53: Q&A - Water damaged subfloor / Fine particle cleaning / “Low” mold counts / Sick animals

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, how we doing? I put out yesterday a post asking for questions for the next couple episodes of the pod because I want to do some Q&As, and I got a lot of questions that came in. I was looking through them. Some of them I've answered already, either in different Q and A episodes or just other kind of general topic episodes that I've done. So. So what I would encourage you guys to do is, especially for the Q and A's, you can open up the descriptions of those and see exactly what the questions were that we were answering in those. And that might be an easy way for you to just kind of check back and see what's there. And then the titles of all the episodes, I try to make pretty clear on what the topics are going to be. So my thought process when I was putting together the podcast feedback was not so much just creating a podcast, but trying to create a resource that is a place that you could continue to go back to, as different situations may come up for you, so you may not need. For example, Corey and I on the last episode, we talked about insurance and the whole playbook that we use when we're trying to put things together. You may not need that right now, but maybe you need it later. Right? So you'll have a place to refer that or to refer to that. And a question I get a lot is about air filtration and different products. Well, way early on in the episodes, I did an entire episode on.

Air technology and filtration units and all that stuff. So I would encourage you guys to look through the feed. Like I said, just check stuff out and it's all there for you. Right. So the purpose of me putting this out here so you have this information to come back and look at. And as we go, I'm obviously going to continue to answer more and more questions, but I just wanted to kind of give you that heads up because I know some of you have asked some questions that have already been answered, and I don't want you to think that I'm not looking at them. I just want to make sure that we're continuing to Kind of put new. New information out there and kind of help with some more of these new questions. So all of that said, I'm going to start with one that's a little more specific, but at the same time, I feel like it could be applied for multiple people. So this question came from Mina Murph on the comment thread for the question post, and it said, I found historical water damage to the upstairs subfloor after pulling up carpet. It looks like Kills was sprayed on it. So if you guys don't know what Kills is, Kills is like some sort of spray or paint that people will put on to just try to cover up mold. Basically, like, they think that that removes it and they just, like, cover it up. So that's what that is. The house is a foreclosure. When we bought it, should I have it tested or just have the new carpet installers rip out the damaged subfloor and then replace it? So there's a couple things to think about here. If the subfloor is damaged, that means that. Or if there was mold in the subfloor, let's say this, right? And if they're spraying Kills on it, there probably was at least water damage of some point, and that was the concern. And you were even saying that you're seeing water damage here. Right. So if there was a mold issue that was down there, the carpeting would have retained all of that anyway. And when you pulled out the carpeting, it would have dispersed it all over the place. So the testing piece is not so much to say whether or not we should remove the subfloor. The testing piece really should be, how do we clean everything before we put it all back together? So that's what the thought process should be when you're thinking about what you're testing and why you're testing in this case, because, again, when you pull up carpeting, it's creating a massive disturbance. All that stuff is getting airborne. So it's already moving throughout the house. Like, you've kind of. You kind of missed that boat already. So now we just have to figure out how to handle that stuff. Right now I would definitely have the subfloor removed. Okay, so you're in this process.

There was obviously some sort of treatment that was tried that you know, that they tried to do. Right. So that's already a big red flag. And then you're seeing water damage. The thing with subfloors is you don't know what's under the subfloor when you're on a second floor like that. On an upstairs level, you have your wood plywood, and then under that you have framing joists and pieces. And if they're staining on the top, there might be mold growing on the supporting beams that are under it. So I do think that taking that out is a good idea. And so I think that that makes sense. What I would do in terms of testing is I wouldn't do the testing right now because, like I said, the damage is kind of done. I would. I'd pull out the subfloor, and then once the subfloor is out, I would then have someone come in and do an inspection and testing of the area at that point. So think of it now as a post remediation inspection. Okay, that's kind of what we think of it now. So the removal has been done now. We're coming back in now that we have a better look at stuff, and let's try to see what's here if there's problems here or whatnot. So, you know, when you're looking at this, at the joists and the framing pieces that are under the subfloor, really water damage and any sort of suspect discoloration, those are going to be the red flags that you're looking for. And so in those places, you know, I would do surface testing. I do swab testing on those. Now, you don't have to do like a separate test for every single spot where you see something that's, you know, inconsistent. You could do it by room, let's say. So if you're. Let's say that you're upstairs. I'm walking upstairs right now in my place, I've got a couple bedrooms and a loft, right? A little small loft space. So you could split out the surface testing by room. So in my. In my setup here with a couple bedrooms and. And a loft space, I would do a composite swab sample of the framing pieces that are below the subfloor. I would do one in the first bedroom, one in the next bedroom, and then one in the subfloor space or one in the loft space. So I just want to know what's there, Right. I want to have an idea and to do a composite. You literally just anywhere that. That visibly looks kind of suspect, you kind of rub the swab over it and you just kind of see what's there. Right. So I would do that for that piece of it. Then the next thing I would do is I would actually look to do some dust testing as well after everything has been pulled out, because you're focusing on the Upstairs. You've kind of done the removal upstairs. What I would do is actually split the house into two levels. I would do a separate set of dust testing upstairs and then a separate set of dust testing downstairs. The reason I would do that is because, you know, we don't know what else is going on in the house. Right. So, yes, there could have been a problem in the upstairs and that could have disturbed things and moved it around. There may also be problems downstairs that we don't know about. And especially, you know, this is a foreclosure. You don't know how things were taken care of. You know, if they weren't. If they weren't paying their mortgage and they got foreclosed on, then they probably weren't paying for maintenance too. Right. So there may be some things that happened that didn't get handled the right way.

And so if you do, if you split them top level and bottom level, then if. If the one that you do on the top level is way higher than the one that you do on the bottom level, then it kind of gives you some direction on. Yeah, you know, this might have been a bigger problem up here. And it's a good thing that we did all this. If you do it and it's consistent throughout, then there might actually be some other things going on in the house and the downstairs that are happening. And you'd probably want to look into getting more of a thorough assessment done of the whole home. In terms of dust testing. You can start with an Ermie and you can do it that way and you can see what it looks like. And then after that, once you have the results and you have to say, okay, so we have to clean everything before we put stuff back together. Right. So you don't want to just take the subfloor out and put a new subfloor on, because you have an opportunity when you remove building materials to actually get a better look and see what's happening. And it's something that a lot of people don't have the opportunity to do. And it's important to understand what's behind these areas as best as you can before you cover them back up. So when you do these tests, excuse me, if you need remediation that's done at that point, then you can have everything remediated while it's open and then you can close it up afterwards. So that's how I would set up the testing. And like I said, the dust testing for the ERMI test, I would split upstairs and downstairs just to give you an understanding of does it look like that when you took everything out of the upstairs, are you seeing consistent mold types and.

Across the upstairs and the downstairs? And maybe they're just at like a lesser level than they are upstairs. And if that's the case, and it then it could read that the upstairs was the source and just started moving through the house. And you might have to do a full home cleanse afterwards at that point, or if they're equal or even if the downstairs is worse than the upstairs. And you have to start asking your question, you know, is there other things going on in the house that maybe we don't know about yet? You know, I'd say if you're listening, you know, listening to the show and interacting on the Instagram feed, then you're likely mold sensitive. I would say in a foreclosure, I would definitely be having a thorough full home inspection done anyway, just to see if there's anything else going on. So thank you for the question. Hopefully that's helpful.

All right, our next question here is from Eliana Grady. And the question is, when is a particle knockdown necessary? Always. And, and what do you use for it? So, you know, the, we've talked about the two phases of remediation. The first phase is removing the source where the growth is actually happening. The second phase is removing basically the contamination that those sources have made throughout the house. Those, that contamination is particles that are floating around. Okay, so when you're talking about like when is it necessary? Is it always necessary? I mean, ultimately it's, you know, what are your goals and what are you trying to achieve in the house? But if you're, if you're trying, you know, if you're having health reactions and you're trying to limit that and you've identified sources that are happening and you don't do the particle clean, then there's still going to be the residual impact from those sources that are potentially moving throughout the house. And that's the challenge. I think this is why a lot of people say that remediation doesn't work and you have to burn your house down and you have to run away and you can't ever live in a house. It's because they leave this piece out. And so, you know, I mean, you could think about this with, with anything, any sort of contamination that's happened, right? I mean, let's say there was an oil spill in the ocean, right? We've seen these happen before. The first thing you do is you stop the oil, the source of the oil from spilling okay, what if that's all you did? You said, okay, well, we stopped the oil source, so we're good. All the oil's still in the water. The animals are going to still, you know, get exposed. You know, they're all going to get covered in it. Everything that happens that we've seen in these big oil spills. So what do you have to do next? You have to clean up what happened from the oil spill, right? You have to clean that out of the water. And if you don't do that, then those animals that are still in the ocean, you know, we've seen the commercials with the little ducks that are being cleaned with the dial soap or whatever the soap brand is that they, that they say is super gentle. All those animals are still going to be impacted by it, right? And it's the same thing for us. Like if the mold is the oil and we stop that from occurring, but we leave all the residual impact that's happened throughout the house. Going to walk through the house and we're going to say, well, we remediated, you know, area X, Y and Z. Why are we feeling better? And it's probably because there's still particle, which is the byproduct of that stuff floating around the house. So I don't want to tell. You always have to do it, right, because it does depend on your goals. You know, it depends on your level of sensitivity, what you actually are trying to get done, you know, with the project. But if ultimately you're trying to kind of get your house back to clean slate, back to ground zero, if that's what you're trying to do, then there definitely needs to be a phase two piece of the remediation, which is a full house cleanse, and that has to be part of it. And if it's not, then you're going to be missing something, you know, now what do you use to do it? You know, everybody is so different in terms of what they're sensitive to, that I'm very hesitant to ever say you should use a certain product for the fogging. But let's just think about the fogging is doing the fogging is not killing stuff. That's not really the point of the fogging. Like, if it does, that's an added bonus, right? The fogging is pulling the particles down to the surfaces so we could then wipe it all away. Okay, so when you keep that in mind, I honestly don't really care what you're fogging with, to be honest with you, as long as the fog is grabbing the particles and bringing them to the surfaces. It's the wiping and the removal of those particles that is the effective piece of this plan. It's not this magic fog solution that's destroying every type of anything that's floating in your house. Because you gotta think about it. You're not. It's not all one thing we're dealing with. You're dealing with mold, which is a fungus. You're dealing with bacteria, which is something separate. You're dealing with biochemicals, which are chemical byproducts of this stuff. You're dealing with gases, alcohols, aldehydes. All of these things are byproducts from these microbiological organisms. And to think that there's one product that is going to magically work for all of those different things. When you think about it that way, just think of from like a chemistry perspective, like all those things are made up of something different. How is one product going to work for all of that? I haven't really seen anything that does. And so the. The point of the product is not to just kill everything that's there. The point is to bring stuff down, to be able to wipe it away. So that's, you know, that's kind of my take on it. Is it always necessary? You know, kind of depends on how bad the situation is. I mean, if you do dust testing throughout the house and you find that it's not really that bad, and the ERMI is pretty low, and there's no toxins, and maybe you don't need to do it. Right. But if you're reacting really bad in the house and you've already done remediation, then maybe that needs to happen. If you've done the appropriate testing and you understand what's moving throughout the house in terms of the particle load, and that's the dust testing throughout the house, and you're in the middle of remediation, then, yeah, I would say that it does need to be done. But ultimately it's about what you're trying to do, what your sensitivity level is, and kind of what the situation looks like. And so you'll have to kind of think through that as well. And you can listen back to some of the previous episodes where I really dive deep, more into the processes themselves and try to figure out what works best for you. All right, thanks so much for that question.

All right, and the next question is from who knew? Not me. Who knew? Not me. Yeah, there you go again in the comment feed of the post that we had just put up. And it Says we found low counts of mold in the bathroom. I'm reacting pretty bad, though. The lab analyst said altenaria tends to trigger people even in super low counts. Is there any truth to that? There's a few things about this one. A lab analyst is not a doctor. I am not a doctor. We don't know what's going on with you. Right. So it's not about, can a certain mold trigger somebody in low counts. It's about what is that person's toxic load? Are they in accumulation mode? Are they able to detox? Are they not able to detox? What else are they dealing with? Do they have other health conditions like Lyme disease or autoimmune disease, or like pans, pandas, and all these other things that could contribute to how their body is reacting to stuff? It's not black and white like that. And, and especially then asking, you know, someone like me, because I get health questions too, and I. I typically don't even answer them because I, you know, I don't know, to be honest with you. It's not my area of expertise on how things are impacting your health. And I definitely refer people to who they should be looking at and online sources. There's a couple great places you could go to. Dr. Jill, Christa is great. Dr. Jess is great. Casey Holland is great. So there's a few places that you can go to find more of the health side of the information. But, you know, looking. Looking at this question a little deeper, and it says, found low counts of mold in the bathroom. Well, what does that mean? What does it mean that we found low counts? Right. And when I say that, it's not that. What does the number on the page mean? Because the number on the page could be low, but what type of sample was it? How was it collected? What's happening in the space? What does it look like? Is there water damage? Is there. Is there a history of something that's happened there? Right. So, for example, if you took an air sample in the middle of the bathroom and you found low counts of a particular mold, that doesn't really mean that there isn't more of a problem in the bathroom. So I, you know, I did a study for ourselves internally, where for a year, when I was going to different houses, if I thought that there was a mold problem, a source, a hidden source of a mold problem in a wall or in a cabinet, I would do that test in that. In that targeted area to really understand what was going on. But then I would also do an air sample about 3 or 4ft away from it. Just an air sample, like, you know, kind of the one in the middle of the room type of sample that I constantly harp on that are not accurate. But I wanted to prove it. And so I would, you know, three, four feet away, I would stick up a air sampling pump on a stand and I would take that sample. And you know what happened? 80% of the time that ambient air sample that was three or four feet away showed a false negative as compared to the source sample that showed that there was a problem. So 80% of the time it was wrong. Right. So what type of test did you take here? If you did an air sample in the room, then honestly, to me, it doesn't matter. It doesn't tell you what's going on. You really need to understand where source might be located to truly get a sense of low, medium, high significance, that sort of thing. So, you know, I would say that. And then, you know, when it comes to understanding how it impacts you again, you know, you have to try to look at your entire health position in its entirety to get a sense for that. Because I get, I get asked questions like, you know, is this mold, you know, is X mold toxic to me? And I actually was just a guest or I just recorded for the Frolic and Flow podcast, which is going to be coming out. I think that episode was a whole Q and A episode, by the way. It's going to be coming out sometime early November. And that was one of the questions like, are all molds toxic? And it turned into a very long answer about, you can't just think of it like, when you think of toxic, people seem to. They relate toxic to health. And that's not what toxic mold means. Toxic literally means it has the ability to produce a toxin. That's what toxic means. But we somehow then associate that with a direct impact on health and saying, oh, well, that mold must be toxic to me, right? And yes, any mold with a toxin, yes, that's a biotoxin. So, sure, that's a toxin that you're exposed to. But I think people use the word toxic and they actually mean, can this make me sick? And those are two very, very, very different things. Right? If you're in the boat where you're dealing, you know, your, your toxic load is high. And when I say toxic load, it's, what are all the external environmental issues that you're being exposed to? How's it filling up your immune system funnel? Are you detoxing properly? Are you just accumulating a bunch of Stuff and you're not moving it. If you're in that space, then you don't have to have a, quote, toxic producing mold to create a health reaction for you. Right. And that's the big thing out of this. So here's what I would say. I don't know if you're working, you know, with a functional medicine doctor, but if you're having, you know, pretty bad reactions, which is what you mentioned in the space, I definitely think that you need to be understanding what is happening in your body. Right. Because that's a big piece of that. And additionally from the question, I don't know what was done in terms of an assessment in the bathroom, but there's a number of things in the bathroom where there could be issues. You have a number of plumbing sources. There's different areas that there could be things under the sink, around the tub, the seal around the toilet, the baseboards by the shower, the inside of the shower. There's so many places where there could be some things going on. And so all that stuff has to be looked at individually. You got to understand if there are hidden sources in there and if there are, you know, it may not get picked up in an ambient air test. And again, I don't know exactly how you did it. So this is just kind of more commentary overall, but it sounds like your bigger part of the question is your health reaction. So I hope some of the description that I gave can help you in terms of figuring out if there's something going on in there and how that might be affecting you.

All right, so this is going to be the last one for today. This one is from Priscilla Gorilla. Hey, Alliter. No, that's not alliteration, that's rhyming. Yeah, got it. So here it is. Do domestic animals also suffer from mold issues in the home? So I mean, I, you know, I've never done, you know, I don't do testing on animals. Right. So I, you know, all I could do is speak from you or speak to you from experience and anecdotally. And the answer is yes. Like, I've heard it multiple times. I've heard it with dogs, I've heard it with cats. Their demeanor changes. They, you know, they develop, you know, cancer. They develop things that are going on and the vets, they don't, they can't really explain it. And it just kind of happens over time and they see it. Here's the thing that's really interesting. So first off, I mean, we're very similar to these animals, right? We're all mammals, you know, so, you know, to these types of animals. So, you know, we have similar systems. I'm not a biology expert, but we have similar, you know, internal systems. So we breathe stuff in. We have organs, we have fat tissues, you know, we have respiratory tracts. We have different systems in our body for, you know, for detoxing and things like that. So there's a lot of similarities in, you know, animals and people in general. And the. The thing to think about is, you know, I talk a lot about dust testing and understanding what's in the dust composition in the house. And that's how we figure out what's happening from a mold perspective and bacteria and mycotoxins and what's moving through the house. Okay, so knowing that, where does dust settle? Where does dust collect? It collects on the ground a lot of times. And where are dogs and cats? And let's take it a step further. Where are your crawling babies walking, crawling around on the floor. Their face is in the floor. They're so much closer to the source of where everything is collecting that it pops up into their breathing zone even easier than it does for us. Right. And so when you think of it that way, then, yeah, absolutely. You know, that happens. And I think that's why I've heard a lot of people talk about. And, you know, some people lose their pets, you know, and they're like, I lived here and. And then, you know, my cat passed away. And then, you know, and then everything continues. And then this happened. And this happened. And now I'm figuring out that what was going on. Can I tell you, it was 100% from a mold issue that was in the house. Like, no, you know, I don't know. Right. I don't know from that very clear 100% angle. But when you start thinking about how things are moving through the house, the different levels of a home where things collect and then where the breathing zone of an animal is compared to the breathing zone of a person. It makes a lot of sense that their exposure is going to be not only really similar, but they're actually be closer to a lot of the sources. Especially, like, if you have carpet, right. If they're walking around on carpet, I mean, their nose, depending on how big the animal is, could be 6 inches away from the ground, maybe a foot away from the ground. If they're smaller, could be even closer. Right? So now you think they're walking around, they're basically right on top of it. And anytime you take a step on carpeting or anything for that matter, you're creating a disturbance that's popping particle up into the air, and they could be exposed to that. Right. So, yeah, it can happen. And I've heard it happen a lot, so I hope all that makes sense. Just kind of thinking through, like, where everything settles, how it moves up and then how, you know, from what I remember in college, from a biological standpoint, we are at least similar to, you know, to some of these, you know, to some of the more common pets that we have in our homes.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.