83: Mold Cleaning vs. Prevention

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, what's going on here for another episode today? Obviously, that's why I'm doing this. That's why there's an episode for you to listen to. I don't even know why I say that. Anyways. If you hear little background sounds, these are like these little birds that are outside tweeting around. I thought I would come out and get some vitamin D action while I was recording and let my dog out and run around. And so that's kind of what's happening. You know, it's all about multitasking, right? So trying to kind of do all the things that we need to do.

But for today's episode, I don't think it's gonna be a super long one, but I've been getting questions that are asking about, like, how to clean mold a lot. Like, just so, so many questions about what cleaning product do you use? What cleaning should we use? I wanna clean this. What should I use to do this? Is it okay? Is it okay to use that? And.

You know, I think part of it might be. I don't know if you guys have seen, but I've been doing a lot more kind of Instagram lives and interviews with different people. And so those are a lot of the questions that come up because they're kind of like the initial basic question that people ask. It's like, hey, how do we clean this stuff? And, you know, I always try to kind of qualify the answer before I do that, that cleaning is not what removing cleaning is not preventing. Right? And cleaning can only be so effective in certain situations. Most of the time, with the exception of certain places, cleaning is not really what you want to be doing. If you're seeing visible mole growth, you actually need to be doing, like, source removal and real remediation. But what I wanted to talk about was more about, like, prevention versus cleaning a little bit. Right. And so this kind of this topic. Right. And. And so the thing is, it's not that I'm seeing, like, spotting on the walls, you know, in certain places and what do I clean it with, or that it's about understanding why it's happening. And Preventing it. All right? So I don't want us to get on this kick. We think we're going to come in and clean these problems because. And you may have heard me use this analogy before, but most of the times when you're seeing mold growth, it's already not a good situation. Mold is microscopic. That's why when you take. When we collect samples, they get sent to a lab and they look at them under a microscope, because at the time, you can't see any of it, right? Yet when they look at those samples under microscope, sometimes there are hundreds of thousands of spores that are present there. And hundreds of thousands is a lot. You know what I mean? But you could still get that in an area where visibly there's no mold that's there at all. Right? It could be hidden somewhere behind a wall or something like that. And I think just kind of explaining just that piece of it.

Is really just trying to help us understand that it's not always as simple as just like, wiping something off. Because what happens is if there's. If you're seeing spotting or discoloration or something like that, maybe it's on the ceiling above your shower. Maybe it's like in a cabinet somewhere. Maybe it's on a wall under a window. You know, places like this, we think, oh, we'll just kind of wipe it off. The thing is, is that. And I think I was just about to say this. You know, I've said this before. Mold's kind of like, if you. If you think of an iceberg, that's kind of what mold is like, right? You know, the Titanic was the biggest, baddest ship ever made. And it wasn't the tip of the iceberg that sunk that thing. It was everything that was hidden under the water that you couldn't see. Right? So they navigated around the tip. The problem is, the thing was so big underneath that it hit the bottom of the boat, and all of a sudden, the Titanic sinks. The unsinkable ship sinks. Right? And.

It'S just like a way for us to think through of how we can't just rely on what we're seeing, because there could be bigger problems that are hidden beneath other areas. Right? And so kind of thinking of that and then understanding how we collect samples. And if literally, if you did a cavity air test behind a wall where there was even just a historical problem, there might not even need to be anything visible that you're seeing there, right. You know, or. Or there could be just a very slight kind of buckle in a Baseboard or something. It doesn't look like a problem. You do a wall cavity back there, and you could literally have tens to hundreds of thousands of spores that are in that space back there. All of that stuff gets out. Like, I don't say all of it, right, but stuff that's behind walls can get out of the walls. This is a big piece of how we are exposed in homes. Again, most mold is hidden. Most mold is growing behind places. So if that's really the case, which it is, then why would it be possible for us to be getting sick in a home from mold exposure? If it's all trapped behind walls and it can't get to us because it's trapped behind walls, then how is it a problem? How are we breathing it like that? Enough is telling us that those areas behind those spaces can impact us, right? So if you have an area where there's some spotting on a wall and you clean off the surface so you don't see it anymore, and then in your mind you're like, oh, cool, I don't see it anymore. It should be gone. Well, that didn't do anything behind the wall. And. And that stuff can still get out into the space. So when you do an ermi in a house and the ermi comes up and it's bad, and you're like, well, where is this coming from? I don't see anything. It's because there are things going on behind. So when we talk about cleaning, part of the reason that cleaning could be a big problem is because it turns into out of sight, out of mind. At that point, you wipe away a little of the spotting that's there now. It doesn't. You don't see it anymore. And then you think that there's no problem because you can't see it, which is normal human nature, by the way. Right. If you can't see it, then it's hard to wrap our head around this concept. Right? And then if you do that, you know, all of a sudden you're not thinking of it as a problem anymore. You're still being exposed to whatever may be behind that wall or underneath that cabinet panel, floor panel, or wherever we're talking about here. Right? And that can happen. So, you know, it's more about prevention than it is about cleaning. You know, when it comes to cleaning stuff, it's really more about cleaning solid, kind of semi solid sort of areas. Shower tiles, glass, you know, things. Things where mold typically can't grow into is really like those solid items, you know, even semi solid stuff. Mold can grow into that. So wood is semi solid or semi porous, depending on who you talk to. Whatever is kind of middle of the road. So you have solid, semi porous, and porous. That's kind of like the three types of materials. Well, wood is kind of semi porous. Mold can grow into it. Solid items, you know, mold can't really grow into solid. It's not organic. You know, you need an organic building material for that to happen. But it could grow on dust and dirt that's on top of them. Right. Because that is organic. So I don't want to say that you'll never have mold on a window or you'll never have mold on a piece of metal, because that's not true. I'm actually doing an inspection right now. I just popped out real quick to record this episode. I'm going to go back in. And.

There'S mold growing literally on the metal enclosure of the air conditioning units that are in the attic. It's growing on metal. The question is going to be, well, how does mold grow on metal? Well, it can grow on the dust that's settling on the metal. And because there's moisture problems, it can create that problem. Can the metal be cleaned? Yeah, the metal is a non organic material. So when you're talking about cleaning, like you could clean metal like that. Right, right.

But the problem is there's so many other areas that you can't clean. You can't clean drywall surfaces if there's mold growing in there, because it could get behind wood surfaces. It could get in. You might have to sand wood down a little bit. You don't necessarily have to replace wood, but you might have to sand it down and kind of get the roots that have grown into those areas out. So again, it's all about understanding water, that water creates the mold or allows mold to grow. Right. And so the goal is to prevent the growth. The goal is not to let it grow and then try to clean it. Right. And this is kind of what I talked about in the last episode with the H Vac.

Technology stuff. The goal is to stop the problem from getting in. It's not to let it get in and then try to use technology to clean it afterwards. Right. So it's all about prevention, all about stopping it from happen. That's what we're trying to do. And. And then if something does happen, then we can handle it and try to fix it at that point, you know, but it's all about prevention. So when we're talking about moisture and water Right. You know, a couple things and I've mentioned some of these before, but these are super easy examples. Showers. After a shower, you squeegee the walls down. You squeegee the water that then is on the floor to the drain. You're removing water from the space. If you have a sauna that you sit in after you get out of the sauna, you dry off the sauna inside so you don't leave moisture in there. Our sweat is moisture, it's water. It will make mold grow if you just leave it in there. So you know, if you look around on your windows and your windows are, and condensation is forming on your windows, that is water. It doesn't have to be a leak for it to be water. So then the prevention is, why is this happening? We need to get a window person out here to figure out what's going on. Are the windows not properly insulated? They're not blocking the temperature changes effectively?

You know, things like that. In a bathroom, if you're seeing spotting on walls, maybe above the shower, the problem is probably from showering and having the steam in the room and it not getting exhausted and aired out properly. So you're increasing the humidity in the room and then you're getting mold to grow. Right. And if mold starts growing into the ceiling above a shower or walls around it, mold has roots, it grows into stem stuff and it can get in there and so and it can get behind the surface. Right. So again, it's all about prevention. And I think that's, that's the big thing. So I mean, in terms of a cleaning product.

I made a quick little website where you could put in your email information and I'll send you what I. My favorite cleaning product is non toxic. It's, it's botanical active ingredient is, is an essential oil. The website is moldcleaningproduct.com you could go there, I'll send you an email. It actually breaks down. It's kind of more of an in depth email, shows you the product name, it gives you the safety data sheets of the product. So you can see that.

And kind of breaks it down. So you could go there and check that out.

And one other thing I wanted to do when it comes to products, right. There are times when people kind of get frustrated. Like in my podcasts or even, even in, you know, different things that I put out where I talk about, you know, cleaning something after the remediation has been done, for example. Right. You know, use an antimicrobial solution, use something As a surfactant in it, whatever. But I don't specifically name the products all the time. And the reason I don't do that, just so you guys know, is because everybody has a different level of sensitivity. Like yes, there's. So the product I was mentioning that you can, you know, you can go and get more information on, on, on moldcleaningproduct.com the product is called Benefect Decon 30 and that's a. It's a great product, right? I think that it's great. A lot of my clients have used it in the remediation process. You could also just use it in the basic home cleaning and wipe down process of stuff afterwards. But here's the thing is that because everybody has a different level of sensitivity, some people have a higher toxic load which gives them a more. Which can help, I want to say help which can create and develop a chemical sensitivity from them. Right. And so for those people, you know, it's not just about, you know, non toxic products. Sometimes there's just different sort of odors and smells that trigger them. Right. And I've had clients where they've been so far down the chemical sensitive route that really all they've been able to clean and remediate with is like dawn soap and water and that's what's being used in the cleaning process. So the reason that I don't always throw out a product name is because I don't know your situation. Right. And there isn't like one end all be all. Like for a lot of people Benefect is great. Like it can work. But if I say that this is the product you need to use then somebody goes out and uses it and has this bad reaction. I don't want it to be like well Brian told me to use this and now I'm. Now I'm mad and I'm pissed off. Like I want you guys to understand that any cleaning product you use and this is sent out in the email. This is part of just kind of the last little piece that I write in the email. When you go to moldcleaningproduct.com and kind of get the more information on Benefect is you really should be running any of this stuff by your doctor. If you're seeing a doctor, a function, you know, even if it's not a functional doctor, I guess. But if you're seeing a doctor and they know your health position, right. So they're gonna have a better feel just for what your body can handle and it's really important in all of these types of cleaning solutions. And you just talk about stuff you use in your house or whatever that people are going to react to different things like you. What works for one person isn't going to always work for the other person. And I don't want it to be like this definitive. This is the thing that you use to do it. Honestly, there's a lot of stuff you can use. Again, it's all about source removal. It's not about cleaning, it's not about what product you're wiping or spraying over something. It's about actually removing the growth that's there in the first place. Right. The cleaning is really more for the kind of the residual and the impact that might be on the structural components that are back there. But most of what you're doing and is removing impacted drywall, removing impacted cabinets, sanding or wire, brushing the framing that's back there to get the growth out that's grown into them. And then you clean stuff afterwards. So the cleaning is not necessarily removing the source mold of the problem. The cleaning is like a secondary step afterwards. And, and that's why source removal is just something I harp on over and over and over and over again. It's about source removal, source removal, source removal, because it is. Every stage of the remediation process is about source removal. There is not a magic product anywhere along the line that's just going to magically fix everything. And.

You know, so anyways, that's kind of the difference between cleaning and preventing. Right? So just remember, like we want to prevent moisture as best as we can because that's what's going to cause these problems. So you know, I mentioned the shower, looking at your windows, bathrooms getting steamed up after showers, you know, under your sink cabinets. Take everything out of your cabinets once every couple weeks or once a month and make sure there's no dripping or leaking under there. You know, just kind of areas where there's, you know, typical water things that go on. You just want to keep an eye on that stuff. Right? Because once something grows and starts happening, remember the lab tech at the lab, they're literally taking a sample that you can't see anything on. And oftentimes they're seeing tens to hundreds of thousands of spores on that little sample that literally doesn't look like mold at all. So what if you tried to clean the wall on that side? Like nothing's going to happen because it's on the backside and you can't really see it. So that's, you know, that's just kind of like the quick, the quick overview, prevention versus cleaning. I just want to make sure that we understand that like cleaning is not, is not the primary thing that we're trying to do here. We're trying to remove and prevent, actually trying to prevent. And then if something happens, then we need to remove. And then after that has happened, then there's kind of like this, a cleaning process after that to kind of just clean up the rest of whatever might have been there. But if the source is still there, the cleaning isn't going to work. Okay, so first is prevent, then you want to remove and then after that you do cleaning and sanitizing and that sort of thing. So that's just a quick breakdown on that. But yeah, benefect decon 30. That is the product that we typically recommend as the starting point for remediation. When people are going in. So they'll remove a wall, a cabinet, you'll have the exposed framing back there. They'll sand it, they'll wire brush it down, they'll do whatever they need to do for areas where there was growth and then they finish it and they do a wipe down and a cleaning process with benefact and they can clean it that way. Right. It is an antimicrobial, it's antifungal, it's a botanical blend. So on the chemical front, it's not a super heavy chemical product, which is great too. So that's why a lot of our clients have responded relatively well to it. I haven't really heard any, you know, anyone complain specifically about that product in general. But you know, when it comes to these different types of things that are out there, like Shockwave and all these other ones, we would rather be using Benefect if those are your options. Right. So, you know, hopefully that helps you on like this is what I like to clean stuff from, you know, a remediation point of view. And you could even use Benefect when you're doing regular cleaning in the house too. Or guys, you could use stuff that's more basic. It doesn't have to be this product that you go out and you get. You know, you could be looking. I mean, you literally can use soap and water, you can use, you know, more natural products that, that exist out there and you know, use Borax. There's a lot of stuff that you can use.

The idea is that we're not just going around and trying to clean the whole house of stuff. Right. If you have mold growing on something, it needs to be in most Times it needs to be removed and remediated. If you have mold growing on your clothes, sorry, clothes are gone. Right. If it's growing on your clothes or on items that you have, or if mold is growing on furniture, the furniture needs to go. In my opinion. There's no cleaning that. Right.

Really. Metal, glass, ceramics, things like that, Those types of things can be surface cleaned with a basic cleaner. When you get more to semi porous items, which is like wood for example, surface cleaning might not be enough. You might actually have to sand down the wood and get the growth out of them. Right. Again, this is if mold is growing on it, right. If mold is settling on stuff, then the wiping and cleaning process could be a little more effective. So this, you know, if you, if you're doing remediation and you moved things out of your house to allow the remediation to the remediators to come in and clean everything and then you're like, okay, how do I clean my stuff when I bring it back in? Then you can use Benefect. It's the same thing they're using in the house. If they're wiping down the wood framing in your house with that everywhere. Remember, not every piece of wood in your house is contaminated. Right. So they're going to do a wipe down of kind of all the surfaces in the house. Your items were in your house. It's a surface that was in your house. And as long as there isn't physical growth that's on it, then you're wiping it down and you're cleaning it. And you can use something like Benefect to do that cleaning process on those two before you bring stuff in. So I hope that this like helps clarify stuff a little bit. Like I said, this isn't a super long episode, but I think it's super, super important for us to differentiate, like how do we clean stuff versus how do we prevent it from happening in the first place? And that's the big goal. The big goal is prevention. If something happens, then most times there's going to have to be some sort of remediation or removal. Now remediation, if mold is growing on your clothes, it's going to mean you throw your clothes out. That's the remediation. Right. Because if it's growing on there, you know, I'm not recommending that you try to clean that stuff or if it's on walls, cabinets, ceilings, whatever, you know, there might need to be some removal of this area. And only after you get rid of the growth structures and you get rid of the colonies and like those sources are gone. Then cleaning happens. And so that's kind of the flow event. So thanks for, thanks for listening for a few minutes today. The next couple episodes that I, or at least one of the next ones that I have coming out is going to be, I've started kind of bringing more people in that I'm interviewing that are talking about kind of interesting topics around the mold world, but not directly related to inspections and remediation and testing, but more just some of the things that all of us navigate, kind of dealing with mold and environmental toxins in general. So I'm excited to start rolling some of those out. I think my next episode is going to be one of those.

And that's kind of it. And one more thing on a, on a personal note, I was thinking of maybe trying to start like a little segment that's called, I know, like Parent Corner or something, which by the way, I'm stealing that. I don't know if any of you guys listen to the Ben Simmons podcast. He's, he talks a lot about basketball and sports and pop culture and stuff, and I'm kind of into all that. But he has a segment that he calls Parent Corner and he's like this humongous podcast. So I don't want to make it seem like I just came up with this idea. But he like brings somebody on and they talk about their kids and like what's going on. And so I was thinking every now and then I might throw a little Parent Corner thing in. So here's what's happening right now. So my daughter started school on actually she started on Thursday last week. It was so weird. So when I say school, she's two and a half, right? So she's going to like half day from like 8:30 to 12:30. And it's, it's almost just like a little toddler class sort of thing where they do some crafts and she can hang out with some, you know, there's like eight or ten kids in her class or whatever and kind of hang out for the day and do some stuff. So it was so weird. So Easter was obviously this last weekend. So they start, they started like the new school cycle on the Thursday of last week. And then because Easter was on the weekend, they said, okay, so we're taking Friday off and then we're taking the next Monday off. So then there was like a four day weekend and then she started again yesterday. And like, I don't know how many of you, you know, have you have kids or Whatever. But the whole process of like getting your, your kid to get comfortable with this new schedule where like, you're not with them all day, like, this is the first time that we literally haven't been with her all day.

You know, she doesn't want us to leave, right? And she gets upset and she cries and we drop her off at school and it's just like ripping our hearts out and it's so brutal. And so we went on Thursday the first time, and I don't think she totally understood what was happening. So as soon as she like went into the class, she started crying a lot and she was really upset. And both, both my wife and I were just like, oh my gosh, we're the worst parents ever. What are we doing? She hates this. But like, we know that this is part of like the separation process, right? But then she's off for four days. So then when Tuesday happens, it's like starting all over again. It's like her schedule is like, oh, we did this weird random thing one day and then, oh, just kidding, we're not going to do that again. And then, oh, bam, we're doing it again. And I feel like this threw a major kind of like wrench into everything. And it was really annoying because it's hard on her. I could tell. Although it seems like she gets over it once we leave, you know, we're gone for, you know, for a little bit. She kind of gets over pretty quickly. But honestly, it's really hard on me and my wife too. And it sucks that they basically did this one day on thing and then she kind of had this reaction and then she thought, oh, maybe this is a one time thing. And then we had to like start it all over again and it would just like hit all over again. It was so annoying. Like, I wish that if we know that we're starting a new school year on a day that's literally a one day in school, and then why not just start on Tuesday after the holiday? Like, why am I the only person that's had to deal with this? Like, I don't know, it's just super frustrating. I remember as a kid going to school when like school would start on a Thursday and it was like, okay, Thursday, Friday, then I'm off for the weekend. This is cool. I used to like that. But I also knew that I was going to school and it wasn't this traumatic experience for me to be away from my parents. Like, so I feel like that was different. But I kind of feel like the screw the Schools sort of screwed us on this with the whole one day on, four days off, and then, oh, by the way, you go full time again. It could have been smoother is all I'm saying. I don't know if any of you guys have. Have dealt with anything like that. If you have, feel free to text me. And if you just want to, like. Like, if you've sent your kids and the first time they went and they were upset and they were crying and all this, like, if you want to text me and just kind of like, tell me how long it took for them to get over it. Because my wife and I are really on the struggle bus right now. Every time we drop her off at school in the morning, it's just like, it's. It's. It's brutal for us where we hate seeing her cry. You know what I mean? So, anyways, yeah, you guys. You guys, if you have any. If you have anything that you can share, like timelines on when they got over it or anything like that, selfishly text me. My number is 949-528-8704. It's. It's 949-528-8704. I would love to just kind of hear like, hey, Brian, it's going to be okay. You're not a terrible parent. Everything's gonna be fine. All right, so that's. That's my little first edition of Parent Corner. I feel like every now and then I might just kind of share what's going on with me, and I feel like a lot of you, because I'm a pretty new parent. I know a lot of you have kids. Maybe you can help kind of settle my nerves and give me tips on things that we're struggling with or whatever. So, I don't know, is Parent Corner selfish? For me, maybe. But maybe for some of you that are in the same place, I'll tell you what's going on with us. Maybe it'll be helpful, I don't know. Or maybe you'll just find some stuff funny. I don't know. Lots of things I don't know. But hopefully you dig it, at least to some extent. All right, guys, that's it. I'm gonna wrap it up, let you go do your thing. Remember, it's about preventing. It's not about cleaning. Cleaning is last. Prevention is first. All right, talk to you later.

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.

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