types. It's what their levels are individually, all that stuff. So the ERMI score On this was 0.9, which, you know, for. For those of you who have SIRS or follow Dr. Shoemaker or have been kind of going down this road, you know, he put out a blanket number where he said, if your ERMI is under two, then everything should be fine. And this is a perfect example of how you can't rely on that. Okay? So, yes, the ermi score was 0.9. When you start looking at the individual molds, scroll down to Stachybotryus. The count for Stachybotrys was 792, which is super, super high on an ERMI result. So I. I mentioned in the. In the episode with Corey that it took me, like, five years to get a hold of the actual Ermes study, but I have it now. And so I compared. I was like, okay, so what was picked up in the regular URMI study that they did? The. If they use what's called the geometric mean, let's just call it the average for conversation's sake. To make it easier. The average for Stachybotrys that they picked up across all the 1100 samples that they did was two. Okay. And in this air conditioning system, we found 790 something. 792, maybe. So you're talking 395 times higher than what the average was on the study. Right? So, yeah, your ermi score was 0.9. If you were just looking at that, you'd be like, oh, my Ermi's fine. There's nothing wrong with the air conditioning system. Then you look at the individual mold types that are there, and you see, holy crap, Stachybotryus is off the charts. Basically, in this air conditioning system, you say, okay, so the air conditioning system has that. What else is going on? The mycotoxin results came back. Picked up trichothocenes, which are produced by Stachybotryus, also picked up aflatoxin, which is produced by different species of Aspergillus. And it picked up kind of a inconclusive result on gliotoxin, which could be produced by Aspergillus or penicillium. The reason I say it's inconclusive is that there is this gray area when they're doing the analysis that they can't reproduce continuously either a positive or a negative result. So they call that equivocal, which is inconclusive. In my mind, I'm like, well, listen, if you can't continuously produce a negative result, then for me, it's a problem. Right. If you're in this gray area, it's higher than it should be. It's a problem as far as I'm concerned. So. But we definitely had a couple for sure, and then we had that one. So now we look at that, we say, okay, so let's go back up into the attic. I also tested for ermia, mycotoxin in the attic. Okay. And you'd be like, well, why did you do that? You did a surface sample up there. Why do you need to do that? Well, I was asking the client. I'm like, listen, what are you. What are you trying to figure out? What are your goals here? And they said they want to know if the attic is what's causing the problem. Right. And they've had a lot of work done up there. They may or may not want to, you know, pursue maybe a legal route with this because of the way that the ventilation was done and it was, you know, improperly done. It's caused a lot of problems. I was like, listen, if. If you want to have information for that, or you just simply want to know, is the addict the bulk of the problem, then we need to test separately in that space and have comparison points for the other places we're testing in the house. And so we also did an ERMI and a mycotoxin in the attic. All the mycotoxins in the attic came up negative. So if we're just looking at the toxins themselves, it's like, okay, we really. We really think the attic is a problem. And I do think that it's a problem. The URMI was still. It was. Was more elevated than the air conditioning system was. Obviously 300,000. Count on the actual framing that's growing in there is a big problem in its own. Right. But the reason that I'm sharing this with you is because you could see how the mycotoxin production is different in those places. Right. And so that's why it was important for us to test that and to help show that. Listen, the air conditioning system is a big problem. And when you think about what an air conditioning system does, it moves air throughout the whole house, Right.

I use the. The analogy, like think of Star Trek. You know, how they got on that little platform and they said, like, beat me up, Scotty. Right. And then they disappeared and they reappeared somewhere else on another planet. Right. Well, think that that platform is your air conditioning system, and the mold and the mycotoxins inside are the people. And when you turn it on, it's like hitting the beam me up button. And then they just appear in the. In the different rooms of the house. Right. Because it's spreading it everywhere. And so even though initially the thought process was we really feel like the attic is what's causing the problem. Right. And I, again, I still do think the attic is a big component of what's going on, but it's not the only thing. Right. Just because the air conditioning unit was on a floor below and on the other side of the house and in a garage, and there was a mole problem on the wall behind that unit. The. What I'm thinking, and, you know, this is how it's all kind of laying out to me, is that the mold problem that was happening behind the wall or behind the air conditioning unit is getting pulled into the system and contaminated the system. And then the system started spreading that throughout the whole house. So really the mold issue on a wall that's as far away from this room as you can get, I think is also a pretty significant contributor to what's going on. Right. And that's why it's so important that you're doing full house assessments. Right. And you're not just saying, listen, I think the problem is here. The reality is, guys, is that we don't know where the problem, where the bulk of the problem is until we look through the whole house, figure out exactly what areas of suspect there are in the first place. There could be things you don't even know about that are going on. Right? So you have to go through the whole house to figure out are there things that we don't know about. And then the testing piece then helps us identify which of those areas are maybe higher priority or bigger contributors, you know, and.

It'S even arrogant for me to say to go into a house and be like, oh yeah, the bulk of your problem is coming from here, guys. I have no idea. Right. And any inspector that tells you that they could just walk into your house and be like, oh yeah, here's where the bulkier problem is. So this is what you're going to handle. They don't know what they're talking about either. Right? Because the reality is we're dealing with stuff that, that we can't see for the most part.

And travels through these invisible airways that move through the house. It's just silly to think that we can sit there and tell you exactly what's going on without having data to look at. And that's the importance of going through and doing a full home assessment and then also using testing to validate that there are problems, to understand severity of problems in different areas, how things are moving, how things are traveling, and ultimately for us to be able to put together the right remediation strategy. So in this case, if we just focused on the attic, because that was really kind of the main point that was brought up during the initial conversations and we didn't go down and look in the garage, we didn't see the issue behind the air conditioning system, or we didn't open up the air conditioning system and we didn't test it, then we wouldn't know this other very large component that's moving toxins and large amounts of mold throughout the house exists. And furthermore, we wouldn't have the remediation plan place to actually fix it. So let's keep going down this road. So if we didn't do that, what would have happened? Well, kind of what has been trying to happen the whole time. So they've been having other remediators and other people come in and they've been focusing on the attic. Focusing on the attic. We're going to get this attic fixed. First off, whatever they're doing is not working because it keeps growing back. And the problem seems to be, at least from the last report that they had done from the people that came out, was that the ventilation is not working in the attic. Right. So they, for whatever reason, airflow is not functioning properly, has to get fixed. Right. You're going to get mold and addicts if your airflow isn't moving. So that has to get fixed. Then they have people come up and they spray it, you know, with encapsulate paint and think that's going to handle everything. And that doesn't work either. Right. But they keep focusing on that. Nobody went and looked anywhere else in the house. Right. So their remediation efforts were continuously focused on this attic. And yes, the attic kept being a problem because of the ventilation issue. But even if the attic got fixed the first time around and it wasn't coming back, you still had this air conditioning system that was blowing stuff around. If we don't look and inspect the entire house, this is literally every assessment. You need to be looking at the entire house. And every single assessment, if it's somebody who's mold sensitive, even if they're like, yeah, we just had a leak under here, but, man, we're having these reactions or whatever. Whenever there's health reactions involved, you got to look at the whole house because the whole house is connected, you know, and so if we didn't do that, we wouldn't have seen the air conditioning system. We wouldn't have put for this particular case because of the heavy load of toxins and the really heavy load of stachybotrys, we're recommending the whole air conditioning system be replaced. You can't fully clean an air conditioning system.

It's impossible. I'm going to say it's impossible. I try not to do very definitive things, but honestly, it's impossible to fully clean an air conditioning system. You have hundreds of feet of ductwork running throughout the house. You have all these micro cavities in the actual air handler unit with where little dirt and dust and particles could get in. And that's what carries all the contaminants around. And there's just no way to clean all of it. So, you know, if we're, if we're not seeing mold loads that are super high and we're not seeing toxins, it's one thing you could try to clean the system. If we're seeing these things like we're seeing in here, it's not going to work. Right. It's just not going to work. So we told them that we got to replace. You know, we're recommending that system gets replaced as long as well as remediating the area behind the unit where the mold is on the walls from. It looks like there was a previous pipe leak that was actually in that wall, and that's what caused that issue. And so that's the thing when you don't look at the whole house. We missed the part of the air conditioning system. So what would happen? We would have remediated the attic. The attic would have been fine. Let's say. Let's say it actually got fixed. The. The ventilation got fixed finally, and the. And the remediation worked. There would have been no mold up there. Right. Yet there still would have been toxins circulating throughout, you know, working their way into the room through the ventilation systems. And, you know, I can't say this for sure, but. But the, the girl probably would have still been having some reactions, you know, and then take another step further as the parents, you're like, okay, so we handled this. We found this. We fixed the mold. She's still having reactions. And you start going to the doctors, like, guys, what's going on? We handled the mold issue. There's no more mold. And so then the doctors start trying to figure out what else is going on. Do you see the snowball that happens? Right. Everything wasn't actually fixed, but we think that it was because the area that we were focused on was fixed. And then you start looking for other solutions and other problems that might be impacting, you know, your health situation, when the reality is there's actually still more things in the house going on. And this is going to take you down a path where you're probably going to get frustrated with your doctor because they. They're going to keep seeing these triggers and these signs of exposure in your testing that they do. Whether it's blood tests, urine tests, whatever they're doing, they're probably going to keep telling you, like, listen, I still think there's something going on in the house. And you're gonna say, no, we had it all done. You've kind of. You've kind of wiped the house out of the equation at this point. You know, What I mean, and so you're probably gonna get frustrated with them. You'll probably change doctors maybe one or two times. You're probably going to go maybe another couple years because it takes time to get in to see the doctors, and they run the test, and that takes time. And then they put you on a protocol, and that takes time. And then you find out that it's not really working as well as you want to, and then they go back and they try something else, and then it's still not really where they're expecting it to be. And then you say, okay, new doctor. And then you go somewhere else and you find a new doctor, and they go through the whole same cycle. And you know why they're going through the whole same cycle? It's because you're still being exposed to in the house. And the exposure is always going to win. Right. It doesn't matter what treatment protocols you're on. It can help you in the. In the interim. Right. It could help you kind of manage what you're dealing with. I'm definitely a big proponent of, like, trying to treat people right away. I think it's kind of silly and ridiculous that some doctors will not even treat you until you're completely out of your mold situation. It's a little, like, inhumane, I feel like. But the reality is that that whole scenario that I just laid out for you, the years that you're. The extra years you're spending, the doctors you're cycling through, it could have been avoided if an entire assessment was done in the house. Right. So I just want to hammer that in. You have to look at the whole house. If you're mold sensitive, you have to look everywhere. Okay. Attics, crawl spaces, basements, air conditioning systems, every bathroom, every bedroom, kitchens, laundry rooms, everything. Gotta look at all of it. Okay. Anyways, I hope that that was like, a helpful little case study. It just. For me, I thought it was really cool. Just to illustrate that our. Our focus was put in one place. Like, we really think that this, the attic, is really the problem. And yes, again, I do think it is a problem. It needs to be fixed. But it wasn't the only problem. And without looking through everything and understanding that, we would have missed that. And. And that's important. And so just keep that in mind as you guys are having projects coming or having inspections and assessments done in your home that even if you know you have historical leaks. Yes, we definitely want to know those. Right. And we definitely want to understand that historical mold issues. Things are going on. We need to know that that's actually the very, very first step of the inspection process, is understanding what the history of the house is. Right. Sit down. I. I'll. I would sit down with you guys. We probably spend a half hour to an hour, depending on how much has gone on. Tell me everything. I'm taking notes of all the. All the areas where there's been problems. I'm going to look at all that stuff, but I'm also going to look at the rest of the house, too. Right. And then we're going to see what's happening everywhere together. And then we'll put a holistic plan for the house together, try to get back to as much of a clean slate as we could get to, because that's ultimately the goal of what we're trying to do. Right. So hope you guys found that little case study helpful for you, and thanks for listening. We'll talk to you later.

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