59: TEXT ME... I’m giving you my number / Do air quality monitors tell you anything about mold?

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

All right, here we are back finally in my house. For those of you that saw that I posted last week on Instagram or maybe you've seen just from the news, maybe I live in an area that was impacted by some of the fires that were going on in California. So my wife and myself and my little one and my dog, we all had to leave. We had to leave the house and evacuate and go, go to my mother in law's place for a couple days. Actually, I think we're there for like maybe four days or something while everything kind of calmed down. You know, it was nuts. Like I woke up in the morning and I went to go walk the dog like I do in the mornings usually do it like around like 7:30 or so. And I see there's like some smoke like off in the distance a little bit and there's like a little glow to it. I was like, oh, it looks like there's a fire. It was so early on, like I saw it like right at the beginning and at the time there was only 10 acres that had been, you know, impacted at that point from the fire. Some time goes by, next thing, you know, like in the afternoon there's been, you know, 4,000 acres impacted and 7,000 acres impacted. And at the end of it, I think it was like 15,000 acres that got burned by this wildfire that was going on. And we lived basically they had like their evacuation zones and we lived 10 minutes away from the closest evacuation zone. Right. So I, you know, I wasn't like waiting for them to tell me to evacuate. I, we just decided we were going to get up and go and if there was an issue, then hopefully we would, you know, beat the traffic and not get stuck on the, you know, of people trying to leave. Was nuts. Is that even though our, our area never officially got into the evacuation zone.

The smoke was just so bad. It was like seeping into the house. Like we couldn't, we couldn't do, we couldn't be in here anymore. And so you saw the picture I posted was me and like my, my respirator saying that at least, you know, the benefit of Being a molefinder is that when the fires come, at least I could breathe because I was wearing the respirator around. My wife and I were both wearing them while we're getting everything packed up and out. But I got some messages. I got some, you know, people checking in and make sure that things were okay. So thank you to everyone who was doing that. Everything's cool. We're good. We're back in the house. Everything seems fine. We got our purifiers running.

And we got new filters that came in, and so we're, you know, got all that going on. It kind of kicked me in the butt to get on top of that because I had let that slack a little bit, like I'm sure a lot of us do with things in terms of maintenance. But it's so important that the maintenance stuff is so important. Anyway, so that is the update. I just wanted to start the episode, just give you an update. Everything's cool. We're good. We're back. And that's why I've been off for a week, I think, on the show. And what's so crazy is that obviously I'm recording this right now. And it literally feels to me like it's been a month since I've done this. It's been just a week. Like, I've been so used to doing two to three of these every week that when I don't do one at all for a week, it's like I feel like that I've been off and. And not sharing stuff with you guys for a very long time. So I'm excited to do this, get back on, kind of get back on the horse. And, you know, with the whole fire thing that went on, there's a lot of, you know, information is being put out about air purifiers. People are asking about, you know, are they good for this? Are they not, you know, kind of what the deal is? And one thing specifically about that I started seeing was, like, people referencing the air quality monitors that are either on these purifiers or that they have, like, their own air quality monitors and talking about, you know, locally, you know, kind of about the smoke and stuff. But then I've. I just. I don't know why it all just kind of started happening, but I started seeing people talking about them and as if it was a way to understand if there's a mold issue in your house, like, looking at these air quality monitors. And it's, you know, it's a little misleading from these purifier companies who say oh, and our, you know, our units have a built in air quality monitor. So, you know, if there's a problem, at the same time, they're also telling you that, yeah, our purifiers filter out mold and particles down to whatever the small particle size is, depending on what filter you get and all that stuff, or even if you get a regular air quality monitor that's not attached to a filter or purifier, know, they make these claims about how your air quality is good. You know.

The question is, what does air quality mean? You know, like, for us, air quality is not just about kind of the standard stuff that's floating around, right? So we, we talk a lot about, you know, how you have to clean a whole house because particles move around, how small the particles are that break off off of mole colonies. You know, how, how they move around, how they attach to dust, how they are so small they could bypass our body's natural filter system in our nose and our throat. That's how they get into our lungs. These particles, they're called fine particles. You know, the ones that we are concerned about, the ones that us moldies are concerned about, they're fine particles. These air quality monitors, they don't measure particle sizes down to that size. You know, so they could be really misleading. Like, I'm looking at mine right now, and it has a little happy face that's green but says everything's cool, right? And so if you look at that, you could be like, oh, cool. I don't have a mole problem, right? And that is just so, so not true. Like, we can't rely on that. You know, we. We went on this odyssey of trying to find.

Air quality devices that actually could somehow determine mold different from other types of particles. But that's. That's not how they work. They work based on particle size. That's how these air quality monitors work, at least when it comes to the mold stuff. Now, you know, you can get monitors that look for like CO2 and, you know, different kind of chemicals and things like that that can trigger some sort of mechanism that shows that in the monitor. But when it comes to particle size and mold specifically, we haven't been able to find anything that can tell you this is what is floating around. Mold specific, right? So what they do is they lump it all into the size of the particle. And there's kind of like three main types of particle. There's PM10, PM2.5, and then ultra fine particles, which are the small ones. So PM10 is like your bigger stuff, PM2 5 is really where the, a lot of the monitors try to focus on. And so if you think like a HEPA filter, you know that that's basically trying to attack particles that are PM2.5, but in terms of size. And there's a lot of things that could be that size, right? Mold spores can be that size. Fragmentation is much smaller than that. But mold spores could be that size. But then other things, combustion byproducts could be that size. Do you live near a freeway? Do you live near a factory somewhere? Do you have just kind of. Did you have a fire that was burning down your city? And is there smoke in the air? You know, do you have a lot of dirt and dust in your house? And is. And is it accumulating and getting to sizes like that? There's so many things that add up to PM2.5, and that's what a lot of the monitors that we see are trying to measure. And so when we look at those and we say, okay, so I have a filter that says that it filters out mold to really small particle sizes. So let's say you have.

I'm not going to throw the filter names out there, but, you know, there's. There's filters that go down to 0.007 microns or filters that go to 0.003 microns. Okay, PM 2.5 is 2.5 microns. That's what it is. So, so, you know, get a concept for that difference, right? 2.5 versus 0.003 or 0.07. Don't hold me on my math, but that sounds like a thousand times smaller quickly or two. I don't know, but it's a lot smaller. And so if you're thinking of it like that and you say, okay, mycotoxin sizes are much smaller than PM2.5. So if we were just thinking of toxins, those mycotoxins could be smaller than that. The particles that break off of the colonies that are not the spores themselves, that could be smaller than that. That's the stuff that we breathe in. That's the stuff that impacts us the most, right? And so if you have a filter that's talking about how it filters mold and bacteria, and it's works with VOCs and all this stuff, which is great. And then right next to it, you have an air quality monitor, has a nice little green happy face in it. Do you see how that can give you, like, this weird false sense of security that, like, there is not a mole problem, when it actually has no idea if there is or not, because that's what's happening, right? So I just wanted to kind of like talk through that concept with you. Yes, these filters are great, right. But the monitoring devices that are available are. They're not, as you know, they don't get to the level, the particle size that we really need to understand it. Just from what I find, what I found, I can't find one that exists. And then when you start talking about wanting to separate out mold, let's say even if you talk about mold spores, right? So I said most spores can be in that 2.5 micron range. Well, so can all that other stuff that I talked about, right? So. So.

Even if, let's say your air quality monitor says that it doesn't look so good, does that mean that it's mold necessarily? No, it could be something else too. So it doesn't differentiate because mold is particulate, right? While mycotoxins are a chemical byproduct. They attach to particle. That's how they move around. So they're particulate, too, we're dealing with. That's why a lot of times you'll hear fine particle remediation as like the catch all for how we clean everything out of your house, right? It's called fine particle remediation. Everybody has kind of their own version of it. It's because we're focusing on particle, right? It's not a gas that we're trying to clean. It's a particle that's. That's floating around. And so when you have a monitor device that can't really differentiate between any of the particle sizes at. At the level that it's able to actually filter to, or that not filter to at the level that it's actually able to detect. So it can only detect 2.5, right? So there's so many particles that. That it doesn't even know about. And then the ones that it does know about, it can't tell you what it actually is, you know? So the. The moral of this story, the key takeaway is please don't rely on your little air quality monitor that has a green face on it or a green thumb or whatever and say, okay, it's green. There's no way. I have a mole problem in the house that is so far from the truth. It's such a misleading piece. It's actually more misleading than taking an air sample in the middle of your room. And you guys know how much I hate doing that. So that's how misleading the air quality monitors are for particle mold, particulates specifically. Right. I mean, sure, there's benefit on the carbon monoxide side and some of the other gases that it might be able. Yes, there's definitely like, there's a reason that they exist, but there are limitations to them. And what a lot of the companies have done is said, well, we'll just take this and kind of insert this into our unit, or we'll sell it as a, you know, a secondary piece that we can sell. And, you know, it'll be something else that can make people feel good about how well the unit is working, when in true reality, it's not actually telling you how well it's working for the. For the important particle for us. Right? And that's the stuff that's below 2.5, the really small stuff that's floating. Floating around. So just keep that in mind when you're looking at filters and you're looking at particle loads and you're trying to determine how effective things are. And you walk in your room and you got your green little face and it says, everything is good. Just be aware of what's happening in your house. Right? You can't just look at this one thing, do what we've talked about. You look under your sink. So you look, you keep history of water damage that's happened. You do maintenance that's needed to make sure you're preventing moisture issues and things like that. If you're staying on top of that, that's really the best way to, you know, to keep tabs on what's going on. Being aware of your home and your surroundings. Right? That's the best way to keep tabs of what's going on. Not relying on the little happy green face to tell you that everything is okay.

Okay. So I did something a little crazy this weekend. I went out and I got a new phone, which I know doesn't sound that crazy, but I got a new phone that I'm gonna use specifically to talk to you. So. And I know this sounds a little nuts, like, Brian, you're giving out your phone number to a bunch of people to like, text you and. Yeah, yeah, I am. I don't know. We're gonna see how this goes. But, like, I get so many messages all the time and, you know, I wanna help people and there's only so much that I can do. And, you know, I was thinking through, I'm like, okay, how can I. How can I interact with the people that need it the most and try to help people the best that I can, you know? And that's really where the podcast kind of started, I was like, okay, so I'll do this, and then I'll take questions and I'll try to answer the questions on the show and maybe talk about some other things while we're there. That'll be helpful, and that'll be a cool step to do that. Right? And so that's what I did, and that's why this whole thing started. And it's been cool. The feedback's been really good. I mean, hopefully you guys like the show, but then the questions that are coming in, there's just so many, right? And so I was thinking, okay, I need to prioritize, like, what I'm answering, you know, because there's only so much time that I have and only so many questions that could be answered and so many interactions I could have with people. And so I was like, okay, well, I would love to really try to focus my answers on the people that support me the most. Right? And I think, you know, that's a. It's a fair feeling. You know, there's. There's something to be said for people that interact with you and that they really, like, appreciate you versus, you know, you get a message from somebody one day, it's like, hey, how do you do this? And, like, you've never seen that person before, right? Could you imagine, like, if a friend that you haven't talked to in, like, 10 years, like, called you and said, hey, can you give me tickets to this thing? Like.

No, you know, versus one of your really good friends that you talk to all the time, and they're like, hey, I know that you have access to the guy that. That can get me into the show. Can you get me tickets to this show? I would really appreciate it. And you'd be more apt to help that person, right? And I think it's just, like, human nature.

So that's kind of what I'm doing with this phone, right? So I got this phone and I got this phone number that I'm literally going to give you guys here in a second, and it's to text back and forth as much as I can. You know what I'm going to. What I'm going to try to do is dedicate anywhere from like, 10 minutes to 30 minutes a day to interact with you guys via text. And then I'm going to start taking the most of the questions that I answer on the show. Now I'm actually going to be taking through this phone through the questions that you guys text me, okay? So.

I want to roll this out to you guys, listeners first, because I want to prioritize, you know, what I talk about to the people that actually listen to me talk about it. I think that's kind of fair. I'm so appreciative, you guys, and I just think that this was an interesting way for me to do that. So I went out and I got a phone, and that's what I did. And so.

I'm going to give you the number here in a second. So you guys know it's like really like my phone, right? So it's. It's not some weird automated thing I have. There's. There's going to be. When you text me, you're going to get one automated response that basically is just something that says it's okay for us to text, right? Because I have to have that for the. For. For the lawyers. But then after that, it's just literally communication that it's unfiltered. It's not automated. It's me talking to you guys, right? So that's how it's going to be.

And what I would love for you guys to do. So if you're interested, and hopefully you are, right, Text me. And just when you text me, just say, hey, I listen to the podcast, right? Or just something that just. So I know that you guys are podcast listeners, right, and that you listen to the show, and then I'll know that. And, you know, then as we talk, like, if things come up and if I'm able to help you, I can. And if you have questions for the show, I'll, you know, we'll try to do that. So I'm really trying to put myself out to you guys as much as I humanly possibly can without just completely dominating my entire life. That's the. That's the fine line I'm walking. My wife, I'm sure, does not want me sitting on the phone all night every night texting everybody. So I'm putting. I told her I was going to put a limit on the amount of time that I put on it, but at the same time, I want you guys to be able to have access, and I want to be able to, you know, like I said, support the people that are supporting me. I think it's, you know, I'm so appreciative of everything that. That all the feedback I get from you guys and. And the support that I'm getting. And so I want to be able to give something back to you, and that's what this is. So get your. Pull the car over if you're listening in the car, stop what you're doing, flip over to your notes app in your phone, all right, because here's going to be the number. I'm gonna give it to you. The number is 949-528-8704. All right, so again, it's 949-528-8704. So you guys, literally you could just text me right now and say, hey, I just got your number from the podcast. Just mention something about the podcast and that way I'll know, you know, kind of where you guys came from. And I will do my best to prioritize our conversations as they come through. So, again, thank you so much for all the support, you guys. The, the feedback on the new training program that I've been putting together has been insane. The pre registrations are much more than I ever thought that they were going to be. And I haven't really told you everything that's happening yet. So the excitement and, and the support that I get from all you guys is so, so, so appreciative. And I hope that giving you access to, you know, via this, this kind of text platform for me or for you guys, I should say, is something that you'll find appreciative. I'll just say this. Please don't call me.

There's, there's only so much I could do. All right, so let's try to keep it to text messaging and I will do as much as I can for you guys. All right, so again, one more time, it's 949-528-8704.

And one more quick thing I mentioned, obviously I'm going to be doing this free training here in a little bit, so the timing looks like it's going to be towards the end of November. Don't hold me to a specific date yet, but I'm still trying to finalize everything and get it done. So I just want to give you guys a heads up on that. Those of you that have already pre registered, just know that I have all of your information and I am going to let you know when the official registration opens so you guys can get first crack at it. And for those of you that have not pre registered, you could go to moldfindersmethod.com and it's just a simple pre registration form to fill out. And like I said, I'm going to have all of your guys contact info who are, who are on the early registration list for the training and you guys will definitely be getting the first invite to claim your seats first for the training. You know, there's only 200 seats that are going to be available in this. And I mean, as of right now, there's more than that. Who is pre registered. So definitely when you see it, just, you know, just try to act quickly so you can claim that seat for that training. And you know, if need be, I might have to look at doing some additional ones or something. But in the meantime, that's kind of the plan. So go. You could go to moldfindersmethod.com and go ahead and pre register for that. You could text me. I don't know. I'm trying to do all the things, guys. All right, so hope you have a good one. We'll talk to you soon.

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.

Sam.