The Prescription For A Healthy House: How To Heat, Cool, Filter, Clean & Build A Biologically Friendly Home, With Paula Baker-Laporte

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life Podcast.

In the early days, before the days of WI Fi, what we cared a lot about was how is the house wired? And one simple thing we always do is make a way, a simple way to shut off the electricity at night in the bedroom. If all that checks out and you're not feeling well, you may be living over a geopathic stress zone.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot, lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this. All right, folks. Well, I am asked quite frequently about this whole idea of what's called building biology. As a matter of fact, I am in the process of building a new home in Idaho. And so all of this has been hot and fresh on my mind. However, that phrase goes, frame construction and thermal and moisture and mold and mycotoxin control and the electrical environment and the health or the unhealth of the flooring and the finishes and the furnishings and everything that goes into creating a healthy indoor and outdoor space. So all of that is called building biology. Now, there are a few experts, I would say very few experts, especially in the US well versed in the concepts of building biology. But if you're watching the video version, and by the way, you can find all the show notes@bengreenfieldlife.com Healthy Home podcast, I am holding up a book that is, in my opinion, like the bible for building biology. So much so that I even, I even got a copy for my architect and my builders to read through as a part of the home build I'm doing, because there's just so much in here. I mean, from appliance selection to carpets to the plastics to the roofing materials. And the person who wrote it is Paula Baker LaPorte. Now, Paula is an architect and a building biologist, and she specializes in all of this, in creating healthy indoor spaces along with outdoor spaces, to a certain extent, alternative construction. She even has whole books she's written about, you know, light straw, clay, adobes, and different crazy insulated concrete forms that that book series is called the Econest Home. But this latest book, the Prescriptions for a Healthy House, the subtitle is A Practical Guide for Architects, Builders and Homeowners. And man, it is just fantastic. And Paula is on the cutting edge of this stuff and we're lucky enough to have her on the show today. So again, the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com HealthyHomePodcast that's where you can also leave your questions, comments and feedback. And Paula, welcome to the show. I'm really excited that we're able to do this today.

Thanks, Ben. And thanks for your wonderful introduction.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you'll be pleased to know in case you see that I'm walking, I'm on a non motorized treadmill in my office that actually does have a lot of dirty electricity and low EMF built into it, which I know is something that you cover pretty extensively in the book. And I also owe you an apology for making you wear what are probably not low EMF headphones during our interview today.

We're hardwired at least.

Okay, good, good. So, you know, I would love to start here if you're game. Can you define building biology and kind of the interesting history of it? Because I was intrigued in that section of the book. It's just, it's way different than what I think a lot of people think of when they think of building. Because even my architect thought that building biology was just making a green home, which I don't think is the case. But how would you define building biology? And it's very interesting history.

Let me start with the history. After World War II, many of the chemical factories were turned into peacetime use, which meant rebuilding. And they introduced a lot of the new chemicals into the building products. And the Europeans got sick earlier than the North Americans because of the amount of building. And it has an interesting beginning because it was a multidisciplinary approach to the question what makes human beings thrive in the built environment? And in Europe they had all of the old natural buildings. Of course they were natural because there were no synthetics throughout most of the history of Europe. And then they had the new chemical laden homes. So they had something to compare with. And it's a study, as I said, multidisciplinary. There were health professionals, wood scientists, psychologists, medical professionals, concerned citizens, and of course architects and builders involved in the formation of it. And what they came up with was 25 basic principles for human health in the built environment. And because of their origins, what they discovered is very different than anything we see coming out in this country called green building. If I can sum up their finding, that's the basis of the 25 principles, is that nature actually is the gold standard for what is a healthy human environment. So understanding that our homes need to modify nature for our comfort levels, how can we make our homes optimally healthy, optimally least impact on the environment, following the lessons learned from nature about what makes us thrive.

Is that like having trees in your living room and a stream of water flowing through your kitchen floor? Or is it more like, I don't know, choosing lighting that's more similar to sunlight, like incandescent or halogen or something like that?

Yeah. Well, let's take an example.

Okay.

Let's talk about how nature heats us, because that's a big thing that comes up all the time. The building biology recommendations are to use radiant heat, to use heat in such a way so that there's comfort, which means less than 2 degrees centigrade is their definition from foot to head, but no monotony. So when you're out in nature, if it's hot, you seek shade, if it's cold, you seek sunlight. The sun, this big ball of radiant heat heats objects, not air. So it will heat our body from head to foot with very little variation, while the air around us remains relatively cool. So how do you bring the principle into the home without hanging a big infrared ball in the ceiling or running a river through it, which are other principles. And so that begins to tell you where it. It's a good example of how building biology is different than mainstream green building. Mainstream green building usually rewards better forced air heating. Building biology looks at, well, forced air heating, you know, it blows air around, it heats air, which is an insulator, which is inefficient. It doesn't heat the body, it heats the kind of monotonously, so that when it's on, everything is evenly in the central heating, evenly hot or evenly cool. So there's not a lot of variation. And yet if it's blowing on your head, for example, your head is warm, your feet are cold. So what our norm is in North America is really could take some lessons from building biology. It's somewhat the opposite.

Yes. My understanding actually that green building has a real focus on the idea of a better planet and energy efficiency, but that there could be trade offs in terms of, for example, the toxin load within a home based on tightly insulated spaces, for example, and that it doesn't take into account the health of the human living within the home as much as the energy efficiency aspects. Is that, is that the general idea?

It's very much most of what green building is, focuses on energy efficiency. There are some realizing that these are going to be tighter buildings. There are some nods to health as well, lower VOC products, et cetera. There's other aspects of health, the subtle aspects especially that are very little understood or accounted for.

Yeah, I'm glad you Brought up the low voc thing because maybe we should backpedal here for just a second. I think a lot of people might not even realize why they could feel crappy living in their home or why their home might be actually making them unhealthy. I know that one big part of that is this idea of multiple chemical sensitivities. Can, can you describe what's going on there, like why it is that someone's home, how that actually happens, that it would make them feel bad during the day?

Yeah. And why one partner might feel bad and the other one might think they're crazy.

Yeah.

So it's often been the analogy of the, the barrel being our immune system. And some people have bigger barrels, some people have smaller barrels, some people have incidents that happen to them during their life. That's like a hole in the barrel, some big exposure before they're in the house, which makes them more sensitive. So for people who are very sensitive, they're going to react at far lower levels of chemicals in the environment than others. And there are many places where chemicals are introduced into new building and into everyday life. Cleaning products, fabrics, softeners, you know, hygiene products. So it's a holistic view and the house being one of them, you want to start with a clean slate of as few chemicals as possible. So the green building movement, especially leed, has done a good job of recognizing volatile organic compounds and ways to reduce them. But there are often unintended consequences of our way of looking at any chemical. Often you've probably seen it with plastics and things. They'll eliminate a plastic because it's found to be harmful. And then the manufacturers will advertise BPA free, for example, but then that'll be replaced by the manufacturer with something with a very similar chemical composition with no information on it, no health information. And then after a while we find out, oh, maybe that wasn't so good for us after all. So it's complex. We don't know a lot about the chemicals in the environment. Of the 84 or 5,000 man made chemicals, there's complete health data on 7% or so.

Oh, wow.

So even when we have full disclosure, which we don't often have, we still don't know about every chemical in it. I was just going to talk for a moment about SVOCs, semi volatile organic compounds. So often something like a formaldehyde glue is replaced with another substance that isn't volatile, 0VOC, but it has semi volatile emissions for the rest of the life of the product. So semi volatile, we Often can't smell them, but we do inhale them and eat them. Fire retardants are a great example. And often people aren't instantly sick because they don't have the mechanism of smelling it. Some people are, but so just because a jar says 0 voc, it does not necessarily mean it's better for your health. So it's complicated.

Now, is there a good way to test for multiple chemical sensitivities that you know of?

So more in the medical area? I experienced it certainly. And anyone who experiences it knows, once they cue into it, know they're reacting in certain spaces. They don't know, might not know why they're reacting in certain places. So the human being is a great instrument. When I was highly sensitive, there were was testing, there were traditional kind of allergy testing, scratch tests that I had done. Oh yeah, that kind of thing. And there are doctors who are much more advanced now in this.

Yeah, I know that a lot of times if you do something like DNA testing, you can reveal deficiency in things like glutathione pathways, for example, that would dictate you do a poor job detoxifying. And then of course you can get things like urinary mold and mycotoxin tests to determine what kind of toxin load that you might have. I think it's smart, even if you don't have multiple chemical sensitivities though, to be aware of some of the choices you could make in your home as far as furniture, carpet and the overall design to just lower your toxin load in general. The same way that someone who maybe doesn't necessarily have what's called electro hypersensitivity, a lot of sensitivity to wi fi and Bluetooth and appliance and radiation would probably still be better served as far as their overall cognitive performance during the day, at least being aware of their load, their exposure to dirty electricity or man made EMFs. But when it comes to multiple chemical sensitivities, what are the main things that you would do, like the low hanging fruit in a home build or an existing home to lower the toxin load?

Actually, this is one of the easiest things to do right now. Are you talking about an existing home or building a home?

Both really. I'd love to hear just a few of the key factors that folks should take into account in either situation.

Okay, so building a home, when I started this work over 30 years ago, it was a specialty item to get things that didn't have chemicals. Now you really just need to know which of the many products on the market to choose so lowering the chemical load of any new construction should be a no brainer. We wouldn't consider building a home even for a well person who wanted to remain well with toxic chemicals in it that can easily be avoided. So if you get to build from scratch, you get to choose if in day to day life, if there is a chemical load in your environment, there's many things you can do. There are excellent air filtration devices that can just keep filtering the air, can exchange the air, and if there's a specific thing, there are ways to either remove it or isolate it, or block it with specialty paints or clear varnishes, that kind of thing. So there's a lot you can do to reduce the chemical load and there's no reason everyone shouldn't. Educating a homeowner to not plug in Febreze, not spray with pesticides, not use toxic chemicals to clean with is huge. It has a huge impact, but simple to do.

It's interesting that you brought that up about the actual cooling or heating or filtration of the air. There's obviously these standalone HEPA air filtration units like Air Doctor is one that I know of that's pretty popular and I have a few of those and they seem to do a pretty good job. But let's say somebody is listening and for either their home or their office, they just want to go with like the creme de la creme option for heating, cooling, ventilation, humidity control and filtration. Are there devices out there that you think are really good for just doing it all at once for someone's home?

You know, I have heard of one device that was designed to do it all. I'd have to look up the name for you and Ken for your readers later, but it's really pick a climate and pick a level of sensitivity and environmental impacts. Like we're in a fairly good climate here, except when it's smoky outside and many of the tools designed to bring in fresh air into a tight home cannot handle environmental smoke. It just brings the smoke right in. So, you know, right now I'd say the state of the art of the industry is different pieces all put together rather than a holistic system. There's nothing wrong with standalone filters if they're good quality and if they're we prefer ones that are not putting anything into the air, but are simply doing mechanical filtration. The Air Doctor you mentioned is a great new little unit and has saved many person in this area when the smoke outside was hazardous, for example, they're going to do A pretty good job, provided you change filters when you need to.

Yeah. I wrote down one note from your book, by the way. I sent it over to my architect, actually. You mentioned you say a unit that combines heat pump technology, heat recovery, ventilation, dehumidification, and robust HEPA filtration. It sounds somewhat similar to a unit that I have in my current home build, but my current home build's like 10 years old. And I use one called an aller air, like Allergy Air. Aller air, that stuff. But the one that you list is the Mino air. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly mio or M I N O T error might be Minot error. Yeah, that one actually looks like it's a pretty good solution.

It looks like a wonderful solution. I don't have personal experience with it yet, so I can't say from personal experience, which is what I like to go with when I can, how well it operates. But the. We spoke to the owner of the company and he's a great educator and I'm sure if someone was interested, he'd be happy to let them speak to his clients and explain how the whole thing works. I think it's a great move and that that's where the future is. I personally like to have a radiant heat source. And the bottom line is when we approach a design, it's. It's. And the technology in it is what can we do so that if the power happened to go off, we would have a home that was resilient enough that it wouldn't be like yanking the owners off of life support dependent on electricity, for example.

I was going to ask you what's the best way to set up radiant heat? Because I know there's a few different ways to do it, like hot water that's run through tubing or electric baseboards, for example.

Yeah. So if it's electric, it's going to have fields that you probably don't want to be around. And also electric baseboard is hot enough to fry dust. There's some better sophisticated ones. I prefer hot water. And if we were in Europe, we'd have all kinds of ways to put that radiant heating in walls instead of the floors. But North America is mostly in the floors. I personally, we use a masonry heater, which is a soapstone mass oven that sits centrally in the house that we fire for an hour a day. And then we do. We always put radiant heating in. But in our house we only turn it on in a couple of zones.

And in A new home. You can actually build in radiant heating though. Like that hydronic radiant system that they might use in Europe.

Yes, we have that in our floors. We have not found a good wall system for it yet. So we always put in our floors and we zone it so it can be shut off. We zone it so it's not running and I don't. We don't need to run it in our bedrooms, but if it were in a bedroom we would prefer to zone it so it's shut off at night so that you don't have moving water under the bed. It's subtle, but I have found subtleties are really important to go beyond just non toxic and into a space that deeply nurtures.

Yeah, the masonry heating sounds pretty interesting. You have a whole chapter or a section of the chapter in that called masonry heater. The ideal heating for room climate and health. So that definitely looks like a viable option. That would work, correct me if I'm wrong. For an existing home or for a home that you're building, right?

Yes. They work by. They're very massive. So in an existing home you have to have the structure for it.

Okay.

Usually if you're slab on grade, you can do it. If you've got a basement or something under it, you have to support it.

Like how big are we talking? Like as big as, like a, like a fireplace or a wood stove.

It looks a lot like a fireplace or a wood stove. Ours is a finished one and it weighs several thousand pounds.

Oh, wow.

That mass of it is part of what's helping to heat the home for a whole day with only a small firing. Wow.

Those darn Finnish folks. They know how to do things right. I guess. At least they got the sonic game down.

All of the northern Europeans know how to do this, how to do climate right?

Why is that? Do you think that the Europeans need to be ahead of the Americans when it comes to ideal climate and more of a building biology approach to a home build?

Well, they work with mass materials. We are unique in North America that we work with paper thin. And so we develop different technologies. The masonry, something like a masonry heater works when you've got mass walls around it surrounding you. When the Europeans examined building biology, they realized that these mass walls were working very differently than the poured concrete walls. They were building mass high rises out of at that point for mass housing. So they got to compare them. They also have the advantage of a lineage of craftsmanship and everyone makes mistakes, but they got to make them over a 700 year period, a little Bit at a time and make corrections as they go along. We are like a plane that's flying way off course and has to make big corrections to get where we're going.

Yeah, well, speaking of making mistakes, I was reading part of your book. I think I was actually, ironically enough, in my bed as I was sitting there reading, where I do a lot of my nighttime reading. And our bedroom is located directly over the garage where cars are going in and out of the garage. And I was reading in your book about how that can actually be a problem to have a garage attached to a house. As a matter of fact, I've changed that in our new home. Build the garage detached from the bedrooms and totally detached from all the living spaces. But get into why that's important. This whole idea of toxic byproducts of combustion, I think you call them.

Well, if you were chemically sensitive and you had a heightened sense of smell, you could walk in a house blindfolded and tell the owner immediately if there was an attached garage by the smell of the house. So if you're not that sensitive to smells, you might not be able to do that. But those car fumes are in there. And also, even people say, well, I have a Prius. Can I have an attached garage now? And even if you are not getting the car fumes, you're still driving in a hulking load of heated rubber and paint and engine oils. So there's not a perfect solution. If you have an attached garage, there's many things you can do to make the situation better. Ideally, we prefer to see a breezeway or a detached garage completely.

What could you do if you're listening in right now and you don't have a detached garage? We talked about HEPA air filtration systems, but I would imagine there's probably some other things you could do to protect yourself from fumes and combustion, things like that. If your garage is right there next to the home, yes.

The basic strategy is to make all of the walls, openings, electrical things between your house and your garage. Airtight ceilings in your case, if it's right, you. And then to slightly negatively pressurize the garage. And they have specialty fans that are called. I forget what it's called in the book, but recycles will turn on periodically and recycle the air in the garage. Problems come when you say, turn on your kitchen fan when you depressurize your house. My co author, John Banta, he used to call the fire department, let them know, put theatrical ice in the garage, close the garage door and then turn on the bathroom and kitchen fans and you have a visual of where the air's coming through.

That's a good idea. And what did he use for that? To create the fumes in the garage.

He used theatrical ice.

Oh, so just that's like similar to like dry ice that produces vapor, right?

Yeah, yeah, dry ice. So if you're pulling on it, you know, if you're turning on a fan, you're sucking the air in and you see where it comes through, you'll see it coming through around a badly sealed door, you'll see it coming in the sill plates, you'll see it coming through any joint clump penetrations in the wall, like electrical boxes, et cetera. So that'll give you a sense if you depressurize the house and did something visible. You know, not all tracing pens are non toxic by the way. So you need to look into what you're going to use. But that would give you a visual if you needed one.

Oh, that's a great idea. My kids would love that. Giant dry ice party at the Greenfield house. Now how about this idea that I think a lot of people might not be aware of, but I find it intriguing, the idea of geostress. What's geostress?

So you may have noticed that there are parts on the earth's, on the surface of the earth that are healthy and desirable to be in. And then other places that don't look so good, it may be signify there are certain things in nature. If you're used to seeing the signs of nature. Trees with mistletoe or ant hills or spiders or cats are drawn to a certain spot. You might want to measure it or cancers on trees, that kind of thing. It may not be where you want to put your future bedroom. So these things, you know, this is more alternative science, it's more woo, it's more out there. People used to pay a lot of attention to it and now, now we've done things that are so much less subtle that people don't spend as much time.

So is this related to the concept of biogeometry? Like building your home with biogeometry?

Very much so, yes. Dr. Karim, the founder of biogeometry, he began measuring sites in Egypt, where he's from. And he measured all the temples and found that the ancients knew what they were doing in the placement of those temples. And he actually did a plea to the Egyptian government. If you're making a dam or something, avoid the areas where the temples are because they're beneficial. It doesn't help to move the temple. The temple is simply a marker of the energy. And I've been on site. I had a wonderful experience on site once with him where we were looking together at where a new health clinic was going. And the owner was very conscious of health. So he invited both he and and myself to work on this building. And the first thing he did was took out his measuring device, and he was measuring the site. And then he called me over and he said, stand on this spot. And I stood on the spot, and I got a wave, a literal wave of nausea. Then he pulled me off the spot. He said, I don't want you there too long. I just want you to experience this. And he said, and look. And he pointed. And I saw clearly, once he pointed it out, a pathway of trees growing away from an invisible line. And then at the very end of that was an office building with a window, a corner window right on the line. So he said, you know, those people are at risk of health things, and, you know, you can't exactly knock on their door and say, hey, you're going to get cancer if you stay in this office. First of all, they'd probably think you were crazy. And secondly, they don't feel anything, so they wouldn't move.

Wow. You know, there's this idea, I think, that's related to this. I had a. What's called a well witcher come to our home build in Idaho. I did the same thing at this home in Washington. And they went through this pendulum that was measuring, from what I understand, different areas underneath the earth where water might be crossing certain paths. And it's not a pendulum, it's more like a rod, but it'll rotate in a certain direction. And this person, nobody in the area around us in Viola has gotten, I think, much more than five gallons per minute. They told us where to drill, and we got 18 gallons per minute, which is astounding in terms of the actual flow for the well that we drilled. Now, this idea of being able to measure electromagnetic radiation from what I understand is what would happen if you had, like, a biogeometry practitioner come to your land or come to your home. I guess they use different pendulums that detect electromagnetic radiation, and they can tell you, hey, put your bedroom above this spot, or don't put your bedroom above this spot. Or, you know, put your barn here, don't put your barn here. Or these are the certain areas where you may not want to have your garden, et cetera.

Yes, I have had the privilege of working with Dr. Cream, who founded that many times. And he can work remotely too. Some of these people can work on a remote map. So it's pretty far out there. You at the same time want to measure and see what kind of man made radiation is hitting the site because that will affect the entire house. And there are people who can make corrections. What he's using, I never thought I could douse, but he uses. He calls it radioesthesia because it's not a mental. You're not asking questions, you're not saying, is this a good spot? Is this a good spot? You are simply measuring. And he's built some pretty, I would call it dowsing tools for dummies or architects. So even I can use it. I don't do it professionally because there's people who. That's all they do. And they're very, very good at it. In Santa Fe, where it's hit or miss, if you even hit water, everyone used water, the same guy, and he would tell you where to drill, how many feet down to go, how many gallons per minute, and the quality of the water. So they're out there, but they're not, you know, they're not necessarily scientifically respected. If you're going the science route, you hire a geotechnical engineer to. Or a hydrologist to figure out where to drill.

Yeah, it's interesting because I actually had Brian Hoyer, who's been on the show before. I'll link to the couple of podcasts I've done with him, which were intriguing about having somebody come to your house and measure all the sources of electricity, the AC current, the cell phone tower exposure, et cetera. And he came through with about five different meters and just toed ahead, measured the entire home, as well as even measuring my body in certain areas of the house in terms of its exposure. And he already came out to our new home build in Idaho and did the same thing. Now for the geopathic stress, obviously for a new home, you could design the home around it not being located over areas of heavy geopathic stress as determined by say like a biogeometry practitioner or someone like Brian. But let's say someone's listening and their home's already built and they just want to be able to mitigate the potential deleterious impact of geopathic stress. From what I understand, you can actually get certain biogeometry tools that you can put around the house that would minimize your exposure.

Yeah, that whole energetic level is very interesting because, for example, if you're getting radio frequency, there can be tools that might help you biologically, but when you measure again, you'll still have the same frequency. And it's the same with geopathology. So someone like Ibrahim Karim or other people working on the more I call it subtle energetics can also perform corrections we call it. And you know, some people do it by what you might call Earth acupuncture. Or in Ibrahim's case, he produces several shapes that can be used. And if you read his history, he's had great luck, for example, in Switzerland mitigating the effects of cell town cell towers that were put up. And the Swiss government was really, really documented and was very grateful for his work. So it does exist out there though it's those kind of practitioners are rare, so you're lucky to have one. And you can. It's not only not building over negative things like it's not only avoiding toxins. You can find where there are positive areas where you would really want your bedroom to be, for example.

Yeah, I first learned about this concept when I interviewed Paul Check and went to his home near San Diego. I walked into his office and it just felt like this peaceful Zen like place. Like you could just almost sense the drop in sympathetic nervous system activation and heart rate and this feeling of peace wash over the body. And he had all these shapes around his office. I started asking him about them and it turns out he not only did his whole home with biogeometry, but then his wife Angie became a biogeometry practitioner. So that's another person you could look up is Angie Chek C h e K and she planted all these different rods that are also in these biogeometry shapes around their yard and the outside area of the house to minimize the geopathic stress. Again showing that you could outfit an existing home in such a way that would decrease any deleterious electromagnetic radiation you might be getting from the earth in areas underneath the home, which is super cool. So one thing that I'm thinking about that I'm sure some other people might be also is as we're talking about these ways that you could outfit a home as far as the walls, the flooring, et cetera, using building biology concepts. How much more expensive do you think it is to build a home using building biology? Like is this going to vastly increase the cost of a home build?

Well, this is probably the most common question we're asked is how much more does it cost to build a healthy home? And there's so many variables. The least expensive home that you can build is the way we build in this country standard two by construction with, you know, all kinds of composite wood, product sheathing and layers of plastic, etc. So anything up from there is going to be more expensive. Some things cost nothing. How much more does it cost to detach a garage? And they're in the planning phases. How much more does it cost to build in cross ventilation? How much more does it. There's a lot of low lying fruit. If you want to change your wall system, which is the biggest probably bang for the buck. The wall system itself is probably 10% of the cost of the home. So even if you double it, how much more is that going to cost? So the answer is somewhere between 0 and 25%, depending on your starting point. If you're starting with a high end home already, where there's already some craftsmanship and level of attention to detail, you have choices. You can buy the $2,000 faucet or you can buy the $300 knockoff. And if you want to get the pay for. Where do you want to spend your budget?

Yeah, I can tell you right now, for me, it's the high end Japanese toilet. I'm halfway joking. I actually did in the master bathroom of our new home build, I did get one of those Japanese toilets with the bidet and the warm seat and probably plays me some nice music while I'm using the restroom as well. So that's one investment. But I believe that when we tallied up everything after meeting with the builders and the architects, as far as modifications we wanted to make, based on what I learned from your book and chats with you and other people like Brian Hoyer, I would say it probably added about 15% or so to the total cost of the home build. So, you know, not insignificant. But considering the long term health, especially because, you know, I plan on that being a home I live in for a really long time, just like this home, it's worth it to me to have done Cat 7 metal shielded ethernet cables throughout the house so that I didn't have to use wifi. And that was an added expense. But man, I think it's worth it for long term health. And you started to talk about the wall system. I thought that was actually a really interesting part of your book. You describe it as, I think like a third skin or something like that. And I would love to hear what the building biology ideal is for a healthy wall system.

Great, I'll go back to the terminology first because that comes right out of building biology. We have our skin as you know, being in the field you're in that. It's a miraculous layer. It's the biggest organ of our body. It takes on and gives off moisture on its own terms, and it can shape shift. So if you're too hot, it will give off moisture for evaporative cooling. If you're too cold, it'll develop bumps and the hairs will stand on end, so you get a lay of insulation. It's an incredible organ that is the interface between our bodies and the built environment. The second layer, the second skin, is our clothing. And you know, you have kids, you wouldn't dress them in plastic 247 because their skin would rot and you'd be doing them a terrible disservice. So you may have discovered that natural fibers or fabrics, or at least clothing that breathes, that allows, that helps the skin do its work, is a better second skin. So a lot of how we build in this country is equivalent of having your kids go play in a plastic bag. So the building biology ideal is to have a wall system that doesn't require a vapor barrier because it's transparent to moisture. And it can only be transparent to moisture if it is resilient enough and has enough, what we call high grick buffering capacity to take on and give off whatever the climate can throw at it without any deterioration. So when you take a famous building scientist, Joe Stibrack did a calculation that a typical frame home, a 2,000 square foot frame home, can hold 50 gallons of environmental moisture before it has problems. And an old brick home can hold 500 gallons, whereas a steel frame building can only hold 5 gallons. So the skin itself. So then when you take a skin that has clay involved in it. Well, clay is light years ahead of other products in terms of its ability to take on moisture and give it off. You can see for yourself if you have a cat and pour kitty litter into your hand, which is essentially clay, and then pour water into your hand, that you won't feel that moisture because the clay uptakes it. And then when the air is dry and the moisture source is gone, the clay will give it back, back off. So materials that are robust, that can handle atmospheric moisture in the first little tiny layers of that wall won't have condensation problems. Vapor barriers were invented.

And when you say condensation problems, by the way, do you mean the potential for mold buildup within the wall system itself?

Exactly.

Okay, yes.

That's why we care about it, because that's the byproduct of moisture in a wall. When we're building out of vulnerable materials such as CDX instead of plywood, for example, is going to delaminate it. It's going to get moldy faster. So it depends on your type of construction. But the ideal for a building biology system is a massive wall that is transparent to the movement of vapor through it.

Now, if vapor is able to move through the wall, does that mean that it's harder to keep a home hot or cold? Like, does hot air and cold air also escape? If vapor can escape?

Nope. There's a difference. You can have an airtight vapor transparent wall, which is what we strive for. You don't want air. We don't want to be breathing through punctures in our thickness, our throat or something. We want to be breathing through our respiratory system, not our skin in the same way we want air exchange where we want it, but our whole body, all of our skin, is a vapor control layer that's transparent to a certain extent and interactive with the environment. Does that make sense?

It does. How easy is it in the US to use things like clay and brick and earth and some of these other wall materials that as far as I know, are a little bit more uncommon compared to modern building materials?

It depends where you are. I cut my teeth in Santa Fe. I lived there for many years where there's a tradition of adobe building and people understand the quality of adobe to the extent that in a real estate ad, if you have an adobe, you expect a much higher price for that adobe. Whereas if you're going to Upper New York State, for example, they think of an adobe as a mud hut and a primitive thing and want to, you know. So there's not the same kind of cultural knowledge of the natural materials. And yet we all flock to Europe and love it and love the feel of everything. While a lot of what we're loving is that we're surrounded by natural materials. So how easy is it? We worked for a long time to get light straw clay, which is what that we have built many of, into the code. It's now in the international residential code. So more of these things are straw bales in the international residential code. Cobb construction. So they are getting there. Rammed earth is pretty accepted in many places. And then often we use systems that are quite acceptable because they're just masonry systems. They're common in Europe, not as common here. Faswall autoclave, concrete are a couple of the ones that we use for especially for highly sensitive clients who, you know, a lot of people are allergic to nature at this point as well. Can't be around wood terpenes or even the natural molds. And so how do we bring those qualities into a house without introducing materials that are wet processes and materials that might be difficult for them? So those are all available to us in this country.

And do you think there's still a time and a place where just for light frame construction that wood could be used and still allow for not as much mold buildup within the walls?

Yes. Building science is really grew up in this country for making better. And one of the major things is ways to make better performing wood frame, because that's what 95, 99% of what's built in the residential market is made out of. So there are certainly better ways.

Is there a certain type of wood that you think is best to use in a home?

Well, I would look to what's local always. If you're concerned about the environment, if someone is highly sensitive, they do better with certain woods. People have allergies to pine terpenes who are also sensitized. Many people who are sensitized to chemicals are also sensitized to terpenes. So for example, if they're building with wood frame, fir is a better choice for them than pine.

Okay, got it. And I know you have a whole section on wood and wood selection in your book. And by the way, for those of you listening in, this book is like an encyclopedia. I highly recommend that you pick it up. I mentioned Brian Hoyer from Shielded Healing as a guy who I've done some consulting with on EMF in both my current home and my new home build. Paula, I'm curious to hear from you. If someone's walking around their house and wanting to mitigate what they can in an existing home, what do you think in the average modern house are the biggest sources of dirty electricity? The type of dirty electricity that could cause brain fog or poor sleep or poor cognitive function or anything like that.

EMR guys like Mr. Hoyer would classify dirty electricity as one of the frequencies, and I've seen it described as hanging laundry on a clothesline. So it's interference on your electrical lines, and that's caused by things like variable speed motors, et cetera. And he could give much more of a rundown. But you're also concerned with other frequencies. And I think that you're referring to in general, what can be done about the whole spectrum of man made harmful electromagnetic frequencies. Is that correct?

Yeah, it's like basically, is it the what? Like, what do you go after in the highest priority? Like, is the dishwasher Is it the WI fi router? Is it the solar panel inverter? What do you think are the biggest things people should care about if they could just make a dent in it right away?

Well, the biggest question is what's going on? It's an individual thing. In the early days before we had wi, we started doing this work before the days of WI fi, before the Internet, et cetera. And what we cared a lot about was how is the house wired. And one simple thing we always do, healthy, not healthy, sensitive, not healthy, is make a way, a simple way to shut off the electricity at night in the bedroom. And there are easy retrofits for this so that you're not in the field of the electric field. Sturdy electricity. You don't want a refrigerator back to back with your bed because it has a magnetic field, it's going to go through the wall. So you look at your household wiring. You may be living near an exterior source of high magnetic fields like high tension wires. Then that becomes the air biggest issue. You may be simply in an area with a lot of WI fi all surrounding you and then that shielding from that becomes the biggest issue. So are you, as you stated earlier, you're maybe living over, if all that checks out and you're not feeling well, you may be living over a geopathic stress zone. That would be, that's usually the last suspect because we've done so many other things. So it's individual. And you would hire building an expert electromagnetic radiation specialist like Mr. Hoyer to come and do an inspection to tell you where to start.

Okay, so we talked about geopathic stressors and some of the things that you could do about that, including like some of these concepts in biogeometry. I know that this idea that I think you were alluding to as far as the home wiring, I think it's called microsurge electrical pollution. Is that right?

MEP no, that is the dirty electricity. Microsurg electropollution is a good parallel to that. But just in your household wiring itself, there can be wiring errors and there often are. So measuring to see if you're getting a high magnetic field that you shouldn't be getting on a line. All lines have electric fields emanating from them unless you've put them in conduit, metal conduit. So you find that in commercial buildings it's all in conduit. So you don't find that to be as much of a problem. But for most healthy people, shutting off at night when your body's repairing and your body Repairs at a very low frequency, so you don't want to interfere with that. And household wiring is what comes the closest to our biological system. So you shut it off at night, you're going to be exposed during the day in any case, unless you're someone who's so sensitive that they need to live in a very specialized environment.

That makes sense. I mean, the way I think about it is turn off appliances and electronics when they're not in use, disable WI fi, even with a wall timer. And if you can even Bluetooth, if and when you're not using it, have some kind of a cutoff on the breaker panel where you can use like MEP filtration at the panel or the sub panel, I would say, as far as appliances and things like that, if you can run them at night, if you're tucked away in the bedroom at night, I think that's another biggie. I think lighting, like not using dimmer switches, that's another one. And. And even incandescent bulbs, from what I understand, even though those are getting more difficult to get in the US Produce less of that microsurge pollution. Why is it that they're trying to get rid of incandescent?

That's a good question. They give off heat, and so it was thought to be energy inefficient to give off heat from a light source. That's the COVID story, I guess you'd say, why they banned it in Canada first when you need every ounce of heat you can pour into your house. I don't. I'm not sure. But unfortunately, people are scrambling to find other solutions where that has been banned. In California, you know, there's not a lot of workarounds now. There's not. It's not a case of screwing one thing in and then screwing something else in after the inspection. Because you have to have, you know, something that will take an LED with the pins rather than the screw and adapter, that sort of thing. So it's tricky. And that's what we work with. Electromagnetic specialists. We don't claim to know the whole. No one knows the whole picture. It takes a village. So these are excellent questions and I hope you don't go over my head too soon here.

I promise not to. Yeah. And Brian Hoyer, I think he's a great resource. He even has some lighting guides at Shielded Healing. Like, our house is mostly incandescent and halogen. And it is interesting. Like incandescents are more of an energy hog, but the bulbs last way longer, so you get less pollution but you also just get less turnover of the bulbs. So I think it's kind of silly when you step back and look at it. It's kind of like people say meat is bad for the planet but don't factor in say like transportation, agricultural pollution, costs of plants and vegetables and farming. And so you have to take into account a lot of factors before you just throw incandescent under the bus. And I absolutely love incandescent and halogen and even OLED lighting compared to led. On this topic of electricity and whether it's electricity or, I don't know, sound pollution or mold or something like that, what are the major appliances that you think people should think about more? Like whether it's the washer, the dryer, the refrigerator, the chest freezer. Are there certain selections when it comes to appliances that you think are important?

Well, yes, and for other reasons besides emr. If I can diverge a little. You want a dishwasher that has flood control. You want a refrigerator that can be clean. You know, the condensation coils and the condensation pan are often a source of mold. You want a refrigerator that isn't on all the time. Some refrigerators get their energy efficiency ratings from going staying on all the time. There's a noise pollution factor. So I use European refrigerators that are really built sturdier. Ours rarely turns on it. And let's see, washer, dryer. One of the real common sources of mold is front loading washers.

Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you're bringing this up. Please, please continue.

Okay. And then all of the appliances, I've met so many people now who, their lives have been totally turned upside down because they became mold sensitive from something so avoidable. So when we do a new home or when you buy a new appliance, things to pay attention to is when the appliance breaks. How will you prevent a flood? Where will the water go? How will you know it's happening and you know. So there are many. Those things are many. There's a lot of low lying fruit. You can get a device to hook up to your main water supply that will shut the whole thing off either if there's a sudden water loss in an area where there shouldn't be or where there's a pinhole leak. Because often, you know, people don't, people don't, are not trained to maintain their homes and they don't look under the sink and a little pinhole leak or a little tiny leak in a faucet or an under sink Piping can lead to very toxic mold in a very short amount of time. So if you're building from new, you can put, you know, have metal trays fabricated under there. You can always have the flood control device specified. But those flood control devices, anyone can add one to a home. We put floor drains where the code doesn't call for floor drains. Like, you know, some areas, mechanical rooms don't require a floor drain, but water heaters break all the time. So if you don't have a floor drain, can you hook it up in a pan? Can you set an alarm to shut off the supply? So there's many, many things you can do around appliances.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up, by the way, the top loading versus the front loading washing machine. The front loading washing machines, I think are a horrific source of potential mold. Now you can get, and we have one of these, you can get one of those ozone units that you hook up to the washing machine to actually clean with ozone, which is fantastic for controlling mold. And those are pretty easy to outfit to the washer. But man, if you can select a top loaded laundry washing machine instead of front loading, I think that alone is a huge step, especially for mold sensitivity.

Also simple things, if you've got a front loader, open the door between loads and actually wipe down the gas, wipe down the inside of the gasket so it's not, does not have standing water between loads. And you know, so if you're willing to do the maintenance, you don't necessarily have to have the usual problem.

Yeah, I'm kind of a dumb home guy when it comes to appliances, right? Because you talked about electromagnetic radiation, AC magnetic fields, AC electric fields, radio frequency radiation, microsurg, electrical pollution. And you get a ton of that from a lot of appliances, especially modern appliances that you'll find in a smart home with WI Fi and Bluetooth or with a bunch of bells and whistles that produce additional microsurg electricity. So I go as simple as possible. I don't like them with built in WI Fi and Bluetooth and disable that if I can. And I think the more bells and whistles that you put into your home from a smart home standpoint, like dimmers or lights that operate on WI Fi that will automatically change color at different times of the day, or the refrigerator that tells Amazon when you're out of milk. I mean, there's a biological cost to those conveniences, I think.

Agree.

Yeah.

Getting them to not have it is getting harder. Finding ones without it is getting harder and harder. It's a wave.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, how do you clean your home? Like what are the general principles for just cleaning? Obviously this would apply to an existing or a new home build.

Yeah, cleanliness is really important. It's really important. Now that we're introducing SVOCs into the into products unknowingly that we have, we lower the dust load, et cetera. So we have a section on cleaning in the book, but the basics are use something non toxic. I could put a shout out for Branch Basics. I think it's an incredible product. And in our book we have an essay by the founder and why she made it. She had a bubble kid who couldn't tolerate anything else, so that's how she formulated the product. There are many good products. My cohort, John Banta, my co author, is he, since he works on many, many protocols for cleaning up mold, is a real cleaning expert. So I've learned a lot from him. A true HEPA vacuum, a really good one, is very important. Maintaining it is very important.

Did you say a HEPA vacuum?

Yes. So a high efficiency particulate arrestor in the vacuum, so the type of filtration in it. A common brand is Miele and another one that's an inexpensive one is Shark. Now John's the kind of guy who goes around with a laser particle counter. So he'll take several vacuums of the same brand, the same model and see if they're effective over several brands. And he's found some surprises, some really good names that were not effective in all of their all units. So Mile and Shark are two that he has, he can stand behind. So we mention those in the book. So he has a section on his website called Ban the broom. When you sweep, you're just moving dust around in the place. If you have a bad vacuum cleaner, the particle count in the air is going to be far worse after you clean the house than before. So good vacuum cleaner, microfiber cloths. I use the cloth type it for mold remediation. They use the disposable kind of course, but it's a great cleaning tool. It'll pick up a lot. Not using antimicrobials has become a big post Covid soapbox now because they're not proven to be that effective, but they put them in more and more products. So just because someone something advertises how many germs it kills, we have to ask ourselves what's it using to kill them. So you can do wonders with soap, a good soap, water, microfiber cloths and a HEPA Vacuum and regularity. One of the biggest factors I'd like to mention is making your home a no shoe home. Oh yeah, Getting in the habit, taking off your shoes at the front door, designing an entryway where it's convenient to take off your shoes. And you will be saving yourself from trapped in pesticides, dust, mold, dirt, et cetera. So that's a great start.

I think about that a lot when I get home after airline travel. I'm like, I've been walking up and down the moldy airplane carpet, I've been standing in pee in the men's room, I've been walking through the airport and I get home and I go upstairs in the bedroom still wearing my shoes and think, whoa, I just track like half the world into my bedroom. So that's a great tip. And by the way, a few subtle nuances there. That microfiber tip cloth is amazing because those pick up particulates that are very small. A lot of people don't realize there's a difference between cleaning with your, I don't know, the cloth napkins that you use at the dinner table to save on expense versus cleaning with these microfiber cloths. So I use those, I use them on my computer and my, my office, on my desk. The broom thing I was only familiar with until I read your book with that being a very good idea to not use the broom if you're sweeping up one of those mercury light bulbs that is broken because it redistributes all the particles into the air. But after I read your book, I thought, well, gosh, it's true. Anytime you're using a broom or sweeping briskly through the kitchen, you're just redistributing stuff up into the air. So that idea of a HEPA vacuum cleaner, I love that. I know you have some brands in the book and I'll put those brands that you mentioned on the website in the show notes as well. And then of course, using the non toxic cleaning products, it's so easy to make your own with essential oils, lemon and vinegar and water and soap. But yeah, I think a lot of people, they'll invest in a home and invest in dirty electricity filters or grounding mats or incandescent light bulbs or whatever, and then just create kind of a chemical firestorm with their cleaning processes. Yeah.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah. Well, you know this book, Prescriptions for a Healthy House. I just want to tell you, listening in that, like I said, it's super comprehensive, but it's got indoor health hazards strategies for creating a healthy home concrete, wall systems, metals, adhesives, sealants, caulks, construction, cleaning site work the contractual agreement between the owner and the builder if you're building a home. As far as a lot of these building biology concepts lumber, finished carpentry, plastics, moisture and soil gas management, thermal protection, exterior finishes, doors, interior finishes, appliances and then special construction like swimming pools and spas and saunas, plumbing, environmental testing, heating, cooling, ventilation, filtration, electrical furnishings and then maintenance like the cleaning that we were just talking about. So I think it is an essential handbook. I was very surprised when I got it, how thorough it was and how much it even spoke to my architect and my builder as far as materials to select that they just weren't familiar with. But you and your co author John did a really great job making everybody's life easier with this thing. So I'll hold it up to the camera in case people want to see what it looks like you can get on Amazon Prescriptions for a Healthy House and I'll link to it in the show notes as well if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com HealthyHomePodcast and Paula, I know we only scratched the surface, but I wanted to whet people's appetite about building biology and what they'd find in this book and what they can learn from you and your website also. So thank you so much for sharing this stuff with us.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Be sure to post the Building Biology site for your readership too so they can go take a look.

Yes, I absolutely will. So everybody take off your shoes, go find a HEPA vacuum cleaner and have an amazing week. I'm Ben Greenfield with Paula Baker LaPorte, signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing week. Want free access to comprehensive show notes, my weekly roundup, cutting edge research and articles, my top recommendations for everything that you need to hack your life, and much more. Visit BenGreenfieldLife.com. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion llc, the makers of Kion branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship. If I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product. It is indeed something I personally use, support, and with full authenticity and transparency recommend. In good conscience, I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.