Bacteria and Endotoxins and Actinos…Oh, My! Interview with Larry Schwartz

Foreign welcome back to another Change the Air foundation interview. My name is Kendra Seymour and I'm joined today by Larry Schwartz from SafeStart Environmental. Thank you, Larry, so much for being here.

My pleasure. Looking forward to it.

I was super excited for our conversations today. We've spoken before and for listeners out there, we love talking about the indoor environment and what that means for your health. And today we're going to kind of focus in on the role of bacteria. But there's going to be so many good things around this conversation that you know you're going to want to save this one, I promise. But before we do that, I want to jump in and I want to tell you guys a little bit about Larry, in case you don't know who he is yet. He is an indoor environmental medical engineer. He is the founder, CEO and President of SafeStart Environmental and the SafeStart Building Consulting. Larry has performed over 10,000 investigations of properties for which he has investigated, created remediation plans, performed testing and issued post remediation verifications. He's authored a chapter entitled Building Science and Human Health and a medical textbook, the Nutrition and Integrative Medicine for Clinicians. He is the sole environmental expert on a national study with a team of physicians on a research project into sources and causes of Alzheimer's and dementia patients. And if you don't know, there's a lot of really interesting research out there about that, our indoor air and our environment on that. So definitely something to follow up on after you're listening to this interview. But he's also specialty area is assessing and testing and creating solutions to make homes and workplaces environmentally safe for patients with inflammatory illnesses. Many of his clients are patients referred by their physicians and clinics worldwide and he both travels to their sites as well as conducts virtual consulting and he has performed over 1200 of these. And finally, Larry is a University of Arizona School of Public Health and Agile Lecturer of Environmental Health Sciences. Larry, you are a busy person.

Yeah, but you know what? I don't notice it because I so enjoy what I do. I get a lot of gratification out of it.

Yeah, I hear you on that. It's one of those things that I mean, I don't know if for me at least 20 years ago, if you had said I'd be excited about indoor air quality and health and all those things, I would have looked at you like you were crazy. But I definitely am energized by these conversations because I'm all about empowering people so that they can live their healthiest lives. And I think there's something so satisfying about that. But let's jump right in because there's so much to talk about. And let's start off. My first question to you is kind of simple. You essentially categorize people into some different categories. You told me about this. When you meet with your clients, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, I'm happy to. It's interesting. And if you. If we really break it down to try get a better handle what's happening in your life medically. With indoor environmental issues, I kind of categorize people that feel or know they have health effects from their indoor environment into two general categories. One I call traditional, one I call inflammatory. Now, before I tell you what these are and how they. How they work, some people are really lucky and don't fall into either of these categories. Some people are very unlucky and fall into both categories. And some people who are kind of the average fall into one or the other. So it works like this. Traditional. For many years, maybe up until the last 10, 15 years, all the indoor, environmental and mold stuff fall into what I call traditional. And that's a category in which 5 to 10% of the population have allergy or irritation to mold and water damage issues. And the symptoms are all primarily upper respiratory, the wheezing, sneezing, coughing, runny eyes, runny nose, headaches, and on and on. Now, when that person leaves the scene of the bad stuff or the bad stuff is removed, those symptoms resolve pretty quickly, usually within days or weeks. In the other category, by the way, in that category, the type of testing done for mold testing are generally methods of sport, trap, air testing, tape lift swabs, et cetera. And all those yield information at what we call the genus level of mold. I kind of call it the parents because it's one name, like the family name. And when mold actually grows, it eats what it grows on. And while it grows and metabolizes, the family type of mold morphs into variation. We call species that have two names because they have two names now. I kind of call them the children. So in order to get into when we get in the inflammatory side, we need to get to the specie level. We don't get into the specie level in the traditional paradigm, because when we get to species, we can talk about chemicals they create that get in the air, called mycotoxins story for a little later. So we'll stay with the traditional right now. So in the traditional, the testing methods don't get us to the degree of information we need to deal with inflammatory. Furthermore, the remediation techniques of using strong fungicides and mold killers and all the fumes and fragrances from those can affect people in the inflammatory paradigm. They can even exacerbate it. And types of remediation might exacerbate inflammatory. So one takeaway on this is that if you treat a home remediation wise for inflammatory, you cover both. If you only treat for traditional. We know that almost one in four family members, almost one in four people fall into this inflammatory side. So if you have a family of four or five people, it's likely at least one family member falls into vulnerability for inflammation issues. So if you have a traditional remediation in that home, it may create and cause things that can affect that person that's vulnerable to inflammatory if that remediation isn't done right. So let me jump now to the inflammatory. We know that approximately 24%, we believe it's higher. Closer to a third of people are borrowing with the category of genesis. The good news is I'm not going to give you guys listening any kind of a midterm or final exam on this. You don't have to remember it. I just want you to understand the concepts so that. So where I'm going with this is that in the inflammatory these gene genes are like a dimmer switch on a light. They're either on, off or somewhere in the middle. So people that are born with these 5, 6 genes that are very common are in an off position, but somewhere in their life it could be a serious trauma, a surgery, a contact with contracting Lyme disease. It could be a high stress event. If they have these genes and some of them get turned on partially or fully, it stops the body from getting rid of contaminants that are called cytokine inflammagens. We all have them now. If those inflammations build up in the body, there's 37 actual symptoms that are very common. You go to the doctor for they'll treat the symptoms, but they may not treat the cause of the symptoms. So that's what happens in the inflammatory paradigm. And you have to be careful because there can be triggers by molds, by other environmental things like bacteria. A lot of inflammatory sensitive patients may get triggered by volatile organic compounds, chemicals in the air, formaldehyde, electromagnetic fields. And what's really interesting in the client patients I work with, if one is affected by some of these other less common than the water damage, Water damage is the biggest percentage. There's a whole spectrum of Results, they may be just slightly triggered, they might be highly triggered. So everybody has what I call different trigger levels that trigger their symptoms. So we want to keep the environment below trigger levels. But anyway, getting back on track, these two paradigms are important to know about because the way testing is done, the type of testing and the inflammatory, we need to get to the species level on mold because each species creates specific chemicals that during metabolism of the growth of mold, pump these chemicals out into the air. They have these chemicals to fight their neighbors for domination. And when these chemicals emit an ultra fine and nanoparticles in the air, they attach to walls content, dust, structure, dry when they dry, misconception. When they dry, they're not mold, they're dry chemicals. And they can hang around for years and years and years if they're not removed when they get disturbed and get in the air, they can affect your inflammatory symptoms if you're vulnerable. So I want to move on, but I wanted to open up. Kind of giving you some background I think is really important to understand.

Yeah, and I think that's really important too, because one of the things that we hear all the time is that in a family situation or multiple people living in a home, and one's experiencing a lot of symptoms, maybe one's just experiencing some and attributes it to older age. And they say, well, if our home were a problem, we'd all be sick in the same way. And it just doesn't work like that. People are affected in different ways for various reasons. You mentioned genetics, There are others, but that's an important thing to keep in mind. So, moving on, because I. You had talked before about like kind of a gas tank analogy. And I think that's really helpful when we start to understand our health and our bodies in these indoor environments. Can you, can you speak to that a little bit?

Sure. I tell all my clients, I kind of start out with this pretend that you and all of us have an imaginary tank in our body that's kind of like a gas tank picture. There's a liquid sloshing around in it as we move about. And we'll call that liquid cytokine inflammagens. And we all have these, these con, these contaminants in our body, and we all eliminate them in natural processes. Now, if one is vulnerable genetically and those genes are turned on, this tank doesn't eliminate these inflammations quickly. And as they build up, there's 37 symptoms, all of which are common symptoms. Things like fatigue, joint pain, headaches, leaky gut depression, Vertigo, a whole bunch of stuff. And people normally go get that treated by their physician, and it may or may not give a whole lot of treatment, but a lot of times the physician doesn't go to try and figure out or correct the root cause of what's causing these symptoms, and they are focused more on treating the symptoms. So in this tank, imagine in this imaginary tank, you have everybody has some level of this liquid sloshing around. Our goal is to have that tank fully empty, and then we won't have these symptoms. Now, picture at the bottom of this tank is a drain pipe and a valve to turn it on and off. And picture at the top of the tank is an inlet pipe with an event, with a valve that can turn on and off. So the physician can give meds and things, typically called binders, to open the valve at the bottom of the tank to allow the tank to drain. I focus on the valve at the top of the tank to keep the cytokines from coming in. So the takeaway on this is if the speed of what's coming in the tank is equal or greater than the speed of what's going out, the tank doesn't empty. A lot of times my client will say, you know, doctor's giving me these binders. I've been on them two months. My symptoms aren't any better. And very often the cause of that is what's going in the tank is equal or faster than what the medicine's taking it out. So it doesn't mean necessarily the medicine is ineffective. It's just there's not the right balance of how the environment's affecting the body.

I love that. I can't remember which healthcare practitioner talks about it, but he said if you step on a tack, the solution isn't to take more ibuprofen or whatever. The solution is to remove the tack. I think sometimes we're treating these individual symptoms instead of getting to the root cause. When you get to the root cause, a lot of these symptoms resolve on their own, or they just need a little bit more support to do so. It's similar to something, too, that Scott Forsgren, Better Health guy, talks about, and he has this great quote where he says we can expect to be healthier internally than our external environment. So when we're talking about health, we really want to be thinking, you know, our bodies and the places where we spend most of our time. I'm wondering too, so. So we understand a little bit about how the body is working. Let's. Let's switch and talk A little bit about what's going on in our home. Some pe, some people are familiar with water damage and that can lead to mold. You mentioned mycotoxins, which are those secondary byproducts. But there are some other things going on high level. Speak to that. And let's start talking about bacteria because oh my goodness, there's bacteria in my home. Where does it come from? What can I do about it? Should I test for it? If I test for it, you know, how do I understand that? Can, can we zoom in there for, for a bit?

Yes, I can. And about five years ago, I was lead author of a document. I work with several physicians and about 6, 7 colleagues locally and internationally. Took us a year and a half. We created a document called the Environmental Consensus Document. And part of that first document was medical. Part of it was how to treat and make a Home Safe Environmentally was published on the survivingmold.com website. Subsequently, myself and many of the same people did a follow up about two years ago with a more updated version. But my point is in that first version we learned there's like we know of exactly names of about 27 kind of life forms that grow with water damage on building material and cellulose. Molds and bacteria are the primary things that grow. But you have to know there are other things with strange names like they've come out of science fiction that we know grow. And the reason I want to tell you that real quick aside, a lot of clients I work with that takes a specialty test that tell the degree of what I call the big three in the home affecting them. The actinomycetes, the endotoxins, the mycotoxins. A number of times it shows that nothing seems to be in the home affecting of those big three to the patient, yet something in the home is affecting them because the home affects them. And it could well be some of these other 27 things that grow. The good news, the treatments we come up with treat the home for any and all of those things. But the actinos and the bacteria, the endotoxins, we have to treat a little differently in how to remediate and keep those at low levels. So know that bacteria, the bacteria only need about hours to start growing on a food source, whereas mold may take 36 to 48 hours. And we take that into account in some of the recommendations we give on how to minimize the growth and control of bacteria in the home. I mean, it's amazing, even on a bath towel, if it's not dry in a couple Hours, it's going to be loaded with bacteria. I mean, it's hard to talk about it because it's so disgusting to think about. Right. But we have to deal with this. We don't want to think about it hourly or daily or we don't want to imagine a picture of it in our minds. But we coexist in this world with all kind of life forms.

Yeah. And just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. And, and just because it's there doesn't mean we can't do things to minimize it. So, so we got bacteria. You, you had mentioned endotoxins and actinos and stuff. Let's. Can we unpack that? Somebody knows nothing about bacteria. What, what is that?

There are many thousands of families of names of bacteria with names. Many are hard to pronounce. How they even got named, I can't even begin to imagine. But in the world of bacteria, there are ways. It can be measured on dust collected in a home and the test by the one test, next gen sequencing, it's called, from Envirobiomics lab. They measure 40 families of bacteria by name. And within those, each of those families there are sub materials called their species levels of the family name, again, like the children, like in mold species. And among these species, there are some labeled pathogenic and some that are not labeled pathogenic. And the pathogenic species are named that way typically because they have a coating on them called something like mycolic acid. They also may have what they call flagules that attach to them that have this acid. And that acid is mainly the thing. Now here's the deal. What we call environmental bacteria don't generally grow up body temperature or cause disease per se, but they may cause illnesses and effective illnesses. So we want to minimize the concentration of pathogenic species. And I, I, if we were to look, or maybe we don't want to go to the test just yet, we can talk a little more. Let me explain what endotoxins are because they're a byproduct of bacteria. You, you may have heard the term gram negative and gram positive bacteria and you know, sounds like a broad category, sounds kind of like positive negative charges in electricity. I mean, who knows what that is. The reason they call them that is that when these two types of bacteria are given a stain and looked at in the microscope, one of them appears with a stain. And the reason is the gram negative, which are more plentiful than the gram positive, have two outer cell walls and the Gram positive has one outer cell wall. Now, when the outer cell, when those bacteria die, they die because there's a lack of water or food source. So within hours, they can die. Now, when they die, the outer cell wall of the gram negative disintegrates. This is believe so much more info than you ever wanted to know. It's helpful into materials called lipopolysaccharides and they convert into what are called endotoxins. So endotoxins are a byproduct of gram negative bacteria death. That's usually when those cells die that that outer cell wall goes into the air. Okay. Now the physicians have found that the, that the pathogenic species of bacteria and endotoxins are a large source of contamination that can affect environmental symptoms. Now, the really amazing thing is we think by killing bacteria, by sanitizing, by killing mold, that we're taking care of the problem for ourselves. The fact of the matter is, on the inflammatory side, whether the mold or bacteria are dead or alive still affect our symptoms. They still have these dried chemicals on them if they're dead. And the fact of using these strong sanitizers and chemicals to kill mold, kill bacteria. The chemicals themselves can cause inflammatory reactions in people. If spores themselves are dead, they can still cause an issue because there may be dried chemicals on the outer cell walls of the spores. Additionally, there are particles of mold that go in the air besides spores that are hundreds of times more plentiful in the air than the spores themselves. And these pieces of mold parts that are extremely microscopic can also exacerbate symptoms. So, you know, our goal is to remove, either to physically remove the material that has the bad stuff on it, or to use surfactant, safe surfactant methods to remove the mold dead or alive. Like the old western posters wanted dead or alive. We got to get rid of it, not just kill it.

So let's stop for a moment. If somebody doesn't know what a surfactant is, you have it in your home, more than likely. What's a surfactant?

Larry, Surfactant is a cleaning agent. It, it makes a kind of a slippery surface that you can wipe over bad stuff, that it will pick up the bad stuff and whisk it away by adhering to the particles in the soap film.

Yeah. So like your dish soap is an example of a surfactant, Correct?

Correct.

Okay, so it's not some fancy chemical. And I just want to reiterate another point you make because this is really important. People are like, well, I'll just Kill the mold, I'll kill the bacteria. But dead mold. Dead bacteria is still a problem. Those chemicals aren't living, so you can't even kill them. So the goal is always removal, right? Am I understanding that correctly?

Now, a lot of the health issue with mold that's come up is it stemmed a lot from these tests and virobiomics created because they categorize information into what they call human habitat, soil habitat. So, for example, I was asked by a number of physicians because I've had. They know, they know. I've had a special interest in actinos, and I've done a lot of research and delving into it, and I find that there are different sources. Our bodies create them. Generally, they grow and eat on our skin, on dried skin cells that come off of us. We exfoliate skin cells all the time. They grow. I'm not trying to get disgusting, but they grow on mucous membranes and stuff like that. And I did some know also there are certain species of mold that grow primarily only in soils. There's 13 predominant species of bacteria and soils. There's 33 type of species of bacteria that grow from our human body, from our skin, from what we exfoliate from mucous membranes and the like. And there's more than that. There's a huge amount more than that in the home from what our bodies and may come in from soils. So there's a lot of bacteria. And even the actinos that grow on towels, on dishcloths, on our clothes, we wash if they don't dry fast enough, on water that gets in on. If rain gets in. Besides mold that might grow within hours, you won't see it. Bacteria may grow. And some of those are going to be actinos. I usually see in lab tests anywhere on the average from about 25 to 40% of the 40 type of molds that test does are of the actino family. But here's another thing. If you ever do this actino test and they give you these numbers for the human habitat and the soil, they give you a report in two forms. One's called index and one's called score. In the score report, they tell you that, for example, 785 species of bacteria showed up and 52 of those were pathogenic. And that score report may say, of the Actino family, 36 species showed up and 20 of those were pathogenic. And if you scroll down that report, they give you this long, boring list of probably 10 pages of the names of all these species and their concentrations. And they Might put a P after some of them, meaning they're label them pathogenic. So when, when there's too much focus on just the human and soil habitat, because there's far more pathogenic species overall in the home than just what shows up in the index report. But I think there's so much emphasis on the human habitat because we may be in closer proximity to that because we are our bodies and you know, it's coming off our bodies. So we have to think about the target. The target is what's in the air we're breathing. So we're not going around necessarily sticking your head in the clothes washer, smelling it. You're not going around so much smelling your bath towels and all of that. So we probably have more proximity to these pathogenic species, you know, that come from our bodies, this human habitat.

So I'm gonna. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I'm jumping for just a moment because I know we're gonna, we're gonna pull up. For those who are watching this, as opposed to listen to the audio, we're gonna pull up an example of one of the tests here and we'll take a look at it. But if I'm understanding this correctly, we can have bacteria in our homes from a few sources, our bodies. And I should have. We should have said, if you're eating lunch or eating dinner while listening to this, you, you maybe wanted to save this for later because it does get kind of gross. So it can come from our bodies, it can come from water events, a leaky pipe, you know, rain that got in a back door, or even just, you know, air drying our clothes or our damp towel we left on the floor, our drains, which I know we're going to talk about, and then soil. So, like, you know, my dog, we have a puppy. When he comes in, I often wonder, what are you bringing in on your feet? But. Or our shoes. So it sounds like there's a couple different avenues that bring bacteria into our home and allow it to thrive.

Correct.

Okay, so now you have talked before about that. You have seen that these high levels of actinos are concentrated in a couple areas of the home. What are those? And maybe we highlight that and then jump into the. An example of the test. Would that make sense?

Sure. Okay, so there's a building science concept you need to know. It's very simple. When we run, bath fans, kitchen fans, clothes dryers, rising, warm air we call stack effect, or we're pushing air out of our homes. I think you might have an illustration of that.

Yeah, let Me pull that up because that's an important one. Stack effect is something that, you know, you didn't know you needed to think about as a homeowner or renter, but it actually plays a pretty important role. You should be able to see my screen. Is that correct?

Yes.

All right, so this illustration comes from a white paper that, that Larry wrote on bacteria that we're actually going to link to on our website because it's got a ton of good information. But yeah, talk to us about stack effect.

Yeah. Let me give you a simple example to illustrate this. You go into an office building to go to an office or a doctor's visit or whatever. And if it's kind of a high rise building, you either walk into a vestibule and then through other doors into the building or you go through a revolving door. Now if you. Nobody would ever stop and think about this, but you think, well, why would the builder spend more money to put in an expensive revolving door when they can just have a regular door? So the deal is the warm air rises through that building through 10, 20, 30, 40 stores stories. The higher the building, the higher the stack effect. Because as that warm air rises, that leaves of white at the bottom, which creates a suction. We call it negative pressure. So if you were in this building and you didn't have a vestibule or revolving doors, you would not be able to open the door to go outside. Maybe you've been in a restaurant and in the restaurant in the kitchen they have these high volume exhaust fans over, over the, over the ovens and all. And they may have a vestibule. You walk through and then go through another door in. Because there's so much suction and negative pressure in the restaurant. If you tried to open, push the door open to leave it didn't have that vestibule, you would not be able to push that door open because of the rising air. We call that stack effect. So the warm air rises, it doesn't even have to be real hot, but just warm air rises. So as it rises, the air escapes through areas in the attic, the roof, we call that exfiltration, maybe around windows. And most of the air replacing the air being pushed out comes in from lower levels like you see in the illustration here with the arrows at the bottom going into a basement or crawl space. And then it goes through air penetrations rising up again. So there's a lot of ramifications of this. Think of this not trying to grow SH. Soils are 25% microbial growth from dead and decaying Organic material, leaves, twigs, branches, all of that. And there's moisture all the time in the soil. So there's all kind of microbial growth. There's air mixed in soils. Radon gas may be mixed in soils. So all these kind of. There's contaminants in the soils, in the air that can get into the building or the house. And we have ways in testing to measure the degree of that. We have cures creating air pressure differentials if it's really bad to stop that from happening. But you need to know about this effect because. Let me think where we were going on this, Kendra, with the bacteria.

Just the main source is, I think, you know, where are we finding bacteria? Largely in the home.

So the, the deal is, is that as we push air out, we're bringing in outdoor air. And outdoor air, both above and below ground, can have contaminants and bacteria in it that can come in that way as well as molds. So it's a. It's important to know because when we talk about the soil species, some of the ways the soil species can come into the home is because of the stack effect and the air communication within the home. Additionally, if you have pets that like to roll around in the dirt and such and come in the house, we even find that even in litter boxes with cats that a lot of actinos and bacteria like to grow in the litter. Believe it or not, I talked to a client Yesterday that spent 9,000 on automated cat litter box. It even has the exact weights of the different cats in the home. It has a way of sealing it all and keeping it from the air of the house. A very sanitized kind of a deal. It's an amazing thing. Story for another day.

Yeah. We're not telling you for all your furry friends, we're not telling you to get rid of your cats. We're going to talk about solutions and things that you can do. And I also, since I'm chiming in and interrupting your train of thought, folks, if you're listening, this is why the mold or water bacteria in your basement or your crawl space matters. People think it's not a living space. I don't have to worry about what's in the crawl space. I don't have to worry about what's in the basement or in the attic. That does impact your. Your indoor environment and your indoor air. And if I could jump in for just a moment, I think one of the things that the homeowners may not realize is that the, the air currents and the pressure in your home is constantly changing throughout the day just by the simple things that you do. Hopefully when you're cooking, you're using your oven range hood and that's going to create a negative pressure. Your bathroom fan, hopefully you're using that during and after your showers and even like running your dryer. Am I understanding that right, Larry? All those things and pack the way the air moves through our home.

Right. There's also convection currents that create circular movements of air from lower to higher in a circular movement in rooms. Just walking through a room can disturb microbially what's on surfaces in the room into the air. If we did a sport trap test ambient in the middle of a room per se, it hasn't been occupied for a while. We're going to get so many total spores per cubic meter of air. If you walk through the room for a moment and we retest, we're going to get a much higher level. Just the change in air movements disturbs what's on surfaces and puts them into the air. And always keep in mind our target is what's in the air we're breathing. Even though you do testing taking dust off walls. I don't mean this to be cute or funny, but I'm pretty sure you guys aren't going around licking the walls and the furniture. So we have to be, we have to decide, you know, what makes things on surfaces get in the air. We have medical correlation with these lab results that we know it happens. But you have to think about the mechanics of what makes these things. It's not all the time homogeneously coming off the surface at the same rate of speed. There's different events that make it happen. Air movement, temperature changes, air pressure changes that make things go from surfaces into the air we breathe. So.

Yeah, go ahead. I would say there is an interesting study like I think was Yale and I forget who they did it with. And they talked about, I think it was the classroom and they were measuring, you know, before the students got there and then, you know, during and after. And just the mere presence of people, human bodies in the room and just walking and disturbing put like, you know, can't remember if it was 137 million or billion. I should know this, you know, just into the air, just our presence being in the room kicked a lot into the environment. And I always thought that was interesting.

So on actinos I think it's further in this report. We talk about the bedroom and the bed. And this is really before. Before you go right there, you can.

Yeah, yeah. We'll leave it here.

When we're under covers during the night, there's virtually no ventilation, air ventilation under the covers. Our bodies give off heat, our bodies give off moisture. Our bodies exfoliate skin cells and others. And it was my intuition that this would be the perfect storm and factory for growth of bacteria and actinos. So I went about taking dust samples off mattresses and all and sending them to the lab. And sure enough, we got the highest level of bacteria and actinos off the dust from beds and pillows and stuff. And we find that the bedroom, of all places in the home, is the primary factory. Additionally, we found through testing that the rooms most people spend the most time in have the highest level of actinos, which on the human habitat, I mean, that's understandable. We're continually giving off moisture and heat. We're continually flaking off skin cells, and that happens. So what we have up here now is one. Are we ready to talk about this, Kendra?

Yeah, let's jump in. This is, this is one of the tests that can be run to measure, you know, bacteria in the home or, or at least what this test is able to report.

Yeah. Now, this test has two pieces. This is on a portion they call an actino index report. And it shows the 33 species of human habitat in the left column, 13 species of soil habitat in the right column. And it has numbers. These numbers are the concentration units, bacterial equivalents per milligram of dust. They tell, you know, is this a light little lobe? What is it? Now, in both of these categories, only five of these species are categorized pathogenic. And on the left column, the first one is about maybe a quarter of the way down that says corona bacterium amicolatum. Now, some of these names took me about a week to say without tripping, but I'm pretty good at it now. So the corona bacterium amicoatum was 7,454 units. Now, in all these reports, I see I've come to some interesting conclusions. I usually see that number no more than 2,3000. So in my mind, that's somewhat elevated. Now, if we skip down to the lower third of the side, the next one says corona bacterium simulans. Yeah, you got it. 26,000, 993. That's the next pathogenic. And that again is much higher than I usually see. And if we go a couple down to the corona bacterium tuberculostericum, 56,000, that's kind of in the middle. It's usually usually 5, 10, 20,000. I've seen it as high as 100 and 300 and 400,000, but that's very rare. This is definitely elevated over what I feel it should be. Go two down where it says Chronobacterium Xerosis. I'd say 95% of the time that's always non detected. And go two down to the propion bacterium Acnes 45,000. That actually is, is very related to skin. It's the actual species of bacteria that's within acne, but it doesn't mean you have acne to have it. But again that is elevated. It's usually maybe 5 to 10 to 20,000. I've seen it, except excessively higher. But I would say for the human habitat, these are not safe levels. On the right side, the only one of the five that has an elevation is this Rhodococcus fasciens. And that's about a little higher than I usually see. But I would judge that if, if the person is vulnerable to health symptom effects from actinos that this would cause them reaction this report. Now a lot of people focus on these two indices on the lower right. Would you like me to kind of go into that?

Yeah, because someone might run this report or their IEP or their, their physician might ask for it. And if you're looking at this and you're overwhelmed, I get it. It can seem like it's all Greek. Right? So yeah, let's talk about this dominance index and prevalence index.

The way these indices are created is a mathematical relationship between these numbers on the left and right side in these columns. So if you can follow, follow what I'm going to tell you. So if you add up these concentration numbers of the five pathogenic on the left side and divide by five, you get an average. You do the same thing with the five pathogenic on the right side and you divide by five and get an average. Now on the right side you can see there's only one concentration of the five and that's the 26 11. We almost always see lower numbers and concentrations of the soil than the human habitat. So for example, this prevalence index 52.2, what they did was divide the average from the pathogenic on the left side by the average of the pathogenic on the right side. So when you divide a number by a smaller number, you're always going to get a larger quotient. So I like to focus on what are the concentrations of the five pathogenic in each rather than these indices as some of the physicians say. If that prevalence index is greater than 2.0, and certain genes are elevated in a test called a GENIE test and a category called tgif, then that means you're going to have health effects. My feeling on this is if we get over averages that are what I call a trigger level that they're going to cause symptoms if one is vulnerable to actinos. So I don't know if you've all heard of a test called genie, like genie in the bottle. It's a newer test. Thousands have taken it. And on the last page of that test, there's three questions that say, does this patient show an activity response to actinomycetes? Yes or no. Endotoxins, yes or no. Mycotoxins, yes or no. And let's say, hypothetically, you're that patient and it says you react to actinos, but you don't react to endo or mycotoxins from mold. That doesn't mean you're safe for all time that you don't react to these. It means the environment you've been living in at the time you had that blood draw, those levels in the air maybe weren't high enough to trigger those. Those activities. So in my mind, everybody's kind of have trigger points that have sensitivity levels. If you're lucky, they're so high you never get them triggered, and you don't get the symptoms, but you can't take the results of that test. I've worked with too many people where that test shows they don't react to any of them, but the house affects them. And our goal is to reduce these numbers you see next to these pathogenic species. So I've created a protocol on treating the home with certain type of cleaning techniques to reduce the creation of these actinos as well as reduce, you know, all the. All the bacterial activity and to keep. To help keep them at low levels. So it's interesting. I've worked with a lot of different people, and a lot of these people have different trigger points that will trigger their symptoms. So let me explain my little shoebox analogy. I think it's appropriate now.

Yeah, I think that's. That's a good. It's a good segue, too, because we've kind of covered, you know, how the bacteria gets into our environment that we can test for it, how it impacts us. Let's do the shoebox analogy before you jump into the. Okay, great. I'm grossed out now. What do I do about it, Larry? But yeah, let's start with the shoebox analogy.

Okay, so I like to tell stories. I. I kind of imagination things to kind of understand these concepts better. So I want you to picture that you and your family live in the back half of a giant, large, imaginary, clean, new, shiny shoebox. And halfway across this box, you have four or five air purifiers and filters lined up. And at the far end of the box is a wall. And from that wall, you never know when some sand is going to come out and travel to the other end, through the box, to the other end. And sometimes that sand may be a very light level, Sometimes it might be medium, sometimes it might be heavy, Sometimes it might be very heavy, sometimes not at all. Now, when that sand comes out light or medium, each of these air purifier machines has a capacity of how much stuff they can take out of the air. Now, if it's a lighter, medium load of sand coming at them, these machines may take all of that sand out of the air. And as the air travels through, none of the sand gets back to where you're living, and everybody's happy and healthy. Now picture now that that sandstorm comes out heavy, some of that sand may get back where you live, but may not be at a high enough level to trigger symptoms. And again, you're healthy and happy. Now, when that sandstorm is very heavy, the level of sand getting back to where you live, they make you miserable and you get symptomatic. So now, if you open a window on each side of your box where you live, put a fan in one window, blowing air out and pulling fresh air in from the other, you blow out the remaining sand. So there's a number of important takeaways from this example. Sand obviously is representing the contaminants in the home. Okay? The air filters represent air purification. Whether it's the pco, air filtration, whatever, opening the windows and blowing air out represents ventilation. So the key is, and some of the takeaways, just throwing an air filter in your house isn't necessarily the magic bullet, okay? And maybe putting two, three of them isn't the magic bullet, but maybe it is. Maybe in your shoebox, you know, you don't have a lot of sand coming out of the wall. Okay? Sand obviously represents the contaminants. And know this, you're never going to live in a clean room. There is always going to be sand in your box. And our goal, my goal, my colleague's goals is to not only assess, but to come up with solutions that that level of sand is always below what I call your trigger points. And we want to also make sure that sand does not create spikes that can occasionally jump up and affect you. So the way we can achieve that is first of all by we want to stop any sources that are actively creating sand in your home. And these sources might be the result of current water damage, they might be the result of past water damage that might be coming off past remediated surfaces in the home that still may be giving off some stuff. So in the assessment, besides just taking lab tests that give us more info than it's good or it's bad, you know, we don't want to just pay money to say, you know, this is good or this is bad. We want it to help in solutions. So in this assessment of we want to get a good idea of where sources are, what are they, where are they, and how can we correct them and stop them from being a cause. Then what we call remediation, it's great, but its main goal isn't necessarily to correct everything in the home. It's to correct these sources and neutralize these sources. And then a next step, which we call a special cleaning protocol, is then to remove the result of what all this pastor current stuff is left as residue in the home that you don't see that are plated out on surfaces and then treat the air before, you know, the whole job is done. Right. So, you know, solution.

No, that's really helpful way for people to think about it because it kind of comes down to three areas. If we're thinking about your shoebox and how analogy it's the source removal, which would be remediation or some of the cleaning techniques which we'll dive into. It's filtration. So that might be like your air purifiers or cleaners, your, your MERV 11 or 13 or whatever you have on your H VAC system. And then ventilation, which is, I think, an underutilized thing, you know, even opening your windows provides ventilation. Or some people use ERVs or things like that. So it's. Those three things are a great way to think about your, your indoor environment and how you need all three kind of working in conjunction, right. To really give you the best possible outcome.

So, for example, when we work on solutions for a client, you know, we first want to identify and neutralize all the sources we can find. And we give protocols on how to neutralize those best, as we know, in a safe way. And we have protocols for, you know, the special cleaning and all of those techniques. And this tends to work well. But we found the closest Thing we found to the magic bullet, assuming the sources are somewhat moderate, is the right combinations of air purification and ventilation. Now, in ventilation, the more perfect way, and it's a little more expensive, is using like an energy recovery ventilation system. But we don't want them hooked up the way people that normally hook them up hook them up. We have specific protocols and methods to make sure the incoming air is very safe. We want that air coming in from a safe level. We want it to go through a special filter coming in the home. We may have to take out the filter that comes in the unit. We want to change the velocity of the exhaust air and pick up that exhaust air from the right area in the home to take it out of the home. And then we want to create an air pressure differential that we might want to have a higher air pressure in a room over level, over crawl space, for example, to keep crawl space air from coming up or from outdoor air from coming in or from the building envelope. But I do want to say that the right combination we recommend on filtration and ventilation, we've had over 90% success. And seeing the patient's symptoms improve.

Yeah, it's a really.

I found, you know, just to give an idea of typical costs, and then I want to tell you a simple, inexpensive way of creating some very effective air ventilation. But I'd say depending on the location of your air handler, furnace or furnaces, and how many there are, but per system we found around the country with contractors we've worked with, that I'd say a typical range of cost for parts, material, labor, and getting it working right, might range from about 7 or 8 to 12 to 15 to $18,000. It varies depending on all that. But when you consider medical costs and everything else, and I mean, if this is a solution, it may be worth it. And if you're thinking of moving at some point in the future, you can even take that system with you and put it back like it was. And you would have labor cost on both ends. But you're not going to lose the whole cost if you were to leave your property.

Yeah. Just for further context for people, like an ERV is something you are going to pay to add to your home. Right. And it does a couple of things. It helps to bring in fresh air, which is super important, especially as our homes are built tighter, tighter and tighter. And then you, you actually said you were hinting towards you use it slightly differently, because I know you put buildings under a slight positive pressure, too, if it's attainable.

And it really what it depends on. All homes have air communication with the outdoors around junctions of windows and doors, penetrations that might go through to the outside where there's little openings and air can come in and out. So in newer homes that are built tighter, it's easier to achieve negative, let's say neutral to positive air pressure in the home most of the time. In an older home, where the home breathes more with the outside, there's areas we can easily try and tighten up air communication, like using foam socket sealers around electrical outlets and switch plates, using caulking cord to seal up junctions of base trim with floors, maybe around windows, areas where a lot of air communication takes place. But there's instrumentation, and we guide a lot of our clients, contractors, how to measure these things, how to measure the air pressure differences, and how to balance the system properly.

Yeah, and just to reference, if you think about that stack of X image that we showed you, this is why this matters, because we, you know, you saw those arrows that were bringing in air from, you know, your basement across space or this leaky windows or wherever and was coming up through your house. Now if you, if you change the pressure, those arrows start pointing out just ever so slightly. So instead of bringing contaminants in, you're kind of pushing them out almost like a, like a balloon, you know, that's filling up and, you know, pushing the limits. You're kind of working it to your advantage.

Let me give you an interesting illustration. About six, seven years ago, I was on site at a client's home. It was a farmhouse in a town called Mumford, Connecticut, southeast Connecticut. And the lady's husband was the inflammatory patient in this home. Now, they were like on farmland and where their boundary ended, which I'd say was about pre football fields away. On the next property was an old rotted barn that was dilapidated and coming apart and had a lot of contamination in it, I believe. And it was in a westerly direction from the home. And in the home, we couldn't find any real intrinsic sources of problem. I was able to ascertain with measurements both in the air and near that, that barn, that the western prevailing winds from the west were bringing airborne contaminants from that barn and getting sucked into that home because of that negative pressure and causing this problem. And even though the house didn't have forced air heat, it was, you know, hot water radiators. I work with that H VAC contractor in ways that we could pressurize the home to keep that from happening. And it worked out well.

So and I love that because it's about finding like solutions that work because we don't live in a perfect environment. And so what can we do to change that? Now an ERV is an expensive thing and you alluded to you had a more cost effective solution. So can you talk about that?

I can. And I found it works really well with a lot of my client patients. And even if it were winter and cold outside, even if you did it for short periods of time, could be helpful. I mean, it's a little more difficult for an all time solution because it requires a little minor effort. But here's the deal to if it's, let's say it's a ranch home or on one level, say it's on a crawl space or a basement. And what you can do is if you open a window, now most people have double hung windows that go up and down. Some have crank out casement windows, some may have sliders. So there's variations, but there are different size. If you go for example to a website called Amazon, I'm pretty sure every sometimes I bring up that site and so I'll often bring up the Amazon site and before I do, as I bring it up, I'll tell my clients, I'm sure this is a site you've never seen before. But anyway, if you go to the search bar on Amazon and you put in window fans, you'll see a plethora of maybe 50 different kind of window fans. A lot of them are these horizontal where the ends have like accordions that you can open or close to fit a size window. And you set it on the sill and it has like two fans in it, but you turn it in a way to blow the air outside, not inside, and you bring the top window down on it. So say there's a room, you put that in and then on an opposite side of the room or across the hall in another room, you open a window and again you go to Amazon and in the search bar you put filter cloth or you put MERV 13 filter cloth. They have like a bolt of cloth. This acts as a filter. So if you take wide blue painter's tape that won't peel paint and you tape filter cloth over the open window, fresh air is going to come in through just like that imaginary picture in the shoebox. You put a fan in one window, blowing air out and you pull fresh air in from the other. Now if you do that on each level of the home, say for 20 to 30 minutes, two to three times a day, you will reduce the level of contaminants in the air of your home. You may get them down below your trigger points. And we see this works really well. I want you to continually think of focusing on what is in the air you're breathing. You're not licking the walls. So people say, you know, bad stuff is created outdoors. Why am I not affected so much outdoors? Because you have the wind in the atmosphere to dilute it. But when these things come in from outdoors and they don't ventilate, they build up an intensity and intensity into the air you're breathing, and they're more likely than going to affect you. I cannot overemphasize how important ventilation is. It's key. It's really number one key. Now, if your sources are so great that ventilation itself is not enough, because what's being created is so overwhelming and fast, if it's coming in faster than it's going out, you got a problem. But generally, most homes, so people say, you know, do I have to do this entire small particle cleaning, the labor, the time, the cost, and to do it right? I mean, in the ideal world, yeah, you want to do all that. But if you can combine these treatments, if you can do a reasonable amount of the cleaning and you can do a reasonable amount of purification and a reasonable amount of ventilation, you may be able to keep that sand level low enough on a continuing basis. I'm not saying this can work in every case all the time, but it's a reasonable approach. A lot of people get so overwhelmed with what they have to do, it just doesn't get done.

Yeah. So. So to kind of, to summarize again, so you, you were giving us some solutions for ventilation, which is super important now. Filtration, you know, we're going to run out of time for this interview, but for anyone listening, I did a great interview with Carl Grimes. We talked about air purification, air cleaners, your H VAC system. So we're not going to dive too much into that because it can help, but it doesn't take the place of source removal. So let's, let's kind of circle it back to source removal, because you mentioned small particle cleaning. You mentioned cle Obviously, you know, on a more intense level, we're talking remediation, where you're bringing in a professional company. You're dealing with, you know, probably water damage and mold and bacteria. But there are things that we can do ourselves to reduce that source, like the byproducts, what was put off in the rest of the environment. So can you talk to us a little bit. I know you have some, some interesting tidbits on mattresses and on drains and just cleaning. What can we do ourselves to reduce the source in our homes?

Yeah, kind of simplifying some of the things you can do. Think about your plumbing drains, especially in your shower and tub. Both soap films and hair and skin cells, without getting too gross, build up on the side walls of the drain. There's a U shaped trap there that has water in it. But there are other drains in your house you don't use a lot. And the negative pressuring your home can bring up sewer gases and actinos and bacteria and mold into the air of the home, pulling it through this drain plumbing. You want to make sure that all the drains in your home, whether they're in sinks you never use or whatever, that every week you run some water in it to fill that trap to keep sewer gas and all that from getting sucked into the home. And the simple way to clean, I'd say even no less than monthly. So if you take a bowl and make a solution with some free and clear dish detergent, maybe even six, seven drops per quarter water, and you get like a stiff cylindrical shaped oxo brush that it's a good, good brush for cleaning. And if you take the drain cover off, say in your shower and you put the brush in the solution and you go up and down in the drain, the brush is going to come out looking really gross. Rinse it off in the sink, put it back in the solution and do it again two, three times until it comes out looking clean. Then pour a bottle of drugstore grade hydrogen peroxide down the drain, let it sit 10, 15 minutes and then run water through and you're done. Put the drain cover back. And also if you clean the shower walls and tiles, I'd say at least once a week with the same type of a detergent and water and rinse it off. Believe it or not, you don't see it. A soap film and skin cells build up on there you don't see. And we get growth on the shower surround and your bath towels and all. After you shower, if you really want to do it to the nines, you use that towel once and you'll, you'll put it in the wash or else if you're going to dry it, you want to make sure it dries within an hour or two.

That's really helpful. That's something actionable that, that I'm going to be better about committing to. It's water. You said Some the non scented, you know, dish soap or seventh generation. I don't want to name brands specifically. And then do you add a little vinegar or anything for acidity to that when you're cleaning bacteria?

I find that if you add like per quart of mixture of the 6, 7 drops per quart of water for the, for the soap solution and you add one to two tablespoons of vinegar, it will change the pH to be slightly acidic. And I like that for this reason, if you leave an acidic film on the surface, we find bacteria don't like to grow on it. So it will add some resistance to the bacterial growth.

I love that. Yeah, anything you can do to increase your chances that you're minimizing it. And then you said just the hydrogen peroxide that you get at the drugstore, at the grocery store, 15 minutes and then you rinse it all down. That's super helpful. Now, what about our mattresses because, you know, we spend 90% of our time indoors and a huge percent of that is in bed where we're sweating and putting off those skin cells. And, you know, definitely a place where I'm sure bacteria love to thrive.

So what I recommend in my white paper and feel free, you know, to distribute that to anybody, we'll link to it. Yeah, they can contact us. But we recommend we, we keep a little shop on our website that anything on it connects to Amazon to buy. There's a thing called a bed vacuum cleaner. It's a plug in powerful motor hepa. And believe me, if you took, if you were an inventor and took that onto Shark Tank, I think they'd laugh you off the stage. Like, who in the world's going to buy a bed vacuum cleaner? But in our protocol, we say when you change your sheets to vacuum the mattress cover and the pillows with this machine and daily. I know it's kind of a pain, but you get in the habit when you get out of bed to vacuum the top sheet you've been lying on and vacuum your pillow will help. We found that does dramatic help. If your bedroom has carpeting, be careful. When you vacuum, the air brings particles in that have settled into the carpet. Into the vacuum, it goes through a filter or filter bag. Say it's a HEPA. Any particle smaller than HEPA openings in your lower lungs are 0.1, 0.2 micron. They're smaller than HEPA. Those particles will go through the filter back in the air of the home. And they're so small and light, they can hang in the air long periods of Time. So when you vacuum, I want you to have a fan in that window blowing air out and the door open and maybe 10 minutes afterward to try get rid of all these particles the vacuum put in the air. Ideally, I want you to remove the carpeting in the bedroom and replace it with something like luxury final tile that's floating or some other safe material. And at least one time to follow a special protocol to clean the walls. You don't have to do that all the time, but you really have to be. I'd say the master bedroom, the adjoining bath are going to be the primary actino factories. The family room and the kitchen you want to do. Put more priority on your cleaning in those areas will help reduce the bacterial levels. Be mindful of what's going on outdoors. Do what you can to try ventilate the home. But we would be happy, you know, if anybody wants info or we can work with them with protocols. And I don't know how much time we have, but I wanted to address a couple other things or if you have, if you have some true false questions or things I do.

Do you want to speak to it first? And then, you know, I do have a little game for us. But do you have anything else? Feel free to chime in with anything else you want to mention before we wrap up with that.

You know, there's so many things I want to mention, it's hard, hard to put them in line.

Will you come back for another interview?

I will. But let me just address one thing. Real, real. There's a creation I created about 10, 15 years ago and I've got it now. I'm working with a client of mine that I'm, I'm working with heavily. There are in the software business creating software. That's a method of easily taking a little quiz on eight functional areas of your home on your phone, laptop or iPad. And it will generate a report that will tell you the risk of each area of your home and in total for the creation of moisture, mold and bacteria. And it will also, in the areas that, that are correctable, tell you what those areas are and how to do corrections. And it will be reasonably priced. We're beta testing it in about a week or two. It's called Map Mold Action Plan. So keep your eyes open for that. Eyes and errors.

Absolutely. And you'll have to keep us posted. I'll definitely be following up with you on that. Any tool that really empowers the homeowner or renter to take control of their environment is. It can feel very Overwhelming. But, you know, there's good news here. There are steps you can take that can, you know, improve your overall indoor air quality. They don't cost a lot necessarily. They require some time and getting in the routine of it. You know, if you're not changing your sheets regularly and washing them, that's an easy thing to think about. I love clean sheets. It's like my favorite thing, you know, these are small steps you can take. Larry, if it's okay, can. Can we do some quick little quiz show that I want to call true or False?

I love it. Let's do it.

And. And you're going to find that it shouldn't really be true or false because, you know, often answers are somewhere in between. So here are some things that we see people asking all the time. So true or false? I've seen it suggested that if you see, like, a suspicious spot, maybe I'm like, molding or wherever. And you want to know if it's mold, you should pour hydrogen peroxide on it. And if it bubbles, that means it's mold. If it doesn't bubble, it's not mold. True or false?

Partially. Partially true. Because here's the deal. Hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, wants to get rid of one atom of oxygen. Just be H2O. So it uses that atom to oxidize what it comes in contact with. Now, if the mold is alive, it will cause it to bubble through oxidation. But if there are other forms of microbial growth or bacteria or other life forms that are alive, that will also bubble. So I think the effective answer is I would go with it, because if it's not mold and other microbial growth, it's not good for you anyway. So it's an okay test.

Yeah. So it may not mean mold or no mold. It means more. There's an organic substance, something alive, and there's something alive there that maybe you don't want to be there. Okay, awesome. So then here's my next one. True or false. You can take a black light to something and have it show mold that is otherwise not visible.

Now, it's true to a large degree, but ultraviolet has different wavelengths, and depending on the source of black light you have, which is ultraviolet, you may or may not see the mold, but there are. I know I've got a device myself from Amazon. I forgot the name of it, but it was maybe 80, 90 bucks. It was a black light deal. It's not a hundred percent, but if. If you turn out the lights and you shine it, I mean, you'll Even see cleaning streaks that were used when the house was built from just leftover stuff you don't see with the naked eye. But especially in areas where you know there's been water damage, for example, or like an area under a window in the wall where you have this envelope where if the flashing of the window allows water to get in, you won't see behind the wall. But if sometimes you'll get condensation or dripping on the wall that there might be some minor mold growth. I would look in vulnerable areas with the uv, and if there's something of, of some nature of size or consequence, it'll probably pop out with the UV light. But it doesn't mean it's exactly mold. It might be something you need to deal with. If you pull back carpeting and the tack strips sometimes get rusty or that little wood. I mean, areas where you think there's bing water. I would use the black light. It's a good investigative tool, but don't count on it to be 100%.

And I, I think, honestly, something even simpler that just about everyone probably owns is a flashlight. And you would be surprised what you can find with a flashlight under your sinks in your attic. And if you have a wall here or a beam and you don't shine the light directly at it, but if you hold it this way or even in your, your, underneath your kitchen cabinet, pull everything out, do that this weekend and lay the light flat, you're going to see things that you wouldn't otherwise be able to see. So a flashlight, something that we all have, can I actually do a lot for you. Doesn't cost very much.

Get a light that is really strong. The flashlight's the best single tool I would recommend using. Just like you described. Sideways, not just straight on.

Yeah, Yeah, I love it. All right, this last one, and then we're going to wrap it up, Larry. And we kind of covered it. But true or false, if you kill mold and bacteria, it's no longer a health issue.

Well, I'm sorry, repeat that, please.

If you kill mold and bacteria, it's no longer a health issue.

False. We find that whether this stuff is dead or alive, even the dried chemicals on them will affect. Will affect your health. So killing it is not the answer. Removing it is the answer. Even the ICS 520 standard from the insurance industry, MOG remediation. Remove, remove, remove. The chemical companies that create these biocides and all, yes, they prove they can kill this stuff and all, but in the act of doing it, and what's in these chemicals may not be good for you. Myself and colleagues, we've studied this over a year and we find and we've picked out special surfactants that work the best, that you may see enzyme stains after you clean. But that's not mold. Those are enzyme stains. If you remove with surfactant the right way, with elbow grease, you're going to remove dead and alive together. You're going to leave a clean surface. And then the next step, control the moisture. It's hard to stay below 50% relative humidity. That would be the very, very, very most. 40 to 50%. You can go to 60% pretty safely. But there will, there are molds that will grow without free water with high moisture. And you want to stay below 60% however you do it.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think a big takeaway from this conversation, it's about source removal. You don't need fancy chemicals. A surfactant, your dish soap, for example, and some good old fashioned elbow grease can go. So, Larry, if people had follow up questions or wanted to get into touch with you, how could they find you?

A couple ways. Our website, safestart iaqed, like indoor air quality. Safestartiaq.com we have a place you can enter your info and questions and contact info and our uptake will get to you. Or you can call us at 8479-1392-0084-7913 9200. And a very educated service would take your call and connect you with our uptake staff. And usually same day, but maybe next day we get back to you and not rather than just, you know, tell you what it cost and this and that, we do a little infomercial. We want to know what's going on with you and how we can help you. We can talk about our schedules and pricing and all of that.

Yeah. Well, Larry, thank you so much for being here. You're a wealth of information. I hope you come back another time because I know there's other things, you know, we want to talk about that we just ran out of time today for. So thank you for your time.

My pleasure. Glad to be aboard. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. And for everyone listening, if you found this interview helpful, do me a favor like follow and share us on Facebook or Instagram, YouTube because that's really the best way to get great information like this directly in your hands. We'll see you next time. Thank you so much.