Mold Remediation Part 3: The Mold Sensitized Client

Yeah. So the first thing to think about is that the mold synthesized clients look like you and I and anybody that you see on the street. They can be young, they can be old, they can be male, female, children, adults, high schoolers, whatever.

Thank you to our sponsor, Airmada Drying Solutions. Their generosity helps keep our resources free and available to the public. For more information on our sponsor, please head on over to our corporate partners page@changetheairfoundation.org As a reminder, this mini class series is designed to provide a consumer friendly overview of the mold remediation process. It is not a do it yourself series, nor does it cover every detail or scenario that needs to be considered during mold remediation. Before beginning mold remediation, be sure to work with a knowledgeable indoor environmental professional and remediation company. Today we're going to talk about part three of our remediation mini class series that focuses on remediation for the mold sensitized individual. Michael Panto is back to take us through this important topic and he's been talking about the mold sensitized client, I mean, for a long time now. And I know it's something that he's super passionate about. So thank you so much, Michael, for being here today.

What an absolute opportunity. And thank you so much for providing this space so that people can learn.

Yeah. Before we jump in though, I think it's important that we kind of talk about what we mean when we say mold sensitized client. So can you tell us who does that look like so that we kind of all go into this with the same understanding?

Sure, yeah. So the first thing to think about is that the mold synthesized clients look like you and I and anybody that you see on the street. They can be young, they can be old, they can be male, female, children, adults, high schoolers, whatever. Many times people hear the statistic that's thrown around that about 25% of the population is mold sensitized. That's actually incorrect. There's genetic situations with certain people that make them susceptible to being mold sensitized. And it's true that about 25% of the population, as far as we can understand from the genetic studies and stuff, actually carry those genes that may make a person potentially susceptible to mold. But to be a mold sensitized individual, you have to have that genetic disposition and you have to have an exposure that then tells the body that it has to respond to the mold, and then it doesn't respond properly. And then you start getting this cascade of symptoms that we'll talk about. Just briefly. And that's what the mold sensitized person is. But realize that the. There's a lot of people that could be mold sensitized that are not because they haven't had a. You know, some of them only need a slight mold exposure. Quite a few people need a more significant mold exposure. Bad remediation. Living in a moldy house for weeks or months or years. You're shaking your head. Yes, because I know you're one of those people that didn't know they were susceptible to being mold sensitized and then had some exposure which caused your life to just crash in a lot of different ways. So that's who we're reaching out to. Not just the people who already who have had exposure and know they're sensitized because their body is telling them that, but the rest of the population. Because unless you have some sort of genetic test and actually look for those particular genes or you have a mold exposure and don't recover from it, well, those are like the two ways that you figure out that you're mold exposed. And that second way, pardon the expression, that stinks. I mean, that ruins your life. Whereas, anyway, so just remember, there's a difference between being. Having the potential to be mold sensitized and actually being mold sensitized are two different things.

Yeah. And I think, I think at the end of the day, this is why we talk about the importance of like safe and effective mold remediation. Right. Just for everyone. Because you don't always know if. If you are going to develop that sensitivity to mold. So let's jump right in because I know they're here to hear from you and not from me. So go ahead and take it away.

Well, that's fine. Thank you. Well, thank you again, Kendra. What an opportunity to share with people. And as you can see here from the lead in slide, this is part of the series that we're talking about with all these different and wonderful pieces of information related to the mold situation. So let's just get right into it here. I always like to start here. I know that people who have watched different parts of the series may have seen this slide a couple of times, but it's a great place to start, either to remind you what's going on or as an introduction. When we're talking about the mold sensitized individual, we have to make sure that we don't minimize the extent to which they're dealing with a lot of different aspects of the mold remediation process. And as you can see from this Slide. It starts with the water damage building in the center and then everything takes off from there. Now, I'm not a medical doctor, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about the medical side of things that you can see. Nor am I officially a counselor that might be able to help people with some of the social issues that go on. Because, oh my goodness, it just. The more you deal with people like this, the more you realize that they need prayers from us and they need help and emotionally the sport. Sometimes there's other loved ones in their life that don't understand the mold sensitization, don't think that it's real. And so they're not really supportive. The number of divorces that we've seen as a result of this, just as scary to me. Of course there's a financial strain. They spend money and think that they're getting the remediation done properly. It doesn't get done properly, then they have even more problems and it's just on and on and on. Legal issues in some cases. But for today's discussion, we want to focus on the bottom there. What happens on the environmental side for the mold sensitized individual. And even on the environmental side, we're really going to focus on the one there that's a second from the right at the bottom, the whole structure cleaning. Because, you know, there's other sections in the series here that talk about investigations and the source removal of the contaminants and even content decontamination and things like that. And there is a section on whole structure cleaning which is going to be really helpful. But today I want to take that a little bit bigger perspective and talk about it in regards to sensitized individual. So let's start here. Standard mold remediation that's taught in most classes, and I know this for a fact because I've taught lots of the classes myself and have colleagues and friends and co instructors. And it doesn't matter where you're getting the training, iicrc, normi, ria, acac. I mean, there's lots of places that offer good mold remediation training. And the standard training is focused on some background information and some personal protective equipment, but mostly on how to safely remove the source material. So you're getting rid of the mold colonies and you're doing it in such a way, if it's done right, you're doing it in such a way that that removal doesn't cause any further cross contamination of the house or the office or wherever it is that is being conducted. The remediation is being conducted. Now, the problem with that is that even if it's done properly, it's missing what the S520 standard talks about as condition two, which is residue from the mold colonies that have, you know, spread throughout the house. And although bad remediation is actually the best way to spread contamination throughout the house, it also is spread just by people living in the house and the mold growing there and that sort of stuff. So again, just realize many times by the time the individual who's sensitized is now sick enough and goes through all the medical things to screen out all the other things that could be wrong with them, they don't have fibromyalgia, they don't have chronic fatigue syndrome, they're struggling to find out what it is. They finally hit on the fact that they have mold contamination. Maybe they actually have mycotoxin levels in their body, that sort of stuff. By the time they get there, it's usually months or even years that the mold has been growing. And as it grows, those spores are just being dispersed by the normal air currents and the H vac, which is the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system. And so the facts on the bottom here is really so important to me. If you have that contamination already in your house and you don't do anything to deal with the secondary contamination, yes, the people come in, yes, they do a great job removing the source material so it's no longer spreading around. But for all those previous months and years, it has been spreading around just naturally. And you don't do anything else to your house. There's a number of good studies, and I know the numbers here are a little wild because it's a pretty big variation between 6 and 24 months for the mold spore levels in the building or in the home to come back to what we would call a normal level. So you can let the house sit and you can live in there. But if you're already sick, do you really want to spend another two years being sick while the house cleans itself? Or do you now recognize that, okay, the source is out of there, but we have to deal with the residual contamination and we do a whole house cleaning. And depending on the size of the house and the size of the crew and stuff, that's, that's normally a one to three day process. But the interesting thing, I just want to finish with this slide, is that what we find after a good whole house cleaning is that we haven't taken the house back to a normal Fungal ecology. It is freaking clean. It's really, really clean. So that, you know, the. The sensitized individual who's just struggling on the medical end doesn't necessarily have the, you know, to ward off the assaults, the continued assaults from the environmental end. So, again, what does all that mean in terms of both the source removal and the cleaning of the structure? Well, it means a couple of things. One is that you have to have a pretty good inspection. You can't identify where that mold is in the first place, because I tell you what, I don't want to spend. And it can be, you know, a significant amount of money. We could be talking six or eight or $10,000 to do a whole house cleaning and do it right. I don't want to spend that and then find out, oh, well, there's some source material that got left in the basement or underneath the kitchen sink that nobody looked at or anything like that. So, you know, that initial inspection and making sure that you're taking care of all of the sources, even some small secondary sources, at the same time, that's the way to go. Then you also have to remember that it's not just the mold, but it's the mycotoxins that get spread around. I've already talked about this. Your heating, ventilation, air conditioning system pushes it around. It goes just naturally on the air currents because of temperature and pressure changes in the house people. And although I'm, you know, a pet fan, I have to admit that they really, the pets tend to do more in terms of spreading some of the spores and the mycotoxins around than many of the people do. And then there's that number again in terms of. And again, I would point out that the studies that I looked at to, you know, include this in the slide here. Most of these are from various European sources where they have been tracking the secondary contamination, and they've been doing cleaning for health in houses over there longer than we have. The other thing I would point out is quite bluntly, most of the European houses are smaller houses than we have as a typical house size here in the United States. And so, you know, cleaning the whole house in Sweden, for example, is going to be a lot less burdensome than cleaning one in Houston, Texas, which is, you know, 4,000 square feet or something like we have in many of these subdivisions and things. So again, for the person who could be mold sensitized and maybe doesn't have the exposure yet or knows that they're sensitized because they've had the exposure, we do have to just think about this as stair steps. I like the red carpet myself in the illustration here because if you get to the top of this and get it finished, it's like, woo, we're standing on the heights here and maybe somebody will take our picture. Right? But anyway, the fact of the matter is there's all of these things that are going to be included in dealing with that environmental side of the process for the sensitized individual. Of course, the source material has to get taken care of. We even like to have the finished materials repaired before you do a lot of the house cleaning and H vac cleaning and things, because the repair also creates a lot of dust and everything. So why not clean up all of that at the same time that you're doing the cleanup of the other things? And there you can see the heating, ventilation, the air conditioning, which is H vac cleaning that really has to be done well. And there's a whole section on that coming up. I know, content decontamination. I mean, we talk about whole house cleaning. We're basically talking about the structure of the house, the walls, the ceilings, the floors, you know, the attached countertops and cabinets like you see behind me, that sort of stuff. But the other portion of that, of course is content decontamination. And again, we've got a really good session on that coming up here in the, in the mini training. So then we will talk a little bit more about the whole structure cleaning. But I did want to throw that last bullet point in there that sometimes even going through all this isn't enough for the sensitized individual. And there's other things that we can do. I do want to point out if your listeners and the CTAF members haven't reached out to look for the book Mold Free Construction by a gentleman by the name of Doug Hoffman. They really need to look at that because he talks about so many additional things you can do after you do all this cleaning. Kind of make your life so much better while you're in your house just on a natural or on a regular basis, but more importantly help to prevent the reoccurrence of the mold in the first place. So what might be some of those specialized steps at the bottom there? This is a bit more extreme, but sometimes it's important to put, you know, better filtration on your furnace and air conditioning system. And this diagram, if you look in the center toward the bottom, you can see it's got a HEPA filter in there. Well, a HEPA filter is way too dense to just Put in the normal Airstream. We've actually had people try to do that. You totally screw up your ventilation system. So it's got to be set up like you're seeing here, with a segmented return. And it's what they call a bypass, where you take about 25% of the air. Every time that the air moves through the system, you're taking about 25% of that, putting it through the HEPA filter. And then we also, like, you can see in the center there, right where it says furnace, there's that little black thing in there, and that's representation of an ion generator. So there's different things you can do to make your house and your mechanical systems and even your cleaning processes. I mean, we recommend very specific techniques for how to keep your house clean after you go through all of this. So, you know, it doesn't necessarily just stop when you have the source removed. And then you clean your contents, clean your H vac system, and clean the whole house. As a sensitized or potentially sensitized individual, you have a responsibility to then take some of these steps to keep the house clean and happy. This, by the way, is not one that you want to utilize. Many of our sensitized individuals have small children. I mean, just think about that adding to the burden. You're trying to take care of a small child, and you're, you know, sick all the time and everything. Don't fall for something like this where you just put your toddler in the little cleaning stuff. This is actually a real product. They call it a baby mop. And it's got some, you know, for me, it's got some interesting features. Those are little microfiber noodles on there. So it kind of makes sense. But it'd be a little bit more random cleaning. It would be like your robot cleaning or something. And I'm not sure that would work well. Plus, the other thing, in all seriousness, I do have to say this because the mold sensitivity is a genetic situation. It's not uncommon for us to see, you know, the mother be mold sensitized, and then one or more of the children end up being mold sensitized just because, again, it's genetic. So different aspects of the gene pool are being passed down every time, you know, a child is born. So that's another reason I don't think I would use the baby mop because who knows whether baby is actually going to be mold sensitized. And I don't want to make it mold sensitized by having them clean the floor like that for me. But you know what, it's pretty funny. They found a good picture of a cute little kid to use as an advertisement, didn't they? So, you know, as we go through here, a couple of other things I want to point out is that, oh my goodness, you know, mold sensitized individuals tend to get so desperate that they'll fall for some of the worst shenanigans in the industry. And I certainly don't want to say or imply that everybody who is, you know, providing a service, which is one of those ones we talked about a couple of slides ago, you know, there's extra things we can do and may have to do, and sometimes we actually will recommend fogging or spraying in a situation for a mold sensitized individual, but never as a standalone. That's the issue. Oh my goodness. You know, don't spend all that money ripping out your drywall just to get to the mold behind it. We'll just gas the house. The gas will get back there, it will kill all that stuff. You'll never have to worry about it again. You'll save, you know, 80% of the remediation costs because you don't have to pull out all that drywall, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I have seen and heard so much of this that it just, it breaks my heart quite honestly, because if they would just approach it the way that they're supposed to, which is we're going to remove the stuff, we're going to do all the cleaning and after we do the cleaning to absolutely make sure that there's, you know, no mycotoxins left behind or you know, whatever it is that you're trying to approach, then you can selectively pick the right spray or the right fogging agent or something like that. But this standard spray and pray approach where we're just going to use this stuff, and again, I'm not just making this stuff up. As you can see here from the side. I took this information here from AD in the trade journal. So basically what they're saying is they're just advertising to the contractor. Look at what you can do. You can increase your profits by 60, 70, 80% by using this fogging stuff. Because it saves you all the time, it saves you the labor, saves you the manpower. Well, no, it doesn't. Because quite honestly, if you do that and you're a sensitized individual, don't expect it to work. It can be an add on, it can't be a replacement for all the hard work that goes into dealing with mold and this is, in my opinion, this is the worst aspects of the mold remediation industry right here. I mean, there's bad remediation contractors that don't know how to set up containments and there's people who don't really understand why they should be and how they should be using their personal protective equipment to be protecting the people, not necessarily just them, but the other people in the house and things like that. In some respects I can, I can deal with that better. Because you know what, that's just a lack of education. In many cases, they just don't know any better. But this sort of stuff where you're trying to substitute this spray and pray or this fog and go or whatever you want to call it for real work, this one bothers me because I think the people that tend to sell this well, know better and know the industry and then choose to do this.

So I'm going to jump in and ask a quick question or really, I guess it's just more of a comment because I've seen this as well. And you know what's unfortunate is the cost to just fog alone. It's not cheap either. And so people spend, you know, what limited resources they have and then only to find out, you know, after a few months that, you know, they're still having problems and reacting to the home. And when we're talking about the mold sensitized client, you know, you're putting a chemical, whatever it is you choose to fog with throughout the home. And you can develop a sensitivity, you know, to that as well. And so, you know, there's all these considerations that, you know, people have to think about. So I appreciate you clarifying, you know, when and how it may or may not be an appropriate solution.

So just one, that's a great comment too, because as again, I'd say look at this chart. This is not my chart. This is just an advertisement from one of the providers of some of this material. And you know, they're not saying, well, you know what, you can do this and you can save your client 70% of the cost of the remediation or something like that. They're saying you're essentially going to charge your client like you would charge them for a full standard remediation, but then you're going to do this stuff instead. And so basically it's all going to your bottom line as the contractor. Boy, that's just not the way that I do business. You know, my, my goal is to provide a fair value for a reasonable price to my client. And this Just strikes at the very heart of that for me. So jump on, because some of these are. Even the language just bothers me. So you're gonna get some of these spray and pray people, and they come in, they say, oh, we're gonna fog it, but it's gonna be a dry fog. My head wants to explode. There are two terms that are exact opposites of one another. Fog, by its very nature, is a vapor. And yet they're saying, well, it's a dry fog. I understand they're, you know, they have smaller droplet sizes and they're atomizing it differently and all of that. I mean, I certainly understand the science, but they're taking that science and they're letting the marketing people have their sway with them. And so you're getting these terms like dry fog. There is no dry fog. Right? It's a mist that is very fine that dries quicker than a standard misting, like if you got it out in your, you know, yard for your watering your plants or something like that. But no. And. And so again, for me, as a. As an expert in the industry and somebody who thinks that words matter, when I see things like this, it just really bothers me because if they can't be honest in terms of the basic terms that they're using, are they being honest with the rest of the stuff that they're trying to sell to? That's the question that I would have. So, again, you know, it doesn't matter who it is. There's. This is just a big deal in the industry right now, and I think they're actually praying and starting to identify the sensitized individuals as people to come after in terms of the advertisements for the chlorine dioxide bombing, if you will, of the homes. And basically what you do is the different manufacturers have different ways of doing it, but it's a dry chlorine dioxide. And you open up the containers and add a certain amount of water, and then it vaporizes. And you need to make sure that you're leaving the house or the room or wherever it is that you're doing the treatment to, because chlorine dioxide typically will get to levels that can be dangerous to you if you inhale that. Now, the good thing about chlorine dioxide, I mean, just being fair, is it does break down to the point where in a few hours, there's only carbon dioxide and water vapor left and not very much water vapor at all, just because of the way the process works. And again, I'll also say that the chlorine dioxide and other chemicals seem to be good at breaking down certainly the chemical products, the mycotoxins and things like that. How? Well, they actually work on the physical products, the mold spores themselves, the fragments, things like that. I'm still not 100% convinced that it actually breaks down physical things like that. But some of the chemical things where it can break those chemical bonds, it certainly is doing that. So again, you know, I don't want people to get the wrong idea. Well, Pinto hates, you know, chlorine dioxide or paracetic acid or, you know, fill in the blank on any of these other things that people find. And the answer is no, I don't. It's not that I hate them or anything. It's they have to be used in the right context. They're an adjunct and can be very helpful for the sensitized individual, but they're not a substitute. You can't just say, I'm going to do this because it saves me a lot of work. The minute you start hearing somebody say, well, it saves you so much work, that's the key sign that they don't really know what they're talking about, in my opinion. All right, a couple other things here just for the sensitized individual realize, and I said this earlier, I don't think that you should be, for a sensitized individual, that you should be returning the environment to a normal fungal ecology. If, if that was good enough, they wouldn't be sensitized. They wouldn't have that, you know, genetic predisposition to having problems. So, and I will tell you that we've got 20 plus years of experience with this, and, you know, people can reach out to us. And I think you've got this. They can reach out to you or anybody there at Change the Air foundation. And we've given you permission to share this with them. This is what we would recommend for post remediation criteria if you're using air samples and sport trap air samples, which is one of the bigger methods of doing the testing for post remediation. And it's also one that a lot of people in the industry are familiar with. Now, this particular criteria came from us looking at about 40 different studies from around the world in terms of what normal fungal ecology is. And then also a lot of them had already determined what they thought was clean. And we just aggregated all that information. We didn't make it up, you know, just from whole cloth or anything like that. It's actually a result of real study, real science, something that, you know, sometimes you don't see in this industry. So I'm not going to go through all those steps. But just suffice to say, it starts with a really good visual inspection. If you can't even get it visually clean, how would you expect it to be, you know, clean from a sample perspective? The other one that I often get feedback on is the last one, which is section six, which is where we have target spores, which we called Stachybotrys and Catomium, Memnalia, Trichodomina, fusarium. And we just say zero tolerance on that. We don't want a spore in the samples at all. And people say, well, a single spore can be random and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I understand all that, but those are the ones that tend to cause more health problems. Those are the ones that are typically not found in houses. Those are the ones that don't move as easily on the air currents. So get them out and if you can't get them all out, do some more cleaning.

Yeah. And you have part 11 where we have a whole mini class just on post remediation verification. So if people want to dig into that criteria, which I strongly recommend they do, check out part 11.

Yeah. And this whole chart you can, like I said, you can get from Change the Air foundation just by reaching out to Kendra. And I would encourage you to do that. There's a lot of information tucked in that little diagram right there.

Yeah, yeah, you can get it. If you sign up for our newsletter @changethe air foundation.org, you automatically get an email and it has our Mold Remediation at a Glance guide, which is just gold, in my opinion. And we have a couple pages where we've printed out the criteria so people can have a copy. So that's another fast way you can grab it too.

Absolutely, absolutely. And again, I just want to thank Change the Air foundation for all the good work that you're doing and sharing all this information with people. To me, this is where our industry needs to go and I'm a big supporter of you guys. Anyway, the fact of the matter is that we have the scientific side on the post remediation and I believe this is also touched on quite a bit in session 11. But there's the other side of this as well, which is the symptoms. You should start to see symptoms reduction. Now that's a tricky thing because it also depends on what medical attention the people are getting and what stage they're going through there and whether they properly diagnosed and et cetera, et cetera et cetera. But, you know, if you've been having exposure and then we stop the exposure, you should start to see some reduction in those symptoms and stuff. And as I said, sometimes it can be fairly subtle, but you shouldn't be going in the opposite direction. Right. Meaning that if on average you have, you know, three nights out of seven that you don't sleep well in the house, and then we do a whole house cleaning and all of a sudden it's five or six or seven nights out of seven that you're not sleeping well, that, you know, that's a sign that either we need to, you know, move forward with our medical treatment or that perhaps the whole house cleaning wasn't as effective as we thought it was. Maybe just stirred stuff up, didn't get rid of it, and maybe they did everything right. That might also be an indication, you know, just flipping back on what I said a few minutes ago, that might be an indication that you need some additional things. Maybe at that point is where we talk about, you know, fogging or spraying or something like that, just to, you know, further decrease the, you know, potential exposures and stuff. So you do have to watch your own. Your body is really the best measure, quite honestly, when you're a mold sensitized individual. And I'm not, you know, I'm blessed. I don't apparently have that gene situation, but with all the people that I've worked with over the years, it's clear to me that their body is the best way for them to kind of measure what's going on in their environment. So with that, as Kendra said just a moment ago, I think there's way more stuff we could be talking about. We could do do this for two days, Kendra. Not just two hours. We could do this for two days. But, you know, at some point we've got to bring it to an end and then just let people know that there's other great information out there. And here's the listing of the different sessions that they can get a hold of. There's session 11 on the post. Remediation verification. Part 10 is cleaning the rest of the home and the belongings and stuff. All good sessions. Good people. You really have found some experts in the industry. And I just want to say bless you guys over there for doing all this and let me know if I can help.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much too, for the kind words and. And for doing this. Your episodes have been wonderful and. And I will just say, you know, part 10 for those wondering that's done with Jessica McQuaid. And it is fantastic. And she, she shows you, you know, how are you cleaning? You know, and there's videos and products and things like that. So it's an excellent next step to this, I think. Michael too. The thing that, you know, I think is so frustrating is when you're remediating, if you have multiple people living in the home and only one or two are sensitized, you're really cleaning to their level of sensitivity. And one of the questions that I kind of have for you is after remediation, like, should everyone do this whole house cleaning and contents cleaning every time? Like, how does someone decide if they need to go above and beyond and kind of do this? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Yes, I absolutely do. And I know I can tell you what's worked for our clients. And again, we have well over two decades of experience dealing with sensitized individuals, so I think I can share a little bit here. So the key is the whole house cleaning has to get you to a low baseline. That's the key. And it's really hard to do that on a room by room basis. Well, we're just going to clean the master bedrooms where the wife who sensitized, that's going to help, but that's not going to do it. So you have to bring everything down to a baseline. And then it's actually, in my opinion, it's not that much more difficult to do the cleaning processes that you need to do to keep the house clean and keep that mold level down lower than it is, as long as you don't have more sources. So the first thing we would say is, you know, they have to be just meticulous about watching for water intrusion. Right. You just don't want more molds growing after that. It's not as, as burdensome as a lot of people would think. You're doing general cleaning anyway, rather than, you know, mopping with a string mop mop with a good microfiber bomb. It's the same amount of energy. You're just doing a better job rather than vacuuming with a clean, you know, a standard vacuum vacuum with a decent vacuum that's got a HEPA filter in it. So the, the long term, the after the fact is not, in my experience is not as burdensome as many people might think. And I'll just share one last point with you on this. If you ever come and visit us at the Pinto household. My house is like a big experiment for, you know, mold free living. Right. So a lot of the products that I talk to people about, I don't make recommendations on this stuff unless I absolutely know that it works. And most of the time that means I've tried it and, or I'm using it. So you know, what vacuum, probably the one that I'm using or at least that's one of the ones I'd have.

Can you tell us which vacuum you're using? Because I get that question all the time. Time.

Well, there's several of them. I really like the protein HEPA vacuums and what style you get is. It's not as important to me as the fact that it's got a good HEPA filter and it, you know, it's good canister and it seals properly and things like that. So whether you want an upright, whether you want a canister style, that depends on what you're used to using in your house and how that all works. But just. And there's other good ones that are out there too. But that's the one that comes top my mind because that's the one that we use. But just things like that that keep you moving forward. And again, I would also kick us back. We already talked briefly about Doug Hoffman's book that is so full of so many good ideas about after the fact, how to keep your house clean and stuff for the mold sensitized individual.

Yeah, thank you so much for that. You know, I think people underestimate, you know, the importance of like effective cleaning practices and how much that can do to actually improve your indoor air quality. I did an interview a while back with John Banta and I'm summarizing here, but he said, you know, he's becoming more and more convinced that effective cleaning will do more for indoor air quality than like even an air purifier. So the good news is you as a homeowner and renter, that's something you can do, right? We don't recommend you do your own remediation, but you can do some of these practices that you can work into like your day in and day out routine just by making some small tweaks and changes and that can, that can, you know, move the needle towards healthier living.

So, and it's really understanding a little bit about science and applying it with some of these products that are out there. Because the, the goal, at least for me, the goal in the house cleaning is to get it done as fast and efficiently as I can. I don't want to spend any more time vacuuming the house than I have to. I don't want to spend any more time mopping the hard floors than I have to. So finding the right products and then using them a, is going to improve your health and the indoor air quality, but B, it's going to, you know, reduce the amount of time and effort that you're putting into it because you're letting the science work for you. Yeah.

So again, I'm going to give a shout out for part 10 because Jessica McQuaid does an amazing job actually showing us step by step how to do that. And you're going to want to check that out. And while I hope you go and order, I wouldn't blame you if you jump right to part 10 and then come back to part 4. But thank you Michael, so much for being here and for everyone listening. If you don't want to miss a great episode like this, if you want to, you know, be notified when the rest of the series drops, please head on over to changethey are foundation.org and sign up for our newsletter because it really is the best way to get great information like this. Plus that free mold remediation at a glance at it will do about directly to your inbox. Thank you so much. We'll see you next time.

Be blessed.