Mold Remediation Part 4: Personal Protective Equipment

And so essentially you take whatever amount of contaminant is in the air and you divide it by the protection factor. So if there's too many spores in the air and you're wearing a dust mask, you're breathing in 215,000 spores.

Thank you to our sponsor, Airmada Drying Solutions. 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. Hello everyone and welcome to part four of the Change the Year Foundation Remediation 101 series. We're going to be talking today about personal protective equipment, otherwise known as ppe. And I will tell you this is one of the easiest ways to spot the difference between the good companies and the not so good companies. Now if the company you plan to hire is not protecting their worker, there's a good chance that they're not protecting you and your home either. And I have a little antidote I'll share with you at the end about this, but I'm joined today by David Merrick, who's owner of Valor Mold Removal, a remediation company in D.C. metro area since 2006. Now, after doing bad remediations like everyone else for a couple of years, two mentors convinced him to take the first training classes on mold and he was shocked at what the S520 mold remediation standard said. He's been remediating mold for 17 years and has appeared on Fox 5 News, WTOP radio and other major news networks in the D.C. market. Thanks David so much for being here.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

I've known David, for those of you listening, a long time. He is a self confessed mold nerd. I hope you don't mind me saying that. And I absolutely. We talked at length that, you know, you, you kind of have this mission too to help people understand and implement these research based sound practices that that come with effective and safer mediation. So I'm so glad that you're going to be taking us through our next few episodes on this series because it's super important that we get things like this right. But since they're not here to listen to me, I'm going to turn it over to you because I'm super interested to learn a little bit more about ppe.

Yeah. And this was a. This was one that I just thought would be quick, it would be nothing, it would be boring. And then when I started putting the presentation together, I was like, I'm actually passionate about this. Like, this, this, this matters. You know, it's like the last line of defense for, for my guys and myself, but it matters. And also too, you know, the people showing up to your house, what they wear is a big sign as to what kind of work they're going to do, how professional they are, you know, and how much they care about their own health.

Absolutely.

So to dive right in now, I'm not going to cover too much of this because I assume that the people watching this already have an idea what mold is. But it's nature's recycling program. Obviously, it's meant to decompose dead organic material. And obviously it's great when it's outside decomposing dead trees and leaves and things, but it's the bad thing when it's in your house eating your home. So it's really hard for people to comprehend. I think when. Let me go back. When you're looking at this, right? Yeah. It's visible growth. This is what everybody concentrates on. Oh, my gosh, there's the mold colony. We have to get it. And as a remediator and looking at this through the eyes of people's health. Yeah, the mold colony is one thing. And as a remediator, yeah, we're going to take care of that, but we're actually more worried about the spores that are sitting on the surface of these colonies. And so this next video I managed to find long time ago in a training class, an animation for this that gets into what it looks like on a microscopic scale. So this would be hyphae that are sitting on the surface of the colony itself. And at the tip of the hyphae, they're like stalks, but at the tip are mold spores. And so, you know, on the. The heads of these hyphae are just billions upon billions of spores. But, yeah, so here again, you know, these are. These are microscopic spores that they go airborne, they fly around very easily, and these spores are the main drivers of health effects in people. So when we talk about contamination and we talk about mold spore cleaning later on and part seven, this is what we're going after. But anyway, this is the point. This is what we don't want. This is what we don't want to be exposed to. So when you talk about mold pathways in the body, there's four major routes. So ingestion is the worst. You know, that will definitely cause the major health reactions, I think. Aflatoxins are one of the most toxic substances known to man and they're, they're taken from specific species of mold. Now we don't really worry about that because when you're doing remediation or you're living in a moldy house, you're not eating the wall. So the second route is inhalation. That by far, inhalation is by far the biggest route of spores into the body. And then third on the list would be absorption, where you're actually absorbing it through your mucous membranes and then dermal, right through your skin. Dermal is one that I, I have to list it just because I know some people would crucify me if I don't. That applies more to mycotoxins, not really so much to spores. So, so like when we, when we wear our suits. Well, I'll get into that later. Now, just to cover the basics, PPE acronym stands for personal protective equipment. These are my four categories. These are my personal categories. Don't think these are official. But the first one is what I would call rock bottom ppe. So this is what you see plastered all about the Internet. You know, if you read a hundred mold articles or if you read 100 articles on mold, this is what you're going to see recommended. Second would be the discount remediator PPE class. Third would be what I would deem acceptable, and then fourth would be top notch. So for examples of this, you know, I grabbed this off stock photos, right? So they talk about an N95 dust mask, safety goggles, coveralls, gloves, and you'll hear a hard hat, which I think is overkill, unless you're on a construction job site. I, I, Hard hats are, are, yeah, again, they're overkill. But the N95 dust mask, I, I don't want to be too tongue in cheek, but it's almost like wearing nothing. Does it give you some protection? Yeah, it's better than walking around with nothing. But it's, it's just, you're, I would, I would go so far as to say your body might be able to stand a couple, you know, a couple different remediations. If you're going to tear out mold yourself, maybe you can withstand that a couple times. But that's definitely not something that I would hang my hat on. And then a bad sign would be like in this case, the coveralls that this person's wearing. You can actually see or close through the coveralls. So this is a way too light, way, way too light. You know, maybe it's meant to keep large particles off you, but it definitely wouldn't work for mold spores because they're just too small. They're going to go into these pores and basically just deposit all of your clothes like you're wearing nothing. This one's kind of a blend between the rock bottom and the discount remediator class. You know, the point out, the point I want to make with this picture was, you know, again, you can see your hair through the, through the coveralls, you know, with the red down here. Hold on, where'd my little cursor go? But you can see her hair through the coveralls. And then the second arrow is, you know, going back. You'll see this all the time on the, on the Internet where they talk about wearing a N95 mask and goggles or they talk about wearing a half face respirator and goggles. And it depends on the kind of nose you have, to be honest. Like, I have a pointy nose, right? So the bridge of your nose is the seal point for both the half face respirator and the goggles. And you're gonna get a good seal on one or the other. You're not gonna get a good seal on both if you have a pointy nose. So, and, and again, the major route is the inhalation. So you always want to make sure your respirator is on. And so if you wear goggles, especially if you wear glasses, you're going to notice that there's a bit, you know, it's a big leak. You're going to get your glasses fog up and stuff. It's just, it just, it sounds good in theory, but it just does not work well in practice. And then, whereas if you have like a flat nose, then maybe you get a good seal. I don't know. Discount remediator class. This would be, you know, the most common. If you hire a mediator and they show up at your house, this is what most people are going to be wearing. And it's just, it's, it's bad. And I have, later on, I have slides about why this is bad. But you know, this is the half face respirator. Suit, gloves. Now this picture. Sorry about that. So it has the suit and gloves. Now this picture in particular, I grabbed grab this off the Internet. You know, these gloves are laughable, right? I don't know what kind of protection that's going to do. You would, you would tear those in about three seconds. And going back to this for a second, you mentioned in the, in the intro that we did remediation the wrong way for many years and I used to wear this, I used to wear a half face respirator during remediations. And what was interesting was, especially if we were doing a particularly, you know, bad one where there was, you know, lots of square footage of mold, I would actually have black boogers at the end of the day. So you can't tell me that this is good, you know. Yeah, the filters, the, the, the filters, the HEPA filters, they filter out all the mold. But the problem is that seal that you have around your, your face and your nose. There's a lot of contours, there's a lot of angles. You just can't get a really good seal, especially if you're working hard, especially if you're, you're sweating, right? The mask will slip. It's just, it's not good. You know, again, maybe you can get away with this for a couple months or something, but this is not something where I'd want to go do remediations for a long period of time. Acceptable ppe. Here's a picture of me actually from many moons ago up on a roof sanding mold out of attic trusses. So here you have a full phase respirator. And a full phase respirator you have a much better seal, right, because it's around the circle of your face. So you're going to get a much better seal than out of a half face respirator. Now the rest of this is similar. The only thing I would change is say we use rubber coated work gloves. So like nitrile work gloves that are dipped in nitrile so they're grippy. And then boots with a protected toe, so steel toe, safety toe, that kind of thing. One thing I'll point out in this picture is the cuffs, right? So the gloves are taped to the suit, right? So that way you have a good seal there. Now, I don't want your listeners to crucify remediators if they've been working in the containment for a few hours and they come out and that seal is not there anymore because again, you're working hard, you're sweating, the tape is not going to adhere all day. It's just not. But it's still, it's a good practice. You want to start off that way, top notch. Ppe. This is actually one of my guys, Oscar. He's wearing what's called a papr, that stands for powered Air Purifying Respirator. And so these things are cool because it, what he's wearing here is a belt, right? And, and there's a motor on it with a battery. And the HEPA filter is on that belt. And so the motor is working to push air through the filter and then up through the tube. And then it fills your mask with HEPA filtered air. And it's just, it's. The protection factor is a lot better. And I'll get into what protection factors are. The rest of this is the same. Now something I will point out. This was a marketing photo that we took for the website. And yeah, he is not wearing his hood up. So, yes, you're supposed to wear your hood up, right? And then the, the mask sits over that. You, you, you have that protecting your, your hair and, and your neck. So that way you're not getting debris and spores into your hair. So everything else in here is great except for that one piece. Now I had a case study. Let me talk about this for a second, just so that way your listeners know what this is. So we have an Instascope. Instascope is a machine. There's probably 150 in the world. 175. And it does instant airborne mold testing to get to give us an idea how much mold is in the air. And so when we first got it years ago, we, we took it and do active remediations to see what the actual mold spore counts are. Because the issue I was having was a lot of my guys, they would take their mask off during the cleaning process, right? Because they, they removed all the mold. The mold's not visible. And no matter how much I told them, hey, this is still a hazard, they would take their mask off if they thought I wasn't around and I care about my guys and they weren't getting it. And so, so yeah, we went ahead and tested multiple jobs. And so what we found was, you know, these are the airborne multiple accounts. On average, I think we tested eight projects or 10 projects. And you can see the amount. And, and matter of fact, I should probably add this into the, the cleaning slides. But you know, the counts go anywhere from, from 2 million, right? The 2 million on average during the demolition down to 336,000 during the cleaning. And so I'm going to take this number here. And so if there's 2 million slides, if there's 2 million spores in the air. This chart is the protection factor for these different respirators. So, you know, on the left you have the dust mass through the PAPR in the middle, this is, these are the NIOSH protection factors. NIOSH is a division of osha. And so they actually tell you what the protection factor is of all these different pieces of equipment. And so essentially you take whatever amount of contaminant is in the air and you divide it by the protection factor. So if there's 2 million spores in the air and you're wearing a dust mask, you're breathing in 215,000 spores. So again, this is why I say, yeah, some people can take some exposure, but this isn't something you want to do a lot. And especially if you're talking about mold sensitized clients who, you know, what have you. Lime, sirs, pans, pandas. No, no. Just no. Right. At bare minimum, I would say a half face respirator with the P100 cartridges, but really it should be a full face. But they are a lot of work because you have to breathe through the, through the filters. But even with the PAPR with a protection factor of a thousand, you're still breathing in 2,000 spores. So sometimes people get this, this sense of invincibility where they're wearing this protective gear and that means that they're completely immune to this stuff. And it's like, no, it, it really, this is your last line of defense. And so this is why when I get into the engineering controls in part five, that is so important not only to protect your house, but also to just protect yourself in the containment. So, and you know, the big red flag, if they don't care about their own health, then do you really think they care about yours? So, so again, you know, this is important in terms of just knowing the quality the, the, the, the tier remediator you're bringing in is based on what their guys are wearing.

Will, if you were to be home during remediation, which we don't typically recommend, you may not always see your mold remediator in ppe. Correct. That's because they're going to be taking it on and off inside something called a DEC contamination chamber, a decon chamber that we're going to talk about later. Am I understanding that correct?

True. That's a good point. That's a very good point. But they're still going to have to walk in with their gear. And so I can't imagine, I mean, it's possible they might have a big bag where they just carry in all their gear. But probably not. The guys are probably going to be carrying in their respirators loosely. So that would be what you're looking for. So is, you know, is it a half face, is it a full face? What have you?

And you'll certainly notice too when they don't. I have a quick antidote. But one of the questions you can ask we have a free resource for everyone listening if you go to changetheirfoundation.org backslash free resources and it's questions to ask your mold remediation company while you're vetting them. And we have questions on there about PPE and see what they say. But as I promised, a quick antidote. My neighbor many years ago called me in a panic because her son was living in the basement bedroom and she was noticing this odor and thought it was just like teenage boy stank. And so she ended up doing some investigation and pulled back his bed and it was a wall mold. And turns out there had been a crack in the foundation. Moisture and mold had been growing for quite some time. He never said anything. He's like, oh, I just thought it was my gym clothes. But she called me, she's like, what do I do? And I said, well, first don't disturb it. And she goes, well, I'm going to call the builder. The house is still under warranty and I, I don't recommend you call the builder. I know this is hard to hear because they're just going to send one of their I'm sure, well meaning people on staff handyman type situation. I said, and I don't recommend this. She showed me pictures. It was pretty severe, what we could see on the interior. So I can only imagine what was on the other side of the drywall. Long story short, she didn't listen to me. And the guy shows up and I watch him through my window in four as he is remediating, wearing nothing but his street clothes in a KN95 mask. Not a single ounce of he's pulling stuff out in garbage bags. The garbage bags are laying open just in the driveway. We'll talk about that, about proper removal of debris. And there were so many red flags. And later she called me and she's like, well, he took care of it. And he said to me, yeah, I was a little in over my head. And then she asked me, she goes, do you think it's a problem that he knocked the drywall open that separated her son's room from the room that had the h VAC system. So further contaminating everything else. I think they had minimal stuff up, but it just goes to show, guys like these are easy things. If you see someone and you happen to be home or, you know, stop the remediation before it goes further. And that's one thing I hope I can empower you to do. Hopefully with this series and our resources. You hire the right remediation company the first time, but if you don't, or if you're running and they're sending someone, that's a red flag, speak up, stop them. They're not protecting you. They're not protecting themselves. So I'm giving you permission to, to stop right then and there and wait to call on someone who understands the scope of the work. David, thank you so much for this. I hope everyone listening you stay with us because in part two, we're going to be getting into engineering controls. Right, David?

Yep.

And you won't want to miss it because David usually has like a hall of shame and a hall of fame bad. And it's, it's wonderful. And for everyone listening, if you want to make sure you don't miss this episode when it, when it drops next, head on over to changetheirfoundation.org and sign up for our newsletter because it really is the best way to get great information like this directly to your inbox. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time.