Matt Kelly explains ERMI, the DNA test that analyzes dust from your whole home to detect 36 mold species and their concentrations. Unlike air cartridge tests that miss most mold, ERMI identifies water-damage molds versus common indoor ones by collecting dust samples with a Swiffer from every room.
Q and A Number four is what is an ermie? Okay, if you've heard the word ermi, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm just set my timer here. If you've never heard, if you don't know what an ermie is, that probably sounds pretty weird, but an ERMI is what you use for testing your house. Okay? So I'm going to start my timer here. So the question again is, how do I test my house? What is an army? Because they go together. Okay. One, two, three, go. Now, when you have found out that your body is harboring mycotoxins, okay, we've already done the mycotoxin test. Maybe we did or not do the organic acid test. But if your body is mold toxic, we need to find out if your home is a factor. Okay? You can't if the all your problem. You got to figure out where your problems coming from. Coming from your home, that's a big problem. Okay, so the way we test your house is not with an air quality test. If you call your local mold inspector, he'll come in, put an air pump in the middle of your living room with a little round cartridge, and he'll visit with you in the kitchen for five minutes while that's running air through. But Those miss about 95% of the mold in your home when you're looking to check just the total toxic load on your home of mold. So they're great for cavity testing, but not for checking general toxicity. So if you want to check your home on a, on a hole, as in, am I sick from my house? What you're going to use is an ermi, and it's ermi, and that stands for Environmental Relative Moldiness Index. And the EPA came up with this many years ago, a way of measuring levels of mold in homes to see how it compared to the average home. But the reason this is nice and how it's different from the air cartridges. Air cartridges, they send the little cartridge into the lab and someone looks at it under a microscope, and they might see a few spores of this or that, and that's what they record. And 99% of the time, they come back and tell you that your space is safe and there's nothing to worry about when that may not be the case at all. And I have a case study of a client that did exactly this. But an ERMI is what you use, a Swiffer, you collect dust from every room. Up high, down low. Okay, because some molds are heavier, they're down low, some Molds end up up high. So you literally swiffer and collect all your dust. And I've got a, I've got a big video on how to do this. And I'll try to remember to link it below too. And then that goes to the lab. And then the lab uses DNA analysis. You know, it's not someone sitting before lunch looking to see what they can find before they quit and go for lunch. This is DNA analysis of your dust. So what they do, they look for 36 different molds from the sample from your home. And they have two columns on the ERMI results. One is water damage molds, one is common indoor molds. And they, out of both those columns, they fill in all the molds that were found in your house. And if none were detected, it'll say not detected. And now it categorizes them so it's more like toxic molds and less toxic molds. But then it also gives you the concentration. So say you have Stachybotrys, you know, the dreaded black mold. You, if it's found, it'll also give you the concentration of it. If you have ketomium, you don't want that either. But if you do, it gives you the concentration of it and it goes. If you have Trichoderma or Wollemia and different Aspergillus and Penicillium species. How much time? Oh, four seconds. All right, so an ermi. An ermi. It looks like I'm gonna go over. An ERMI is a simple at home test that you can do yourself or you can hire someone, but why spend the extra money? I'll try to remember. Put the link to my video blog post about how to do an ermie is a simple test you can do at home. You send it to the lab and they email back and PDF your results of which molds are found in your home. We already know which ones are toxic. And then it gives you the concentration and it gives you a perfect overview of the indoor air quality in relation to mold of your home.
Do you have questions about mold in your home or body? Book a consultation with Matt, AKA the mold man to guide your home and body to the next level of healing.
