GOT MOLD? GET UPDATED WITH THE JASON EARLE INTERVIEW!

Podcast Transcript

David Avocado Wolfe

Thu, Jun 06, 2024 4:31PM • 1:23:30

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

mold, building, people, spores, moisture, musty smell, house, problem, air, fungi, vocs, food, mycotoxins, test, deal, water, growing, materials, sample, chemicals

SPEAKERS

Jason Earle, David Wolfe

 

David Wolfe  00:04

Greetings, everybody, David Avocado Wolfe here we’ve got an amazing show ahead, we’re going to get into mold toxicity sick building syndrome. If you’re living in a sick building, soon you will become sick. I’ve got an expert in that field. Jason Earle joining us, he’s from gotten mold.com, and one 800 Got mold, and he’s got all kinds of interesting stuff, including a system he sent to me to test mold. So I’ve got his system here, we’re gonna get into that. Very interesting. It’s one of the biggest issues around today I was with an inner circle member who came to visit us here in Hawaii. And she has been suffering from mold toxicity for the last year, she finally figured out what it was, it was so bad in her case, and I’m gonna talk to Jason about this, she literally had black mold oozing out of the plugs in her room. Now we’ve had mold here in Hawaii. I think we’ve remediated as best as we can, with the systems that I’ve used. But I’ll talk to Jason about how good those systems are. 

 

He’s gonna give us some insight. But I no longer have like real bad allergies. In my room I used to have, you know, I used to take that poncho right there and flip it up. And I could sense the spores that were on me, I was awful. And then finally, we got that knocked back down, I’ll tell you the strategies that I’ve used. But we’re gonna get into what Jason’s got here with his got mold system. It’s a home system, so you can get your stuff tested, you get your rooms tested, and he’s gonna give us a protocol about that. VEC before the call, I was talking to him about it. 

 

And he had actually suggested that we do it a different way than we were planning because we were planning for everyone to leave the house at some point here soon, we’re gonna go on a on a little hiatus from this house. And then our guy who’s watching the house, he’s going to test all the rooms for us. But Jason’s saying we don’t even have to do that. We’ll get the skinny from him. But with no further ado, Jason Earle, how are ya?

 

Jason Earle  01:42

What’s happening? Excellent. Excellent. So good to be here, Dave. Thanks for

 

David Wolfe  01:45

being with us. And let’s get into the mold issue. It’s a crazy problem. I mean, it’s getting worse and worse. I’ve had friends who moved into old houses couldn’t last six months, the mold was so bad, they ripped the walls off. Obviously, there’s black mold showing up, I guess, with the first question is how big is this issue?

 

Jason Earle  02:04

Well, it’s a massive issue. And it’s it’s literally a growing concern. You know, this has been going on for a long time. But you know, evolutionarily speaking, we spend 99.9% of our time outdoors, right? I mean, in the history of humanity, we spent most of our time outdoors only recently have we really locked ourselves into these synthetic shells. And so And gradually, they’ve gotten more and more closed up hermetically sealed, really, at this point. 

 

And what that’s done is essentially interrupted all of our natural, our natural relationships. Really, if you think about the way our body interacts with nature, we’re not we’re completely disconnected from it now. And so mold used to be a normal part of our interactions. outdoor air is loaded with mold spores. But we’re not exposed to mold growth outdoors in a concentrated manner. And that’s really where we’re getting trouble.

 

David Wolfe  02:56

It seems to me that we’re dealing with a toxic material type of mold, and this is my read on it. Like this house is made out of a redwood tree, which is relatively non toxic, it’s, it’s it beats fungus, you know, every day of the week. There’s other you know, there’s particle boards sometimes in the house with, you know, like on the floor downstairs, or we had some particle board that was patched in that need the termite went right for it’s really interesting. They went right for the junk wood. So it let’s talk about that. Like, there’s some stuff that this mold likes to eat versus other stuff. What are the big offenders there?

 

Jason Earle  03:29

Yeah, well, so if you go kind of all the way back to the beginning on this, the real problem began right after World War Two, when the baby boomers created this demand for faster and cheaper building materials. And you know, so enter drywall really. So gypsum wallboard, paper faced wallboard is the ideal growth medium for mold, it soaks up moisture, which is really the root cause of all this, and then it offers this beautiful, nutritious material for it to grow on. And so it grows like wildfire. I mean, you know, she rock is just sort of a Petri dish. So, we began building with these building materials. And then and then in the 1970s, we close up our buildings really tight to save energy, right during the fuel crisis. 

 

And so and then also, we began lathering our buildings with a toxic petrochemical based products like, you know, fluorescent light, polyurethane and, and voc based paints and all the stuff that we import from from overseas. And so now we’re stuck in these buildings that are essentially made of molded food. You know, even the dumbest of the three little pigs didn’t build us outside of paper, but we do at scale, right? And then we’re also hermetically sealed in these things. So if you do the math on it’s pretty fascinating. We breathe 13 to 15 times a minute. 

 

And that comes out to over 20,000 times a day. Right? So So and most of us don’t even leave the building anymore. It used to be said that we spend 90% of our time indoors, but now not only do we spend 90 Plus percent of our time indoors, we’re doing it in the same building. Right? So this is really if you if the building environment isn’t pristine, what I mean by proceeding is free of fungal growth, right? Free of moisture problems and also low in chemical load. That’s a big deal. Right? So this is really, you know, this is a multifaceted conversation. Mold is the hot topic, but really, it’s about, it’s about mold and moisture problems. It’s about chemicals, and it’s about hyper sanitisation. Right, so that the microbiome of the building, sort of, you know, we all know the dangers of antibiotics. But we’re doing the same thing to our buildings by hyper sanitize as well. That’s,

 

David Wolfe  05:35

that’s really an interesting part of it all is this hyper sanitization. And this idea that we’re going to get rid of all bacteria, when actually we need friendly bacteria. We tested buildings back, this is about eight years ago, and we tested for 30 vocs, every single building tested for all 30 vocs. I couldn’t believe it, I was just that’s what really got me into HIPAA filtering and carbon filtering and ozone ating. And that’s what I’m doing in this room. Right now I got my fan up here, I’ve got my ozone system back there, I’ll tell you that in a second how that one works. 

 

It’s not just an open ozone filter, it’s actually coming off the tank, bubbling through all of oil, so it’s breathable, so I’m gonna be in the room while it’s happening. It’s so it’s more of a long chain ozone. So it’s not as aggressive. It doesn’t attack your mucosal membrane. It does work, though, because I have noticed wires on the floor because those zones heavy. And it’ll start eating into the wires if I’m not careful, because those on will attack metals. So just for everyone who’s using ozone out there, be careful. And then I’ve got you know, the air doctor and other air filters and stuff in here. Is that, is that reasonable to deal with that? I mean, I know it makes it easier for me to be in my room, that’s for sure. It’s not like the old days, I can tell with my wet towels that I don’t smell mildew when I’m running my system. But if I come back after a long trip, I do smell mildew. Yeah,

 

Jason Earle  06:49

so there’s three things you can do with an air quality problem, you can either do source control, which is where you remediate. And you’ve got that all straightened out, you fix the water problem, you remove the offending materials and clean up the surfaces in the air. That’s ideal. But that’s not always possible practical, right? That can be cost prohibitive, or maybe you’re not in control of the property because you’re renting. So that’s not always that’s not always in the cards, the other thing you can do is filter the air, simply mechanically remove those pollutants. 

 

But that’s also you take some awareness around that too, because as you pointed out, HEPA filters only take out particles, and then the carbon filters take out the gaseous contaminants. And even those carbon filters don’t take out some of the really big offenders like the combustion chemicals that come from an unvented apply event that cooking indoors, right. So so it filtering the areas is great. And every house should have these devices. I mean, I really think they’re required appliances in modern homes. But they’re not a substitute for source control. Ideally, they’re used as an adjunct or as a way to buy time or as a maintenance thing. 

 

But they also tip into this hyper sanitization. Because when we when we when we remove them, all we’re doing, we’re essentially removing the healthy elements of the microbiome too, right? So there’s something to be said about, you know, filter your air, use the HEPA vacuums, all that stuff, and then open the windows, right, let nature back in. And then the third thing you could do with an air quality problem is dilute, which is opening the windows or in cases where you might be in a climate that doesn’t necessarily support that because it’s too hot, too cold or too humid, then you need to install mechanical ventilation systems known as RVs. And HRVs, which is literally another podcast, another show and other a

 

David Wolfe  08:29

whole world in itself, isn’t it when we should do that show? I’d like to do that with you because that that’s something that’s just a whole nother can of worms to get into when I when I do want to ask you what we’re on that venting systems in general are notoriously contaminated, right? And can can like this house doesn’t have a enter there’s no air conditioning. There’s never been air conditioning his house, so it has no vents. But geez, imagine if there was vents in a tropical climate. We’re in the jungle over here. Oh, yeah. Like, how bad is that disaster?

 

Jason Earle  08:58

Well, HVAC systems in general are inappropriately installed oftentimes in crawl spaces, basements and crawl spaces and attics, which are the hottest and coldest spaces, they’re also usually the most grossly contaminated. So you’re you’re asking your systems to heat and cool the air while putting them in in the worst possible environments. And then there’s also air leakage. None of these systems are sealed unless you go to great pains and great expense to do so. So essentially, you’re introducing those pollutants into the air while also straining the systems. It’s just, you know, modern building is modern construction is a series of experiments gone wrong.

 

David Wolfe  09:32

It really, that is so well said My God is that well said, you know, there’s no controls. Nobody’s like, hey, this parts made in China. This is gypsum from over here. This is thrown in there. We’re throwing this all together. It’s trash project anything. Yeah.

 

Jason Earle  09:45

And it’s also if you really think about it, and I know that you and I have shared similar sentiments on this because I’ve listened to you mochi for years. But the you know, you really think about who’s who’s in charge here. And this is, this is a function of capitalism eating itself, really are building material companies are chemical companies just like our pharmaceutical companies and our food companies are, you know, essentially chemical companies. And so what we’re what we’re dealing with here is a guilt, an innocent until proven guilty scenario. And we all saw how that played out with asbestos and lead paint and all these other things. 

 

And I could argue even fiberglass falls into that category. So the HVAC systems are, in the most common form, simply aircon, they’re just they’re just air conditioned systems, they’re just circulating very inefficiently air through these dark tubes. A lot of times they have insulation in them, especially in commercial buildings, and they collect dust and moisture and they become petri dishes too. But really, at the end of the day, what we’ve done is just kind of cobbled these things together over time. And and what we’ve done is created these, a situation where we’ve got this 100 and 14 million single family homes that are essentially all sick. 

 

And so unwinding that is complex. And it’s and it’s not for the faint of heart, a lot of people facing this stuff get very overwhelmed, because there’s a lot to know. And there’s and it’s there’s there’s a lot of trust that has been misplaced in these institutions that essentially built these paper mache chemical boxes that get moldy very quickly when they get wet. That’s

 

David Wolfe  11:19

well said that paper mache angles an interesting one, let’s talk about the basis of the problem, which is you’ve got these different chemical paper mache walls, materials that are treated wood, for example, that’s holding the building together. And then you get a drip through the ceiling, something happens there’s a drip through the ceiling, and suddenly you’ve got mold in the wall is that normally how it plays out? It’s usually a roofing problem that then drips into a wall. Next thing you know, you’ve got mold growing, and then is the major thing because I started doing a deep dive on all the different molds. 

 

Geez, I want to ask you about your system, you know, you’re got mold system, it’s like a home test system, where you put the kits in there, and then you send it off to a lab so you can see what you’re dealing with. And by the way, if it’s a match with what shows up in the lab and what shows up in your body, I assume that that’s the strongest evidence we’ve got of what a person is really dealing with. But is that usually usually how it happens is that you get a drip in a wall, and there’s usually black mold, or how many I mean, Geez, that I there was at least 30 different molds I was looking at just a few minutes ago, where there’s

 

Jason Earle  12:22

about 100,000 species, and about 1000 are commonly found in buildings in modern buildings, G 1000, about 1000 different different species now, so but in the genus level, you know, it’s a much it’s a much less diverse group of offenders. But you know, it depends on the food, the food source, really. So fungi just like people, we’d like to eat different things. And so you know, these spores are everywhere. So the thing about mold that people have to realize is that mold spores are ubiquitous. And so you know, Kingdom fungi every year, this includes macro fungi, like mushrooms and micro fungi, the keys and molds produces 50 Mega tons of spores, which is the equivalent of 500,000 to blue whales, okay. And to put that into greater context, that’s about 25 times as much tea as the globe drinks every year. That’s just the sports. 

 

Now most of those land in the ocean are on mountaintops or fields and serve lots of different functions. But the point is, is that every single breath you take you’re breathing in, in a healthy environment, you’re breathing in significant numbers of multiples, usually without any ill effect. The problem is when it grows indoors, it becomes concentrated, we breed more of them, and also the chemicals that it produces the mycotoxins which get all the headlines, and the musty smell, which doesn’t get nearly as much attention. But it’s probably the source of most mold related illness, although there are no tests for it, which is why you don’t see anybody talking about this or hear anybody talking about this. And there’s no diagnose. There’s no diagnostic, there’s no detox protocol for the mold. Vocs just like there’s no detox protocol for VOCs. 

 

Right, if you have a voc exposure, most of the time, the detox process is love your liver and get out of the environment. And that’s essentially what you have to do with most mold toxicity. Most mold toxicity is really, we get into that there’s an overlap here with air and food, which is a really important conversation because there’s a lot of misunderstanding around Miko, toxicosis and the way we actually in way we actually get exposed to and ingest mycotoxins most of the time it’s from food actually, it’s a very common misnomer. But the way that most of this occurs is you’ve either got water coming from outside and that can come into more liquid water right. So you got a building defect, a maintenance issue or a natural you know, a tree falls in the house or a roof issue. And you also have high humidity that can diffuse through. 

 

So this is very common, especially in Hawaii, where moisture will actually diffuse into the building assembly into the wall assembly and form condensation inside. So you see this in really humid climates. And then you also have sources from the inside right so that would be where people are mismanaging their their their indoor environment by like maybe drying clothes indoors or believe it or not not venting their dryer, outside people do this, or venting an exhaust in the bathroom or the kitchen into the attic or into a wall or into a ceiling and the outside. So we generate a lot of moisture, humans, right, we exhale also got a lot of plants. 

 

So people who are mismanaging their humidity, we’re not monitoring it, and keeping it within the safe zone, which is between 40 and 60% relative humidity. So we’re to the wives here, everybody should have humidity gauges throughout the house. And you want to keep it around 45% when you can. And so moisture comes into sources liquid really, and and, and vapor. Right? So so a liquid or gas. And so you need to be aware of both of those dynamics, because it’s coming at you from all angles. And quite frankly, it likes the same environments that we do. It just likes it when it was a little bit out of balance towards the moisture side of things. And that’s where things really start to to, to kick off. Okay,

 

David Wolfe  16:09

so what I’m hearing from you is like, the more the spore is like kind of a little Pac Man kind of thing. So it’s going around, and it’s chopping up VOCs as food. And so the problem is it that spore itself, when it multiplies to a certain threshold, it’s like a parasite, right? Like, God doesn’t bother you until you get past a certain threshold and your immune system can’t handle that anymore. And then suddenly, it’s a tsunami of troubles.

 

Jason Earle  16:32

Yeah, there’s, there’s kind of a dose, there’s a little bit of a dose response effect. And then there’s also a sense of sensitization. So like, the spores themselves, like I said, are normal and every in every environment. So you actually see a there’s a fascinating inverse relationship between a high microbial diversity. So we a lot the microbes in the house. And we have lower cases of asthma, allergies and autoimmune disease across the board even at autism. Fascinating data,

 

David Wolfe  16:59

that again, that’s a really interesting point. So the more diversity of bacteria and spores in the environment to healthier the environment.

 

Jason Earle  17:07

That’s exactly right. Yeah. Now, the data on this is very, very strong. So they used to call this the hygiene hypothesis. But they’re also now calling it the biodiversity hypothesis. And so it just makes sense. Think about your gut, right. So I think about this as like Matroyshka dolls, like those Russian stacking dolls, you know, so as above, so below, so So when your microbiome in your building is essentially stripped, it’s not uncommon for people to also have microbiome issues in their body to these things have a remarkable ability to sort of Cascade up, up and down, but mostly down. And so the opposite is also true, where you’ve got a very low microbial diversity in these buildings, you have much, much higher, I mean, extraordinarily high. 

 

Likelihood of, of asthma, allergies, and autoimmune disease. And interestingly, along the same line, families who hand wash dishes, instead of using a dishwasher have much, much lower cases of asthma, allergies, and autoimmune disease. Because the things aren’t sanitized, right, the dishes aren’t sanitized, and there’s still little bits of food that remain. And so especially in homes like my home, my one, my youngest son has a pretty significant allergies, that some of my favorite foods, when he’s getting a little bit of that he’s getting these little tiny micro doses, right, he’s getting these little exposures, which I’m betting is going to bode well for him in the long run. 

 

So you know, there’s this fear around this stuff, which is what I tried to dispel. We shouldn’t be afraid of mold any more than we should be afraid of sunlight. It is a normal part of our environment, what we want to do is have lots of microbes in our environment, we just don’t wanna have any of them growing in our house.

 

David Wolfe  18:43

Now, you know, when you think about this Pac Man idea, there’s the there’s obviously the what it’s what it’s eating, which is the your wall, and then there’s the chemicals in the wall, right. So what you’re saying is that there’s this derivative voc problem of essentially the poop of the microbe and the poop of the spore, the poop and the fungi farts, the farts, really? It’s okay, so, yeah,

 

Jason Earle  19:04

it’s gases. So yeah, the spores are the are the little Hardy seeds, if you will. And then there’s the mycotoxins, which are really oily substances, they’re sticky. And they actually don’t become airborne very easily, contrary to popular opinion, and I can dig into that a little bit because it’s kind of a fun visual that I can I can I can paint a beautiful picture of that. And then the microbes when when the spores land on the surface, if you look at them microscopically, they when the right conditions are present, I think about it like a combination lock, you know the right temperature, mold needs a few things, it needs a comfortable temperature, it needs a food source, which like I said drywall or even the dust on you know in carpet carpet in itself in some cases, if it’s a natural fiber can be a sort of food source as well. But this tiny little bits of organic material are all mold needs to grow. 

 

It needs a moisture source and it needs oxygen. These are obligate arose, so they actually arrows They actually need oxygen. So again, it likes the same conditions we do. So when the spore lands on the surface, if the conditions are right, and the moisture is right, it will send a little shoot out. It’s called the Hi Fi. And it feels around. I mean, there’s brilliant intelligence in these single cell microbes. It’s amazing. And they have a catalog of enzymes available to them to digest whatever’s there, but they digest outside of the cell, of course, right, they don’t have a GI tract. And so they’re releasing these enzymes to to, to to extract the, the nutrients, and in the process of doing that they release digestive gases, just like we do. Interestingly, also, our digestive gases aren’t ours. You know, we’re, we’re basically ambulatory composters. 

 

You know what I mean? Like, we’re not really digesting our food, everyone thinks it’s the stomach acids, that’s protecting us from the nasty bacteria, that’s everything else is going on if your digestion is good, is the help of this from from this, this evolutionary sort of partnership that we’ve created, or that was created for us over the course of all these years. And so, you know, this is, in essence, understanding that when mold is growing, it’s releasing these gases in the gases themselves are our digestive byproducts. 

 

And so you know, I always say, if you’re stuck on the tailpipe of any any living animal, any living creature for long enough, unless it’s a tree, you’re probably not going to do very well. Right. So So these chemicals, by the way happened to be, you know, the musty smell is a potpourri of of solvents, really, alcohols, ketones, aldehydes. Even chemicals, like benzene, are fat coming from actively growing mold. And, you know, we can produce biofuels from these things, right? So you know, if it’s a biofuel, something that you can burn for energy, it’s probably not something you should be breathing. Right? Okay,

 

David Wolfe  21:46

so people are dealing with various different levels of this type of exposure in their home, their other home is somewhat composting down. And you’re what you’re saying is that these gases are picked up by the carbon filtration, that’s your best bet, probably.

 

Jason Earle  22:01

Yes. for that. That’s the only the only solution really,

 

David Wolfe  22:04

the only solution. What about taking carbon internally? I mean, I was taking it’s my little charcoal right here. I take a lot of charcoal internally. I took five of these this morning. That’s my coal biter, charcoal right there. What about that? Is that also helpful? Yeah,

 

Jason Earle  22:19

I mean, carbon has a carbon in the gut has, you know, I think it should be used judiciously, because it can actually extract things that you don’t want it to necessarily extract as well. But I would also agree with you that in general, especially if you’re in an environment, where you’re dealing with a lot of VOCs, which by the way, is almost every house in America, like you to your point, that 30 Vocs test that you mentioned, if you were to test almost every home, in America, you’d find some degree of of the VFC problem. 

 

And so when you’re when you’re looking to accelerate the detoxification process, you know, loving your liver and then giving it a transport vehicle, right. So when it comes back into the track, what’s going to pick it up, so it doesn’t get reabsorbed. And that that I think, does have some validity. But, but I think what, as with all binders, which is you know, what you’re talking about here, that a lot of binders are very much in vogue these days. And, and so they can, they can also pull out things that you want. And so my suggestion is to use them in in in an on a cyclical basis, and then see how you feel, because some people might find that they they actually don’t do well, if they use them for a very long time, because they’re depleting other things. 

 

So I would just be very aware, this is where I think you should just this is i It’s a call for intuition. You know, I think people need to realize that their building is an extension of your immune system. It’s like an echo scanner or an exoskeleton. So you need to get tuned into your building, just like you get should get tuned into your body. So whether you’re treating the building or treating the body or treating the building and the body for the same reasons, you need to really start listen to your listen to yourself and say, Is this really working for me? And I think because we’ve turned over so much of our of our relationship with our body to the healthcare system, that I always encourage people to turn that back around and really get engaged in your environment and in your environment. Right. So your environment, your environment, and your environment. Right. Yeah,

 

David Wolfe  24:18

it’s that that’s getting back to that idea of like sick building sick person because we’re absorbing and becoming one with our environment, especially if it’s a place where often at like our home. Now let’s talk about the step that you’re making with your gut mold system here, which I’ve got sitting next to me by the way, I’m David Avocado Wolfe. I’m joined by Jason Earle and he’s the creator of this got mold system. So I’m what I’m assuming about your system is this is kind of an intermediary step between getting someone who’s actually going to come in as a mold expert, and like go through your home with all the expensive what that is and you remediate the wood or whatever has to happen or pull the drywall out or whatever all that is, this is kind of an intermediary step to kind of see like, okay, Is it really a mold problem? How big is the mold problem? And which molds are they? Is that what your system is focused on?

 

Jason Earle  25:07

Yeah, the idea behind the test kit, I created that because I’m also the founder of 100. Got mold, Mold Inspection Company, and we serviced, you know, affluent homes for the last 20 years. And it always frustrated me that the people who needed testing the most couldn’t afford, you know, and so, you know, my own history was that I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when I was four years old. And it turns out, I didn’t have cf I was I was sick with asthma and pneumonia, and I was allergic to everything, everything I tested before, but when I moved out of that musty house when I was 12, when my symptoms went away, I never thought about it again, until actually I was in Hawaii, I was actually, I was on a walkabout after a career on Wall Street. 

 

And I was sitting in front of the Kalia tower on Oahu, reading a story about a guy who’d gotten sick from the hotel where he was an employee, he was working there. And he had developed adult onset asthma and all these allergies he’d never had a problem with, with allergies to foods that he’d never had a problem with before. And it was like a deja vu moment for me. And I just put the pieces of the puzzle together because we had a really damp basement. And so the irony of it is that I created an inspection company that my parents could not have afforded to hire. And so So I began with that frustration to assemble a dream team of scientists and experts to create a very high quality low cost test kit, not as a replacement for a professional inspection to your point, but rather as a as a cost effective first step, I like to equate it to a pregnancy test kit and the sense that you wouldn’t start buying baby furniture just because the test says positive, you go to the doctor. 

 

And so because we I use the building as a body, or the as a metaphor here. You know, if you were to, you know, get an inspection, it’s a lot like getting a physical at the doctor, right? A professional inspection should be a thorough physical assessment with some testing, not just testing, and not just a visual. The same way when you go to the doctor, you don’t want them just give you a physical and walk out the door, you’d ideally want to do some some tests too, especially if you’re presenting with symptoms. So this path is the way to get you there. This is this is designed for people who are not quite willing or able to spend $1,000, or $2,000 is the first step. Okay,

 

David Wolfe  27:17

so what I’ve got here is I’ve got your sealed up. This is sample one, sealed up sample two. So that’s going to go in here. I assume we’ve got the

 

Jason Earle  27:26

nipple. Yeah, cuz, right. Yeah, she’ll take the

 

David Wolfe  27:30

batteries, yeah, batteries. So I haven’t put them in yet, because we’re not testing it, then this is going to go where right on top of that,

 

Jason Earle  27:37

you’ll take those tabs off. And then you’ll insert it right on there, you can only go one way. Okay, it’s neatly designed. So there’s a round orifice and around, exit on the on the cassette, I see it. And then it runs for five minutes. And that those are called spore traps, which are aptly named because they do exactly what they described, they trap the airborne microscopic particles, including spores and pollen and dust. So so our report also shows background debris. So dust general dust load, which is really important for people that are dealing with air quality issues. In general, a lot of people who are using our kit are very early on or very early on in their in their, in their journey, their health journey. And they’re finding that, you know, air is a foundational element of health. 

 

And so this test doesn’t just look at mold, it also looks at other elements too. But the focus is on on on mold. And so then once you collect the samples, you put them all back in the prepaid return mailer, and it goes to our lab partner, which is the number one lab in the world, your offense, they do the analysis, and then they send the data back to us. And we distribute the report in a really easily understood intuitive color coded format with a green, yellow, orange or red indicator for each sample that was collected. We also show you the kinds of molds that were found and in what quantities. And it’s often you know, it’s very self evident. No one ever calls us and says we don’t understand the report. Now it literally we’ve had three people call us and ask us for help with the report three. So and then there’s also a third page which gives people action steps, you know, like how to find an inspector in your area how to find a remediate or in your area. Because again, this is not to be used as an actionable data point. There is no test for your body or for your building that should ever be actionable by its by itself. You know, you should never just immediately go start start. If you got a high cholesterol reading, you wouldn’t start Step One schedule her surgery or a stent, right, you would get a workup. And so you want to use the same common sense with this. And also, it’s important for me to mention this. As with all tests, there are certain there are certain times when those tests are very clear, and they’re very clearly effective in some tests, where maybe there maybe the data is harder to understand. And what I mean by that is this sometimes you might collect samples with a kit like ours or with this kit, and it might look normal, but you’ve got a musty smell. out. 

 

And they’re symptoms and history of water damage, that is not a false negative, when it comes to a spore trap, what that tells you is the nature of the mold problem, it tells you the mold is probably in the walls, because what happens is the spores there, they have to be airborne for them to be detected here. And so what we what we like to do is know the nature of the mold or moisture problem. And so again, using your senses, using your common sense and your physical and your and your God given senses, you’re going to want to tune into that and say there’s a musty smell. I know I’ve got mold, that’s, that’s a dead giveaway, right. 

 

But by the way, the musty smell is also a health hazard. And so it’s the second leading indicator of childhood asthma behind maternal smoking. And recent animal studies have shown that it’s neurotoxic. Fruit flies stopped producing dopamine, they stop reproducing, it’s that they developed Parkinsonian like symptoms, it causes mitochondrial damage to the musty smell is not just your first clue. It’s also literally health hazard. And for anybody who’s been exposed to it long enough, you’ll know its causes sleep disturbances and anxiety and all sorts of other things.

 

David Wolfe  31:05

When I when I think about musty smell, by the way, I think about the basements I’ve been in, in my childhood all across America, kids basements are playing ping pong and basements. And is that the kind of thing you’re talking about? Yeah. And that’s how bad our basements. basements

 

Jason Earle  31:20

are in my, in my inspection business in the Northeast. It was 80% of our business. And the thing about basements and crawl spaces, is that air rises through a building. And oftentimes the HVAC systems are of course housed there. So air, like I mentioned earlier, infiltrates in and so it gets distributed through the house, the air rises through a building, so a sick basement. And what I mean by that is, and almost any finished basement is a sick basement, eventually, it’s just a matter of time, especially if there’s carpet, which is a dust sponge, a dust collector, and then and then it wicks moisture out of the slab. And so it’s a perfect growth rule. So we all grew up like that. 

 

Right. And, so this is part of what I educate against is people have long regarded. You know, there’s basement musty basements normal. Yeah, so stupidity. But that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable, right? Like we have to, we have to think beyond that. And this is this has been long disregarded as an aesthetic nuisance. That’s just the musty smell. But the data on it is strong. This is a health hazard. It’s a serious, serious problem. Crazy. Yeah. And also, it also, by the way, just so sorry to interrupt you. It’s also fascinating because there’s an overlap between chemical sensitivities, and, and mold exposure. So what happens is the musty smell, which is VOCs, they’re called microbial VOCs, right? And VOCs is the is the,

 

David Wolfe  32:45

so they’ve been parsed up by the microbe itself, kind of like Pac Man. So that whatever was in that rug, or whatever was in those chemical treated woods or whatever, is now airborne because they’ve been parsed and semi digested and maybe even turn to a gas.

 

Jason Earle  33:02

Yeah, so it’s really I mean, they think something is stable as cellulose, right, like, from paper from or from, you know, from the sheet from the sheet rock, something completely stable. And then through an enzymatic reaction produce these gases, right, as it extracts the nutrients. And yes, there are some, believe it or not, there are fungi that grow on things like the growth in, by the way, jet fuel, right. And so they’re actually eating, you know, carbon based compounds that are rich and VOCs, and producing other VOCs. So I mean, fungi is fascinating. I never thought I’d be so fascinated with this stuff when I first got started 20 years ago. But the more the more I look at it, the more fascinating it is. I mean, this is, this is this is this is Earth’s immune system. It’s also exam fungi in general, it’s also the Earth’s communication network. 

 

And I would even argue that there might be something benevolent about this, the musty smell, I believe that mold is kind of like inflammation in the building, if you will, if you’re going to use the building as a body as a metaphor. And so it’s giving you a pain. Right. And if you ignore that pain signal, then it becomes chronic dampness, which is essentially chronic, chronic inflammation, which is his own disease, right and button human right. We know that to be true. And so eventually you leave it to go on, it becomes cancer in the building, they can kill the building, right? Buildings have a birthday and a death, potentially a death day, then their longevity is largely driven by how well we care for it. Right? So the metaphor is really fascinating. 

 

And so I often think that when that musty smell comes out, it’s a building’s way, or Fundrise way of saying, hey, you know, you need attention here. There’s an imbalance in the building. And if you don’t listen to it, we get sick just like the mitochondria and those fruit flies that get damaged. We’re like the mitochondria in our building. Right? It’s our job to keep things moving right it’s our job to and so we get damaged too. So to your point, sick buildings, great sick people, but when buildings heal, they allow for healing other people to heal. Okay,

 

David Wolfe  35:00

cool. So I guess I’ve got to ask you, out of all the buildings you’ve seen, mostly I would assume in the northeast, but maybe in other places. What are what are the worst kinds of buildings? Like if somebody’s you know, let’s say somebody goes, Okay, I’m gonna get a got mold kit, I want to see how bad my house is. And let’s say they’re in a structure that you you already know from your experience that has lots of gypsum in there, and drywall and all kinds of stuff has leaky roof has major moisture problems already in the building. Is there a desert? Is there a point where you’re like, we have to strip this house to the bones, we have to knock this house down? Does it ever get that bad?

 

Jason Earle  35:37

Yeah, unfortunate. But it you know, I’ve never seen a home that wasn’t well, I shouldn’t say never, there have been a handful of homes where I said, you know, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze here. Right? Like, you’re gonna spend as much to get this to zero, when you could actually have a healthy home, not just the home. That’s, that’s almost okay. Right, that’s that you were you’ve remediated, because there’s still so many fundamental building defects in modern construction, that are just kind of like the de facto standard, you know, every one of those tract homes, because when you when you drive into one of these developments, you know, they’re just rife with building effects. And not only that, the VOCs. So So oftentimes, it’s easier to get birth and to resurrect the dead. But it but that’s something that is that’s a bitter pill to swallow. 

 

So, and oftentimes, it’s not that pervasive. So it really just depends when when a moisture problem, like I said, you know, it goes from inflammation to chronic inflammation to cancer in the building. That’s how you have to think about mold. And so there’s a point where if you’ve let it go, sometimes you have to let it go. And, and but you’ll see that reflected in the health inhabitants, I mean, oftentimes, in the beginning, there might be five different people living in a house with five very different health profiles or symptom profiles, usually one person is the canary. And they’re the ones who are setting up the set through pulling the alarm saying, We got to do something about this, the other people are saying it’s not that big of a deal. But then the other four people eventually develop, you know, more, more serious symptoms. And then after remediation, suddenly, everybody’s feeling better. And suddenly, the people who weren’t sick realize that they’re sleeping through the night now, and they’re not as pissed off at their dog. 

 

And they’re, you know, whether they’re just their their emotional dysregulation is, is less severe. And so, but going back to whether or not there are more serious buildings and others, you know, in extreme climates, so you know, where I live right now, I live in Minnesota. So the number of mold prompts that they’re astronomical, because they don’t have ventilated roof assemblies. The walls are too thin, so they’re not well insulated. And so and then humidified the house because it’s so dry in the winter. And so there’s tremendous amounts of condensation Canada, you live in Ontario, right. So there’s major major issues up there. So the extreme cold lends itself to this problem. In modern construction, by the way, old houses don’t really have the same problems, right houses made of plaster, stone, brick, old growth, timber, not so bad. 

 

As soon as we start getting into introducing modern building materials into them, and we can see kind of a Frankenstein building or Franken building, we start bringing in the new stuff and closing up and putting asphalt shingles on where it used to be cedar er, or slate, which used to ventilate. As soon as we started doing these things, we changed the processes that we’re actually making healthy that were made to buildings healthy before World War Two. And so it’s the modernization, that’s the problem as with most issues, right, look at food, we’re spraying poison on our foods for shelf life. And, you know, it’s just like Insanity, the kind of stuff we did. But the but the worst buildings are definitely down south, you know, in the Sunbelt, and up north, in the, you know, up where, you know, it’s I don’t understand why people inhabit a places like Canada and Minnesota, which is where I live and where you live. But the people settled there. 

 

And I don’t know how that survived all that time. But now, because they’re all closed up. Now. We have mold problems in there. And we’re breathing the same air 20,000 times a day. So you have to look at that as a repetitive stress. Right, right. And that’s what leads to the mold toxicity. It’s not just being exposed at the acute exposure isn’t that big of a deal. You know, I mean, you’ll get the exposure tends to lead to acute symptoms, or I should say, short term exposure, short term symptoms, chronic exposure, chronic symptoms. 

 

And so the longer you’re in it, the harder is to unwind. And what I was saying before about the chemical sensitivities, the longer you’re exposed, the more it can change it. So a mold exposure, especially in a very musty building. It’s very common for people to develop chemical sensitivities sensitive to fragrances, they can’t go into the grocery store or the dry clean or the hardware store to me, because they had this chronic mold exposure. basement apartments, bad news, right? Bad News, New York City basement apartments. I mean, how many of your friends who grew up in one of those were lived in one of those and in the village was right, I thought to my friends, right? I’m from New Jersey. So you know, where are you from

 

David Wolfe  40:04

New Jersey?

 

Jason Earle  40:05

What’s Windsor? For instance?

 

David Wolfe  40:07

I’m from Seaside Heights.

 

Jason Earle  40:09

Are you really? Yeah, no. I mean, I spent so much time in Seaside. Yeah, that’s I used to go to LBI as a kid and we used to sneak out to go up that seaside was a lot more fun than LBI. But, ya know, that’s funny. And I grew up in Manhattan, really. So I was born and raised in New Jersey, and then I grew up in Manhattan. So, you know, based on apartments, man, I’ve dealt with so many people that were that were trying to save a couple of bucks. You know, whether they’re in Queens basement apartments, I mean, I just think it’s like such it’s for me, it’s like a like a stereotype. But

 

David Wolfe  40:36

I remember the guy who had the basement apartment, I used to live on a Thompson Street in SoHo in Manhattan. And I just remember like, the moisture the rats that this that that that this guy had to deal with, because he had a basement apartment in our building. And I was like, how is he just how’s he making it down there I was on the top we I always like to have in the top. So you get the dry out of the roof. Right at least you get the sun trying to dry out the roof. And you’re you’re not stuck in between that was always my logic. I don’t know, maybe there there’s logic we should go into. Like, for example, being high and dry was always big on my list. I have to cut all the trees away from this house. 

 

So I’m not getting them coming over shading the house dropping organic material into the gutters and you know, building a problem up that dams up water, for example, that kind of stuff. Of course, we always try to keep the moisture here in Hawaii in this house. Because this is kind of an open house. We can’t get the moisture below 60%. But we can get it at 60%.

 

Jason Earle  41:34

Yeah, well, you can do it in in that environment as you need to keep the air moving. So and in fact, if you think about like the, like the bands on porches down south, and like Louisiana, sort of Texas. Yeah. So you think about that, yeah, why did they have that there. And I always thought it was to keep the people on the porch. Cool. But actually, it’s to keep the mold from growing on the, on the ceiling of the porch, right? You keep that that that flowing, and then it doesn’t allow for condensation to form. So the same same practice can be used and should be used in places like Hawaii. The other thing is, to your point, sunlight, you know, there’s four basic humidity, air, water, food, shelter, and sunlight. And, and people forget about sunlight, we’ve been so disconnected from nature, you know, but sunlight is, is is great for lots of different reasons, you know, it’s going to help keep things dry. 

 

And, and it also, it does a really good job on denaturing mold spores, you know, the black mold spores, actually, you know, but the reason they have black in them, at least this is what’s what’s proposed is that it’s their Bridgen melanin, which protects them from UV light, which makes it much harder against this kind of thing. So, sunlight is not exactly it’s not the silver bullet, there’s no silver bullet, the only silver bullet is keeping things dry, clean and dry. So there’s two things you need to do. If your point about keeping organic matter from building up, you also want to keep the building free of dust. Because you know, since we’ve got sheet rock, you know, essentially, that’s your buildings already built with mold food. But if you want to really accelerate it, if you get the slightest moisture problem, and you’ve got a little bit of dust, it’s like wildfire. 

 

So you want to keep things clean and dry. That’s the mold prevention mantra clean and dry, clean and dry. And if you do that, you’re at least well ahead of the pack. So you know, keeping commoditizing humidity, you know, you know, keeping good airflow. So Ventilation is key, and keeping things clean and dry. If you do that, then you’re way ahead of the game, then you’re dealing with the emergency stuff. And this is what people often this is a really good word of the wise for your for your audience. mold grows within 24 to 48 hours from moisture problem. So it’s super fast right now. So people tend to think about this in weeks, days or months. And they they delay and procrastinate this issue. But if you have a water damage issue, a leak of any sort, you have to address it very, very quickly. 

 

Don’t wait for your insurance company, in fact, don’t even involve your insurance company most of the time, because they don’t pay for mold. Unless it’s a major water damage issue and you can’t afford it. You only have one poll on that. So if you call your insurance company, they have a central database now called the clue report or the comprehensive loss underwriters exchange. And so if you file two claims at the same time, whether it be mold, or whether water damage or fire, and I say I make the distinction, the water damage and mold because they look at them very differently. Even though it’s the same thing, just time. It’s just a timeline thing. So even dog bite, if you find the same claim within two years, same type of claim they’ll drop you like a hot rock, and where they’ll raise your rates to astronomical levels and you won’t be able to get insurance elsewhere either because they all share the data. So you want to be very careful about calling insurance you really want to deal with if you’re gonna deal with insurance, do it within the first 24 hours. 

 

Because it’s 72 hours, the industry standard and the EPA all agree that whatever has been wet and stayed wet, if it’s porous, should be treated as if it’s moldy, whether it’s visible or not. At that point, you go from something that’s free or cheap, the insurance would cover the something that insurance won’t cover. And the price just went up tenfold. And you got to bring in the guys in moon suits to do the remediation. So you have to act quickly. When there’s a water damage issue. That’s, that’s an emergency. It’s an emergency something that sudden and accidental, right, like a roof leak or, or a pipe burst or something. Let’s

 

David Wolfe  45:24

talk about that in the end, because we’re in the dead of winter right now. So that’s an issue that comes up in the wintertime, because you get this, this issue of the melt on the roof. So you get the ice accumulating it towards the bottom of the roof. Because the heat rises to the top of the roof tends to be warmer. And then at some intermediary level, the the liquid that’s created at the top of the roof and flows down can’t go off the roof because it’s too icy on the edge, and it forms a pool that then goes through the roof, which is dealt with, right. So I have

 

Jason Earle  45:54

my house right now, you know, I mean, seriously, you know, the competition has no shoes. So you know, these things happen in all sorts of buildings in these in these climates. Yeah, it’s one

 

David Wolfe  46:02

of the biggest offenders for those types of climates you’re talking about is that particular problem right there. And what I ended up doing in my house is I just rip the whole back roof off, got it down to the bones, remediated as best I could and put a metal roof on it. So we have no leakage of moisture at all, which has appeared to solve the problem. I mean, we don’t have the musty smells, we don’t have the particulate in the atmosphere. I can’t wait to do this test, though, on that house. This one I think actually strange as it sounds, this one in Hawaii is actually is better. The mold problem is better here, the indoor air pollution is not nearly as bad as that other house. And I could just tell that just from being in there, because we’re locked up in that house more in the winter. You

 

Jason Earle  46:47

are the best mold sensor. You know, we humans are an integrated array of precision sensors. And in fact, you know, there’s there’s some really interesting science around this, the trigeminal nerve and the face, there in the eyes, and in your sinuses and in your in your mouth. And they they’re able to detect pollutants, chemical pollutants, and toxins tend to 12 logs, but more sensitively than the your nose. So but the below the order threshold. So a lot of people who had developed sensitivities can walk into a room go I know there’s mold here. And if they’re sensing a toxin, they may maybe mold or VOCs or it may be microbial. Vocs might be manmade VOCs. But they just know it. And you always wonder how do they know that? Right? How do they pick that up, because I can’t smell anything. And it’s these trigeminal nerves in the face that pick that up. So we are we are the best initial Mold Test, if you will. And then our test is there to help validate that so that you know, you can then use that to help leverage maybe some other stakeholders, husbands, wives, bosses, landlords, things like that.

 

David Wolfe  47:55

Let’s let’s talk about getting your system set up in because we read the instructions. I’ve learned over the years that when all else fails, read the instructions. So the decided to this time read the instructions first, especially before talking to you. And it was talking about like, like there’s a lot of activity in this house. Right now people running around ribs were also running a lot of fans were running dehumidifier, I’m running an ozone system up here, I’ve got an ozone system downstairs, a lot of that action is happening. 

 

And we don’t want if we’re going to get a real reading, we can’t have an ozone machine and revert over that with rate all that stuff has to kind of calm down. That’s right. And the traffic needs to calm down or know or get talk us through exactly what needs to happen. Because it was a little bit different before you know when we were talking before the call started from your instructions versus what you were saying and I just want to kind of get it just from you. What’s the best way to do this? Yeah,

 

Jason Earle  48:43

so the instructions state that what we want to do is who first of all, there’s an outside air sample. And that’s important too, because you want to, you want to start with the green one, right. And the reason we do that is because as I mentioned earlier, mold spores are a normal part of our environment, right. And so every climate is different, right? When you’re testing the outdoor air in Hawaii versus Minnetonka, Minnesota, you’re going to find a whole different ecology, you’re gonna find a different sort of, you know, different flora, composition. And so, so we use that outside air sample as a baseline, the pseudo quality control, but it’s really a reference sample. And that’s a real time thing because formulation, which is where the the most common literally are bursting out with spores that happens throughout the day, depending upon the species and the humidity and the temperature and the season and all that stuff. 

 

So we want to capture that in real time. So all those samples by the way, should be collected in the same hour, the same day in the same building. So each kit stands alone because each kit is actually a report and they all tie into each other. This is a comparative analysis, the outdoor samples compared to the indoor samples and then they’re compared to each other. So we want to make sure we’re choosing a day where it’s not too it’s not raining, it’s not snowing. It’s you know there’s it’s not too windy. You’re not right after you rake leaves or mow the lawn right. These are things that are going to cause enormous spikes and Artificial, artificial conditions, the indoor environment, what we want to do is we want to close the building up to two or three days ideally. And so and that means that we’re going to also turn off air purifiers. 

 

Now your HVAC system is fine, you can run that because the pores in your, in the filters in your HVAC system unless you’ve made the investment of getting a HEPA filter, then then that’s different turn that off. But turn off all HEPA filters, turn off ozone generators, ionisers, that kind of thing. You can leave dehumidifiers running air conditioning systems running. In fact, air conditioning systems should keep on because you should keep them on because they’re often a source, especially window air conditioners, right, or you know, the ones that are in wall as opposed to the central air conditioning. So you want to use those

 

David Wolfe  50:51

or worse is what you’re saying the ones that are attached to the window, for example, are worse typically

 

Jason Earle  50:56

Harbor, we see mold in those all the time, because they cycle on and off. And they are the they’re, they’re also exposed to the outside. So you put this in your window or in your wall, and the outside is 90% humidity, they’re not steel, by any stretch, nowhere near sealed, right. And so when they cycle on and off, they’re the when they cycle off, you got all those cold surfaces inside there, they’re cold and dusty, right, so the opposite of clean and dry, and then you get condensation forming on them. And then you end up with mold growth inside and then you turn it back on, it blasts mold into your interior space. So So window air conditioners are notorious, the only way to manage that is to run them constantly. In other words, on the lowest setting, don’t let them turn off. Because then just like that fan in the porch, that’s that’s that’s keeping preventing the condensation from forming, it’s the same kind of thing, it reduces what’s known as water activity, which is a scientific term for condensation surface condensation. 

 

And so so the air conditioners are, so you want to you want to turn off HEPA filters, you want to turn off ionisers, you want to turn off all the things that will would be knocking these things down, right, are precipitating the particle. So like that’s one of the things that like these ionisers will do, or they’ll knock these particles down. And so again, it creates an artificial, artificially low spore count environment. And then actually, we really appreciate people using using the building while these tests are being done, we’d like the activity because the sport you know, gravity works on sports, too. And they falls out of the air. And so these accumulate in the dust. So we want to we want there to be activity so that it’s real world. So walking around the room while you’re doing it is welcome. Okay, whatever, it’s good ceiling fans, great. 

 

You don’t want them blowing directly onto the unit. But you know that air circulation is to your advantage to get a real world situation a real world test. Now some people use the test that collect the samples, it doesn’t come with a tripod, we generally recommend people do it on a chair or on a stepladder. 30 inches ideally or on a on a tabletop. But if you’ve got a specific concern about a room, or there’s mold growing, you know, you’re concerned about water damage in the corner, don’t be afraid of going and putting on the floor in the corner over there. You don’t want to be in a dusty environment. Because if it’s really dusty, it can occlude the samples, and it can it can make it difficult to read. And sometimes those can’t be reported. And that’s why we generally tell people do kind of in the center of the room. But if you’re very concerned about specific area, you can get kind of close to that

 

David Wolfe  53:37

area, like an attic where you know, people aren’t even going up there anyway. And it’s really dusty. Is that is with this system that you have, is that appropriate for that kind of a thing or should you just were focused on the rooms that you’re living in,

 

Jason Earle  53:50

you know, in all candor, attics, air samples and attics generally don’t yield very much data because there’s so much exterior so much ventilation in a proper attic, there should be air coming in from the soffit vents, and then leaving through the ridge vent. Now that’s like I mentioned in Minnesota, that’s very common, but that’s actually building code, even though it’s completely ignored, and in many states, so and also air because there’s not a lot of activity up there. The air has settled out and so usually the spores and stuff are in the insulation. And so you should use your visual sense for that look and see if you see water damage. 

 

A lot of times there’s mold, it’s called Lumberyard mold. It was actually literally from the where the trusses are where the wood was stored before it was used for construction. So yeah, that’s where professionals can be useful to help you make the distinction. But the began basements and crawlspaces great sick buildings, sick basements and crawlspaces create sick buildings, but attic mold doesn’t necessarily translate to a sick building. Not to say that you want to have mold growing in your attic but but but mold a dormant mold situation In the attic generally won’t impact indoor air quality in the building, because the air doesn’t generally go down in the building. And also the data that you get from this usually doesn’t yield much benefit. 

 

So I like to I like to use this in living spaces and in crawl spaces, because that can be very telling, although that can also have kind of artificially low numbers because again, things settle out. So again, you want to look at this in a holistic view, you see something, smell something or feel something. This is this is the way to look at mold. Because this is this, this organism produces gases and particles and toxins, and it affects you in many different ways. But you have to be able to trust your visual senses. Do you see something? You see signs of moisture? You see discoloring? Paint? Do you see blistering paint? Do you see geometric patterns that make maybe colonization? If you see trim falling away from the walls? Do you see water bugs or a dead giveaway? Also, you know, those little guys that circled that the ones who circle up on spider webs are a big red flag too, because of course, spiders need water to write. 

 

And they use the they’re the web oftentimes to gather the condensation from from the air. And they also eat the water loving critters down below, right. So there’s like a whole whole ecology and then the spiders are kind of the top of the food chain when it comes to that. So So you want to look for any signs of moisture, you want to obviously, keep your sense of smell attuned, right? If you smell that musty smell, you that’s a dead giveaway. And if you feel something in between symptoms that seem to get better when you leave the house, that’s also a big red flag. And so these are the things that need to be accompanying a test because that’s what a professional inspector would do. And I should also mention that we created an ebook called How to find mold. And it’s about 40 pages filled with inspection checklists, and FAQs. And it’s really great for people that are early on in their mold awareness journey. And so for your listeners, we made a welcome page got mold.com/david Wolf, if you want to direct people there, and and so there you have a link to

 

David Wolfe  57:07

the ebook. Okay. Okay, so they can get it for free. Yeah, they get it for free. Absolutely. Okay, awesome. Thanks.

 

Jason Earle  57:14

Yeah. And so so that’s a really helpful resource for for people that are that are again, going into the, into this kind of not knowing where to go, and they’re not quite willing or ready to spend 1000 bucks to hire a pro

 

David Wolfe  57:26

do you get into because I was just before this call was looking at that list of all the different molds that can be in people’s houses and all the different this genius and that genius and it was it’s a lot I mean, because you know, what I know is like it’s black mold. I mean, I was telling you about my I think before the call, I was telling you about one of the gals in my inner circle, she literally had blackballed oozing out from behind, like a lectric. Plug. I mean, that’s an extreme situation. Obviously, he was in extreme danger, and still is not completely out of it a year later, but she’s starting to get some good results. Now it takes taken her about a year. Is that normal, by the way is that generally what it takes if somebody’s in a real bad situation, that they might not actually get reasonably back to normal for at least a year or longer? Is that normal? Like

 

Jason Earle  58:09

I said, it’s, you know, chronic exposure, chronic symptoms, and and sometimes people don’t get better, but, but one of the things that really so that this is a good entree into the other other form of mold exposure, which is food. Yeah. So really common thing for people to get a mycotoxin panel from their functional practitioner, or from a forward thinking test is that there’s desert blood test to that looks for the antibodies to the mycotoxins, which I also find, which I you know, and I know that the owners of these labs and so, you know, I have, I’ve got issues with it with the way that the data is interpreted that they almost always they’re encouraging people to look at the buildings. And I think people should always look at their building, because of course, this is an extension of your immune system. But the data is very strong that most mycotoxins are coming from food based exposures. 

 

And, you know, 60 to 80% of of imported gradients are contaminated with mycotoxins and if you look at I Know your audience’s into conventional meats and dairy, but that’s a major source to because really have you out to a restaurant? Yeah, because these animals are being fed, non human grade grains, right? If you think about a pasture cow is he or she is going to be eating grass and they’re not really they’re going to be just eating normal flora and doing just fine with that and they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re ambulatory composters, too, right. And so they’re going to be using soil microbes as part of their digestive process. But when you start feeding them corn and all these other things that they’re not evolutionarily designed to eat. First of all these things are stored in non they’re not they’re not going to be stored in ideal conditions. 

 

They’re non food grade for a reason. Right? And then they’re also loaded with glyphosate and all this other crap but that’s is different conversation but the but the but their moldy corn grows mold like wildfire and and and they’ve mycotoxins that are produced by corn are some of the most potent actually fun fun little side note on that is that the same fungi that’s used to produce Camembert cheese and Roquefort cheese. It’s Penicillium kemin. Bertie, and Penicillium roqueforti. It’s pretty, pretty selfless, you know, you can see pretty clearly what they are. These produce delicious cheeses and and that st those same fungi growing on corn and silage produce some of the most potent mycotoxins known demand that actually kill cattle. 

 

Yeah, so Miko, phenolic acid, in particular. And so so it’s not just the fungi, which is kind of circles back to one of your questions about the type of fungi it’s not just the type of fungi that’s that’s found in your building. It’s what it’s growing on. And so you know, sheet rock grow loves it, or I should say certain fungi love the sheet rock. And, in fact, a recent study in Denmark found that nearly all sheet rock comes pre inoculated with mold spores snacky boxers and Khatami of spores, which are the toxigenic species that nobody worries about. They already they already had they already in the paper and all commercial drywall that she tested this Birgit Anderson, out of think it’s a Copenhagen Danish University. So she she found that all of them contained the sports so essentially, we build self composting homes, just add water, you know?

 

David Wolfe  1:01:43

I mean, okay, so there’s two things that you’re bringing up, which are very important, isn’t it? That’s exposure just from food. I imagine we used to, you know, when when I worked with Dr. Gabriel cousins at his healing center, we would wash all nuts and seeds and it was unbelievable how dirty it was. I mean, it’s, it’s crazy. Actually, you should never eat nuts and seeds that are open out of a store. It’s dirty and loaded with mycotoxins. Same is true with grains, of course. And then you know, then you’re saying animals that eat that type of grain their meat and dairy is contaminated with mycotoxins as well. So what so we have the food issue that we have the building issue? 

 

So the question that comes up what should the pill think be made out of because the the sheetrock of the drywall that’s a no no, of fungi resistant wood, like this house is built out of a redwood with a metal roof seems to me to be a good idea, especially because we can get good ventilation as long as I keep the jungle off of this house. And I’m keeping all the biological material and shade off this house. So at least we get the sun and doing its deal that we tried to keep the moisture down, go to wood floors. You know, that’s and then obviously occasionally using ozone and occasionally using HEPA filtration and carbon filtration seems to be like the best way to deal with this house. But, you know, let’s, let’s say you’re starting from scratch what’s what where do we go? What did we learn?

 

Jason Earle  1:03:00

Well, you rewind back to 1945, if you will, and ideally, you’re using plaster and, and brick and stone and old growth timber. That’s not always, you know, practical, try to find someone who’s going to clash in your house these days. Right, those artists. They sailed off into the sunset decades ago. But now there are materials that there that are a very, very good substitute. And there’s there’s there are paperless wallboards Georgia Pacific, who makes lots and lots of paper paper based wallboard actually makes a paperless material called dens armor plus, and it’s fiberglass mat. 

 

It’s not it doesn’t become airborne. So it’s not the typical sort of hazardous type fiberglass that we use in our walls, which by the way, contains many of the pink and yellow stuff contains formaldehyde, which is a group one carcinogen, why we build buildings with carcinogenic materials. It goes back to the beginning of a conversation. It’s beyond me. But the chemical companies make those decisions and we pay the price. And then so you’ve got paperless wallboard, like lens armor Plus, there’s also a magnesium oxide board. That’s that’s on the market. These things have to be ordered through specialty supply houses, but they’re accessible. It’s just that most people don’t think or know. And it’s really hard to get contractors to work with these materials I’ve had very I’ve had a very difficult time getting contractors to use no VOC paints and paperless wallboard and stuff, because they’ve been there. They’re one trick pony, they do what they’ve always done before, and they’re scared about results. They don’t want it to not be good and then not get paid. And so they’d rather just keeping, keep doing what they’ve always done. 

 

So you want to choose moisture resistant materials. Wherever possible. You want to choose things that do not support fungal growth. You also want to stay away from antimicrobial materials and antimicrobial treatments and paints and because if there’s a moisture problem, no antimicrobial is going to do anything for you. It will eventually dissipate. And and also we want to help the microbiome like I said before, we want to very diverse microbial microbial diversity. And so we don’t want to do anything to inhibit that we really want to encourage, you know, a robust Flora within our building, just no growth. And so that comes down to moisture control. And so you want to make sure that you’re, you’re using ventilation, you know, you’re installing good ventilation in your kitchens and bathrooms, you know, you want to use cement board in your bathroom, not green board, right? 

 

A green board is just as just a, it’s just that a little bit of an additive in it that prevents moisture, mold from growing instantly. But it doesn’t take long for it to eventually just dissolve just like regular sheet rocked us. So choosing materials that naturally will shed moisture very easily. You also want to make sure you’re doing simple things like you know, I say no to crack, I mean, cracks in your grout. And so, and you want to make sure that those things are cuffed and grounded really, really religiously, you know, people always ask about the mold on the grout and caulk. That’s a hygiene issue. I don’t worry about that. Although that might mean that you’re not using your bathroom exhaust vent, you’re not and maybe you use a squeegee to get the moisture down that down the drain. So you’re

 

David Wolfe  1:06:08

not getting the moisture out. That’s it. This is an interesting point. Because most people go I got it. My bathroom is growing out of the caulk and grout material.

 

Jason Earle  1:06:18

Okay, okay. Yeah. But the problem is this thing that the thing that you can’t see is when you have a missing, grab, and missing call, now you have a route for a drip, drip, drip, drip and match what mold loves. I’ve seen entire bathroom shrouds rotting out, right? I mean, like literally where the floor joists are rotting, full thing from an almost imperceptibly small gap along the bottom, what they call the cove, which is where the wall meets the tub. And it’s amazing how much water get behind there. Also behind your sink if you don’t have a proper backsplash that’s caught. 

 

And you know, kids are splashing, even just washing dishes. You’d be amazed how much water gets behind there and lot of people have mold problems behind the kitchen cabinets, because they don’t have a proper properly sealed up backsplash. And so that kind of stuff, these really small things that literally the solution is at $7 cost gun, right? Yeah. I mean, you gotta be I, you know, I’m gonna do a post on this. I’ve got I’m armed, you know, and, you know, so it

 

David Wolfe  1:07:22

took me years to realize, you know, that there’s a little hole there that that you use as a scissors to cut the end of the caulk? And took me years to find that out. I mean, this is this is a, you shouldn’t be learning this stuff in school. That’s, well, that’s totally say, yeah,

 

Jason Earle  1:07:37

no, it’s up there. I mean, it used to be like tying shoes, right. Like, we thought these things were pretty young. I think that you know, learning how to work with your building, learning, you know, you know, this is this is table stakes, you know, understanding how to navigate mold and moisture issues. You know, we live on a water planet, we live on planet fungi, for heaven’s sake. You know, so learning how to navigate mold and moisture issues is fundamental. And granted, it is a generationally somewhat new thing, right? Our grandparents didn’t have to deal with this, right? This is a fairly new thing. And so it is showing up in so many ways. Look at the there’s 100 autoimmune diseases now, for God’s sake, you know, like what is going on here. And I would argue that it’s air, food and attitude. This is my this is the triumvirate of health for me is it’s air food and attitude. 

 

It’s a Venn diagram. And so you got to get your air straight, you got to get your your indoor environment tree, which is mold VOCs and hyper sanitation, right. And so that’s low chemicals, get rid of the chemical stop using those stupid cleaners, stop, stop using, you know, personal care products that have fragrances, don’t use plugins, please for heaven’s sakes, stop using glade plugin or any any plugin any air freshener, this is it clean, doesn’t have a smell, okay? And so you know, you and by the way, clean does not equals sterile either. So cleaning means free of dirt and debris. It does not mean sterile. We bastardized and conflated these ideas. 

 

And so we just want to have an area that’s free of dust and debris. So air and then food you’re eating clean, you’re the king of this, right so I don’t need to tell you but you know, you want to eat local seasonal, organic, grass fed pastured if you’re gonna go the meat route, because you want to avoid having carryover effect from from the animals eating moldy stuff when they’re eating stuff that’s not on their evolutionary menu. And so if you get the your pantry straight, and also the audit process stuff, right, this is hiding in processed grains, flowers in particular. You know, you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, but it’s there. And if you do a urine test for mycotoxins, almost everybody will test positive, they’re eating conventional diet or they go out to regular restaurants, almost everybody that some people won’t because they’re holding on to it because don’t they have detox pathway issues? That doesn’t mean that they don’t have it, it means that they’re, they’re all gummed up. 

 

And sometimes they need to push things through with like glutathione Oh, and if they can tolerate the sulfur, but sometimes you This, these these processes can sometimes hide a real issue the detox pathway issues. So, so foods, so you’re cleaning up your environment, which is again, chemicals, moisture, and then you’re also doing this thing with, with food where you’re looking in your pantry, and you’re looking at what what you do when you eat out. And then lastly, attitude. You know, I’ve never seen anybody get better. Never have I seen anybody get better, who’s scared of all these people that are, you know that. And listen, I grew up as a as a mold sick kid. And, and of course, I didn’t know it at the time. But And thank God because I probably would have had sincere some degree of PTSD myself, you know, I was itching my whole life, and it was on inhalers it was you know, it was not fun. But, but what I’ve seen with people who become very, hyper vigilant about this stuff, is that they tend to be, they tend to be the ones who linger. 

 

And they tend to be the most vocal people on Facebook about how you have to burn your house down and leave with a shirt on your back and don’t, all this kind of stuff. And this is this is a false narrative, if you can, again, out of 1000s I mean, I’ve done 1000s and 1000s of healthy home assessments, or sick building assessments, if you will, depends on which side of the coin you want to look at. And I’ve only, I’ve only had a couple of where I’ve said, you know, this is not a building that can be saved. Budget drives that a lot. But, but barring budget, it’s really a matter of removing the materials that can’t be cleaned fixing the moisture problem and cleaning the air and surfaces, what’s

 

David Wolfe  1:11:29

the worst offender in your experience homes or office buildings?

 

Jason Earle  1:11:34

Well, the data on this is interesting about 47%, of of residential homes are deemed to have a mold or moisture problem of significance currently. And so that’s that’s the big number, right? And acid is a massive number. And I and the numbers do not make the distinction between apartments and single family homes. And I would argue that there’s 45 million apartments in the United States. And so that’s then those are obviously going to be maintained less, what’s a digital asset like than single family homes, just because the the business model for renting for landlords is invest as little as property in the as little as possible in the property, and then charge as much as you can for rent. And so that’s inherently conflicting against maintaining a healthy building. And so, so apartments are notoriously problematic, and they’re disempowered because they can’t afford an inspection and or they’re not allowed to bring in outside professionals. 

 

So renters are a major unserved audience, which is why one of the reasons why we created our test kit, by the way, because this gives the people the ability to leverage the data to either break a lease or to, or to, or to get the landlord to take some action. But, but the commercial buildings, about 80% of them, according to the same study that I just referenced with the 47% of homes, that 85% of commercial buildings have had water damage, and about 30% of active leaks. And then, and then schools, they say, I think it’s 25 to 30% have have roof problems, and I’ve been in lots of schools, and I would argue that all of the ones I’ve been in have root problems, deferred maintenance, drive it, you know, they can’t afford pencils, right now. 

 

So, you know, what are they going to do? So so so kids can’t learn, by the way, you know, the musty smell is the number one impact is cognitive impairment. You know, so kids can’t learn teachers can’t teach teachers can’t thank, you know, emotional dysregulation is very, a very common symptom when it comes to mold exposure from the VOCs. And so, you know, this, I would argue, I used to think food was the was the big thing. I think air quality is the leading cause of most chronic disease. Most of the malaise that we experience is like, this is air food attitude. But air is the thing that we do 20,000 times a day, right? You know, you only need a few times a day, but and you can choose what foods you eat, right? You have to choose the foods, but your air you don’t get to choose often, especially if you’re working or are in school. So so this is this is something that is a it is it is tables is the most it’s the most fundamental thing that we do. And it’s interesting, because it’s kind of like the story of you know, David Foster Wallace gave that great talk. This is water, you remember that you ever see this? It’s a it’s a commencement address that he delivered. And he talks about these two young fishermen along and they happen to meet an older fish coming in the other direction, who knots then goes born a voice as the water and a couple of minutes, a couple of a couple moments later, the two young fish look at each other. And go What the hell’s water? Right and that’s, we’re in it right and so just like you can’t really smell your breath unless it’s really bad. 

 

Air is the same kind of thing. This is a this is hiding in plain sight right under the tip of your nose. And it’s the last frontier of environmental awareness you know, we’re a lot of people especially in their listening to this are aware of food and they’re aware of water and you know, but air man because we’re so close to it, right? Just like we reserve our worst behavior for the people close To us, you know, the things that are closest to us are the last things we look at, you know, our own behavior, right or the lack. We always want to judge other people’s, but our own behaviors of the things that we often need to look at. And the same thing goes with air, it’s so close to us, that it takes a special sort of, you have to zoom in and zoom out and kind of a unique way to get a get a perspective on this stuff. But it’s imperative that you do because it is it is, it is, in many cases, a matter of life and death. It’s certainly no matter what, it’s a matter of quality of life.

 

David Wolfe  1:15:28

Fascinating. Thanks so much. This has been an incredible conversation, Jason, and I really appreciate everything that you’ve been sharing. This is his kit, by the way. So I’m David Avocado Wolfe. I’m joined by Jason Jason Earle of got mold.com. And we’ll give you a link, by the way for his free eBook. So you can get 40 pages on the download, and what exactly is going on with mold in buildings? Here’s the kit that we got in the mail. So we’re going to be doing a sample here in the next few days. And we’re going to send it into the lab network, we’re gonna get those results within a week. So they send the results to you. And then you guys email us and go, here’s your analysis set. How

 

Jason Earle  1:16:05

would I know it’s a turnkey thing? So as soon as the results are available at the lab, they get processed immediately, and they will go right to you. So yeah, so you’ll get that. And so like I said, you know, you put this in the shownotes. But you know, at gmail.com/david. Wolf, you’ll see there that there’s an ebook. There’s also a coupon code, or any anyone who’s interested in possibly getting a kid’s avocado 10, which gives them 10% off. And yeah, and so, and then, anytime anybody has any questions about this, you know, you can go to our Instagram account at COP mold, and ask questions there on Facebook, or to gmail.com. 

 

And we have a little section at the bottom of the homepage where people ask questions. I don’t answer all of them, but I see them all. And so really, I often think that we’re I often say that we’re an education company that happens to sell a test kit, because there’s so much, there’s so many myths and misconceptions around this. So let us know if you have any questions. We’re here to help. Okay,

 

David Wolfe  1:17:04

awesome. One last thing I’ve got for you is, let’s say, I know you work in the northeast, do you have references for other organizations in other parts of the country, for example, let’s say someone’s in Southern California, they’ve got a mold problem, and they get your test kit. They’re like, Geez, it’s off the Richter scale on these three things. And they, we got to rip this drywall out, because obviously, we’ve had a leak here. Do you recommend companies to do that? Ever, we are in the process of developing

 

Jason Earle  1:17:29

a referral network on our website, we free and open to the public. And they’ll have to test in knowledge, air, verify their knowledge, and also sign a code of ethics. So so we’re looking to really curate that. In the meantime, when they when people use our AR kit, the last page of the report contains links. And by the way you can get you can go if you just want to skip over that you don’t have to use our kids to get through this, you can actually go get a sample report, go to the footer@gmail.com. And it says view sample report and grab a sample report. And you’ll see the third page that those links are live. And that’ll take you to the two trade associations the train and certify inspectors and remediators. That’s not that is not a an endorsement of those professionals. 

 

But it’s a good filter. And there’s some language there around what certifications and designations to to focus on. But and also within the ebook. There’s also some some discussion around how to hire a professional inspector, because there’s a lot of questions you need to ask, you need to make sure they’re not conflicted that they don’t also do remediation, you want to make sure they don’t advocate these biocides and chemical products during remediation, you want to make sure that they’re gonna oversee the process, not just just handoff to remediator is going to, you know, hit you with a big bill, you want to make sure that you’re gonna get proper post remediation, verification, testing and inspections. So there’s a lot to it. 

 

And there’s also a wealth of information@gmail.com we have a learning center. And so you can go there, and there’s just a, we’ve got a treasure trove of resources there around for example, why not to use biocides and how to hire inspectors and stuff like that. So So you know, I encourage people who are curious about this stuff to do. Go to the website, go to Learning Center. There’s a it’s a, you know, we’re building it out constantly. We’re working on some online courses too. But what’s there usually gets people going in the right direction. Fantastic.

 

David Wolfe  1:19:24

It’s It’s a hidden epidemic, for sure. And it’s affecting 10s of millions of people without them even really realizing what’s going on. So if you are affected by mold, or suspect that you’re being affected by mold, get a got mold, test kit. Check it out, see what’s happening in your own home. We’re doing that process right now. And do the best you can to remediate rip out all the old rotten materials and rotten wood. Get it Get an expert like Jason and Jason’s team and people who are working he works with and also start working through this trade organizations to see if you can find a good fit for you and get to a solution. So I What I love about your approach is that you really are solution oriented. And that there’s always a way to get to the goal to and also very interesting to get that biological diversity that you’re looking for in your environment, which I find to be fascinating. 

 

And I guess I wanted to say one last thing that I found very interesting with plants. I’ve been growing plants near very wild and crazy forests for a long time. And if the plan is to domesticated the mold, in this case, in this environment, it’s anthrax knows, it, just the pressure on those weaker plants is is just, it’s overwhelming and they get stunted. But what’s interesting is that there are certain plants for example, horsetail that you can spray, like a compost tea can literally spray the tree down, that improves their immune system against that pressure, and allows them to fight back and increase their antifungal or anti mold, immune system. 

 

And I suspect that humans have that too, that if we take in the right nutrients, we can get those similar benefits and, and to me that I always think of the great antifungals like you’d think of horsetails being one of them. That’s one of the great ones powder, Jarkko, which we have a couple of powder, Jarkko trees right here, which are really, which is really amazing. And maybe that has effects like what happens with plants that can help your body to deal with the mold in a way that it couldn’t be for that Herb was introduced.

 

Jason Earle  1:21:16

Yeah, there’s, that’s also interesting. And there’s an organism called Pythian Alexandrium, which is a micro parasitic algae that, that actually you likes the same conditions that that most fungi do. And it can be sprayed on to two plants. And so I actually have some I can send you the testing. And so it likes the same conditions. And so it will literally eat the fungi. And so I like the idea of microbial medicine, right, instead of trying to kill stuff, let’s introduce a friendly competitor, that gives it a run for its money so that it doesn’t have such a huge lead. huge head start, you know, so I think this will be a one conversation of many. I’m looking forward. I really

 

David Wolfe  1:22:01

I thank you, by the way, I agree. I think this I think everyone who’s watching this all the way to this point, I think you’re going to agree you’re going to want more information. Certainly I do. I’ve been going through the different Phone Guy, and I can’t wait to hear what you have to say just on the specific phone guy like that. You know, there could be microbial competitors, that’s the one you want. And so the one you don’t want, that’s a big thing in farming, by the way, we have weedy vines that you know are very good for the soil because there might nitrogen fixers, but we want the ones we want. We don’t want the ones that nature’s throwing out a center like desmodium, which is a nightmare. lacuna which is what we want. So there’s always a natural replacement. 

 

Appreciate your time and I’ve kept you way over time. So we’ll get this out there to our people. We’ll put it out in our newsletter, we’ll get out on telegram and get it out on Twitter and getting out on the social medias. Including YouTube rumbo and bitchute. So if you’re watching their E, we’ll put all the links below for you to get those ebooks get to his website, find out all the information you need to know and I will say this and that this is coming from experience of dealing with two homes for 20 years is that you got to stay on top of this you have got if you own a home. You don’t want your home to mold over not only is gonna make you sick it’s going to make the house potentially even unsellable until it’s remediated. Any any last parting words Jason?

 

Jason Earle  1:23:13

No, that’s perfect. You know a mold problem is a moisture problem. Run to these things don’t run away from them. Well

 

David Wolfe  1:23:19

said. Thanks for joining us have the best day ever. Anyway, we’ll see you next time. Cheers.