The Basics of How Our Homes Impact Our Health

I am here to talk about the profound effect that air quality has on our health and what I believe is one of the largest missing links and pieces of the puzzle in our healthcare community.

Hello, everyone. My name is Kendra Seymour and welcome to another Change the Air Summit interview. Today we are talking with one of our co founders of Change the Air Foundation, Michael Rubino. Michael, thank you so much for being here.

Yes, well, thank you very much for taking time out of your busy day to be here with me.

You as well. I always, I get so excited when we talk because you always have these great, like gold nuggets of information. And so today with everyone, you're going to be talking to us about the basics of how our homes impact our health. So I want you to jump right in because I know there's so many good things you want to share and I'm sure we'll have a couple follow up questions.

That's right. You know, I think this, this whole realm can be confusing for folks and I want to dive into the basics. I've done many technical dissertations on this, but I think really getting back to the basics is really helpful because we're trying to frame the problem and make sure people understand just how widespread it is and then what to do about it. So I will share my screen and take it away. All right, let's make this big. So it's called the Basics of How Our Homes Impact Our Health and a little bit about me. My name is Michael Rubino, founder of a company called Home Cleanse, which kind of led to this journey here. Co founded and president of Change the Air Foundation. As you guys all know, you're part of this event here. We're trying to make clean indoor spaces accessible for all. I'm also an author, educator and advocate, bridging the gap between indoor air quality and our health, which, you know, health is holistic. I think we all know that there is a whole body here with many different parts. Mental health, physical health, all this ties in. So we want to look at things holistically. I am not a doctor and I want to make that very clear because I had a call even earlier today where people were asking me for medical advice. That's not my role. My role is the home. So I will not be mentioning any supplements on this, this presentation. I apologize in advance. And please don't send me pictures of your poop. It wouldn't be on here if it hasn't happened before. I am here, though, to talk about the profound effect that air quality has on our health. And what I believe is one of the largest missing links and pieces of the puzzle in our healthcare community. When we talk about health, we understand things that influence our health, like food, like water, like exercise, genetics and epigenetics. But one of the big missing pieces here has been air quality. And I think it's a larger piece of this piece of than. Than we have really given attention to at all. So we'll start with some. Did you knows, you know, did you know that the average person takes 20,000 breaths each day? Right. And I think that should hone into the fact that, well, the air quality has a profound effect on the body because we're not drinking 20,000 gallons of water, we're not eating 20,000 pounds of food, but we are taking 20,000 breaths of air. Right. So it's really important to harp in on that. The World Health organization estimates that nine out of ten people do not breathe clean air. That's 90%, folks. 90% of the global population does not breathe clean air. So I really want to hit that home. The EPA suggests that the average person spends 90% of their time indoors. Right. So you start putting all this together, we really understand how important it is to have these healthy indoor air environments here. So what makes air quality poor? Right? So know, we have to look at this from a standpoint of 20,000 breaths that we take and then particles that are entering our body with each breath that we take. Right. So what, what particles might be contributing? Well, VOCs, right? Volatile organic compounds. Best way to describe this is if you've ever painted a room, you've walked into that room right after and even some time thereafter, you're smelling this fresh paint smell. It's the particles that you're breathing in that are then representing a particular smell. But these particles are called VOCs, electromagnetic fields and radiation. I've seen crazy stories with, you know, refrigerators on one side of a wall, a kid's bed on the other side of the wall, kids not feeling well. Right. Because of the EMFs that the refrigerator is impacting. So, you know, being mindful of EMFs and radiation inside of our homes is important. Formaldehyde is another big one. You know, thanks, Amazon. I can get a beluga whale delivered to my pool in two days. However, most of the products that we have delivered to our home, we don't really know where they come from. If they come from other countries, they might not have as strict formaldehyde regulations. And so unfortunately, all this brand new stuff that we buy all over our house all the time could have high levels of formaldehyde that's impacting our air quality. Another one that we don't talk much about, radon. Radon comes from typically below ground, can impact basements and crawl spaces, which then impacts the living space. Important to be mindful of radon. Household chemicals is another one. You know, we want to start trading our chemicals for botanical products, but household chemicals can again increase the amount of particles that we're breathing in. And then of course, water damage, which includes mold and bacteria. How do we invest in air quality? Right. I think I've tried to do a good job framing the problem. Hopefully I've done that for you. And the next thing we want to talk about is how do we make these investments? Right. And so we want to use low VLC alternatives for paints, adhesives, and other voc containing products. We want to ensure that our homes are well grounded, not creating any EMFs, hardwired things like Internet if we can, and then potentially using EMF. Reducing paints on the home's exterior to just reflect EMFs instead of absorb them is a good tip and trick to do for that. Ensuring your furniture, sponges and other manufactured products do not contain formaldehyde. I say sponges. Yes, I know it's weird, but sponges, the big brands that we know of, that we have in our home sometimes might, might not be as good as we thought they would. Inspecting the home for radon and installing a radon mitigation system if necessary is another good trick to help with the air quality of the home. I mentioned this earlier, but tossing household chemicals for botanicals and unfortunately, when it comes to water damage, we're going to need way more slides for this because it is a lot more complex. So let's begin on water damage. Right. So we have mold and bacteria. Well, mold and bacteria are pretty insidious as they constantly reproduce. Mold is typically 2 to 4 microns, or roughly 25 to 50 times smaller than what the eye can see. Bacteria can be between 0.2 and 2 microns in size. Mycotoxins, which are toxins produced by certain species of mold, are approximately 0.1 microns in size. Why does this matter? According to the American Lung association, Anything smaller than 10 microns poses the greatest health risk. And I put together a nice little slide here to get a little understanding of different particle sizes. I have a needle, right? 1230 microns. Fine grain of sand here, 125 microns. Mold spore 1 to 20 bacteria 2. These are all averages, right? Every, every, every particle size is going to have a range, but you're going to see the different averages of what particle sizes typically are. And again, we want to focus in on the particles that are 10 microns or less, because those pose the greatest health risk. What is mold? Right. We've all heard this word mold. It's that ugly four letter word that we typically tend to avoid, become fearful of, and all kinds of things. But the word mold means many things, which I think causes confusion. It's one of three types of fungi, right. Others being mushrooms and yeast. It's also 100,000 different species that we know of. It's also a living multicellular organism that reproduces asexually with spores. Asexually, meaning it just reproduces on its own. One, one spore that grows and germinates into a actual living organism can just start reproducing one spore on its own. And if you know about mold, they typically colonize together. Right. So it becomes a colony of mold similar to like a colony of ants. And finally, mold is the spore itself. Right. So here are already four different definitions for mold that can be very confusing when you're talking about it in conversation. Let's talk about some fun facts about mold. So there may be a hundred thousand different species of mold, but we can only test for about 50 of them. I think that's really interesting. Mold can grow in as quickly as 24 to 48 hours. Certain species of mold like Aspergillus only require 60% relative humidity or higher to grow. Right. And so controlling humidity is going to be an important endeavor. Certain species like Stachybotrys or Catomium take typically three to five days of moisture to grow. Right. So you're seeing some differences in different species and how quickly they can grow. Mildew is just a nice way of saying mold. I can do a whole different topic on that, but you just got to trust me on that. It comes from powdery mildew. Ascomycota kingdom. Aspergillus is also from the ascomycotic kingdom. And so when you look at that perspective, a lot of people think that, you know, Aspergillus or, you know, mildew is to what people typically reference that as is not as harmful. But Aspergillus can be a mycotoxin producing mold. Right. So we want to get away from using things that make us feel safe when that might not actually be true. Bleach does not effectively remove mold and may cause increased production of mycotoxins. Right. Because mycotoxins are a self defense Mechanism that mold produces. Typically they produce it to kill each other because you might have different species fighting for the same real estate of water damage or moisture. But you know, when you attack molds like you would attack a skunk, right, it's going to defend itself. To remove mold, you need to remove its roots too. And that opens up the door to all these other different conversations about fogging and things of that nature. But we want to stick to the, the basic datums that we need to know so that we don't get caught in solutions that aren't effective. And then mold hates me, right? And that's, that's a joke. Mold in our health, mold is like a plant, a poisonous one. Now it has roots, it produces things like seeds that are called spores. And it could also produce toxins. Right? So that's where that poisonous fat comes into play. Mycotoxins are fungal toxins produced by certain species of mold. We know there's a hundred thousand species of mold. We know very, we know that not all of them produce mycotoxins that we know of. And we don't, probably don't know all of the different mycotoxins that might possibly exist at this time. But this is kind of the baseline for our understanding here. How are mycotoxins produced? I covered a little bit about that. It's a self defense mechanism used to defend against the real estate inside your wall. So we become innocent bystanders essentially of this, you know, chemical warfare that's happening behind our walls. And that's kind of how we get impacted. Also, of course, you know, mycotoxins can contaminate food supplies and we can typically have that issue with coffee and grains and things of that nature. So something to be aware of. But you know, what we really want to understand is modern buildings are being tighter, being built tighter and tighter to solve a problem called energy efficiency, which really goes back to 1970s when Richard Nixon was president and we had an energy crisis. And we have just been going in that direction ever since. But what that equates to is we have less volume of air inside of our homes than outside, which causes an increase of particles and toxins with each breath we take inside. And so this is, we're starting to see how this problem is getting worse and worse and not better and better. Did I mention we take 20,000 breaths per day? Right. Really want to drive that point home. So then we get to bacteria, right? Because water damage in our homes, not just a mold problem, but also a bacteria problem. Human beings produce bacteria Too, Right. Bacteria is in the soil. We have pets. I mean bacteria is a problem I think we know more about, but we don't really know much about regards to our homes. And so bacteria, especially actinobacteria, which is gram positive bacteria that can accompany these water damage events inside of our homes. And so looking at some sources of actinobacteria, water damage that intrudes from outside, you have PVC drains, including H vac, drain lines that could potentially leak and impact the air quality that we're breathing. It's abundant in the soil. So you know, if you don't take your shoes off at the front door at home, you're probably tracking stuff in pets also track it in. And you know, we do release 39 million particles of bacteria as human beings as well. And so we want to take that into consideration too. And what does bacteria need to grow and survive? Water, just like mold. Right. And so when we have water damaged homes and we are tracking all this bacteria in, we're giving it a good environment to grow and thrive and impact the air quality at the same time. The size of actinobacteria, between 2 and 50 microns, with 10 microns being the most common size. So interesting to know because again, we're tracing that back to that 10 microns or less posing the greatest health risk here. Did I mention we take 20,000 breaths per day? Right. So we're getting the gist of this. So my story is an interesting one. I just dared to be different and that's kind of why this in the title here. With Hurricane Sandy, I saw this pattern of illness that came out of that. Homes were remediated, but they were still testing, showing that they were sick with high levels of mold there. There seemed to be a lack of understanding between mold bacteria, their byproducts, which allowed people to still feel the effects of water damage even after their homes were remediated. You know, my career, it definitely is about 10,000 people over the span of a decade since I've been doing this. I've been in touch with just 4,4000 people since the pandemic. And you know, by the time I wrote this slides, I'm sure it's a lot more Lyme disease, mast cell activation syndrome, Epstein Barr virus, Hashimoto's, Sears pants, Pandas, Chronic fatigue syndrome, Bartonella, pots. These are all illnesses of that people have had that I've worked with that have had some sort of correlation between poor air quality in the home, the symptoms they're having, and the autoimmune disease that they're experiencing. So I'm not going to get into causation and all that. But what I will say is when you look at these and you see all of these people get better by improving the air quality in their home, you know, you really start to wonder how this is all connected and hopefully we are able to solve that problem soon. One thing that really noticed for me is, you know, once these people had toxic exposures, they really became hypersensitive to mold and bacteria from water damage and that kind of followed them from home to home if they moved or from remediation to remediation if it wasn't done thoroughly enough. I want to dive into the common symptoms of living in water damage, talking to so many people. It can be a wide ranging reach. And this is important because if you're experiencing any of this, it's a really good idea to just check your environment. Brain fog, chronic fatigue, headaches, inflammation, gut issues, skin issues, respiratory issues, trouble breathing, night sweats, night terrors, insomnia, cognitive impairment, fertility issues, mental health issues, mole rage, and more. These are all things that you might have heard about. Some of these might be new to you, but it is very interesting to see just the brevity of the situation here. Like all illnesses, it's going to show up differently in everyone. You might see one person in the home affected differently than another. That is all normal. It's because we're all different. There are so many unanswered questions, all the things mold and bacteria can really do to us. But one pattern that has really been profound for me is when we find and fix these issues, people are getting relief, right? And so that's a testament to how important this is. You know, a lot of mold is hidden, right? And I think that that is always creating the most complicated factor because it's hidden like behind a wall and you have no idea hidden. It always appears that you don't have a problem. And so there was this old process where people would call, you know, some, some guy from Mold Inspections R Us and they'd come in and they'd run an air sample in the center of your home. And you know, while that they're telling you how nice and clean the place is and there's no way you have mold. And guess what, a couple days later you get this one page report back and it says, good news, your home is perfect. Right? And imagine going to the doctor and you're not feeling well and they just check your vitamin D, right? And as your whole whole health profile and your vitamin D comes back and they're like, get good news, you're healthy. You know, and this happens to so many people all the time. They do a blood panel, they check for the basic stuff. They're not looking for other biomarkers. And they tell you there's nothing wrong with you. You know, it almost makes sense. If I have poor air quality, I would test my air. I mean, it does make sense, but the problem is, is that mold typically travels about 2 to 3ft before it becomes a part of, you know, before it settles, becomes a part of your dust. And then once it's a part of your dust, it's just too big to fit inside this air cassette. Right? And so now we get this problem of we're missing things. With air testing, dust recirculates through changes in pressure and H Vac from one room to room and entering the body with those damn 20,000 breaths that we take. Now, if you've ever sat on a couch near a window on a sunny day and you saw that light refract off of the dust, you really get a sense for how much dust is in our air. And mold becomes part of our dust. Even mold behind a wall that you think is not impacting you is getting in front of that wall becoming part of the dust and impacting the body with each breath you take. So really, we needed to move away from air testing as a screening tool. Now, air testing is great to help find sources when utilized by a professional that really knows what they're doing. But just like we screen our bodies at the doctor, we want to be able to screen our homes. Our dust is like the blood of our home. It carries the DNA of what's in it. So I personally developed an at home test called the dust test to help consumers get better information. But any test using MSQ PCR technology can provide you the data that you need, right? And so it is the technology behind this task. MSQ pcr, very similar to. You guys probably have heard the word PCR pretty vividly over the past couple of years. We understand that it's DNA specific testing. This is no different. You're analyzing the dust, you're finding out what is in your dust so that you can do something about it. With this technology, you can look for mold, toxins for mold, bacteria, toxins for bacteria, essentially all the byproducts for water damage. And I think why I particularly like this, and I don't know if I put this in a slide or not, but you essentially are getting information beforehand if you have a problem and then you're able to take that to an inspector and say, hey, this is what's abnormally high. Help me figure out where these are in my home. And that's why I love it so much and why I think it's so effective. But this is kind of a little bit of an understanding of, you know, different types of testing, what their benefits are and stuff. Air testing can miss sources more than three feet away from testing. Really important that you know that it can miss sources behind walls or ceilings unless you're pulling air from behind them or unless you're testing really close to them. Surface testing is really only helpful to test visible spots. Now, I love surface testing when we're talking about water damage underneath the kitchen sink, for example, because sometimes even the most benign looking water damage sign, if you test it, it might have boatloads of aspergillus or penicillium that can produce mycotoxins. That's an issue. So it's good to be able to check suspect areas. But the benefits of dust testing technologies, msq, PCR technology, really, I think, drive the point home of being able, for a fraction of the cost, to be able to test the entire home to see what you're being exposed to. To answer that first elementary question, does my home have a problem? It really helps validate people to, to understand if that is an issue and what to do about it from there. So we get to addressing water damage, right? So you, you, you do a test, you find out you have a problem, you figure out where it's coming from. Now we have to address it, right? And so what do we do? Well, after you identify the sources creating these particles and toxins, you need to remove, not kill, the sources of mold and bacteria. Now, I put not kill in parentheses. This is very important. We do not want to rely on killing products that are designed to kill, like fogging and all that other stuff, because that is not going to get to the root cause of our issue and it will just come back. So it's really important that I harp on that we need to clean the H Vac because it's the lungs of the home. Now, you may have had a problem in a basement or a problem in a bathroom, but if you did, odds are that those particles and toxins that become part of your dust are then getting into your H Vac system. And then your coil that constantly condensates is a wet environment for something like mold to begin to grow. And so our H VAC systems 99% of the time become contaminated in a moldy environment. And, and it's important that we deal with that. Otherwise, even if you remediate, you're still likely to feel the effects of that. Finally, we need to clean the home. Because if you know about H vac, 97% is the national standard of how well sealed a system should be. Meaning there are leaks so particles will escape into the environment. Doesn't matter how good of a company you hire. So you want to clean the home directly after the two main objectives, right? Remove the organism. Remove the particles and toxins created by the organism. That's it. We'll keep it real simple. How you go about doing that can be as complex as you want it to be. But we have to keep it simple so that everything that we do goes right back to handling those two objectives. Now. Killing, fogging, destroying, sanitizing, disinfecting, ionizing, U.V. ing. All marketing terms to avoid. Right. Just it. It doesn't. There may be some benefits to certain things in certain applications, but we want to start getting ourselves away from being sold these marketing terms and really just get back to the fundamentals of removing the organism, removing the particles of toxins, other dangers of murdering mold. You see how I'm framing this here, guys? Mold and bacteria from water damage events are filamentous and root into building materials, right? So what happens if we don't remove the roots of a weed? It's going to grow back. So we also have to remember that something is wrong allowing for the opportunity for mold and bacteria to grow in the first place, right? So if you're just trying to kill it, it's going to come back because there's still opportunity for it to be there. When mold or bacteria feel threatened, they produce toxins. Chemical warfare, remember? And the average water or damage event takes a professional three to five days to properly dry out with professional equipment. So if you've ever had a leak and you've had these companies come in and they have all these fans blowing stuff around, well, even with all of that, it still takes three to five days. And so by the end of the day, when they're done, when they bring all their equipment away, it's almost guaranteed that there's going to be mold there. Did I mention that mold grows in 24 to 48 hours? So with that being said, the best chance that you have is to always make sure that the wet building materials following the path of the water traveled have been removed. Because if it's not wet, then it and it dries and it's going to dry faster when two materials are not touching each other. At that point we're in a much better, safer position. So here's the ugly part. This is why change the air foundation exists in the first place. What does it all cost? Right? Well, good air quality renovations with no gimmicks are a renovation and cost. The average cost of a renovation, renovation, which if you didn't know, has gone up about 300% post Covid. The other, other ugly part is some homes need more renovations than others. I have done projects for 15 grand. I've done projects for $500,000. Right. And so it's really important to understand that your problem might be more expensive than the next person or it might be less expensive than the next person, which makes this really hard to nail down. Homeowners insurance can be helpful if you have the proper coverage and if it can be tied to what is considered covered loss. But it typically doesn't cover all of your air quality concerns. So what can we do when we cannot renovate? Well, here are some budget friendly IQ hacks. So particles and toxins accumulate in the dust. Regular wet wiping of the surfaces can reduce exposure to contaminants. Right? The more dust you're removing with these particles and toxins with it, guess what? Every time you take a breath, less particles and toxins come inside. However, obviously if there are sources, you know, you're, you're going to have to stay on top of cleaning more often than not. Wet wiping and vacuuming. This is a mind blower here, guys, because, you know, if you've read my book, if you've listened to anything I've put, you know, HEPA vacuuming, you hear all about it. But you know, if we go back to the first slide where I say mold is many different things, we're now talking about wet wiping for mold, the spore or the toxin, right? So not the living organism. You definitely need to vacuum when you're dealing with the living organism because you're trying to abrasively remove roots from building materials, suck them up into the vacuum. Here we're talking about the, the settled spores, toxins, et cetera, right? The only reason is because when you turn on a vacuum, you're going to notice that there's an exhaust that's going to blow air around. And so you're almost chasing as you're vacuuming, you might also be dealing with this issue of exhausting the air that's pushing the air around, unfortunately, just stirring stuff back up, getting a re Aerosolized. So when you spray something down and you wet wipe, you're suppressing it from getting back into the air, which is a lot faster of just getting these particles and toxins out when you're at this particular stage. Air purification, it removes dust and contaminants as they become aerosolized, which also helps reduce their frequency of cleaning. So there's definitely some efficacy there, you know, whole bunch of marketing terms in that world to. To look out for. The best advice I can give is remove the smallest particle possible at the highest efficiency possible. That's the name of the game when you're looking for an air purifier. H vac filtration, consider upgrading your H vac filtration to remove smaller particles for the entire H vac. The highest filtration you can get is, is MERV 16. So if you have a MERV 8 or a MERV 13, you may want to consider, you know, getting an upgrade from there. Cleaning your H Vac first, then the home. You know, keeping that in mind, that's a good strategy to make sure the H vac clean it is the lungs of the home maintaining humidity levels between 40 and 50%. These are all things you can do right now. Reasonably priced to improve the air quality right this second. So I want to thank you guys, you know, for, for having me on here. I am a certified microbial remediation supervisor. It's the highest certification you can get, requiring 10 years of documented field experience. Author, founder of Home Cleanse Again and co founder and president of Change the Air foundation, who has been instrumental in helping to put together this event with all the amazing guests that we have here. So I just want to thank you again. We're here to help people and we really appreciate you for joining us in today and really hope that you learned a little bit and continue to learn as you kind of go through the, the episode. So without further ado, I'll stop sharing.

Thanks, Mike. That was great. Yeah, I, I love how you really made this kind of tangible for people because I think everyone thinks, well, I can only improve my indoor air quality if I hire a professional to do X. And what you've kind of shown us is that there's these easy swaps with cleaning products and the types of paints we use and then even down to like our, our cleaning regimen. So I wonder if, if we could hone in on that a somebody's cleaning. What are you wet wiping with? Because if you go online to the Facebook groups like there, there's like all sorts of recommendations. So what do you use to. To wipe in your home? What are you using to vacuum? What are we looking for specifically?

I use a product called Benefact and I've been using it for a long time, so I think it's 2014 or something like that. I made the switch and I've never, never looked back. There's a reason being behind it, and it's because it has an amazing ratio of surfactant, fancy word for saying dish soap, and disinfect it. Right. And so what we're looking to do is we're looking to help separate particles from surface surfaces and really remove them with a microfiber towel, which is another hundred times more effective than any other removing agent. Here you could use soap and water. You know, you can use vinegar and put a little soap with the vinegar, whatever you want to do. But at the end of the day, do what's. Do what's best for you. It's easily available. And, you know, make sure you're. You're using something that is going to degrease. Because we have to remember as human beings, we actually are pretty oily. Our skins release oils. If you've ever been to Disney World and you've seen the post that millions of people touch all the time, they look all oily and weathered. That's literally what happens. So our oils stick to things that we touch, and we touch our walls and we touch our doorknobs and our desks and our computers. Cooking oils in the kitchen, the products we use in the bathroom, we take a shower that kind of crystallize and get all over the place. These create these oily films that allow particles and stuff to stick to. So I think it's really important that we have some sort of degreasing effect when we're cleaning, which is why I use that particular product. But if you want to use something that doesn't have a surfactant, make sure you put a couple of drops of dish soap in there and mix it with it.

So then in terms of wiping now, do you use paper towels or microfiber cloths? Like, you know, there's a lot of debate out there on that.

So I use disposable microfiber cloths, and I fold the cloth into force so that I essentially get to wipe things multiple times with the same cloth, just folding it over and turning it over, et cetera. You know, you can really get like eight uses out of one towel if you do it right and then you discard the towel because well, who wants to be worrying about, you know, these contam, potentially contaminated towels now? And what do you do with those? And if you get a disposable towel, um, it's a lot cheaper than a reusable towel because really it's the piping that goes around the towel that allows it to be reusable or the threads would fall apart. So that's what I do, that's what I recommend. And I think that's really the better route to go to, to be safe.

Yeah, I like that you mentioned that. That need to not use the same cloth everywhere. I've always wondered, people have like, cleaning services and there's like one cloth they use to clean the entire house. And it just makes me, wow, are they just smearing stuff around at a certain point? It's no longer collecting what you're trying to collect.

Well, shout out to my mom, who actually I think was instrumental in teaching me, I think, everything I know on the cleaning side. So I grew up. I grew up in this, this household where I was asked to do chores, right? And a lot of the times I had to do chores, it was cleaning, mostly cleaning up after myself, but, you know, cleaning, you know, upstairs or my room or whatever it was, right? And the voice in the back of my mind every time I was cleaning was, did you change the water bucket several times? You know, because it was always, michael, this is not acceptable. Because you. All you did was swish the dirty water around the floor. And you know, when you. When you realize that, like, I was this dirty. This bucket of water got very dirty after I cleaned it. And then I would have to change it three or four times. And it always amazed me how much freaking dirt there still was after, you know, changing this bucket three or four times. And I started to realize later on in life how important this actually is because, you know, we're just swishing dirt around when we use the same rag. You know, when, when I clean a home, I mean, going through hundreds and hundreds of racks is. Is pretty standard, especially when you're getting down to this level and you're worried about, you know, this overload of potential particles and toxins. And you're cleaning every square inch of the home, right? And I think that it should speak volume to people that, you know, you want to use a good amount of rags, you do. And if my rule of thumb is if I wipe a surface and I see residue on the rag, like a streak of dirt or something, I'm wiping, turning the rag over and cleaning again. And when I know it's clean is when I clean something and I look at the rag and there's nothing on it, then I know it's clean, then I can move on to the next thing. And it depends on the state of the home. Right. Typically when I'm cleaning a home, it's like after this major renovation, construction or something. Right. And so, yeah, you're going to have a lot more dust, you're going to go through a lot more rags. But it just depends on which stage you're in. And, you know, the rule of thumb is if it's not clean, then it really isn't clean.

Yeah, no. Your mother is a smart woman, ahead of her time, so we should all give her our thanks. A last one. So you talked a little bit about vacuums, and I know you probably don't want to get to too much detail, but can you speak to us about what somebody might be looking for when purchasing a vacuum? Because some are better than others and what you don't want to be doing is basically recirculating everything into the environment. Are there any tips that you have when it comes to if someone was looking to buy a new vacuum?

Yeah, I like canister vacuums, probably the best. You know, and the reason being is because they're usually better sealed, easier to maneuver around. They usually have like, vacuum bags that create like a, almost like an extra layer of filtration. And then typically the way they exhaust is just much more efficient and much less likely to, you know, recontaminate as you're cleaning. And they make these hepa. It's gotta be a HEPA certified vacuum. So the, the HEPA thing's confusing because I can go and buy like a Home Depot vacuum for like $30, and it's not HEPA, but then I can buy, you know, the $40 HEPA filter for that vacuum and make it HEPA. But it's not actually HEPA. Right. Because HEPA means two different things. It means the filter is efficient, but it also means that the system is well sealed and doesn't leak. And those wet shop vacs that you get at hardware stores, those are not well sealed, right. And they allow dust and debris to escape back into the environment. So even with a HEPA filter, it is not actually hepa. So we have to clear that part up. Get a HEPA vacuum, there's ULPA out, which supposedly gets a little less. Our technology on vacuums definitely need improvement because if we have air purifiers that can get a smaller particle, that means that we could develop filters for vacuums to get smaller particles as well. So I'd love to see that come. Come to fruition.

Yeah, that. I, I'm. I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to vacuum cleaners. They spend a little too much time because I do find it interesting. So that's good to know. So you definitely, you want it basically a closed, sealed, HEPA filtered system? It's kind of what you're looking for.

Yeah.

Okay, great. Well, thank you so much. Do you have any final thoughts for us before we sign up?

Well, welcome, and I hope you enjoy all the other amazing talks. I have another presentation where I. I did one of those animation videos that, that you should check out. Dep. You're watching this in. But I. I hope that. I hope this has been great for you and I hope that you continue to learn a lot from this.

Yeah, Michael's absolutely right. We have so many great talks for the summit that dive into each of the aspects, maybe a little bit more, and lots of health practitioners and doctors, so be sure to check it out. And, you know, do us a favor, tell your friends about us. All right, well, we'll see you next time, Sam.