Podcast Transcript
“Hello and welcome to The Strength in Hormones Podcast. I’m your host, Lauren Papanos. I’m a functional medicine registered dietician and a past hormone mystery case.
I took my years of professional training and personal lived experience and set out on a mission to help empower women to heal their body from within. My mission is to help you understand your body and hormones better so that you can show up as the absolute best version of yourself every day. Thanks so much for being here.
Now let’s get into today’s show. Hello everyone and welcome back to The Strength in Hormones Podcast. I’m your host, Lauren Papanos, and today I’m joined by Jason Earle.
Jason is the founder and CEO of Got Mold and also the creator of the Got Mold Test Kit. We’re going to be talking today about indoor mold testing and what you really need to know about the benefits, the problems, everything in between that comes up with this conversation of when you want to get your home tested for potential mold issues. We’ve had a few other podcasts on this show regarding mold and its problems with our health.”
“If you are curious as to why we are having a conversation about this, we’re going to drop those show links below and the show notes, so that you can always go back and listen to those. But today, we’re really going to get into that indoor testing. Welcome, Jason.
I appreciate you being here and thanks so much.
Yes, it’s a pleasure to be here and thanks for having me again.
Absolutely. Well, for those that may just not be familiar with you, could you just give us a brief introduction to yourself?
Sure. I am the founder and CEO of Got Mold, as you mentioned. I’ve been in the industry for, gosh, almost 24 years now, which is hard to believe.
But what got me into the space was my own personal experience, an awareness that came to me when I was about 25 years old. When I was a child, I was severely sick for reasons that were unknown. It was so severe that I was falsely diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.”
“Turns out I had asthma and allergies and pneumonia at the time, which is what led to that diagnosis. I did not have CF. But when I was 12 years old, my folks split up and moved out of that moldy house and all my symptoms went away.
And I didn’t think about it again for over 15 years. And so that awakening really, really led me to start thinking about the way buildings impact our health. This is something, the idea that a building can make you sick was such a new idea for me.
And that’s really the curiosity around that has never waned. And that’s what led me into the inspection side of the business, which I did for 18 years. And then more recently to the creation of the Gotmold Test Kit to help democratize access to high quality lab data.”
“Amazing. I love that story. And I feel like individuals that have had an experience with mold, it’s like pretty life shaping in terms of, I mean, I know for myself, for example, it’s influenced how I practice and kind of how I see the root causes of different health issues.
And so I think that it’s, you know, can be really profound in terms of how it shapes you. And, you know, there’s such a prevalence of mold. It’s honestly kind of ubiquitous, right, because it’s just a normal species out there.
But maybe you can tell us a little bit about what is the prevalence of mold in homes? And is this something that if you are living in a new home, for example, that you don’t have to worry about?
Great question. Very common question and also filled with common misconceptions. So a mold just on its face is one of the most ubiquitous organisms on the planet.”
“I mean, it’s in every breath you take, there are spores. In healthy environments, there are spores in every breath you take. In fact, in some of the most unhealthy environments, they’re actually sterile.
And so spores to a large degree can actually be healthy. Like many things, the dose makes the poison. So we just have to understand that we live on planet fungi.
And so it was here before us and it will be here after we’re gone. So how we interact with mold is really the most important aspect of this conversation, because we’re not getting rid of it and mold free is not a reality. So why is mold such a problem these days?
Well, actually, since 1945, when we started having to build faster, cheaper homes to meet the demand of the baby boomers, we began introducing different building materials that were less durable, that were more mold friendly. You know, back then we built with plaster, stone, brick, concrete, these kinds of things get wet, they dry out. And no matter how long they get wet, mold doesn’t grow on them.”
“But we replaced that with, especially plaster, sheetrock, fluffy insulation inside the walls, which holds water. So, you know, all of our building materials these days are essentially disposable. And that’s not the way buildings were built in, you know, before 1945.
So since then, most of the new construction or, you know, the vast majority to the tune of, well, 75 percent of current homes are sheathed in the interior with sheetrock. And that is mold food. Mold loves the paper, the sheetrock, this is sort of a paper sandwich.
And it also is very absorptive, so it holds the water and it provides a nutritional support. So that’s really the sort of bedrock of the mold problem in the United States. And it’s part of the reason why it’s such a concentrated problem here in the United States.”
“It’s not such a problem in many other countries that are still using a lot of the legacy materials. So according to Lawrence Berkeley Labs, just to put a point on it, about 47 percent of American homes have a mold or moisture problem of significance. So it’s a big, big number.
And in the way I look at it, I think about the prevalence of it, which is at 47 percent, which again is largely driven by about 75 percent of American homes having the wrong materials in them. And then we have this very high, highly susceptible population. Asthma is a big deal.
We got 25 million asthmatics in the United States, 37 million with chronic sinusitis, 100 different autoimmune diseases. The list goes on and on. And so these are the people that are most susceptible.
And so if you take the prevalence and the susceptibility and you overlap, there you go. That’s why we have such a big issue in terms of the number of people that are affected.”
“Yeah, that’s fascinating. I always think about that because my husband and I go to a certain beach town in Mexico often and you see everything that’s built there is all cement and it makes you wonder, you know, maybe they think kind of know what they’re doing because there’s obviously a lot of moisture in this atmosphere. You know, why aren’t things built with cement in the United States?
But like you said, it’s much. Yeah. And I’ve heard that this is something that a lot of newer homes can deal with because like it rains or something of that sort.
Right. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a water leak. But that moisture and the, you know, potentially a rainfall when they’re in the middle of the building process can expose the dry wall to the moisture.
Is that correct?”
“Yeah. So during construction, you know, buildings are not built in a bubble. And so they get they take on weather.
And sometimes it’s just that even just the framing itself gets really wet. You get one sunny day and the contractor is like, man, we got to hurry up and close this building up. And so they’ll come in and they’re supposed to follow processes around testing moisture levels in the wood and making sure that it’s to normal.
But, you know, the almighty dollar and delays in construction, unfortunately, lead to haphazard decisions. And so lots and lots of homes are closed up when they’re still damp. And of course, if you put, you know, you would never put dry shoes on wet socks.
But that’s basically what people end up doing.
Terrible. And you have probably no idea thinking that you’re walking into a brand new house, mold free, right?
That’s right. That’s right. And oftentimes you won’t even smell in a situation like that because it’s not actively growing.
It’s just sort of like this dormant, widespread problem that’s happened in the walls. Yeah. Yeah.”
“Makes sense. What are some signs that might indicate mold, maybe for someone that isn’t in a new build? Is there things that they can look for in certain areas that would maybe pique their interest in proceeding to test their house?
Sure. Well, there are a lot of things to look for. At the end of the day, it’s all about moisture.
So when people talk about mold inspections or mold assessments, what we’re really doing is a moisture inspection or a moisture assessment. And we’re looking for signs of past, present or potentially future issues that we can prevent. So we’re looking for all the clues.
So I always say if you see something, smell something or feel something, do something. So the see something would be any visual sign of moisture or dampness. That could be as obvious as condensation on windows, stains, discoloration.”
“Some of the more subtle things might be like little water bugs, you know, those little round bugs that end up in the corners and the carpet and things like that. You know, you’re looking for any sign of a trim pulling away from a wall. That’s kind of a dead giveaway because materials will expand and contract at different rates when they get damp, and then they dry back out again.
So any visual indication of moisture. Also the outside of the building, you know, especially if you’re looking at any place or rental, you want to make sure there’s not ponding and puddling in the yard. You want to make sure the gutters look like they’re draining properly.
There’s not like lines on them, which indicates that they’re flowing over. You want to make sure that the windows are that there’s not gaps around them, that they’ve been properly caulked and sealed. You want to make sure that the driveway is not pitched towards the house.”
“So the water sheds off the building and then also sheds from the property. So it’s a comprehensive sort of view onto things or into things. Then, so that’s the visual.
If you smell something, this is usually the first clue. That damp or musty smell that’s the hallmark of mold growth, that should be the key indicator. We pioneered the use of mold sniffing dogs many moons ago, and that’s what they’re trained to do, is find the source of that musty odor.
So if you have a musty odor, you have something growing, that’s not something to ignore, that’s not something to just dismiss as some sort of aesthetic nuisance. It’s not only the first clue, but it’s also a major health hazard. And the musty smell, the chemicals that are in the musty smell have been found to be extremely potent in terms of their immune impact.
They can trigger cytokine storms, inflammatory responses that are disproportionately large, and they’re now considered to be neurotoxic. So that musty smell is no joke. So but it is a powerful clue.”
“So you want to find the source of that, which always comes back down to again, where’s the moisture problem? And the third thing is if you feel something, if you feel something, if you’ve got a symptom or symptoms, that seem to get better when you leave the building for any length of time, that’s a big red flag. So unfortunately, it’s sometimes hard to find a place to go that’s not like a hotel that’s been sprayed with chemicals and fragrances and stuff like that.
But you know, sometimes just being out for a few hours will give some people some relief. And that’s often a clue that there’s something amiss in the house.
I love that. Those are super simple take homes. I appreciate that.”
“And you know, there’s quite a bit of problems in this industry, and I’m sure you can shed some light on those. I believe there’s even some laws around this, correct me if I’m wrong, where companies can’t both test and remediate because of some of the sliminess that can occur in these areas. So could you tell us a little bit about what are the issues in the industry that people need to be aware of, of what to look for maybe when they are wanting to do testing and a little bit into the difference between just cleaning a surface with something like bleach, for example, versus us actually removing, cutting out that piece of drywall, replacing it and why that matters.
Sure, sure. Well, so the, I think the most egregious problem with the industry is that there’s only licensing in five states right now. And that licensing, there’s solidarity within those states, in the sense that they all mandate that inspectors cannot also be remediators on the same project.”
“And because it’s a conflict of interest, it’s like, you know, never ask a barber if you need a haircut, right? This is, you know, you’re asking for trouble. Now, there’s lots of industries that do this all the time, and no one thinks anything of it.
You bring your mechanic to the shop and you say, hey, it’s just something wrong with my car. And guess what? You’ve never had your keys handed back to you.
Nothing’s wrong, right? They’re always going to give you something. But, you know, when it comes to mold, there’s too much room for abuse, there’s too much history of abuse.
The industry is filled with people that are sort of opportunists, unfortunately. Mold is gold is actually a refrain that you hear within the industry, which kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies, because I don’t feel that way about mold. And I think at the end of the day, we need people that are focused on doing a very good job of assessment without any financial ties to the size of the project.”
“So inspectors are paid for their time and advice. Remediators are kind of paid by the pound, if you will. You know, the size of the project is how they get paid.
You don’t want the person giving you advice on how much to remove and what to remove being paid by how much you remove, right? So there’s the and also you don’t want them, their thumb on the scale, so to speak. So someone who’s doing testing that has a relationship that’s too close with a remediator can kind of have their thumb on the scale when it comes to testing beforehand and after.
If you know what you’re doing in this space, you can gather data that kind of tells a story. What you want is someone who’s willing to take, who’s going to take their time just on the inspection and assessment side and really protect your interests. And finding a qualified independent inspector who just does that is not only difficult, it can also be expensive.”
“And so a lot of people want to skip over the assessment part and just call the remediation contractor to come over. But what you end up doing is inviting the vampire into your home. They’ve got no one telling them what to take out, no one giving them the parameters.
There’s no accountability in terms of the post-abatement or the post-remediation assessment. And so oftentimes they just go wild and people don’t know any better. It’s kind of like if you had a symptom and you just immediately scheduled surgery.
You wouldn’t do that. If you had a symptom, you’d get a work up, you’d get some guidance. Surgery is a team approach.
You’d have your primary care or at least a specialist guiding the process. The surgeon is not usually the same person doing all of those processes when it comes to your health. The health of your home is no different.”
“You really need to have a professional team if you’re going to go the distance and you’re going to go through remediation. So the industry standard delineates that, by the way. The industry standard is called the IICRC-S as in SAM-520, S for standard, 520.
And that follows the S-500, which is the water damage standard, which explains how quickly you need to deal with water damage before it becomes mold. But if you don’t get to it within three days, you have to follow the mold standard. And soon, there’s going to be an S-530 mold inspection standard, which is exciting.
So there’s actually going to be some rigor and some structure around that soon. But the standard even clearly delineates that you shouldn’t be the same, the contractor and the remediator should not, the inspector and the remediator should not be the same. So it’s very important for people to take that in consideration when they’re doing their shopping for who’s going to guide them through the process.”
“Got it. Okay. And if someone finds mold, say, on their wall, and they suppose it’s in their dry wall versus say, on their refrigerator, is there a different way that those situations need to be handled in terms of calling in a full company to remediate versus cleaning up an area?
Sure. Well, you had asked a two-part question on the previous one. And so the answer to that answers both.
So when it comes to removal versus cleaning, mold remediation is usually a little bit of both. So the most common misconception around this is you got to kill the mold. And if you just kill it, you’re good.
So that’s like the bleach mentality, or I’m going to paint over it, or I’m going to ozone, or fog, or whatever. These things are ill-advised. They actually, you’re adding toxins to the environment.”
“Oftentimes, you’re adding moisture to the environment. Fogging, by the way, is a wet application. And bleach is 97% water and 3% sodium hypochlorite.
So you’re literally adding moisture to a moisture problem. So these things are ill-advised. Okay, when it comes to surfaces that are hard, non-porous, so that might mean like your refrigerator, or even the gaskets around your refrigerator, or the tile on the grout in your bathroom, these things can be cleaned with just good old-fashioned detergent.
You don’t need to use chemicals. You don’t need to kill it. Killing mold doesn’t actually do anything to make it less harmful.
Dead mold is still allergenic and potentially toxigenic. So you need to remove the physical mold, so the spores and any growth that you see. Unfortunately, on some surfaces like grout, you’re never going to get rid of the staining unless you use a little bit of bleach, but that’s an aesthetic thing.”
“That’s not a health thing. So hard, porous surfaces can be cleaned with a damp wipe, a little detergent. I actually really love a product called Force of Nature, which doesn’t leave any chemical residue.
It doesn’t kill it, but it’s a good cleaning agent, and it’s healthy for kids and pets and stuff like that, as opposed to some of the more noxious things. Now, when it comes to mold on sheetrock, soft materials, porous materials, furniture that’s been upholstered, curtains, drapes, carpet, carpet padding, things like that, that stuff all has to be cut out and removed. And so, generally speaking, you want to go about a foot to two feet away from the visible damage.
So if you’ve got mold, staining, any sort of delamination, any visible water damage, you want to go one to two feet away from that, because oftentimes behind that wall, but behind what you see is Pandora’s box. And so you go until you don’t find any damage. Now, I’m not saying you as a homeowner do that.”
“I’m saying that a professional would do that, because anything beyond, I would say one square foot of mold is too much for a homeowner. And there, by the way, there’s a little trick. If you got a small amount, you can put contact paper on top of it and helps to contain it.
You go around the edges you put and then you can cut that out. That’s helpful, but unfortunately, there’s still mold on the back of that sheetrock often. And unless you’re wearing proper protective equipment and you’ve got ventilation set up and you’ve got the building, the room contained and all that stuff, which is what professionals do, oftentimes even removing a small amount of mold can contaminate the rest of the house.
So even I, who teach people how to do this, when I have a mold problem, I don’t go just cutting stuff out. You know, it’s a process. And I strictly adhere to that.
I’ve seen it go south too many times.
Yeah, I’m not jealous of remediators, for sure.”
“Tough job.
Yeah, I would not want to be exposing myself to that every day. But I’m sure the equipment probably helps protect them to some degree.
It does. I see a lot of remediators that get sick, believe it or not. So they get arrogant after a while and then and then they learn their lesson.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m sure. Okay. And so within this, there’s different types of testing techniques and reporting and things of that sort that I’m sure you can speak to.
The ERME is something we talked about a little bit before we hopped on. I think that a lot of functional practitioners still believe that to be the gold standard, or that is what is maybe advised to the patient. Is that the gold standard?”
“And if not, why? And what is the best type of technology and reporting system that someone should be looking for?
Yeah. I mean, the ERME test, which stands for Environmental Relative Moldiness Index, is a test that was developed by an EPA staffer named Steve Vesper, 23 years ago. If you Google EPA ERME, the EPA’s website will pop up and it’s like an FAQ.
And it says, should I use ERME to test my house for mold? And it unequivocally says no, do not use ERME. It is a research tool.
It is not to be used for home diagnostics. Steve Vesper, the guy who created it, will say the same thing. Yet it’s been taken and turned into this thing that it isn’t.
It’s a 22-year-old genomics-based test. So there’s basically 36 species that were identified in 32 homes in Ohio 22 years ago. It’s not even a geographically diverse data set.”
“So it’s got lots and lots of flaws and it’s a very old form of DNA-based testing. There are new tests coming out that will look at all known microbes, but this is very, very narrow. And it was actually developed for an asthma study, and now it’s turned into like a microtoxin thing that it isn’t.
And so the reason that it’s so popular is because, quite frankly, it’s always high. And this is not a conspiracy theory, but it supports a very serious problem in the functional health care community, which is confirmation bias. Everybody’s presenting with a symptom right now has mold.
It used to be everyone had Lyme. Now, everybody has mold and Lyme or maybe a combination thereof. And so, ERME is almost, I mean, when I say almost always high, it’s like 95% high.”
“And I went in when I was still doing inspections in the field, we followed up. First of all, we used to use ERME and we used to sell ERME. My first test kit was actually an ERME test kit, but we stopped selling it because it was so prone to false positives.
And people will say, you know, oh, it found the mold. No, it didn’t. It found spores.
And spores are normal in indoor environments. As I started explaining, that was like the first thing I said. And they settle out of the air, like because gravity works, works on spores too.
And so if you pick up a bunch of dust, you’re going to find spores. And if you don’t, then your house is maybe even too clean. So, so ERME capitalizes on this accumulation and the algorithm that creates the output is wildly flawed.”
“And anyone who wants to do a little research on that, I just dropped the link in the chat here for an article I wrote about ERME, which you might want to put in the show notes for anyone who’s curious about that. And so ultimately, at the end of the day, it creates a lot more panic. You still have to find the source of the mold.
So it’s not really a great test for a proper assessment. Most of the time, it just leads to investigative demolition. It leads to tearing houses apart.
And so generally speaking, we recommend Irmin not be used as a primary diagnostic. Now, what do people use instead? This is the challenge.
You really have two main things to worry about with mold. Spores and the microbial VOCs. Everyone else is going to say, microtoxins, microtoxins, microtoxins.”
“But only about 100 species produce them out of 100,000 that are known to science. So we’re not worried about microtoxins in the assessment process. We’re worried about spores as an indicator of mold floating around in the air.
And we’re worried about the musty smell indicating active mold growth. So if you want to test your house, you test for spores, airborne spores, and you use your nose. And it may sound so simple, overly simple, but that’s exactly what you need to do.
Now, if you have a musty smell and the spore counts are normal, you’ve got mold hiding in your walls. Okay? If the spore counts are high and you have a musty smell, well, then you’ve got a dampness problem in your space.
And mold is actually circulating that’s airborne. These are two different kinds of mold problems, and that’s where assessment begins. You know, what kind of a mold problem do I have?”
“Where is it located and to what extent? Once you’ve got that figured out, then you can start the remediation planning. But oftentimes, that’s where people get stuck.
So they do a test, whether it be an air test, like ours, or they do the sniff test, which almost everyone has the capacity to do. Then finding the source of the moisture, that’s the trick, and that’s often where you have to get a professional involved.
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And with that, are you looking for any level? So say some, you know, the reporting shows that there is some spores. Is there a certain safe limit, I suppose, that maybe doesn’t require remediation that could be treated through something like air filtration or some type of purification candle or some other method?
Sure. I mean, you know, the levels are often what lead people to taking action. But air purifiers are a really good thing to have in any home anyway.”
“And they also should not be used as a substitute for remediation. So you can reduce exposure if you can’t go the distance. You know, if you can’t afford an inspector right now and you can’t afford remediation, buying a really good air purifier that has a lot of carbon in it.
And this is the key, because we talked about the musty smell. HEPA filters, for example, the smell just goes right through. Those chemicals go right through.
But if you’ve got carbon, that captures the compounds that are in the musty odor. So you need to get a good air purifier, like an Austin Air, or an IQ Air, or like a Jasper, which just upgraded their carbon content. And those will take out the musty odor.”
“That’s key. Okay, so if you’re going to use an air filter to buy yourself time, get one that has a lot of activated carbon. And don’t buy into this thing about, you know, ozonation or, you know, ionizers or PCOS or molecule and that stuff.
This is absolute junk science and often causing additional particles to be generated. Additional new chemicals are created in those in those processes. So really comes down to good HEPA filters with carbon.
But here’s the most important part. If you have levels that are higher than normal, and here’s the key, when you look at our report, for example, for the Gotmold Test Kit, we give you a green, yellow, orange or red, okay? Green means nothing was detected, but if you smell it, that means hidden mold, okay?
Right? Normal spore counts, musty smell, hidden mold. If you got higher spore counts than yellow, orange or red, then the key there is to figure out where that is coming from, where the source of the moisture is.”
“Don’t just buy an air purifier. Find the moisture. Look outside, see what might be coming in.
Are you doing things inside your home, like drying clothes inside and allowing excess moisture? Do you have a humidity gauge? Do you actually have your humidity in the safe zone, which is between 40 and 60 percent, or is it higher, right?
Do you have any leaks, odors, or symptoms that seem to get better when you live? This is all part of the assessment process, but you need to get to the source of the moisture problem. It’s of the utmost importance, because if you get to the source of the moisture problem, then I’m totally about buying an air purifier to buy yourself some time.”
“But if you don’t get to the moisture problem, what’s going to happen is it’s going to continue to grow, and mold grows exponentially. It only takes three days for a moisture problem to become a bonafide mold problem, and then it just compounds after that. Yes, you can buy yourself some time, but don’t forget that what we’re really trying to do is get to the source of the issue.
Got it. What about the ozone systems that people put into clean their mold off of food? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Is it kind of the same situation with the ozone technology?
Ozone on food, it doesn’t bother me nearly as much because it’s contained within a vessel. I prefer to see using apple cider vinegar and filtered water and soak your berries and that. There’s just a lot going on.”
“Think about ozone is three oxygen molecules. And there’s one that’s on there that’s kind of just waiting to go zap something. It just wants to oxidize.
It’s very aggressive and ozone interacts with everything. I mean, everything it is. It is non-specific in what it attacks.
And so it also doesn’t oxidize everything completely, just like a fire. You know, you look at a campfire when it’s done, there’s a lot of stuff that’s not burnt all the way. Well, think about oxidization the same way.
It doesn’t burn everything off. So oftentimes, it leaves behind charred bits that are much smaller than the original piece, which means they’re more deeply respirable. Food and stuff like that, I can almost get with.”
“I don’t really love the idea of putting this into a bloodstream, and I know there are a lot of people that say they had great results with this. Fine. I will withhold judgment.
But when it comes to treating your indoor air in your building, it’s a hard no. Okay.
All right. Got it. Okay.
So tell us how Got Mold Testing compares to these other types of testing methods out there. We talked about the ERMI and some of the limitations with that, but there’s other systems and apparatuses that are out there. I know we had one, we bought our house where they did some type of like tea that I guess measured something in the air that was set up in the room.
I’m supposed to go over a certain square footage, and then there’s also like the Petri dishes, right? So how does Got Mold compare to these different methods?”
“Sure. I mean, you’ve got the most common ones are ERMI, which we beat up a little bit. I encourage people to do research on that because the more you look at it, the more you’ll go, why are they still doing that?
Then if you follow the money, you’ll see why. When it comes to the Petri dishes, these are also extremely common and they’re very popular within the functional community. They also are subject to, I would say that they fall into the same sort of confirmation bias category.
They will always grow something. Doesn’t mean it’s a problem. So if you look at our report, there’s always outdoor spores.
And unless they ran their HEPA filters right up to the time when they took the samples, there’s always some indoor spores. That doesn’t mean you have a mold problem. What we look for in our test kit is different types and quantities indoors than what we’re finding outdoors.”
“Outdoor spores infiltrate. They’ll come in through nooks and crannies, front door when you open the windows, and even through little gaps in the building. Believe it or not, your building acts like an air filter.
Air comes in through weird little places. And so when we look at the indoor air, it’s very important that we have an outdoor sample. This is something that Ermey doesn’t take into consideration.
This is something that Petri dishes don’t take into consideration. It’s just this snapshot of what fell into the plate at the time with the Petri dishes. And then you look at it and you see if something grew.
And then if you want to send it in for analysis, they could tell you what species. The list of problems with the Petri dishes is so long that we could do an entire podcast on it. In fact, I’m in the middle of writing an article about this.”
“So I won’t bore you with the gory details. But basically, it’s an outdated method. Petri dishes used to be valuable until they found out that about 95% of the species that fall into a plate don’t grow, only the fastest growing ones.
It’s kind of like weeds in the yard. There’s a lot of seeds in your yard. If you go till up your front yard and you water it, just till it up, till up the grass and everything else, and then water it, stuff will grow like crazy.
But there are so many seeds in that soil that aren’t growing because the conditions aren’t right. And the Petri dishes specifically support the growth of the fastest growing species, not the ones that are more indicative of chronic water damage. So they don’t even tell you anything about water damage molds at all.”
“And because they’re always positive, they almost always lead to confusion. They lead to people making silly decisions, like firing a remediator based upon the fact that their dish grew mold. And you could do the same thing with a piece of white bread.
Put on your can, make it damp, and put on your counter, mold will grow on it in a few days. It doesn’t tell you anything. Swabs are also similarly problematic in the sense that if you swab any surface, you’ll find bacteria.
Bacteria is all over. We are covered in a sheath of bacteria that are completely benign. In fact, they’re beneficial.
They’re taking up space to keep the pathogenic bacteria from getting in. And the same thing goes with our buildings. We’re surrounded by spores and bacteria that are either benevolent or benign.”
“And this is a hard thing for the germophobes listening to this, but it’s true. And so if you swab any surface, you’re going to find stuff. That doesn’t mean it’s a pathogen.
It doesn’t mean that it’s a threat to you. And there’s a lot of groups out there right now that are capitalizing on this by doing things like swabbing toilets during mold assessments. I mean, what are you going to find?
You know, it doesn’t make any sense. So the swabs are always positive, and they’re not an accurate indication of what’s going on in the whole building. So again, what we’re looking for, what we want to do is we want to avoid tests that have a lot of false positives.
For obvious reasons, because people want to take action on them. And a broken clock is right twice a day. So just because you have a false positive and there’s a mold problem in your house doesn’t mean that test works.”
“It means that that test is always positive and you have a mold problem in your house. And so this is where a lot of people get stuck because they’re being shown data that they don’t know, they don’t understand. And they get led by their nose and by their fear down a path, a very expensive path that may or may not be necessary.
So with Gotmold Testing Kit, it does not include Petri or swabbing, it sounds like. So what is the method of how it’s picking up these spores in the air?
Sure. So if you hire a reputable indoor air quality professional, they’re going to come over and do an inspection, a physical inspection of the house. And they’re going to look the inside, the outside, from the bottom to the top, and then develop a sampling strategy.”
“And they’re almost always going to collect air samples using a technology known as spore traps. These spore traps are precision-engineered, round cassettes that air is pulled through, and the spores and other microscopic particles are captured within. And then they get sent to a laboratory for analysis.
And that professional method, which is widely accepted as the go-to for air assessment, is the technology that we use in our kits. So what we did was we created a way for people to cost-effectively do that. Right now, you’d have to pay a thousand or $1,500 to have a professional come over to do that testing.
And that testing doesn’t require a professional to do it. It’s not that sophisticated. The testing collection itself.
So we developed an air sampling pump that allows you to do this test. This pulls air through the cassette that I just showed you. It takes five minutes.”
“You do an outside sample, as I mentioned before, for the background or the reference sample. And then you collect the indoor samples in the rooms that you’re most concerned about. Our kits allow you to test one, up to three rooms.
So we have one, two, and three room kits. And then we can buy refills for a little bit less. And you put the samples back in a prepaid return mailer, it goes to our lab, the lab analyzes it, and then we give you a beautiful color-coded report with a green, yellow, orange, or red indicator, as well as the actual lab data of what organisms were found and at what quantities.
We even include background debris, which tells you the general clumbliness of the air, and some other key indicators that a professional who would be looking at that report, if you were to hand this over to a professional afterwards, they would be able to work from that. Then we also, the third page also gives people action steps. Where do you find a professional inspector?”
“Where do you find a professional remediator? We also provide our e-book, the How to Find Mold e-book, which would also be a good thing to put in the show notes, which allows people to do an inspection of their home. Here’s what you look for.
Here are the things that you need to be aware of as you do an outside walk and an inside walk. And so our test essentially takes the professional testing and simplifies it so that the consumers can take this first step in the safety of their home. But I will say this, and this is the most important thing, is that there’s no test, not one test, not our test, any test that should be used as a substitute for a professional assessment.
Okay, and no one test should be the basis for any major life decisions. Not an ERMI, not a cotton-mold test kit, not a Svaba Petri dish. You need to actually have a really good grip on whether or not there’s an active moisture problem in the building or a significant mold problem from a past moisture issue before you start really disrupting your entire life.”
“And so a professional inspection, unfortunately, is often out of reach. So what we do is we created this really to give people a cost-effective first step, kind of like a pregnancy test kit, right? You don’t start buying baby furniture because it’s positive.
You go to the doctor. We encourage people to use that same kind of common sense here.
Sure. Okay. And say it comes back negative that they’re clean on all the testing report.
Do you typically recommend a certain interval of retesting?
Yeah, that’s a great question. So our preference is, first of all, I believe that everybody should test their house at least once, right? Because 47% of homes have a mold or moisture problem of significance.
We get huge issues with autoimmune disease and asthma and cancer, autism, you name it. And so nobody knows how much of that is mold related, but we all know that mold either causes or aggravates a big chunk of that. So everybody should test their house at least once.”
“And then on a seasonal basis would be ideal because things do change, right? These conditions change all the time. But the big thing what you want to do is after you’ve tested your house once on a proactive basis, if you’ve got this concern or you just want to just get ahead of it, then you could also just pay attention again for any change in conditions.
Do you see something, smell something or feel something? Is there an event? Did you have a flood or a leak?
Is there suddenly an odor that developed? Or suddenly somebody having symptoms that you want to follow up on? Those kinds of events and those kinds of change in circumstances are generally what cause people to test again.
Got it.”
“Okay. Yeah, I think that that’s a really good indicator. And do you have that in any of your resources on the website in terms of the see something, smell something, feel something?
Yes, I’ll drop the e-book link in here. And so it’s all in the e-book, How to Find Mold.
Yeah, I think that would be a great resource for people, just as like a reminder of what we’re looking for here.
Absolutely. Yeah. I know this is amazing.
Okay.
Wonderful. Perfect. So we’ll put that in the show notes below, and then we also have a discount code for if you want to do a Got Mold Testing Kit as well.”
“So we’ll include that in the show notes as well. I was just telling Jason that we are actually retesting our house right now. So I will share my experience with how that process goes as well, so you guys can see what that looks like.
And then if you want to do it yourself, then we’ll have the discount for that below. But thank you so much, Jason, for really what you’re doing in the industry, first and foremost, but too also for sharing your expertise and knowledge in this area. I find that so many patients come to us and really feel overwhelmed in this area.
They’re getting quotes for $10,000 just for an inspection and these crazy types of situations or testing techniques and things. I’m no expert when it comes to home remediation and things of this sort. I just know when things sound fishy.”
“I wanted this to be really a great resource for individuals to have something that they could listen to, so that they have a little bit more knowledge and more confidence in how to proceed in this a bit challenging type situation when you’re really just trying to improve the quality of your environment to hopefully improve your own health. Thank you so much.
Yeah, no doubt about it. And I will sort of take that one step further. There is a group of contractors and inspectors that are capitalizing on this fear in a significant way.
And they are charging $6,000, $8,000, $10,000 for inspections. And then they refer to a specific contractor. No one else can handle this problem, and it’s $100,000 to remediate it.
Stay away from these kinds of things. This is outrageous, this is abusive, and they’re very slick, they’re very dangerous, it’s very expensive, it’s a cash extraction, and oftentimes people are left with a home that’s destroyed and no improvement in their health. So buyer beware.
Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you again.
Thank you, Lauren.”
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It is not a substitute professional medical advice. Please consult your medical provider before beginning any new health recommendations.”
