Podcast Transcript
The Rebel Scientist
Thu, Oct 20, 2022 1:36PM • 38:29
Summary from the host:
Sarah and Russ enter Season 3 with a sporeful of fun with Jason Earle of GOT MOLD? They talk about the celebration and the proper remediation of mold. Season 3 is dedicated to understanding every part of the body and how biohackers can plan, predict and prevent to live a longer healthier life. Not all mold is bad!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
mold, fungi, people, jason, vocs, home, coronary heart disease, toxic mold, called, problem, musty, buildings, test, symptoms, mycotoxins, antibiotics, scientist, sarah, feel, environment
00:01
This episode of the rebel sciences podcast is brought to you by cardio diagnostics epogen CHD test. Getting heart healthy begins with knowing you’re at risk for coronary heart disease, ask your doctor about the epogen CHD
00:17
break. So we’re right in the thick of season three, we took our holiday break, we’re back, and we’re focused in on the body. Now we’re focusing on really making sure we’re helping our audience understand parts of their body. And we’re gonna go top to bottom bottom to top of focus on that. And so today’s guest, I believe is right there for us. And so Sara launch introduce our guests. And we’ll we’ll jump right in.
01:18
Yes, we’re very lucky because we’re speaking to Jason. Now today who’s going to talk to us about, well, our environment, which of course, is really what we’re all about. And the whole point of biohacking is how you actually change or manipulate your environment. And Jason is an expert on mold, which is an app topic for me while I’m over here in rainy England, where it seems like you know, there’s damp everywhere I go. And we’re kind of swimming around in water and mold. So I’m very interested to hear what Jason’s got to say. So Jason, Hi, how are you? Thank you for coming on.
01:50
Excellent. Excellent. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Ross. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.
01:54
Yeah, it’s really great to see you. It’s great to see you. So I was checking out your website a little bit before you came on. And it’s really interesting. And it is it a wide topic. And I think people are beginning to realize now how important their environment is. But maybe this is something that people are not aware of. So maybe you can just start off with a little bit of your background and why this has become an important topic for you.
02:16
Sure, sure. Well, first of all, thanks again for having me. And it’s also rainy and damp here, too. So Minnesota, transplanted from New York City recently. And so I’m experiencing a whole new level of precipitation, mostly frozen. But still,
02:31
yes, I was gonna say you’ve got snow, haven’t you on a whole lot of it.
02:35
I mean, it’s basically I’ve learned six months of winter, six months of summer, and, but it takes some getting getting used to also creates new moisture problems. So as a building science nerd, it’s been illuminating. And but anyway, you know, when I first get started in this, which we’ll get into, I remember people saying really molded a business there. I said, Yeah, it’s kind of a niche market. It’s I’m kind of targeting people who live in buildings and breathe air, you know. And so of course, back then it was 20 years ago, it was more of a niche business, because the awareness around it wasn’t there. That’s much different now. And, you know, it is remarkable, though, how long we’ve lived in buildings with running water. And we live in a water plant. And I mean, this is these are not much has changed about that in a long time. But this subject itself has really come front and center. I think for a lot of different reasons. Climate change is probably a big one. But unprecedented flooding, and all that kind of stuff is really launched into the headlines, you know, terms like Katrina cough came out, of course, Hurricane Katrina, which is a mold exposure, you know, sort of suite of symptoms. But ya know, it’s a fascinating subject, because at the end of the day, if you’re talking about biohacking, you know, number one rule of optimizing performance is first stop doing the stuff that makes you weak. And of all the things that mold does, that’s universal mold creates all sorts of different symptoms and different people. I mean, it’s fascinating how much it mimics other things at times. But more importantly, the one thing it does to everybody, whether they know it or not, or admit it or not, as it makes you weak.
04:01
It’s interesting. I had, I had a neighbor, and we all built these brand new homes we lived out in central California, when many many years ago and the builder got sued, because there was a house that was covered in toxic mold. And everybody was like, Oh my God, is our house gonna have toxic mold. Of course, you make it about you, why not? But they sold the house. They went in, they sold the house, and they sold it for more than they built it for. Someone bought it and someone lived in it. And can you remove like, I am curious, the differences between molds, right? There’s things like black mold and toxic mold, like, what are the differences? What is bad for you? I eat cheese, that’s mold, like Are things good for you? So I don’t know. I’m curious that maybe just like sort of setting the stage of like, what are good molds and bad molds?
04:44
Yeah, it’s a great question. It is really fascinating. The subject matters is so wide ranging because as you said, it’s you know, there’s mold everywhere, fungi in particular everywhere, and mold and yeast being you know, a subset of the kingdom fungi. But in fact, you know, fungi is so abundant that I just read a fascinating book called The entangled life, which I highly recommend by Myrtle Sheldrake. Yeah, tour de force beautiful, mostly about macro fungi. So mushrooms and things like that. But one of the brilliant quotes out of it, or statistics was that every year kingdom fungi releases 50 Mega tons mega tons of spores into the environment every year, which is the equivalent of 500,000, blue whales. So the largest producer of biological particulate matter in the planet is that kingdom. And so to be sport free, or to be around fun, you know, we’re awash in this stuff, let’s just put it that way. And so by and large, in fact, we need fungi, otherwise, we would have lots of dead stuff piled up everywhere. And that’s why we have oil and coal because at one point, we didn’t have fungi. That’s what prevented those biological material from breaking down initially, and then being buried and then ultimately transmuting into this carbon energy for us.
05:49
Is that true? Is that how that works? Jason? Yeah. I had never heard that
05:53
was where it came from. Yeah, it’s from the period of time in our planet where we didn’t have fungi, and the trees fell over, they died and they didn’t rot,
05:59
I would have thought that fungus would have come first. That’s all it you know, in evolution, it seems like the fungus would have come first. But they go, that’s an interesting fact.
06:09
So fungi were towering there were huge fungi back then actually. But they weren’t necessarily the ones who were breaking down would. And so they develop new sets of tools, new sets of enzymes and things that would allow them to digest those things. And so you know, it’s just one of those evolutionary sort of left turns that without that, we would just be like, lots of sticks and trees and twigs, and all that good stuff at work, and we piled the piles up. But to make the long story short, you know, it’s a great way to start the conversation because the one of the biggest misnomers out there, and it’s one that I rail against constantly is the toxic mold thing. And it’s very controversial. I’ve been people get up and walk out of meetings where I’m speaking all the time, you know, because what I say doesn’t land right, where they’re training, left off. But the reality is, is that there’s no such thing as good mold growth of any significance in your home, it’s a sign of a moisture problem. moisture problems are the enemy of buildings, buildings are designed to shed water and wind. And if they’re not doing that they’re failing. And so it’s either a small failure or a big failure. But over time, the small ones become big ones. Mold does one thing it grows and eats, but it grows on. If it keeps going, it’s going to eat your house. And if it does lots of crazy things to get you out of the way, like it starts lobbing toxins, men, some of those molds do that. But that’s late stage mold growth, you’ve already had a mold prom for a long time, if you’ve got those kinds of molds, because the toxin producing molds are actually the last stage before you start getting into, you know, really wood decay fungi and you start getting into rot. Mold is just the precursor of decay. And if you’ve got that going on in your house, I don’t care what the name of it is, what the color is, or what kind of chemistry it produces. The end of the day, the problem is you’ve got a moisture problem your home and that is the enemy of all buildings.
07:44
And with that, Jason, can you get rid of it? Can you get rid of toxic mold? Because that’s the part that like, if it gets into the drywall, it gets into your insulation, and that’s where it spreads faster. But can you get rid of it? Can you actually kill that toxic mold?
07:58
Well, first of all, that’s another great myth is that you don’t need to kill anything. Mold Remediation is not about killing anything. In fact, oftentimes remediation is Miss. It is done incorrectly because they introduce chemicals during the process in lieu of the actual remediation steps, which is you remove the building materials that can’t be claimed, which is like sheetrock and carpet and carpet padding and soft, porous materials that cannot be cleaned. And then you clean the rest of the surfaces using HEPA vacuums. And damp wipes. Notice no chemical just to be able to clean it’s basically Molly maids on steroids. It’s a very deep microscopic cleaning. The mycotoxins if you do you have toxic mold that again, that’s a misnomer, because not all molds produce mycotoxins. Even the ones that do don’t always produce them. It depends depends upon whether they’re feeling threatened or whether or not their environment is challenged. So it’s really a it’s it. This is my chemical warfare on a microscopic level, we just get caught in the crosshairs. And genetically we’re more closely tied to fungi than bacteria, which is why antibiotics work on us, right? So we tend to align their they align with armature, our environments pretty well, the moment there’s a little imbalance, it starts to grow. And so you know, mold likes a lot of the same stuff. We do food, water, air, comfortable temperature, and so the Miko toxigenic species are worth looking at. They are good to know about because they’re clearly indicators of a chronic water issue. But that’s the tail wagging the dog in a way that it’s that’s a symptom all the way down the line. That’s a digestive byproduct. This is called the secondary metabolite secondary thought even a primary metabolite, right. So really, you’re talking about looking at a little detail on the fringe to identify the toxic stuff now, can you clean that stuff? Yes. Can you get rid of it from your home? Yes, true remediation is again, about cleaning. So that many times means really taking your building to the bones. I mean, I’m talking to the bones where you stand in the basement. You can see this the attic in some cases, you know, I mean, it’s not uncommon for remediation to be a complete rebuild. Can you do it? Sure. Is it worth it? Do you get to crunch the numbers on sometimes? You know,
10:02
it’s a fascinating topic because it is it’s almost like termites, right? You almost because it’s like outside in. So you’ve got to almost replace everything and start from scratch. And I’m curious, Jason and I think this is an area where I think Sarah, probably wood is going to jump into of like, how is mold good for you? And where does good mold come from? You know, how does it become like a positive in our digestive process and all that fun stuff? Well,
10:26
I think that there’s a lot of ways that mold can be beneficial. In fact, my whole philosophy is that mold isn’t the bad guy. Mold is actually if you follow Paul Stamets, he often says the mold is the immune system of the planet, as well as the communication network. And you see the way fungi behaves with trees and the Rozell, Marvel network and the relationships that they have to keep everything flowing. I mean, they’re brilliant, and truly a benevolent force on our planet in arguably, and so if you carry that thought process through in terms of, you know, what is fungi here to do if they’re the campaign communications network, and the immune system of the planet, and we know that the antibiotics come from most antibiotics or mycotoxins, FYI, but you don’t call them mycotoxin pills, but they’re mycotoxin pills, which by the way, might confuse the subject and may cause people develop mold sensitivities when they have things like Lyme disease and have a lot of antibiotics, you know, these are things that are very often looked at is that we treat something with mycotoxins, and then we have mold sensitivities on the heel of that right, and that nobody’s talking about or researching those things. Well, maybe
11:29
we should talk about it, because that is quite a big point that you’ve raised. What you’re saying is, if you’re taking antibiotics for something else, which people are, obviously people take antibiotics for almost everything, you know, not just Lyme disease, but people, you know, even just for a little cough, but then you’re actually making yourself sensitive to mold in your house,
11:48
potentially. So not everybody could, again, this is a very individual thing, right. So just like your allergy profile, just like any of your sensitivities are all very individual. For me as a kid, we could talk about how I got in the business a little bit later if you want, but I had latent allergies that came out due to this chronic exposure, which also then went away. I’m not allergic to anything now. So you can see how mold pushes on a button that makes everything sort of like high alert, if you’re in a chronic. So some of that high alert can be if you’re taking antibiotics I’ve seen this is anecdotal, right. So this is the in terms of antibody, I’ve only done 1000s of these. And I’ve only helped 1000s of families. But at the same time, it’s still anecdotal, because I don’t have triple blind studies behind me. And I’m not sending this stuff off to we’re not doing but actually we’re putting some of this stuff together. So in the long run, I think what we’ll see is that the more we talk about this, the more people will look at it. But yes, I think when you’re already in, you’re already in a situation where your immune system is primed, and then you start taking mycotoxin pills, we wouldn’t be surprised for your body to negatively associate to that and then develop sensitivities to the external world, which mirror that my mold sniffing dogs, which we used for 12 years, we used to train them with different materials, that would be a distraction, like cat food, you put them in these opaque wheels, and you’d hide mold and one of them. And one of the things they always alerted on was antibiotics like penicillin in particular. And so we want to have what we want to have nature’s pharmacy. But then we’re surprised when sometimes nature produces those compounds in our house. And then we have adverse reactions to
13:22
it makes sense. Because if you think about like you were saying, because presumably, you know, they’re acting on your mitochondria, if you’re saying that it acts on bacteria, bacteria, mitochondria, very similar. So it makes sense. You know, if you’re taking something to kill bacteria, then it’s also going to negatively affect the mitochondria in your body. So there you have that direct connection, maybe
13:43
in many, many different ways. Like I said, you know, mold is is like an interrupter. It makes you weak, it suppresses things in many different ways. In many ways, what mold doesn’t even rise or morphic networks down there. And one of the things that multiple do molds and fungi will do is they’ll actually release compounds to make the tree think it’s not an enemy, because it isn’t, but we’ll get past its immune system, and then get in there and do benevolent stuff. But it tricks it into thinking it’s so it weakens you, in some cases to make you stronger, right to get in there and do what what it’s doing. But sometimes it makes you weaker, and then it makes you more susceptible to other things. And so many times mold illness is not mold illness, it’s the stuff that piled on or that was laying the came out. And then you start reducing exposure. And suddenly those things start to get better. And so the first step on detoxing is stop talking, you know, like these are common sense things if you just really back up and take a look at it. But when it comes to mold, I envision it like the immune systems like a juggler and molds the guy across the room throwing baseballs at him. Just challenging he’s gonna get something’s gotta give, right? Yeah,
14:49
but you can, you can start to incorporate that new ball. If you’re a really talented juggler with only one or two people can do that right and then all of a sudden you’ve got someone who’s incorporating the mold into everything they do. Mold scares me now. Jason, you’ve just frightened me. With all this. It’s tricky. It sounds like I mean, it’s a very complex thing I, it’s, I think it’s worthy of study, it’s worthy of what you’re doing. Because there’s a lot to it. And not every mold is the same.
15:15
No doubt about it. But one thing I will tell you is that it is the equal opportunity pollutant. It doesn’t know anything about race, color, creed, a sex, you know, geographic, he knows nothing of those things. And it happens in every climate, even if people want to believe it’s just the sun Dalits are just in the flooded flooded areas. It’s not true. And it affects everybody, especially the most vulnerable of our population, right, as we learned with COVID, these things can really take a toll on but it also does these sneaky things. One of my friends Dr. John Bennett, at Rutgers is a fungal geneticist, and she got obsessed with it because she was already studying fungi, her entire career. But her house got flooded during Hurricane Katrina. And she was teaching data to lane before that. And she went down there to study the house afterwards, because she was so fascinated to see what fungi were growing in her house like a real scientist. She went down there with petri dishes to sample but she walked in with a respirator on just particular respirator, and she got sick right away. And she was blown away because she had actually testified in defense of insurance companies who believed that you couldn’t get that sick from inhalation and mold exposure you couldn’t get she was knocked down for like two weeks and had lingering symptoms. For a while, she was really flummoxed because she had a respirator on. And so what was it that she was exposed to? And so she took, you know, scientists cat back to Rutgers, and she looked at what she was, and basically, she concluded that there was something in the musty odor because she could smell it through the particulate right and 95 doesn’t do anything for the gases, it only takes out the particles. And because it takes up the particles, the mycotoxins are on the spores and on the dust. They’re an oily substance, they’re not free floating. So now you’ve taken the mycotoxins and the spores out of the exposure. And now you’re just breathing in the gases. So she started looking at those gases. And so what are these, that’s the musty odor, and the musty odors produced by all molds, so if you smell it, that’s the first clue. But what’s more interesting is that that’s been considered an aesthetic nuisance for all these years. And what she started doing was looking at these compounds and studying them on animals. And she found that the modified fruit flies such that they stopped producing dopamine, they stopped reproducing, they start flying downwards instead of to the light, they developed Parkinsonian like symptoms, the list goes on. And on another another group took her studies and looked at mitochondria and and to your point, Sarah, found that it was causing mitochondrial damage to these other fruit flies in parallel study. And so you start looking at some of the other human studies, and they’ve correlated mold naffness indoors to depression. And you start thinking, well, those fruit flies look pretty depressed. Right? They were stopped produce, you don’t mean they stop reproducing. And so the typical mold symptoms are pretty wide ranging, but he’s talking about quality of life, you start seeing how pervasive, how insidious it can be, it can be something as subtle as fatigue, and not feeling good, a low mood. That’s a very common issue in our country where we’re prescribing people pills for those things, and maybe they just need some fresh air.
18:05
I was just wondering, because it’s difficult to know, isn’t it that what is the actual problem? Because, you know, I’m sure you’ve got situations. I mean, you just said your friend, the scientist, you know, her house had been flooded. So she maybe had cause to be depressed, too. Is there any way to kind of filter out? What’s the cause? You know, how much of the symptoms are due to the mold? And how much is circumstantial? Because it would be interesting if there was some kind of test. I mean, I wonder if she’s looked at that. What was her opinion on what was causing it?
18:39
Sara, one thing that rings true on the rebel sciences podcast is quantifying thyself and to quantify thyself is to understand what’s going on inside your body. And I’m very interested in what’s going on inside my body, especially in my heart. Can I still think it’s a great test to understand what’s going on with your heart?
18:58
Yeah, well, we’ve recently heard about a new test from cardio diagnostics, called epogen THD. And this is a coronary heart disease risk assessment test. And it actually looks at your genetic and epigenetic biomarkers. It uses machine learning and comes up with a number that you can then discuss with your doctor to look at your risk of coronary heart disease, which is the primary cause of heart attacks.
19:21
Right, and all the exercise that we’re doing all the diets that we do, it’s still important to understand if you’re at risk for coronary heart disease, right. And I think if those that feel they might be more likely or at risk for heart disease, like people who have a family history, this test the epogen, CHD cardio diagnostics really is a new way to screen for coronary heart disease at really the molecular level.
19:46
Yeah. And the reason that we like promoting, it’s because it’s peer reviewed, there’s lots of studies by scientists and clinicians, and it’s also very simple. It’s just a home draw home blood draw. So you don’t need to do fasting. You don’t need to do prep. It’s As the simple kit, you can get by prescription, and you do at home.
20:04
And it’s really not recommended for those that have already been diagnosed with coronary heart disease. So if you know, then take action. And if you have symptoms of coronary heart disease, probably not either. If you’re under the age of 35, and outside of the United States, those are all things you really don’t need this test. But if you do, and you feel like you want to know ask your doctor, go to rebel sciences.com. You’ll see all of our information there from cardio diagnostics, click through their website, ask about the epi Gen CHD test. It is a brand new way to test to diagnose for coronary heart disease. Incredibly important stuff, Sara, thank you again.
20:42
Yes, prevention is priceless Ross. Prevention is always better than cure.
20:51
Well, I’m looking I’m very interested in the musty smell. I’m obsessed about it. In fact, with our test kit, one of the things we do is we ask a few questions at the end, as we’re doing a research study embedded in the product. So we ask if there’s musty smells, if there’s visible mold, or if there is anybody experiencing symptoms, and then we automate outreach. So if somebody has a musty odor, and there’s visible mold, we’re sending off another kind of test kit. So we can sample there musty odor, and we want to see what’s going on in there, across all geography and across all sorts of building types and things like that. So we’re doing a kind of a giant for profit, indoor air quality study, probably the biggest that’ll ever happen, or the base that has ever happened, for sure. And so that’s a very exciting thing. But the main reason is that we’re seeing that these chemicals, first of all, VOCs, in general, are killing our world. All these we’ve lived very tight buildings, and non alcoholic fatty liver disease is a big deal. It happens to be affecting up to 40% of our population. asymptomatically Is that crazy? That is non alcoholic fatty liver, and they can’t tell quite what it’s from. But after all the stuff that I’ve read, I’m concluding that it’s from VOCs. In our house, you drink VOCs and you drink alcohol that’s alcoholic fatty liver disease. It’s a lot of sugar, a lot of alcohol, why are we getting non alcoholic fatty liver disease in people that don’t drink excessive alcohol except for the fact that they’re eating a lot of sugar and breathing VOCs they’re sitting in their basement, they’re microbial, VOCs, manmade VOCs. They’re all being processed in the same place. And we have a massive epidemic. It’s a hidden epidemic, you look up non alcoholic fatty liver disease as a percent of our population, and it will blow your mind. No one’s talking about this either. But that’s indoor air quality in my professional opinion. And so it’s a widespread This is autoimmune disease. This is fatigue, depression, headaches, malaise, cancer, it’s not hard to imagine with all the chemicals when you sample indoor air and the average home, which we reburied, 20,000 times a day, when you spend all your time indoors 20,000 times a day, you can’t expect us to have these exposures not accumulate in some unintended ways. So to try to piece that to answer your question start to try to unspin that the snowball that’s rolling down the hill to say, am I depressed because the Snowball is that big or because there’s so many sticks in it or because of where it came from. I don’t think that that can really be done. But I do think that in a world where we have so little control over anything, if you’re honest, we have so little control. We have no control over the outdoor environment. But yet we’re so worried about climate change on this and we should be. But the indoor environment, we have incredible amounts of control over. And so I always say everyone’s worried about the things that they can’t control, but they’re not doing things in areas where they do have control. And so the first calculus is, Where can I have control work in my time and money be invested where it can actually produce a return on investment. This is biohacking one on one to write. And I feel like indoor air is number one, you do it 20,000 times a day more than you do anything else more than anything else. And so if you get that straight, the one thing that’s hiding under the tip of your nose, a lot of the other stuff takes care of itself.
23:52
So Jason, a couple of things on that, like Instagrams ads are pretty incredible. They are really good at targeting. And I get a lot of ads targeted about indoor air quality devices, things that will help that. Are there two or three tips that you can give to improve the quality of the air within your home because people don’t know like I work in my basement. I’m on the bottom floor of my house. Sure, I’m sure I’m breathing into a lot of things, but how do you know and then what do you do when you do know?
24:22
Well, the first thing is I actually think that air filters air purifier should be a mandatory appliance in every home and not just in your head not the air filters that go not the filter that goes in your HVAC system, which is really designed just to take out giant pieces of detritus. keep it from getting onto your fan, your blower. Those are not indoor air quality improvement devices. They’re there to keep your stuff clean, but keep your mechanical equipment clean. I’m talking about standalone air purifiers room air purifiers that are capable of removing and we’re talking about HEPA filter, but more importantly you’ll see the designation true HEPA being used more and more, which means it’s a sealed unit True HEPA and then you want activated carbon as a significant component of that, because we’re introducing pollutants content, our building is shedding stuff constantly. And then we’re bringing stuff in from outside. And then we also live in very tight boxes. And so first of all, we already have our indoor air quality problems, we already have them. And then they also occur and get worse. And so if you’re not mechanically removing those things, you’re gonna have a problem. The other thing is HEPA. Filtered vacuum cleaners are a big deal, because if you don’t have a HEPA filter on your vacuum cleaner, you are redistributing microscopic dust has been sitting and being broken up into tiny pieces, and you’re breathing deeply respirable allergen concentrations if you have a regular vacuum cleaner. So those two things are very, very actionable.
25:39
Is there anything around our pets Jason that we can do? Can we remove our pets from our home? Do we need to remove our pets?
25:47
Down? wax them weekly.
25:54
I mean, I’ve just tried to convince my wife that maybe the second dog wasn’t a good choice. Is there anything I can attach that to like bringing extra mold in the house? No, it’s good. I those are all helpful tips. You know, Sarah, you move around a lot. And you’re in different homes and the things that you can do with that, like if you’re a traveler, right? I mean, hotel room. I can tell you, I had Hodgkin’s when I was very young. I was in my 20s I got lymphoma, I take it to I was at a hotel room and that room was musty. It was disgusting. All of a sudden, my lungs clenched up that night and for a couple weeks after I had this chest infection that didn’t go away. months later, I got diagnosed with a very high cluster of lymph nodes in my chest that I go back to and say it was that hotel room in Washington DC that gave me Hodgkin’s and cancer. But is that I mean, is that real? Am I just making something up there?
26:43
Well, so first of all musty moldy hotel rooms are a problem. And I’m travel. I feel like I’m always struggling when I travel and I travel a fair amount to and I tend to do Airbnb for that reason, quite frankly. And then I asked very direct questions to us fragrances and what kind of chemical what what kind of the problem is the COVID made it is really forced everybody to use antimicrobials. We are doing so much legacy like damage to our environment, indoor environments by spraying truck trucks, tanker loads full of these residual these things leave residuals that are often hormone modulating. I mean is just so unbelievable. We’re doing it hotels and airports and public buildings, schools. Horrible. Yeah. So I mean, I am most worried more about that stuff, honestly, than the mold because you can clean up the mold. So to answer your question I don’t have there are travel air purifiers the company that I by the way, I’ll gladly share a brand or two for I love IQ air. I don’t necessarily love the company at this point. But I love IQ air air purifiers. And so I highly recommend them if if budgets not a concern. But they’ve done some weird stuff lately with their distribution network. And I like people too much to support that. So. But that being said, it’s still the gold standard, and I can’t take that away from them. mattify air is a great product to mattify air is a great company, but they make great product, they’re really affordable, you can get up for under 100 bucks, you can get an air filter that covers 200 square feet, which is like a normal sized bedroom. And for under 100 bucks. And they’re really good. They’re lightweight, they’re attractive, they have a travel filter too. So people do bring them with them to hotels that put them in their car rental cars. But again, remember you’re dealing with mold is one thing VOCs or another, you can filter out the spores and you can filter out but you can’t get rid of the VOCs easily and that’s the musty smell. And that is the insidious part of it all is it that slip that stuff slips right past the pleated filters and a HEPA or any sort of pay any sort of particulate filter? So it’s tricky. Opening the windows getting air in there asked for a new room. Yeah, I was gonna say. And oftentimes it may be it’s sometimes it’s just a matter of going to the other side of the building, because you can end up with the North Face versus south face and a north face is gonna have condensation, whereas a south facing one that’s got a lot of sunshine coming in, we’ll have less condensation, those rooms will be less musty, so you can ask for a different orientation. Yeah,
29:05
Sarah, in your world of sunlight. I feel like you’re the combatant and the red light. You’re the combatant to mold. Do you feel that you have a warp ending? With Jason here?
29:16
Do I have a board?
29:18
Yeah, like going to work with mold here. Is there something that red light can do with mold?
29:23
Well, maybe some wavelengths of light, not necessarily red. But I mean, I don’t know Jason, maybe there is some wavelengths like you know, you can use UV light, for example, to sterilize somewhere. But that’s really looking more at viruses and bacteria, where the molds may respond to different kinds of light. It’s a definite possibility. And I think probably, as Jason said, the last thing you want is to add more chemicals into your environment to deal with one problem with another problem. So I should imagine it’s something that’s being looked at Do you know something about it Jason? Has someone used
29:55
it’s funny bring that up. Actually. There’s a great book by Nicolas money called carpet monsters and killers. board and he talks at length about and it’s a very funny book, by the way, is entertaining and brilliant man. And he talks about how the reason that mold spores are black, the black spores are black or they’re not, by the way, they’re not black, because actually the scary toxic mold that everyone calls they’re ever more averse to is called Stacie buttress. It’s actually green if you look at it really closely, but they call it the black mold. And so anyway, it actually has very high concentrations of melanin in it. And the reason for that is to protect it from the light. So it’s a durable exterior. So that’s one of the reasons why on an evolutionary basis, it’s still here doing its thing. And so that’s why I always say our job is not to kill the stuff our job is to not create an environment conducive to its growth. If you stop the water, see that if you have the water problem, you have mold, and then you got dust mites sedate the mold, and by the way, you know what makes dust mites really allergenic, is their poop. And so what makes their poop really allergenic is the mold spores in them because they love to eat that stuff. And so they are eating that stuff, and then you’re getting their poop, but the most part, and then you got booklice that eat the dust mites, and you got the spiders, they did booklice. And then they’ve got the rodents that come in. And it’s like that the old lady who swallowed a fly, nursery rhyme. And then she ate all those things. It’s that whole ecosystem, it all begins with one thing, a moisture problem. If you stop the water, they go party elsewhere, they will have a great time somewhere else, because those critters all need one thing they need, the food is there, we build houses out of multitude, they just are looking for a place where there’s enough to drink. And so really, you know, getting into all that other stuff. Really, again, we get distracted by the molds, the types and how to kill them and stuff like that, when really what we have to do is create an environment that’s conducive to our growth but not theirs.
31:39
So Jason leaves us with some tips leave us with some things that we need to know as a beginners but be like you’re talking to an advanced biohacker here with Sarah, I’m on the path. I’m nowhere near Sara. But I’m curious, like what would be some tips that you would give it you’ve given some great ones already about getting the air filtration systems in your homes? Stop using vos the things that create VOCs in the homes? What else anything else you’d want to leave the audience with?
32:04
Yeah, I mean, I would say that there’s a few things. First of all, we like to say if you see something, smell something or feel something, do something. So the key to navigating a mold or moisture problem is that according to the industry standard, and according to the EPA, and it’s evidenced by nature, is that mold occurs within 24 to 48 hours of a moisture problem that’s not dealt with properly. In other words, if it’s not cleaned and dried. And so that’s a fairly short window, the industry standard says that by the time something gets wet and stays wet, especially if it’s porous or absorptive, and it stays wet for 72 hours it should be treated as if it’s moldy, even if there’s no visible growth. But this is not how most people respond to a mold or moisture problem. I’m talking hours and days. And most people think in weeks Am I had that leak for a while now. It’s been happening. I’ve had that since last April. You know, whatever. That right there is the kind of thinking that needs to be reevaluated because it is something you run towards because here’s the deal. Water Damage is free or cheap to deal with. You rip out the stuff when it’s wet, you clean it up, use tallies, get a dehumidifier, fan, whatever, that’s free or cheap. Your insurance company loves to pay for that, by the way, they don’t pay for mold. It’s not covered. Almost all insurance companies have completely excluded it from their coverage. So if you don’t respond too quickly, you will pay in so many ways. And it literally in your health and your vitality and the livability and saleability of your home, not to mention the repairs and the remediation which go up exponentially because you know, mold does it grows, it grows and it doesn’t grow quickly. It grows exponentially. And so my suggestion is if you see it, smell it or feel it do something quickly, because it is in your best interest in every single way. It will not stop on its own, you cannot ignore it. Do not be an ostrich, but to see it, you know you’re looking for any signs of dampness, smell it musty smell pretty obvious, right? track down the source of the moisture, stop the moisture. And then if you feel something very nebulous, very difficult, but most people just know that they feel better when they’re not indoors, they’re better when they leave the environment. Now, if they’re chronically exposed, they may not feel better when they leave, they may still feel bad for a long, long time. But if they’re chronic acutely exposed, and you’ve got acute symptoms, they’ll often feel better when they leave. And so that’s the see if that feels something thing. And then of course you know, I’m in the business of helping people navigate these waters. And so we have a Mold Inspection Company called one 800 Got mold, which I created out of the awareness that I had gotten sick from my own childhood home and then but it’s a high end service. It’s not for everybody. And it’s primarily focused on residential homes in the Northeast. But because it’s not for everyone, and because I think it healthy indoor air should not be cost prohibitive. A few years ago, we put a dream team of scientists and engineers and designers into a room to create a do it yourself test kit that allows people to use the same devices that we use in our professional inspections, but without having to deal with the cost or hassle associated with trying to find and hire a qualified one we so we created a kit that uses something called spore traps, which are indoor air quality testing cassettes that are A B Because throughout the country throughout the world, and for they’re very common here, and they’re used for various different kinds of indoor air quality testing, but if you want to have your house tested currently you call someone to come over most likely, they would actually use that those cassettes. And so we created a kit that eliminates the need for you to have the professional, we created an entire sampling pump that duplicates a professional pump Exactly. And you can test either one, two or three rooms in your house without any of the those concerns and all the lab fees are included, all the shipping is included. There’s really simple pricing. And you can go take a look at it, we created a welcome page for you guys, for your listeners, where we put some more information there. It’s got mold.com/rebel scientist, if anyone wants to take a look there. And also you’ll find a coupon code for 10% off of any of our test kits if anyone’s interested. And then also there’s an ebook there that we get a lot of positive feedback, which I think is also really useful for anybody who thinks they might have a problem. But they don’t think they need to do any testing. And they’re certainly not ready to hire professional. And it’s called How to find mold in your home. And it’s exactly what it says it’s like a home. And it’s like doing your own. It’s a guide, but for doing your own mold inspection really. It’s got checklists, and FAQs. And like I said, we get a lot of really positive feedback on that because it helps dispel a lot of the myths that I’m constantly pounding the table on, especially these podcasts. So
36:13
I always liked I mean, I’m very grateful for all of you, I just get to join the journey of all the hard work that you do, Jason and Sarah, I can tell you, I learned a lot today, I felt like I could take my glasses off and go to the coffee shop and speak about this a little bit more. But it’s fascinating. It’s a fascinating topic. And I think it’s a topic that people don’t know enough about. So highly encourage our audience to go to gmail.com/trouble scientist, if you need to know how to spell that we can help you. And Sarah, let’s close it out.
36:45
Well, I’m gonna say thank you to Jason for very interesting, I actually could talk to you for ages about all of the evolutionary stuff and how it’s acting on the mitochondria. I’m gonna definitely gonna go and read the PDF that you’ve got and do some more research. And thank you again for coming on. It’s fascinating. Thank you very much.
37:03
Yeah, love to keep the conversation going. This is a wide ranging subject that affects everybody in some way, shape, or form. And I think that confusion amongst consumers is incredible. And I often think that, you know, rather than being in the test kit business or in the mold inspection business, I really feel like we’re more of an education company that happens to sell the products and services to help people quantify these things. Because, you know, at the heart of this, the biggest problem with it is not so much the problem itself is the confusion around it because everybody has the tools to make improvements here. It’s just a matter of being aware enough to know what to do next. And so, you know, hopefully your listeners will grab something here and put that to good use.
37:39
Yeah, you did an excellent service. Thank you so much for
37:42
having me. Thanks, Jason.
37:43
Thank you Take care.
37:48
The rebel scientists podcast is a breaking the great production posted by Sarah Turner and Russ Eisenman, audio production by Dave Messiah and the podcast engineers. For more information and for our biohacking shopping guide. Visit rebel scientists.com. To hear more incredible breaking into great production podcasts visit breaking the grey.com that’s gray with breaking the grey.com
38:17
right