Matt Kelly explains how the ERMI test identifies which mold species are in a home and at what levels, helping inspectors decide how much remediation is needed. Testing again three to six months after cleanup confirms the work actually worked.
Three to six months after remediation.
Stachybotrys (stachy), Chaetomium (ketomium), Wallemia (wollemia), Trichoderma, Aspergillus, and Penicillium.
Angie's asking, how do you use an ERMI test to help patients? Well, the ERMI test lets me help patients by understanding the toxicity of their home. So there are people that will say, I mold toxic. I did mycotoxins lab, so I don't really have to test my home. I know it's a problem. Well, not knowing how toxic your home is is a problem, because here's what can happen. Say your house is full of stachy and ketomium and wollemia and trichoderma and aspergillus and penicillium. And you're like, I'm just going to get someone in to fix a leak we know I have in our bathroom. But you don't know all these toxic molds you have. So you have no barrier to measure progress by. You don't have a baseline of mold for your house. So if you have a whole whack and high concentrations of these bad molds and you have someone in that just finds one spot wrong, your problem's going to persist. They're missing a lot. If we get the results of your house and see it's a train wreck of mold colonization everywhere, different mold species growing everywhere, then we know they need to find multiple sources. All these molds don't grow at one spot. They don't like each other. That's why they send out mycotoxins. So it's going to be in a lot of different spots of the house. So it's just like testing the body. We want to know what's there, how toxic it is, and how much you have of it. With your home, we want to know which molds are there, how toxic they are, what the concentrations are, so that an inspector or remediation company has an idea of what they're working with and can try to find all these. And then when remediation is all done and they assure you your house is clean and healthy, what you can do in three months or six months later is doing another ermi. Is stachy still showing up? Is ketomium still showing up? It gives you a bar to measure progress by and to make sure what you're living in isn't still stressing your body and affecting you. So just like we have to test the body to understand it, we need to test the home to understand it. So that's how I use the ERMI test. We know what's happening, we know if it's stressing the body, but it's also used later to make sure the house truly is clean because mold sucks. It's not always obvious. You know, inspectors can miss spots, you know, and sometimes this is a tool that can say, hey, there's still a raging ketomium mold problem somewhere in this house, okay? So I hope that helps give a little idea of how the ERMI is so beneficial.
Do you have questions about mold in your home or body? Book a consultation with Matt, AKA the Mold man, to guide your home and body to next level of healing.
