An IEP’s Perspective Part 2: Tips for Buying & Renting a Healthier Home

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another Change the Air foundation interview. My name is Kendra Seymour and today we're going to be doing part two of our interview with Michael Strands where we continue that discussion on an IEP's perspective on buying or running a home. There was literally so much good information in part one that we ran time and we needed to do a part two because there was so much we wanted to cover in our talk. So, so thank you so much, Michael, for coming back and joining us and continuing the conversation.

Kendra, happy to be here. Let's do it.

Yeah. So to recap just for part one because someone listening may want to go back and listen to that first, we kind of talked about where and what you're looking for when you're touring a potential home. Right. We talked about considerations for various foundations and heating and cooling systems. We even talked about some exterior issues and how they might impact the inside of the home. And then we got into some really good conversations about mold misconceptions surrounding, you know, dead or dormant mold or how mold in one part of your home can impact others and, and more. So you're definitely going to check out part one if you haven't yet. But today we're going to keep that conversation going and we're going to shift a bit towards runners to start, Michael, because they're kind of in that unique position and have a little bit less control over the solution side of things. So for them, I think it's super important that they are a little more, you know, proactive with certain things. So I my first question to you then today is, you know, a renter likely won't be able to have a formal inspection. So what are some, you know, things that they can do to try and find that best possible place for them?

Yeah, sure. It's challenging, right? We wish even in the sake of a home purchase, let alone a rental, that we could take that house or that structure and tell the owner, hey, do you mind if I borrow this house and perform some studies for the next year and see if it's a good home? But oftentimes we're very limited. Not to mention with the rental renters case. A few responses to that question. First of all, like you mentioned earlier, part one covers a lot of that basic stuff of what to look for in the home. You know, the common plumbing sources, the irrigation in the, you know, the outside shooting, shooting water towards the exterior wall, these classic low hanging fruit things we cover. So be sure to check that out because that would, we'd have, you do that no matter what. Um, the other thing too, and again, just to, just to remind people, and I know we were talking a little bit offline about this prior to this, this interview, is that it seems like when people ask the question of where do we find the most challenge in a home? If we only could pick one thing about an issue like a roof leak, a plumbing leak, a crawl space, H vac. Typically, crawl spaces and basements can be the most challenging. So if you can avoid a home that doesn't have a basement in a crawl space, you will oftentimes avoid some of the concerns that come with moisture, mold, bacteria, that sort of thing that can come and develop in that crawl space in that basement depending on the layout and the situation. Flat roofs, we might have touched on that in part one too. I have a flat roof and I've had three or four roof leaks. It's true what they say, a flat roof can be a problem because they're typically designed to be a sealed system, which means that they got to be perfect. Whereas a pitched roof oftentimes isn't designed to be sealed and the water's allowed to shed on the outside. There's a lot of forgiveness there and we typically see less issues, all things being equal between a flat roof and a pitch. But you know, if we don't have time to do DIY sampling, you know, there's, there's Hermes, there's, there's, there's Hertzmes, there's Petri dish samples, there's all these type of DIY things. The other thing we look at is from a different approach which is working with the landlord of the owner. Episode 9 on my IEP radio.com iepradio.com we dive into the things about renting and one of the things we cover quite a bit is this negotiation process of can you ask the, the owner, the landlord, what to have a short term lease, maybe that means raising the rent up a little bit. Now I get it, I know you're not a fan of raising the rent, but if you were able to raise the rent like say you know, 50 to 150, maybe more, depending on of course the value of the property, you, and you're able to break your lease whenever you want else these people are looking for a one year lease. That's like insurance and, and I'd like to say that, you know, being able to do that with some landlords owners has been a great way to break it. Because the problem is is you might not be able to see something right at that before it's too late, before you sign the contract. So working with landlords, working with management, trying to find a way of, like, what. What's the penalty if I break the lease? You know, can we work on a deal? Because I. And be transparent. Yeah, it is a little bit of tactfulness that would be required to be involved. You don't want to come in with all your bells and whistles because a lot of people don't understand chronic illness. Does that sound familiar? And so if you were to go in there and say, I have health concerns and I don't plan on breaking the lease, and can we work out a monthly sort of situation? The other thing to talk about is what would constitute breaking the lease without penalty. For example, what if I had my clinician write me a doctor's note that said, this environment's not safe enough? Would that be enough? So I know it can be a little bit uncomfortable to talk about these things with the landlords and the management, but the only thing more uncomfortable than that, in my experience and opinion, is when you don't realize those things and it's too late and you find yourself stuck in an environment that's causing you an exposure and you can't get out of it without some major penalty.

That's really helpful. And maybe this is too simplistic. I wonder if, you know, when you're looking for a rental property, even simple things like trying to find one that maybe has less or no carpet, you know, oh, sure. Like little things like that. But I do have a question. Years ago, in my younger days, my husband and I, we lived, you know, we live in a major. Near. Major city, and we lived in an apartment complex with 16 stories. And it got me thinking, if I were running today, and that was my option, is there a preference? Since water travels down, but I want to aim for, like, an upper floor. Granted, you have your roof. Is there. Is there any thought to that? Or no. Am I just overthinking this?

Yeah, well, I don't know. I guess it boils down to construction and personal experience, which inherently is biased. When I used to do a lot of testing for apartments before, you know, apartment complexes don't have exactly the history of being proactive. And. Well, what I found is that they seem to be a lot more issues with overflows and plumbing leaks from the tenant above you than a roof leak.

Tom.

We're also concerned about being on the bottom floor if there's a crawl space. So if it was me, pound per pound, and again, it's hard to blanket this and say always do it this way. But if I had to go with the odds, for me I would pick the top floor unit because you're, you're away from the ground and any crawl space or irrigation issues and you don't have anybody above you because a lot of people who live in apartments like to live like rock stars and you know, the splashing of water, the plumbing issues. And again, when I look back at the number of apartments that I had assessed and it's probably been well over a hundred, most of them were from plumbing leaks, not a roof leak issue.

Yeah, that's a great tip. I mean again, like none, none of these things that we're saying are blanket statements 100% of the time. It's just things to think about. And another thing, I don't know if you think about this, our current home, you know, three sides get some sun, but then the back of our house doesn't and we'll see things growing. So is there something like for large apartment complexes and to not pick the one, you know, apartment that's on the back wall that gets no sun. Is there anything to that so that you know there's some natural drinking and wind.

Yeah, I mean, sure. Northward, you know, northerly facing areas on this hemisphere of the hemisphere of the planet, you know, you're going to get less sun and, and in certain climates there is condensation forming, you see a lot more microbial growth. But you know, there's also arguments to be made about condensation occurring due to the sun beating down on a surface getting warmed up, things getting cooled down. I think as a general rule, if you could find a south facing unit apartment, this multi level story, whatever it might be, for that matter, that's ideal. I think what I'm also thinking about is the prevailing winds. You know, are you next to an interstate or a city? You know we're. So is tunnel vision a lot of times with just mold, but there's other pollutants that are here. Yeah, right. That's true, that's true. And so, you know, can you find out, depending on where you're at, if there's a chart for prevailing winds, can you find out, can you go pay attention and see which way those winds go? Go on a weather station and see what you can find. And I think the takeaway is can you find a building that's not, I guess you might call it downwind of any suspect area, like a high density highway system or an industrial area, those sorts of Things are key.

Just a little tidbit. There's an area not far from us, and I didn't live downwind, but friends of ours did from a sewage treatment plant. They got a great deal on the rent, but nine months of the year, it stunk.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's a tall tale sign, I think maybe goes to the, you know, the idea of, you know, if something's too good to be true, you got, you got, you got to keep that radar on because it might be a situation like you just described.

Yeah. You don't want to be there in the summer, that's for sure. Right, Virginia? So this is way into our next question then. So I'm so excited about this because we tend to focus on mold and water damage and that's important. But there are some other pollutants in your indoor air that can impact your home. Things like VOCs or radon or carbon monoxide or lead. Can you speak to any of those and what we might need to be think about or how we might go about testing those?

Yeah, it's hard to holistically, as you mentioned, blanket statements to cover everything. I mean, we're still learning on what is a contaminant, what's an issue. But on the more common low hanging fruit, you know, we have like the volatile organic compounds is a very classic one. So these chemicals, TVOCs, total volatile organic compounds, and there's there, you know, radon, like you said, carbon monoxide, lead. Well, so for each one, real quick, you know, a lot of these, these types of contaminants that I'm looking at on your list here, you can test both professionally and diy. Ideally, we'd love for a professional to get involved because it boils down to the interpretation of what does it mean with TVOC devices or measurements. There are real time meters that you can hold in your hand that give you an overall count of what they detect are VOCs in the home. It's kind of like an averaging, if you will. There are tests like there's a company called homeair Check that has this sorbent tube pump where you put the sorbent tube in the pump and you can find them on Amazon Home Air check and sample the air for formaldehyde or TVOCs or MVOCs, microbial VOCs, which are great tools that you can do DIY. I think the question we always want to ask is do we have enough time if we're using the test prior to moving in? Maybe a real time handheld meter is a Better option. The problem with that is it's not going to be as specific. And if you buy 102, $300 meter on Amazon, you might not be working with the level of sensors and resolution that you'd get with a, say a 4 to 6 to $8,000 professional grade portable VOC meter. So you know, if we have the time, you know, doing like the, the home air check to me I think is one of the coolest, easiest DIY check for TVOCs formaldehyde levels in the home. When we get to other things like radon, you know, EPA has a radon map that you can look at, but you don't put all your eggs in the radon map basket. It is. We find that a lot of I live in Arizona and we get a lot of people from the Rocky Mountains and Colorado and they'll move here and they'll be buying a home and they'll be like, you guys don't do radon test. So it's funny because depending on where you come from, there's actually requirements for radon testing. They do have. There are charcoal canisters and other things you can do DIY online. There will be some arguments about how accurate they are. Is what you would get into that one. You probably should rely on a professional, but I mean that's an important long term thing. You don't smell radon. It's typically not something that you react to quickly. This is more of an issue of like cancer, lung cancer, that sort of thing down the road because of some elevated level in the home. Carbon monoxide, you know, you know, incomplete, a byproduct of incomplete combustion. When we think of carbon monoxide, we think about our gas appliances, furnaces, gas stoves, we think about outdoor, you know, pollution from cars and things of that nature. There are a lot of reasonable handheld meters you can get on Amazon. I don't have a one particular brand that you can look for to help see if any levels are elevated. That the trick here is that a lot of these meters, you know, may not get down to that low parts per million or parts per billion level. Your, your smoke detector, you know, is calibrated to go off at a certain parts per million. Don't quote me, but I think it's like 9 parts per million or whatever it is might be a little bit higher. The point is, is that that might, you know, you obviously want to look for obvious issues and you might be able to detect low hanging fruit issues with these handheld meters, which is a good thing, not a Bad thing. But it might not be able to take it to the level of forensic. But it's a great starting tool. Which leads us to the other thing you mentioned which is lead. Lead is more is mainly discussed in terms of lead based paint. It's not an exact thing. But if your house was built prior to 1978, most homes would be labeled as having the real potential to have lead based paint. Even. Even if that paint was covered up by a new layer of paint. Usually the issue with lead based paint exposure, if you read the literature online, it falls more to like pregnant women and young kids ingesting it and all of that issues. If you have lead based paint and this kind of brings up some perspective here in the home. It's not an automatic deal breaker. You don't have to move. I mean if the. If the paint is. If the wall with the paint on it that's got lead is in good shape, it's not disturbed. You may have to do anything. But they do have online tests that you can do little real time swab kiss that are kind of like a color metric that will be. It's kind of like absent presence for the lead in the paint. What you will find again is like radon. Lead can be a complicated thing to sample and oftentimes you want to use a professional. So I'll throw all that at you and see what you have to say.

Yeah, no, all these things are good. I'll kind of work backwards. So. So with lead pain, it's something definitely to be aware of. Like certain, you know, again, nothing' deal breaker. But even things like Tamara Rubin, she's let safe mama. She's talked about how, you know, if you have older windows and they have like you're opening and closing that window, that friction causes small particles to release into there. So you want to be mindful of that because it can get into your air. And then for carbon monoxide, you know, I think one of the things and we're going to actually do a talk on this at some point in the future, it changed the air. You know, I have a carbon monoxide detector that that is for that thing goes off, you need to like leave the house. Right. Fire. But there's low level carbon monoxide exposure that can often get missed and can cause headaches and other symptoms. And so there are low level carbon monoxide detectors that you can buy for your home that are gonna help with that. And it's something to be aware of. Right. So so your standard carbon like hopefully you have one. If not Go out and get one. But you may want to think about one that's, you know, a low level rating. And then I want to offer some clarification if someone's listening. We're using the term voc, volatile organic compounds. Can you tell us some sources? Because if you're buying a home or moving into a home, and please add onto this, it can come from things like your furniture, your flooring, your paint, it off gases and that falls under that VOC umbrella, correct?

Oh, absolutely. Anything that is volatile that can oxidize at room temperature is typically what you'd call a voc. I'm trying to be broad here. Common sources are paints, paint strippers, wood preservatives. So a lot of off gassing from like cabinetry, any era, a lot of aerosols, fragrances, things that you use to make your house smell pretty are VOCs. Even certain essential oils or VOCs, disinfectants, cleaners, a lot of those are VOCs. Stored fuels, propanes, kerosenes, things of that nature, all have this ability to create dry cleaning, common products from that. So you are surrounded by all sorts of building materials, insulation has chemicals, fire retardants in there, things that are produced, semi volatile organic compounds, all of which are potential exposures. But for a VOC meter, going back to that, if it's a TVoC meter within a certain envelope, a wide spectrum of range, a lot of the VOC sources that I just mentioned will be, excuse me, be able to be detected with that meter. And you know, people will do things, Kendra, or they'll take their meter, I'll use my phone and they'll go, oh, look, I'm in the living room and it's relatively okay, but I just went into the kitchen area and the levels are spiking. And I found out they just replaced the cabinetry six months ago.

Yeah.

So a good way to help identify VOCs, that way.

Yeah. And I mean all of these things, like there are, there are solutions. And it's probably beyond the scope of this talk. Like, you know, if you've walked into.

Trust me, I keep on wanting to give you solutions. But then this becomes a five hour conversation about one question.

I know we're not to keep having you back with, you know, that new house smell. Everyone knows that new house smell, the new car smell. Right. That's what you're smelling. But there are solutions. We, you know, ventilation solutions and filtration solutions. And that's probably like five talks, right? We can get into that about bringing fresh air in and, and things like that. But it's absolutely just to be aware of. Right and all.

Yeah, nothing's a deal breaker. These are about identifying issues, more like qualifying them, maybe quantifying them to some degree. But nobody has a cheat sheet here. This is why ultimately working with an IEP indoor environmental professional is key. Because you kind of need a navigator to help you. It doesn't mean you can't do things on your own. I'm not trying to say don't do that and work with somebody that's going to charge you money. But our focus is, do you know what to do with that information? If the VOCs are high, if it has a crawl space, if you're reactive and you think there's mold, you start checking off all these boxes and you're going, maybe this is not the place for me. But if everything is checking off and the only thing you got is slight elevators of elevated levels of TVOCs in your kitchen as a convenient example, it doesn't mean automatically that, that this is not an option for you. You might, you might see if you can even. Which, going back to the first question you asked, sometimes management and landlords will allow you to stay in the place for a day. I don't mean spend the night, but even a few hours, hang out in there, bring a book, bring a chair, and see how you react. I don't want you to be the canary. But most of you that are listening know that sometimes the testing doesn't outweigh or the results of the testing, how you feel. And as long as you're in a state, a calm state, and you don't feel like your limbic system is triggered, you might, you might be able, right, Kendra, to listen to your body and see what it's telling you.

I'm so glad you brought up a point. For all of our friends with, with multiple chemical sensitivities, MCS or related conditions, MAST cell, you know, you, those things are more of a problem for them. People are more sensitive and, and their body will tell them more accurately than any test will. Like right now, like, you know, my body's telling me this space is not okay, doesn't mean it's a deal breaker long term, but you need to listen and maybe you make different choices based. Always trust your gut, literally. And I think it can be, you know, these are all good things for people to think about because it all, it all kind of comes together. Now my next question is, what are some common mistakes that you see people making that can result in mold and water damage. So again, this is assuming they've moved into this place. Just what are those things that you keep seeing people do? So we can talk a little prevention, I guess.

Yeah, sure. Well, I guess the theme of the answer is not keeping the house dry enough. You know, and the keyword is enough. We don't want to. We're not aiming for 0% relative humidity or moisture in the air that will, that causes other concerns. But you know, let's talk about a warm humid climate like Miami, Florida. Moisture availability, what is outside and not bringing down that relative humidity invites the potential for that moisture that's in the air to condense. On the surfaces that are in your conditioned home that you have keep. You have kept at 72 to 74 degrees in the summertime. Some of you are going, I ain't paying for that electric bill. But there are people out there. The lower you keep that temperature, the lower the dew point is going to get. Meaning it's not going to take. Or I should rather I should say the lower the temperature is, the more likely you will reach the dew point. And if you have higher levels of moisture in the air because you live in Miami, Florida, it's more likely to condense. So keeping the house dry usually involves dehumidification, proper ventilation of, of of moisture laden air, like for example, during and after the use of a shower. There's another thing you can add to that. What to check for is do you have properly operating exhaust fans or on the kitchen range, is there a fan? Is it exhausting to the outside? A lot of the older models would just be a recirculatory. You kind of blow it right back in your face. Is it ducted out to the outside.

Is not into your attic or into your wall? Because we've seen these vented outside your house. You don't to be dumping moisture into your attic or right on actually seen this in the wall cavity.

We see it a lot. And even if it's not intentional, ducts can fall and then they're venting. In your attic or in the crawl space. It's not uncommon to see dryer vents ducted and having lint all over the place. These are all tall tales. So making sure that those things work to keep the house dry, making sure these things are actually running. How many of you that actually cook over the stove actually turn on your fan? I'm guessing it's not that much. And it's not just moisture, by the way. If you have a gas burning stove, it's a great way to get rid of some of those by products we were talking about earlier while you're cooking from the burnt gas. The other thing that I do you talk about prevention is I'll tell you what moisture alarms I, I refer to Amazon but I need you guys all know you can probably go on Google and search them in a variety of ways. But if you literally type moisture alarm, we're not talking about a moisture meter. We're not talking about a handheld non intrusive or, or intrusive meter. You're checking moisture levels. We're talking about an alarm that goes off if there's liquid H2O that touches it. And they have all kinds of them. There's no one brand that I prefer. I have two different common brands. I, I have 10 moisture alarms in my house.

Oh me too.

And, and they've saved me twice at least. And you stick them by plumbing sources so underneath the kitchen sink that you don't always go under and look behind the toilet where there's a supply line. If it ever leaks or drips or water flows over the toilet, you have something that's going to go off like crazy. It's very annoying, very convenient. But in it can save you as some of you have already unfortunately experienced with the cost of mold remediation, thousands of dollars, especially if you get into like damaged cabinetry and other things of higher value just because you were able to catch that water leak in time and start drying it out. And I've again I've had personal experience and it saved me from a couple of legitimate leaks, including one in my corner kitchen sink would have been which would have been a very expensive proposition because our top of our countertops are tile. So the other thing that I do is I try once a year or even more often to do a thorough walkthrough of the home both inside and outside. Life's busy. I have a couple of young boys, a family, a job and it's overwhelming. I'm getting pulled from all ends. But taking the time to love your home not quite as much as you love your family, but in that same realm is key because you might find like I'll be darn. There was a slow dripping leak underneath the kitchen sink cabinet and it was not enough to get to that moisture alarm, but it was enough to cause mold growth on my bottom shelf on any other scenario. So we're now we're right back to like part one of the interview of the things that you're looking for inside and outside of the house. Do it especially if you live in extreme weather, like hot cold, if you're in the northern states, the. The constant battle between hot and cool, expansion and constra contraction will test the boundaries of your home. The building materials, the plumbing, which is under pressure when we talk about supply lines. So you can easily have a leak that you didn't even realize was occurring. This is especially true for crawl spaces. I've seen many places where they've had drips and they just never knew what was going on. And they've gone in underneath their crawl space and there was literally like a small pool of water. And when I say small, anywhere from say a diameter of a foot all the way to like 4 or 5ft, creating obvious microbial growth, it stunk to high heaven. So that to me are the nice easy takeaways. Walk around of your homes, inside, outside, at least once a year. And the changing of the seasons is probably more ideal. Moisture alarms to anywhere where there's a plumbing source where there could be a leak. Don't put it right next to your toilet, put it next to your shower if you have to, you know, just in case. And maintaining that relative humidity by using a portable dehumidifier. Whatever you have to do to keep it drier. If you keep it drier, moisture is going to have less of an ability to condense, which translates to in this particular point, less potential for microbial growth to occur.

And I love that because it's all about moisture prevention. And it's much cheaper to prevent a problem than to have to go through remediation.

Amen.

And if I can add a few things, just tips that I have at home, I have, I have the legal arms as well. I have it behind my fridge because we have, we do have a water hookup for our fridge and eventually would like to change that, but our washing machine, but. And I even have, you know, under all of our sinks as well. The, the under sink trays with the high lip to catch just to buy you time. Again, it's not, it's not going to stop everything, but it has saved me a few times. And then, you know, if you have kids and stuff spills down, it keeps the bottom, you know, from getting all gross and you can clean it up. But the prevention is huge. And you'd mentioned humidity and something I want to mention to anyone listening, a hygrometer. You can get them for like 10 bucks online and that will measure the humidity in your air. I mean it's not like the professionals, but I found them to be pretty accurate.

Accurate enough for what we're talking about.

What we're talking for the average person. And so you can keep one, if you have a basement, you can keep one on your middle floor, on your upper floor and just keep an ey on it. And if it's okay, I wonder if we couldn't touch a little bit more on some of the specifics with relative humidity. Because people will say, okay, well what should I keep the humidity at in my home? And you'll see a general rule of thumb below, you know, below 50%. But that actually changes a little bit depending on the temperature and the time of year.

Right.

Because your relative humidity should be lower in the winter for the reason you mentioned. Right. Because the moisture in the air is going to condense sooner if the temperature is lower. Is that, Am I explaining that correctly?

Well, yeah. So let me see if I can say it this way. Relative humidity, the term relative is there because the warmer the air is, the more physical actual weight of water it can hold in vapor form.

So that's just to stop you. That's like if you live. I live in humid Virginia. That's like when you walk out and you feel like you're walking into just a wall of humidity. I don't know how to explain it. Like, you can tell a lot of moisture in the air in the summer, right?

Exactly. The moisture, the amount of moisture that you could wring out if you had a cubic foot of air and both of them had 50% of moisture in them, but the air in one box was 50 degrees and then the other box it was 100 degrees and then you were able to wring out the moisture. You'd have way more moisture in the 100 degree air at 50% than at the 50 degree at 50%.

So fast explanation I've ever heard of that.

Yeah, so, so, so relative humidity, you know, matters. And it's true that a lot of us focus of keeping that levels. Usually we, we, we. The ranges always change and there's other challenges. So you'll see people saying, yeah, but this is okay too. But you know, 40 to 50% is a nice clean range where you're dry enough in the summertime, but you're not so dry that you deal with respiratory issues or infection or viral issues where the incidence of viral infections. Where did that come from? Comes up typically like in the wintertime. One of the reasons why we see a higher incidence of the flu and everything like that in the wintertime. In the wintertime, it is true that there's way less Moisture and things are colder. And depending on what the home is doing, you might still read 20, 30, 40, 50%. But again, if it's 50 degrees in the house and you guys are using, you know, electric blankets to stay warm, you know, we're not worried about 50, 60, even, even necessarily 60% when it's cooler. What we find in the winter time is that more people complain about respiratory issues because it's too dry. And so here we're talking about anti moisture. We're actually adding things like humidifiers to put more moisture in the air. So we shouldn't be afraid of moisture, but we want that balance. And I would argue that 40 to 50%, whether it's wintertime or summertime, is a great target for you because it gives you a lot of wiggle room without that worry of microbial growth.

Because, and for anyone who may be listening, on the flip side, if your humidity is too high, you can get microbial growth from just humidity. So sometimes people think mold growth will only result if I have like a flood or pipe leak or something large. But I know during COVID I remember reading an article of a mall and they had shut off the air conditioning to save money. And when things started opening back up, there were pictures of all the boots and purses and suit. Everything had a layer of mold growth. And it had to do with the fact that the humidity wasn't being controlled in that building and.

Right.

And we saw that in the. I used to be a teacher in the school that I worked at, to save money, they would turn off the heating and air at 4pm and then it'd be off in the evenings and then on the weekends and we came back after a long four day break and one of the entire wings had white fuzzy mold growing over everything. And so in an attempt to save money, they created a problem. We live in a very humid area that, that's a problem for us. So just for people to think about, it doesn't just happen because you have a massive flood or pipe leak?

No. To your point, condensation type mold issues is important. And when we talk about controlling relative humidity, it's not because we're trying to prevent a plumbing leak in your, in your wall. It's because of what Kendra's getting at. It's this idea that, you know, mold's complicated and mold's very much a part of our earth. We're, we're, we'll get into this probably in a little bit too. But about what is normal fungal ecology? What are our goals? The Point is, is that if you can lower that humidity, because there's a lot of people that are like, well, no, I just keep it at 60, 70% relative humidity. And you're really flirting with putting a lot of moisture in the air, which makes it more likely again that that moisture will condense. Because the higher. Let's say you have it just as one example of a million. If you had your indoor temperature at 73 degrees and you raised your. Your relative humidity to 70% relative humidity, the. The dew point is 63.

Yeah.

And in that scenario, you're going to have moisture condense. And like you said, that's the common denominator is once you have the moisture condensing, now you have water available for a viable mold spore, which there are plenty because they're all around us. Welcome to Earth. And plenty of nutrients. You've seen mold grow on glass. Not really eating the glass, but it's eating the nutrients or degrading that are on there. The dust, the debris, the plant fibers, what you will get growth, which is that mall example, that's classic, where they had this layer on there because it was in a concerted effort to save money. Now it's going to cost them way more than that to fix the problem.

Yeah. So this is kind of a good segue. We're going to. We're going to kind of shift gears a little bit. Michael and I had talked about, you know, there is kind of a message here that we want everyone to hear. And so we're going to shift format a little bit because we want you to realize that your goal is not to find a perfect home. There is no perfect. And that's okay, because what we want you to think about and what we want you to realize is that you will find a home that you can heal in, and you will find a home that you can be healthy in. And we want you to know that you're going to be okay. Your body is designed to heal okay. Homes can be made healthy again. This journey is about progress over perfection. And this coming from someone who's a type A. I never want to make this mistake again. That's really hard. But it's about progress over perfection. So, Michael, if it's okay with you, I thought we could talk about some of the misinformation, anxiety, ptsd, all of that. That makes this process harder and scarier and more overwhelming than it needs to be.

Yeah. Where do you want to start, Kendra?

I don't know. Take it away and we'll just kind of Kind of go from there, beat it from there.

What I've seen a lot in the last two or three years is the triggering of people that feel like they're in flight or flight. This triggered limbic system where you're kind of always in a state of fear, anxiety. And you know, I don't know if I just wasn't paying attention to it before, but you know, prior to a few years ago it seemed like we would just have these conversations about the difficulties of home and health and that not really observed because at that point I was an observer of, of their, of the health complaints. It was more just like a pain in the butt. Matter of fact, all right, we deal with it and we're going to sell the home and that was it. I don't know if it was the, with the introduction of the coronavirus or COVID 19, if it was just the fact that we live in an upside down world where we have more of an intimate relationship with our phone and being overwhelmed and constantly just being stimulated, that we're seeing this influx of just people that whether they have a mold problem or not, they're coming in here with, with, with their triggered. They're, they're, they're, they're in that sympathetic state. They're, they're not calm, they're not relaxed, they're nervous, they're afraid, they're looking over the proverbial shoulder trying, you know, looking for that one mold spore. And when we stop and think about the amount that everyone's dealing with, you know, it kind of reminds us just holistically that hey, maybe, maybe you need to have some, you know, some, some, some self times, whether it's meditation, breathing exercises, kind of ground yourself because of the pace. But the other thing that doesn't help is the fear mongering is the intentional or not there. I don't think that every company out there that use what I would call trigger words are doing it because they're like, hey, if we say it this way, they're going to really want to use us. But there are people out there that do do that. And even if they're not doing that, they're using terms like toxic, they're, they're saying things that, you know, if that's bad, you have to get out, throw everything out and there's no context. In fact, a lot of times when you ask for the context, you realize it was not even close to what you read. In fact, when you ask a lot of those sources, can you provide me with the studies I mean of why we have to throw everything out or why, you know, that this particular sample result is a problem. You don't oftentimes get a good answer. You get a fear based answer or well, this happened to me and this is what worked for me. And what I'm seeing as not just now an observer, but somebody who also has gone through recently with chronic illness. So I kind of got a taste of what I've seen now. A real one actually is that people just are getting triggered by the bad information. They have this feeling there's no hope. They're, they're, you know, oh my gosh, I had a water leak. I got people that are looking at homes and they find a water stain in the kitchen sink cabinet and they leave. They just, they don't want to deal with the home. And I'm sitting here going, that could have been the perfect home for you. So there's just, I guess to land the airplane. Kendra, because I want to, I want to bat this back and forth with you. Is, is I feel like people don't know what to do, but they kind of treat mold like plutonium where like if one little spore hits them, their arm's going to fall off. They're freaking out. They have every reason to feel that way. All of the stuff that you don't, you seldom see people, they're like, relax, it's going to be okay. From, from, from celebrity status clinicians and practitioners and IEPs, you don't hear that. You, what you hear is fear. Run. It's a good thing you found us. We'll save you. And I think that our industry needs to do a better job. Because folks, what's not being glorified as much as it should are the success stories. The amount of people that are getting better, that are healing. It's weird how we are when we go on the news, how many of us look subconsciously for good information versus bad information? What grabs your eyes? The wreck that happened on the interstate or a success story about somebody that had something positive happen in their life? These are, these are rhetorical questions.

Yeah.

So, so, so that to me has driven me nuts. And then, and I know you and I have had a lot of in depth talks on these types of talk because of, I'm really striving to make sure that as we learn to talk about these things that we remind the audience that we're not talking about plutonium, your house is not on fire. We're just talking about these long term goals and these long term considerations to Be curious, but not fearful, to be responsive, to be responsible for your health, but not to fall victim without really getting into the science of what we know, what we don't know, that your life is ruined. You'll never get better. It's going to cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. More people than not are getting better on far less than the horror stories you're reading.

Yeah. And. And so that's something, you know, for anyone listening for context, if you don't know. I, I co founded and got involved in Change the Year because of my family's own experience. You know, starting 10 years ago, I lived through firsthand. I made every mistake stake possible. Everything that you are not supposed to do, we did. And we're still here and we're doing better and it's okay. And you will be too, because I get firsthand that analysis paralysis. You may be sick yourself or taking care of a loved one or a child who isn't doing well and you're working and it's a lot, and you just want someone to tell you the answer. And it's so overwhelming as a consumer because you are getting all this different information. It's hard to know who to trust. Right. You hit this paralysis. And so I know I was guilty of it instead of I didn't want to make the wrong choice. So sometimes I made no choice. And that is a choice in and of itself. So it's not about figuring out your next 10 steps. So for anyone listening, it's about what is the next right step, what is the next piece of information I need that's going to help me understand my situation and move me forward, because that analysis paralysis is, is a real thing. And then just to touch on something too, because for me at least, the, The PTSD associated with it was a very real thing and not something I think. And I get that. So for. For everything I've Learned over the 10 years that I've been doing this, and, and I'm learning every day things still happen in my home, and I do all the prevention, I do all this stuff and things still happen. And that's okay because one, I catch it sooner than I would have before I became knowledgeable. And two, I know how to handle the situation better. And, and initially, though, we had a situation over the summer where there was a teeny spot like, I'm always checking my ceilings, I'm checking my voice boards, I'm paying attention to shadows. Is that a new spot? And I took my little moisture meter and I just held it there. And it definitely went off. And I was like, okay, so. So I panicked.

Right.

And I think a lot of people who have been through this can relate to that. And then I said, okay, I got over my moment of panic and I'm like, all right, I'm going to give my IEP a call and we're going to get to the bottom of this and we're going to figure out what it is and we're going to. I'm going to get the remediation company and I'm going to go through. We have resources, by the way. Changetheirfoundation.org on how to find an IEP and a remediator, so check those out. And we got through it. Was my anxiety heightened? Yes. Was it stressful? Yes. Did I wish it didn't happen? Yes. But we made it through and we're okay and I didn't have to, you know, destroy everything that we have built, you know, and so every situation is different. Obviously, how we dealt with this. This situation is different than other situations I've been in in the past that were bigger and required a little bit more. But. But the message here is if you've been through this and you're just so worried or scared or anxious about your next step, that's okay, but don't let that control or dictate, like, your future. I don't know. I'm rambling here. I don't know if there's anything you want to add.

Well, this is why we're just having a kind of a coffee shop talk right now, because this is the real stuff. This is where it's at. And people can look up the basics online, but we're dealing with the day to day. And you mentioned ptsd, and I went through that. I diagnosed with it. And it's amazing how powerful our bodies are and how much we forget it. In those moments of feeling hopeless, in the moments of feeling exposed and vulnerable. And these are terms that some people aren't even comfortable talking about. There's all sorts of coping mechanisms people do to avoid dealing with the reality. Calling that person crazy or just acting invincible, but then living kind of like in an unhealthy manner. And I think the balanced way of looking at this is that, listen, you might have a lot on your plate, and you know what? You're strong and your body's designed to heal, not kill. And you will get better. And even if you had no treatment, there's some people that take a lot longer and would be very difficult if you were In a really bad moldy situation, like to get better. But again, you mentioned it earlier about steps. You know, step one is take a deep breath, it's going to be okay. Step two, go through those stages of grief and get that over with. It's frustrated. I was frustrated. You're human. You're allowed to get upset and angry and frustrated that you can't press one button and solve all your problems really quick. And three, realize that there are a lot of good resources out there that are not fear mongering, that are intentioned, that are intended to be digestible. Step by step, proactive, positive direction. Moving steps to help get you better and done in a way that can be tailored and unique to your situation. Not everybody's got a multi crawl space. Not everybody has your susceptibility, not everybody is, has the same symptoms as you. And there are a growing number of professionals that are understanding this and truly can tailor a solution in such a calm and honorable way to your health and your exposure that you actually feel good for a change. Finally, direction, finally purpose, finally testing to validate things, field testing, finally. I didn't have to spend $40,000 to do it all. And yeah, there's some crazy stuff out there. There's some big ones out there. And that kind of comes with the territory. But the point is, is there's a lot of help. And there is, you know, when we talk about hope, some people hear that and they're like, you're making hope sound like it's, it's there, but it's like a faint light. No, I have more success stories than I have failure stories. And typically the people that have failure stories are the ones that got overwhelmed or the ones that gave up. I mean, we got all sorts of cool things we can do to find a solution if you're in a tough spot. So if we were to give takeaways here, it's like you mentioned, is don't feel overwhelmed. Take a deep breath, know that there's a health. Don't. You don't have to, you don't have to treat your mold exposure like you would if your house is on fire. If your house is on fire. Oh, it's game on. It's, it's run, you get out. But, but your, your arm didn't fall off yesterday and you were in the house and probably not going to fall off tomorrow. And we're going to get you better. And, and I'm seeing this pattern with thousands of clients, hundred of clients, many hundreds that are in like real bad situations. And I now have possibly the humble honor of saying I've been there firsthand, and I know exactly what. It took over a year to get from where I was at to where I'm at today. So I can tell you that looking back on my own personal experience, half of my problem was me. And it was, it's not a fault. I'm not blaming myself. I'm just saying I overreacted. And I'm like, why am I overreacting? Well, it's because of all the stuff you hear. And so you have hope and you have resources. This is a great organization that's trying to bring those resources for you so that you can get away from that nagging social media group where you went on there for healing and comfort and direction. And all they do is scare the hell out of you.

Right. Can if it's all right because we're running out of time. Can I. Can I leave us with a story of hope because you brought that up and, and I think it's worth sharing. We reach recently featured on the Change the Air foundation website, the story of a father. His name's Jamie Way. And he actually reached out to Change the Air foundation and he wrote this beautiful article that we ended up publishing on our website. And it's called it's not just Hair. And I encourage anyone listening to read it. And it's about his daughter's struggle with alopecia. She was 4, and I'll just give you high level. And she woke up one morning and there were huge chunks of hair on her pillow. And they couldn't figure out why. And, and I won't get into the details, but three years went by and they did all the treatments and they did everything else and, and it was incredibly hard and incredibly defeating. And he kept researching and asking questions and finally was able to make that connection between their health and their home when he had an IEP come in. And they end up discovering mold and lead in his daughter's bedroom and several other parts. And in this, during this time, after it was fixed, this, this child had lost every hair on her head, face and body. Nothing had worked for three years. They remediated the home within, like days. She had a, her first hair pop up and then a whole crop of hair. And this child's body began to heal because it no longer had to respond to the threat that was in the environment. And now has this beautiful head of hair. They are still in the home. And it is the most heartwarming story. If you read it, I promise you will want to read to the end. And it's a story that is about awareness and it's also a story about hope because that's what it's, that's what we need to understand about this. There is that light at the end of the tunnel and it's okay that you're scared, but don't let that keep you from, from taking your next right step for you and your situation because it's gonna look different than the person in the Facebook group or the person down the street because no two situations are alike. Are there any last thoughts you want to leave us with you?

You knocked it out of the park, I think in those last few comments just to resonate and say, yeah, I absolutely agree. It's what we say, how we say it is more important often than the words and we lose context. And we're such an age of incidents, information and acquisition. I mean, now used to have to use a thing called encyclopedia to look up stuff and now you just Google it. And there's a lot of, unfortunately, there's a lot of bad or personal, biased, emotionally driven information. Even if there's eight good nuggets of information within a blog, there's two nuggets that are bad. And it's going to be the true that trigger you and make you start calibrating your mind to thinking things that are just not true. Guys, we live on Earth surrounded by mold. We're breathing in mold, mycotoxins right now. The way that some people make you think is like you. Oh well. So I guess the standard is I have to live on a bubble in Mars in order to, you know, live a non exposed life. And I go, that would be worse. That would be worse. You have no exposure. You'd be like the astronauts return from the International Space Station and have immunocompromised systems because they haven't had the normal exposures they've had on Earth. So yes, there's absolutely hope and we don't need to turn mold into a monster. We can be very pragmatic, very honorable to your health, not cutting corners, but finding a way that's going to actually get you in a forward direction. We're not just going to throw the book at you and tell you to do everything at once and overwhelm because that's the other piece, right? Kendra is like that system overwhelm. You call it analysis paralysis of somebody coming to you and saying, oh, it's going to cost you, whatever the number that triggers you. And what I often find more than I don't is when I review estimates and protocols where someone has been given that information. I often find that a lot of us in excess and it doesn't mean that doing that wouldn't have been helpful. But could they have saved 10, 50, 60, $100,000 and tried something different to see if that would have been helpful so that their family didn't end up in the streets?

Yeah. And to tie it back to the topic, you know, just, you know, when you're house hunting or apartment hunting, you know, and if you're testing or me testing a place after, but you're throwing a lot of money away when you know you need to be using, you know, all the tools in your toolbox and, and understanding that, you know, you're finding it's about progress over perfection. Thank you, Michael, so much for joining us again today. I really appreciate you taking the time to kind of wrap up this conversation.

I loved it. Thank you. I look forward to the next one. Kendra.

Absolutely. For anyone listening, if you found this interview helpful, do me a favor and head on over to changetheairfoundation.org and sign up for our newsletter. Because this is just one of many interviews that we want to share with you offering, you know, practical tips and advice and helping you make that connection between your health and your home. So the newsletter really is the best way to get that information directly to your inbox. So check out changetheairfoundation.org and we'll see you next time. Thanks so much.