Episode 06: Proper Mold Inspection, Remediation, and Cleaning with John Banta

In this episode of The Awakening Spaces Podcast, Ashley speaks with author and building biologist John Banta, whose decades of work in mold remediation have helped countless families reclaim safe, healing homes.

John shares his journey into this field and the experiences that fuel his commitment to helping others. They explore how mold, building flaws, and genetic vulnerabilities can create a “perfect storm” for illness. He also introduces his book, a practical guide with strategies and illustrations for preventing and remediating mold.

This conversation offers both technical insights and grounded hope for anyone navigating environmental illness or questioning the health of their home.

THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Books written and co-written by John Banta:

• Mold Controlled by John Banta, CIH
• Prescriptions for A Healthy House by Paula Baker-Laporte, FAIA and John Banta, CIH

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Ashley helps you renovate and build healthier homes to prevent future health issues from arising from your environment. Whether you’re searching for a new home, assessing concerns with your current one, or embarking on a renovation or new build, Awakening Spaces can guide you every step of the way.

Ashley brings her background in Building Biology and Building Science and years of hands-on experience helping families reduce mold, chemical exposure, and EMFs in their living spaces. Her clients gain homes that are not only functional and beautiful, but truly support their well-being and peace of mind.

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CONNECT WITH JOHN

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John C. Banta is an Indoor Environmental Quality Specialist with a degree in Environmental Health Science and over 35 years of experience. He coauthored Prescriptions for a Healthy House: A Practical Guide for Architects, Builders, and Homeowners with Paula Baker-Laporte and Dr. Erica Elliott, now in its 4th edition and also available as an e-book.

For 27 years, John focused on mold and water damage, conducting investigations, supervising remediation projects across the U.S., and training cr

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Hey guys, and welcome back to the Awakening Spaces podcast. Today, I am interviewing somebody that I've looked up to for a really long time in the space, somebody that I have learned so much from when it comes to mold inspection, mold remediation, and that is none other than John C. Banta. John is a certified industrial hygienist with a degree in environmental health science and over 35 years of experience in indoor environment I first met John through the Building Biology Institute because he actually hosted quite a few of our monthly indoor environmental quality meetings that we do through the Building Biology Institute. And man, he is so incredibly knowledgeable. He is the co-author of Prescriptions for a Healthy House, which is one of my absolute favorite books and a must read for anybody who is building biology. building a new home and something that I purchased for my conscious construction container clients when they joined the program. And then he is most recently released a book called Mold Controlled, which we're going to be talking about and diving into in today's episode, which again, another must have for anybody who just wants to have a healthier home. John has so much experience and you are going to absolutely love this episode. He shares so many amazing stories with us and I was just so incredibly honored to interview him. So I hope you enjoy the podcast and let's dive in. Morning, John. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. Good morning. Glad to be here. I am. I'm so excited to have you here. I have learned so much from you over the years through the building biology community and at my very, you know, first days learning about mold, you were such a an inspiration and such a helpful resource. So I would love for you to just share a little bit about who you are and how you got into this work. I would love to know if there's actually a personal story that got you into this work too. Two of them.

SPEAKER_00: 2:19

So I am a certified industrial hygienist. I've got my degree in environmental health sciences. I've probably got just about every credential or have held every credential that you can with regards to mold, at least the authoritative ones, at one time or another. But I think that my best credential is that about 35 years ago, my wife got sick. And during that time, there were no physicians out there that were practicing in this arena. The whole mold thing was not really well established as being an issue. There were a few people that were focused on mold problems in buildings, but they were primarily on the East Coast, with a couple notable exceptions. But when she got sick, it was rather sudden. And so she had a lot of fibromyalgia pain, which at that time, fibromyalgia was not recognized as being a legitimate concern. It was more, you know, go see somebody for that problem in your head, but also the chronic fatigue. And we had always been very active hiking, camping. It wouldn't be uncommon for us to, you know, throw our two daughters into backpacks and hike 10 miles into the wilderness, spend the night, hike back out the next day. But after she got sick, that all pretty much had to end. But she had been going to the mountain camping with her parents since she was a babe in arms. And her dad called and said they were going again and they'd love to have us join them for two weeks. And when I asked her, she said, yeah, I can be sick in the Sierras as well as I can at home. We're going. So we did. And about day four, she started feeling better. And by day seven, it was like she'd never been sick. And we hadn't. Yeah, I know. And it was like we had an absolute marvelous second week camping, packed up, headed home, walked in the house, and within two minutes, her symptoms were back. And by the next day, it was like we'd never left. So it became real apparent to me that there was something going on in our home that was giving her trouble. Now, at that time, I was working at the University of California, Davis as a medical research technician. And so I talked with the physicians that were there and her practitioners and nobody had any ideas. I ended up leaving the university and started doing indoor environmental investigations, figuring it had to be something in the home and somebody out there has to know something. But I started out basically earning my living doing asbestos and lead and radon and toxic chemicals like formaldehyde and things like that. But I started hearing more and more about this whole water damage thing and mold that develops from it. So I ended up going back to school through Prescott College through a mentored learning program where I was able to choose my instructors nationwide. I could travel to where they were and study. And so I ended up getting my degree in environmental health sciences through Prescott College and was able to study with some of the top microbiologists and mold specialists and people in the United States. And so my first 10 years were rather shaky, didn't really have much of an idea what was going on. But about 27 years ago, we found a house that was a good one. It didn't have mold problems. My wife went in and did very well in it. And so that's where she actually started doing most of her healing. And for about five years for her conditions to reverse by themselves without any specialized medical treatments, binders, you know, etc. But For that five-year period, she was largely under house arrest. And during that time, I kept learning more and more about mold and water damage problems. And it wasn't too long after that move into that home that I started acknowledging that I was a water damage specialist and mold specialist. But it's been during the last dozen years that I focused specifically on medically important investigations and remediation. And so that was the first personal story. The second one I talk about in my new book, in the epilogue, two years ago. So here I am, I've been going into moldy homes for 35 years doing investigations and it had never bothered me. Of course, I was careful. I didn't want to bring it home to my wife or our home. So I had my routine for cleaning myself up and putting my clothes in into the laundry machine, the washer, getting it started before I ever entered the house, going straight, taking a shower, that kind of cleaning up. I had my car, my wife had her car. We didn't share cars. And it seemed to work. But two years ago, I came down with what I believe was COVID. I tested negative, but my granddaughter came down with it at exactly the same time. And I'd been with her like the week before And so we both came down with it at the same time and she was positive for it. I was negative for it, but man, it really knocked me for a loop. I ended up losing 100% of my hearing in both ears, just completely deaf. And we were on the road traveling at the time, so I ended up having to go to urgent care. And they said, basically, if I didn't go on antibiotics and steroids, I was going to lose my hearing for the rest of my life, which I think was a little bit of a scare tactic. But at the same time, you know, I went for it. And, you know, the alternative physicians that I've talked with since then said, Yeah, when you're in an emergency situation like that, sometimes you have to, you know, do some things that you might not normally need to do. But it took me about eight weeks on treatment to get 80% of my hearing back.

SPEAKER_02: 9:14

And

SPEAKER_00: 9:15

so What that did was it destroyed my entire internal microflora and external microflora. So I ended up with thrush and candida. But the scariest part about it was I lost my brain. Just before going on that trip, I was just about finished writing Mold Controlled. I mean, I figured it was within a month of just fine tuning and tweaking. And one of the things that a lot of professional authors advice is get yourself away from it for a few weeks so that it's fresh and then you can read it a final time and make those final tweaks. And so that's one of my plans. But my brain didn't come back. I mean, I basically lost my ability to short-term memory was gone. My ability to string sentences together in a coordinated fashion was gone. And And I developed a tremor. And one of the doctors that has referred patients to me on a regular basis, Dr. Eric Dorninger with Roots and Branches, I was consulting with one of his patients and him. And at the end of the conversation, he said, John, I'd like to talk to you after we're done. So we talked and he said, I don't know how to tell you this, but you're developing a tremor. I'm worried about you. We need to get things checked out. So I immediately got started setting up the appointments and going through the process. And within like six weeks, I think it was, maybe it was eight weeks, but I got myself on the Shoemaker Protocol. And just within another eight weeks, my brain was back. I was writing again. I'm 70 years old. old. And I felt it. I felt more than 70 years old when all that was going on. And now I feel like I'm 40 again. And so, you know, I mean, it was very successful. But it put me behind on getting the book out. At the time I was taught that I was ready to publish it, I was at 300 pages. And afterwards, I started doing my final review. And I really that that whole experience had taught me so much that I really needed to go through and do a rewrite. I mean, the 300 pages that I already had stayed, but I ended up inserting a whole bunch of things in different places. And it ended up being 384 pages by the time I was ready to publish it. Had some wonderful input from medical professionals and other practitioners that work with chronic inflammatory response syndrome and allergies and the various types of things that go on from a health standpoint with regards to mold and other water damage types of organisms. And so it turned out to be a much better book than it would have been had I not gotten sick. Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 12:36

That's incredible. You now have walked the path and walked in the shoes of many of your clients. And I was talking about this with somebody yesterday. Dr. Terry Fox and I were having the same conversation because COVID can be a priming event for people. Maybe it's already in your system. You have the toxins in your system and then something like COVID happens and it's just the perfect storm.

SPEAKER_00: 13:02

And it turns on the HLA genotype. You start expressing it. It upregulates. So the first thing that happened after I got sick... and it was recognized that I needed some help. I got the genetics testing done, the HLA genotype. And those results came back positive. And so I had one set of alleles for mold sensitivity, and the other set of alleles came back positive for chemical sensitivities, multiple chemical sensitivities. And looking back, when I was in high school and college, chemistry labs were were always very hard on me. During high school, I got through them, but it was in organic chemistry. During college, it was organic chemistry. And those really seemed to push my buttons. And I ended up with a lot of brain fog and things as I was going through. I mean, I was getting straight A's in my chemistry classes, but in the labs, I was like, no, it was not working. And I mean, this was almost 50 years ago. And the instructors that I had in chemistry, they actually recognized my disability. I mean, a student here, labs, he's just fallen apart. So the first one put me in a hood. I mean, not didn't put me in the hood, but let me work inside of a hood so that I wouldn't be exposed to the chemicals that I was working with. And that didn't work out very well. And somehow I fought my way through the fog enough to say to the instructor, there's something that's still getting me in here. And he said, well, of course, why didn't I think of that? You've got other students in the same classroom with you doing their experiments. Their fumes are coming off. So he made arrangements to put me in the next classroom over, which had a hood and nobody else was in there. So I sat in this laboratory by myself doing my own laboratory work inside of a hood and got through it. I graduated with a beef. from that class. And although that was not what I had hoped for, it was good enough. Yeah, at least they found something that works. But looking back at that, there was one day, it was time for me to drive home. It was a route that I had traveled hundreds of times. Maybe not hundreds. Yeah, hundreds. I mean, there's 365 days in a year. So And I ended up going in the wrong direction. And I ended up someplace else, 50 miles away. And I found a phone booth. They had phone booths back then, no cell phones. And I called my wife collect because I didn't have a dime in my pocket. And I told her what was happening. And she talked me down. She basically said, so just stay outside in the fresh air for half an hour and breathe deep. and take it easy and then call me back in a half an hour. And by then my brain had cleared enough that I realized what town I was in. And it's like, how did I get here? So, but anyway, that was chemical sensitivities. That was not mold exposure. So I think I got my chemical exposure sensitivities from my dad and my mold sensitivity from my mom. So with my chemical sensitivities, it was something where... I didn't have to upregulate. I was already, you know, there whenever I was around things that I shouldn't have been. But the mold sensitivities really took the COVID to kick that into high gear.

SPEAKER_01: 16:58

Yeah. What is the genetic snip for chemical sensitivities? Like, what

SPEAKER_00: 17:04

is that? So the HLA portion of chromosome number six codes for a lot of different types of environmental stressors. And so they're there's a segment that codes for mold. There's another that codes for actinobacteria, another for endotoxins from gram-negative bacteria. And then there's segments of it that code for chemical sensitivities. And so it turns out those things are entirely predictable. And I did this for a long time without ever having a clue that I too really needed to be a lot more careful than the three quarters of the population that doesn't get as sick from these types of symptoms. So

SPEAKER_01: 18:00

anyway. If somebody, I want to talk about your book, but real quick, since we're on the topic, if somebody wanted to test these genetics, what would they need to do? What would be the first step for that?

SPEAKER_00: 18:12

So the genetics testing is out there and available. I went through my physician, through my integrative medicine, functional medicine practitioner. And they were the ones that were able to interpret them for me. I mean, the whole thing is kind of complicated. And if you don't understand all the various parameters, you get back this set of numbers from the lab and it doesn't make sense. So there are... online types of sources, but I did not use any of those. I can't vouch for them personally. I will say that Roots and Branches has been my practitioner, Dr. Eric Dorninger, through this whole thing. And he actually wrote the foreword for Mold Control. So very honored to have him figure out that I was in trouble and pull me through. and then write the foreword for the book. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 19:19

Well, that's great. Well, we'd love to hear a little bit more about the book. I mean, the book is, I mean, everyone needs to buy this book, every single person, because you go through so many things from, you know, looking for a house, from what to do in an emergency, to the health impacts, to going into all the different species of mold. I mean, I'd love for you to share your personal take on what it was like creating the book and how you would explain it to people.

SPEAKER_00: 19:46

How do you eat? an elephant. I wrote it the same way that people need to read it, one bite at a time. And, you know, it was, it started out as a whole series of essays on different topics that I posted on my website as a part of a blog. And then it went from there into more formal, you organizing it, combining it, breaking it into segments. But again, it wasn't until after I got sick that I really hit on the exact format that I think works. So the first third of the book is concepts in general. And so each of the first five chapters has essentials text boxes in it. And these are one or two pages that summarize the major concepts throughout that chapter. And so if you're suffering from brain fog or having trouble focusing, um, by going through and reading those page summaries first, uh, and if something catches your eye, then you can go back to the, the main body of that chapter and pick up on the rest of the information. Um, but I think that that's the place to get started if you're having trouble. Um, if you're not having any trouble, then of course just, uh, skimming through it and becoming familiar with what aspects are there. But as you mentioned, so after those first five chapters, which set the basis for things, what it is, what it does, what you need to be thinking about in terms of the big picture stuff, then I have a section on water damage emergencies. What do you do when the pipes break or something goes wrong? And I got to tell you, since it's been published, I've had I had a half a dozen people that have called our office and set up an appointment with me and said, so I had this water damage or that water damage happen on Friday or, you know, last week. And I knew about your book and I got it and I read that section. And I think I did it right, but I want to talk to you and double check. So, but it really is, you know, like, what do you do first? Um, and who do you call? And if you've got sensitivities, how do you help ensure that they don't do things that are going to make your house unlivable? Even if there's no mold, uh, from it, are they going to be spraying chemicals all over the place that, that start creating problems for you? And, um, uh, so, so anyway, that, you know, that chapter I think is a pretty much a standalone chapter, but it's foundational. And then the chapter after that is looking for a place to rent or buy. And in there, I've got all kinds of wonderful illustrations. I found a wonderful illustrator in Malaysia and she just, she's a botanical illustrator and she was able to take, you know, photo micrographs of mold that had been smashed flat on a slide to look at it through the microscope, and then just make it bloom into actual plant life. When I was initially talking with her, I sent her some images of Stachybotrys. And then I explained to her what I wanted her to do. And she said, I'm not sure I understand. And I said, imagine that you've got a flower, because I knew she was great at drawing flowers, and it had been smashed flat and pressed inside of a book and dried inside of a book. When you take that flower out, it doesn't look like a live one. It looks like a smashed dried flower. This is what's happening with the mold. And she said, oh, I get it. And I mean, she just, boom, she was able to turn those into illustrations. And so that became a part of the mold gallery. But then we continued talking and I needed somebody to help with the rest of illustrations. And I mean, I had tried five other people before I found her and they hadn't been able to do, you know, what I needed. So anyway, I started her off with the botanical like illustrations. And then I said, you know, are you willing to try some of these other things? And she said, yeah, let's give it a try. And, you know, I mean, she knew nothing about mold. Well, I can't say that in Malaysia, they have lots and lots of mold. It's, you absolutely everywhere, but they also have a lot of ventilation and other types of things in their homes that helps it from becoming the problem that it is in the United States. And so anyway, she did wonderful illustrations of air movers and air filtration devices and containment barriers and how to, I mean, just the whole range of types of things, even did a few cartoons to illustrate some points for them.

SPEAKER_01: 25:20

And

SPEAKER_00: 25:21

so she, you know, everything just came together. I had about 15 people that I consider subject matter experts that contributed, you know, like between 500 and 2000 words in specialization sections for the chapters and, and aspects of that. And so it's like, you know, I I probably could have muddled through a lot of those and done okay. But because this was their expertise, they were able to really put in those gems. And I've done mold remediation myself. I've done water damage and been in lots of damaged buildings. But these are people that are practicing those specific aspects of these things on a daily basis. So the community of people doing medically important investigations and remediation and support services really embraced this project. I couldn't have turned out as good of a product as I have. And I'm just, you know, so far, the last time I checked, I believe I had 12 reviews on Amazon and all of them were five stars. So very, very proud of that. I know sooner or later, somebody's going to trash it for one reason or another, but it hasn't happened yet.

SPEAKER_01: 26:44

That's a rite of passage. I

SPEAKER_00: 26:46

didn't

SPEAKER_01: 26:52

do that in the previous book. Just showing that image and how people can protect themselves if they're in a home and they don't know what's behind the walls. Getting that nice air control is one helpful tip and tool. And there's so many in the book. So

SPEAKER_00: 27:32

from there, from finding a house, then there's the 25-step program that's divided into five stages. And stage one is, do I have a problem? Stage two is, where's the problem? Stage three is, what do I do about the problem? That's where you end up needing to bring in somebody who's able to do remediation in most cases. Sometimes you can get away with just cleaning, but it depends on the situation. But then stage four is the quality control after the work is done to make sure that it's been taken care of. And stage five is putting it back together, which I relied on prescriptions for a healthy house the first real book that I ever did. Yes, there it is. Uh which I co-authored with Paula Baker Laporte. Uh she's an architect and she was primary author and we first published that over 25 years ago now. Wow. And we're now in the fourth edition. So, the fourth edition came out two years ago but it covers those aspects of how do you go about creating a healthy house and so, after a mold remediation, you don't wanna just slap it back together the same way it was previously, because you may end up with the same problems happening all over again. And so during the stage five, which has, I think, five steps to it, I largely rely on prescriptions for a healthy house and the information that's in there for that, while adding some additional editorial types of comments and focusing it a little bit more directly on water damage and mold. So the two books, you know, between the two of them at$700 pages. And it's, well, my other co-author for Prescriptions for a Healthy House was Dr. Erica Elliott. And she basically said it's my opus maxima. It's the ultimate, you know. And so I don't know if I've got another book in me. We'll see.

SPEAKER_01: 29:43

There's a lot of a lot of great knowledge in both of these books. And I actually run a program called the conscious construction container, where I help people who are renovating or building their homes. And I buy this forever. I get this as a gift for everyone who comes through, because I think everyone, everyone needs to have this. It's like a beautiful Bible for building a healthy home. And

SPEAKER_00: 30:06

it's about 200 libraries throughout the United States. And I want to get, I want to get mold controlled in libraries too. So if I, If you are in your local library and you feel like mentioning it to the librarian there that you'd be interested in them getting it, that's what it usually takes in order for them to take a look at the listing and decide they're going to cover it. But we have it available through IngramSpark in hardcover. And that brings up one other thing that I want to mention. So I have self-published this. And of course, the major major publisher of self-published books is Amazon. Amazon does not control their printers. And what that means, they've got, I think, close to 50 printers throughout the United States. So they can print them quickly and get them out the door. But the problem is because they don't control their printers, I've had quite a number of clients that have received books through Amazon where they smell like chemicals and they end up having to hang them on the clothesline outside or do something to air them out for a couple weeks before they're even able to open them and look at them. And so the books are available electronically through Kindle or through Barnes& Noble with Nook or mold control that I have in PDF form at johncbanta.com on my website. But it turns out that IngramSpark adheres to the European guidelines with regards to printing books. And that means that they don't use the chemicals for the inks and they don't use the VOCs for the adhesives that are used to bind it, stuff like that. They're using water-based products. And these books, when you get them ordered through IngramSpark, they come back smelling like paper, like books. I mean, they're wonderful like that. And so if you are chemically sensitive, you can... get it through Barnes and Noble. You can go to barnesandnoble.com and they will have it. And they only get it through IngramSpark. So it's clean print. It doesn't have the chemicals. If you need it in a hurry, then get it electronically, unless you're electromagnetically sensitive. The electronic version's a lot cheaper. And not only that, but you can do a word search and it makes it very easy to find the various segments that way, so it makes it even more user-friendly. But yeah, the clean print tag is one that I've developed, and I'm hoping that we can get lots and lots of other authors out there that are interested in publishing through IngramSpark so that they can offer clean print versions.

SPEAKER_01: 33:08

Yeah, that's really incredible that you've thought about every piece of it up until the book that is delivered and the chemicals and and the materials that it's made out of. So that's

SPEAKER_00: 33:19

great that that's an option. And I've tried, but you know, that doesn't always keep things from happening. I had a case, oh, it's been a long time ago now, but this client ordered natural cotton, organic cotton insulation for her home. And she went on vacation for two weeks while the contractor was installing it. Didn't want to be around while all that type of work was a occurring. Turned out that the organic cotton bales that were going to be used as the insulation got shipped in a carrier truck that was also carrying a load of steer manure. Yes. It took on, it took on the odor of manure. Oh my God. And it got installed in her walls and the walls got put back together and it was painted before she got back and she walked into her home and it's like, this smells terrible. And so I got called out on that job when I went out there and took a look at it. I said, this smells like manure. And we were able to track back, you know, the truck that had delivered it and it turned out that it had been used for fertilizer uh cartage as well um and so they ended up having to tear out all their walls and get the insulation replaced in order to uh to make it work because you know i mean they tried tincture of time and six weeks later it was still just as bad as ever so you know she asked her contractor didn't you smell that it smelled bad and he said He said, sure, I could tell it smelled bad. Well, why did you install it? And he said, well, I didn't know it wasn't supposed to smell that way. And to a certain extent, we still face these kinds of problems. When it comes to being environmentally sensitive, we can't assume that somebody else understands everything about the project. There is no person who is going to be a better expert about you and your home than you. And so people are always referring to me as being the mold expert and the person who's going to solve their mold problems. And I can't because I don't know all the scenarios. My goal is to turn you into your own best expert about your situation. You can't just apply, do these 10 steps and everything's going to be fine. You have to think your way through it. You have to realize what works for you and then apply. those principles in order to make it work. And so that's one of my goals of the books that I've written. It's been to not, you know, lay it out that, you know, these are the things that you have to do. Although I sometimes get into that mode. It's hard not to sometimes. I've got my soap boxes that I get onto. And I'm sure as we proceed, I might get on a couple of them. But, you know, you've got to use some judgment. And And that leads into, I am always amazed at how bad some of the advice on the internet can be. And if you just take it at face value, you can get into all kinds of trouble. There's one website out there, they've changed this now, but at one time they were saying that if you had pets, a dog or a cat, that the only way to get mold out of their fur was to shave them bald and then wash them with liquid ammonia. Yeah, I know. Now, personally, I think whoever made that recommendation should be shaved bald and washed with liquid ammonia. See how you like it. See how they like it. I mean, so one of the most basic fundamental principles with regards to cleaning up mold is what you use for it. And there are probably over a thousand different products that are being advertised as taking care of mold. Oh, it kills it, you know, or it removes the odor or it... It makes it disappear. Well, you can't bleach the color out and leave the dead bodies behind. That's a problem. You can't remove the odors and deodorize it and leave all that stuff behind. That's still a problem. You have to physically remove it. So how do we physically remove it? Well, you read the internet and you become convinced that all you have to do is use vinegar and vinegar will take care of all the mold problems. Well, everybody's familiar with the saying that oil and vinegar doesn't mix. Mold spores, it's got a polysaccharide outer coating on the spores and the hyphae, but it's also got a lipid layer mixed in there. Lipids or fats or grease. How do you clean up grease? If you've got greasy dishes, if you've got butter on plates, can you wash them with vinegar and expect it's going to come clean? No, it won't. Can you wash them with ammonia and expect it's going to come clean? Not easily. What works is detergent. What works is soap. And the other thing is a good number of the mycotoxins that are out there are also lipid soluble. They're fat soluble. So again, detergent and water is what it takes to do that. And as long as you're doing that, you might as well use a detergent that's going to do a good job and clean things up. My favorite is Branch Basics. because it was specifically designed for people with sensitivities. I first met Marilee Nelson, the founder of that company, over 30 years ago when her little boy was, I think, six years old at the time. And he was quite literally the boy in the plastic bubble. He's now in his mid-30s, and he's doing great. But it was because mom just was not going to, you know, settle for anything but the best for him. Yeah. So they hired chemists to design this formula specifically for him and his sensitivities. And it's turned out that it's worked for most other people with their sensitivities too. So I have a real strong bias against cleaners that have essential oils in them. Tea tree oil, thyme oil, basil oil, orange oil. These are all natural phenols. And phenols are a type of biocide. You can buy synthetic versions of them. And the thing is, they leave the dead bodies behind. They don't actually clean them up really well. But the other thing is they can cause an inhibition that actually interferes with the type of testing that we want to do. I have to wonder how many people have used those types of products on their homes, been sick afterwards, and it's because the dead bodies are still left behind, but all Also, their test results came back okay because the inhibitors ruined the ability for the lab to identify what in fact was going on. Now, the labs that I like working with, they do some quality control tests, one in particular called a geotrichum control. And basically, it's a way that they test the dust from the home to make sure that it's actually going to be able to be analyzed. And if it turns out that any of the different inhibitors are present, then they get back results where they don't see the geotrichum and they know that something has interfered with it. Let me explain that just a little bit more. So they add a known quantity of this organism, geotrichum candidum, to the sample of dust that's been prepared and pre-weighed. So they know how much they put in. And then they analyze for those 36 organ and the Geotrichum candidum. And as long as the results kind of match up, it's a little more complicated than that, but as long as the results match up that the Geotrichum is present, They know that they've not had an inhibition. If the geotrichum candidum doesn't show up on the results, they know they put it in there. It's got to be in there. So what happened? Well, it's likely that some inhibition interfered with the results.

SPEAKER_01: 41:56

So this is really important because a lot of people are using different fogs and things on their own thinking it's making their environment healthier. And then maybe they have somebody come in who's doing some testing for them who might not know that that going to sway the results and then okay that's really

SPEAKER_00: 42:18

so the only fogging agent that I have found that I like is aerosolver and you know but even aerosolver has to be used exactly right otherwise you're wasting your money with it it uses physical principles for getting the fine particles out of the air you create rain droplets and drop them down onto the surfaces and then you use effective cleaning practices to clean those particles up off the floor. If you drop them down onto the floor and you don't clean them up right away, they're just going to get back up in the air after a little while because of disturbances that re-aerosolize them. So, you know, it's one of those things where it's logical, it makes sense when you understand the basics of this stuff, but it's not It's not easy. Actually, it is pretty easy. If you can keep the building dry, not have water damage in the first place, and not develop the problems in the first place, then drying a building aggressively is not a hard thing to do. You just have to get on it right away and do it. So stage one is keeping it dry. If you can't keep it dry, then you want to dry it quickly. and there are important ways of drying that make a great deal of difference. One of the things that I hear people say that they do sometimes, they'll turn up the heat, they'll bring in extra heaters and they'll use lots and lots of heat. Well, there's something known as case hardening. And Ken Larson is one of the contributors that wrote about this. If you have a steak or if you're, if you're a vegan and you're eating vegan marshmallows, you know, you, you put them over the fire and you char the outside and you sear it. And what that does is it locks in the juices. Well, when you've got a building that's gotten wet and you're driving that heat high up, you're in effect over-drying the outside surface, you're searing it such that the juices remain present in the inside of those pieces of lumber and other construction materials. And so you're, You're spending days or weeks trying to dry everything down and it just doesn't get dry. But then there's the other principle that moisture flows from hot to cold. And so when you turn on the heat, you're driving the moisture deeper into the material, which means it's going to take longer for it to reverse and come back out again when it does get into an appropriate drying. So in the water damage section, we talk about the drying triangle. You want to have the right balance between temperature, and air movement and dehumidification. And if you've got all of those in the right balance, then the drying happens very quickly and easily. But what that means is that you want the temperature to be somewhere around room temperature. You don't want to be having a much higher temperature than that. So you want accelerated air movement. You want accelerated dehumidification. But you can overdry. You can put in too much dehumidification. So again, that balance is a real important part of this. And that'll prevent the mold from growing in the first place. But if it does grow, then you want to use non-toxic physical removal types of methods in order to take care of getting it back out. If the mold has only grown on a surface of a material, then effective cleaning can be used. If on the other hand, it's in the wall cavities, then yes, there's demolition that has to be done to remove those materials And then you have to address the mold that's remaining on the surfaces in those wall cavities and then do the effective types of cleaning. But it's not complicated. It just takes some understanding of the order and the things that you need to do. And one of the things that I've spent quite a bit of time doing is studying the clean room industry. With the clean room industry, they've got to get it right. If they have little tiny part around, they can ruin millions of dollars worth of manufacturing very quickly. And so they have spent millions of dollars doing studies to figure out what's the most effective ways to clean. And we're able to benefit from all those millions of dollars in research to take what works the best for us and use that. And so simple things like if you're using a microfiber cloth and you dip it into a bucket of of soapy water and then try to wring it out. Those fibers are so tightly woven together that the moisture fills the space between them. They're designed to hold stuff and they'll hold dirt, but they'll also hold the water. And so you dip it in the bucket, you can't wring it back out and get it dry enough. It's holding that extra moisture that's filling up the spaces. So now you don't have room for the dirt. And so instead of dipping it in a bucket, you put your soap water solution into a spritzer bottle, you take your wipe and three spritzes is all it takes to dampen it so that you've got the best of both worlds. Now, the microfibers with the soap emulsion are going to pick up the particles and the fragments and the microfibers do a great job of breaking down the molecular forces that lock those particles onto the surface. But then the soap emulsifies the fatty mycotoxins and and helps to dissolve them. And the rest of the toxins are water soluble. So the soap and water helps pick those up and incorporates those into the wipe.

SPEAKER_01: 48:21

Yeah. That's really important. One of the things I wanted to ask is, you know, if someone sees some surface mold, right? We already talked about this. People are spraying all types of things on it or they use bleach thinking that's the best solution. So the best solution is just soap and water, which is so simple. Can you touch on bleach a common misconception in the world of mold

SPEAKER_00: 48:45

chlorine bleach bleaches it removes the color years ago I was involved in what turned into a court case where a house had sat for approximately two weeks with water in it before the homeowner came home and discovered the problem and it turned out that his son was a contractor and so the insurance insurance company. That's why it turned into a court case because the insurance company didn't want to cover mold. But in any case, his son, the contractor, ripped out all the drywall, carpeting, pad, you know, all those soft porous materials, got rid of all the insulation. But then instead of cleaning up the mold, he started spraying it with bleach. And he sprayed it and then dried it down and then sprayed it and dried it down. He sprayed it five different times with the chlorine bleach. And at the end of that time, once it was dry the fifth time, he closed it back up, put it back together, told his dad it was ready for him to move in. His dad told his attorneys that it was ready for him to move in. And the attorneys freaked because basically what they had done is spoiled the evidence. The other side had not had a chance to look at the problems yet. And so they were worried that they weren't going to be able to proceed with the case because the evidence was gone. So I ended up getting hired in that case to go in and look and I talked with the son and he told me the areas where he saw the densest areas of growth that had you know the gypsum had been pulled out so we opened some openings where there were you know two by fours and I did tape lifts of those two by fours which were sent into the lab and and I warned the lab that you know bleach had been used so they were looking for it and they I got a call from them saying it was the most amazing thing. You know, usually when we look at tape lifts taken from surfaces, you can see the mold. It's got pigments in it. It's real easy to see. Um but in these samples that you sent us, it was very faint. You could hardly see that the that anything was there. So, we we stained it. We added a stain to it and all of a sudden, the mold spores and and fragments and and hyphae took on the color and you could see it. It was so dense. It was everywhere. Um every one of these samples has come back in know just completely overloaded with uh and most of it was stachybotrys so um so if if you're using chlorine bleach or hydrogen peroxide or anything else that uh is um you know a chlorine based product um uh sodium hypochlorite um uh all of these types of things they bleach the color out but they don't really get rid of what's there so they can be misleading um And then the chlorinated compounds and the phenolic compounds, they are potent inhibitors that can cause the testing to come back negative if you don't know what you're looking for. And so there are all these challenges that the conventional ways that things get done end up creating nightmare scenarios for people that have the sensitivities. And then the other thing is because most people are not aware of this and they're not doing it, things in the way that we would do them for people with medical sensitivities. They are creating situations where homes are being sold as being remediated and everything was fine. Here's the results saying it all worked. And they're buying these places and it turns out that they're not fine. And they've only got a limited period of time to do the investigation work to figure out whether it is going to be okay for them or not. And so many of the practices that are handled by the real estate companies basically destroy the evidence that we use to try to figure out, is it going to be okay or not? It creates this nightmare scenario where I can do my job perfectly well and still think that a house that's got problems is okay. And so I'm not sure exactly how we're going to get out of this. There's a lot of money at stake with regards to the companies that are manufacturing products. And it's difficult for the companies that are doing good work to get the word out there and be able to shine for the major marketplace. And that's not a battle that I'm ready to fight yet. Or I guess I won't say I'm not ready to fight it. It's not one that I've got the energy for just now. I mean, biocides have their place. There are times when they are extremely helpful and useful and important, but mold remediation and initial water damage is not one of them. The other thing to be aware of with water damage and biocides is that if you have organic material present, all of these various chemicals that are supposed to kill they're neutralized by the organic material. This is why the S520 and the S500 standards both say that physical removal is the primary means of mold and bacteria remediation. You got to get it clean first. And the way you got to get it clean is with the soapy water. That's, you know, it's just a given. Now, you can't use a ton of soap because if you use a ton of soap, then you end up having having to rinse over and over and over again. And this is one of the reasons that, you know, people are amazed when I say, just use five drops of dish detergent to a quart of water. Um, and, and again, I said branch basics is my favorite, but, um, you know, seventh generation free and clear. Um, and, um, uh, you know, even, even Dawn, if you get the free and clear, uh, is, is a good product. Uh, people tend not to be as sensitive to it, uh, as they would be to to the Dawn that's got the coloration and the fragrance in it. And in fact, one of the things that's happened, everybody's seen the commercials for how they use that product to clean up ducklings and sea otters and things like that. But what they were finding was when they were using the original product, mothers were attacking their infants or rejecting them because the smell, You know, it was taking away their natural odors and substituting perfumes that are not something that mom expects their baby to smell like. And so when they switched over to the free and clear, when they got the stuff without the fragrances and the perfumes, that changed. And so it works well for cutting the grease and getting it out of there. But you need to use the free and clear. And if you are sensitive to these things... I would love it if everybody would just get the free and clear and just skip the other products. Some people have to do it. Others don't. But that's the nature of it. But again, all of this is based on science and easy to document. It's just that the scientific papers... that document it get drowned out by all the noise. And so if you're adding essential oil to a detergent to make it smell good or whatever it does, it tends to neutralize the detergent capabilities. When you're washing dishes by hand and you put a squirt of detergent into a pan of water and you start cleaning the dishes, as you're working your way through the greasy dishes, the soap It gets to the point where it's no longer cleaning. And you have to put another squirt of soap in. Well, the reason is because the soap detergent emulsifies and binds to the oils and gets used up. So when you start adding essential oils to the cleaning agents, now you're neutralizing the ability for it to clean. So, you know, they probably don't neutralize it 100%, but it's still making it less in terms of its cleaning ability by adding it in.

SPEAKER_01: 57:42

Mm-hmm. What are your thoughts on laundry and cleaning laundry for molds since we're kind of on this topic?

SPEAKER_00: 57:50

So the key difference is do you have actual growth in the laundry items or is it just spores and fragments and possibly spores that have germinated but not really started to invade the fibers? There's a lag period. So when an item like, let's say a wet T-shirt, when it gets thrown into the hamper without drying it first, you've got about 24 to 48 hours before the spores that are going to be in there with that piece of laundry will germinate. And then you've got a little bit more time before it starts to colonize and the hyphae come out and it starts to multiply exponentially. Usually if you can wash things, if you can launder wet things within 24 to 48 hours with detergent, it's going to take care of it. It's just not going to be a problem.

SPEAKER_01: 58:56

So that is actually pretty frightening to know that it only takes 24 hours before you start developing.

SPEAKER_00: 59:03

Well, the thing is, when it first germinates, it's not actually developing. I mean, we can find out a hyphae, but everything that it's working with is like the germ that's inside the spore. It's like, think of a seed. So you put a seed between two pieces of paper towel. And it germinates and it starts to grow. But the mass of it isn't really changing because it's using the nutrient from the seed for that initial nutrient. It takes a while for it to get to the point where it develops the roots and starts taking in the nutrients from elsewhere. And the roots are like the hyphae, like the mycelial structure. And so once it gets to that point, that's when you start having problems. During those first 24 to 48 hours, the mold doesn't have enough energy or anything to produce the secondary metabolites called mycotoxins. And so dealing with these things rapidly is the really important part of it. And even on day three, there's probably only a fairly minor amount. By the end of the week, you can have large quantities that have developed. But it takes some time. And so you have time to take action on it. In order to have visible mold on laundry or walls or anything else where it's growing you've got to have a density of about a million colony forming units per square inch in order to see it and so if you're less than that if you're at a hundred thousand or less it can be there you might smell a musty odor coming off of it because of the gases that are being produced as it grows but it's not reached a density where it's actually able to be seen and the studies that i've seen are that you know in the early stages it washes out just fine. And again, you use the detergent as a part of it. Just regular detergent? Any detergent will work? Or enzymes? No, I don't like... Well, okay. I do not like enzymes being used in buildings. Okay. I think you can use enzymes in clothing because you're rinsing it back out again. And the thing with enzymes... they only work when things are wet. And so these enzymes that are being sprayed inside of buildings, what do enzymes do? They help to digest. We have digestive enzymes that break stuff down. And mold, when it starts to digest our buildings, it's exuding enzymes that break things down. And so by leaving enzymes behind in our home, if they get onto wet surfaces, think the mucus membranes in our mouth or up in our nostrils or even being inhaled down into our lungs. What do they do? Well, they start to break that tissue down. So I just it's it's not something that I like. However, when you add enzymes to laundry, there are certain stains and things that the enzymes can help to get out. But the agitation with the soap is what's getting out the particles and taking care of that. So I'm okay with them having having bleach borax and brighteners, um, for, for laundry. Uh, although you have to be very careful because in most of those cases, uh, they don't stop with the bleach borax and brighteners. They've also got the fragrance and the, you know, other things that, that you really don't want in them. But, um, uh, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give Branch Basics another plug. They've got their, um, laundry booster that you use in conjunction with their, um, with their, um, uh, all Purpose Cleaner. And I don't get paid by Branch Basics to say these things. I like it. We use it in our own home. And they come from the right place. The company was started and developed for the right reasons. And I really appreciate that and want to support it. When you believe that you've had mold that's contaminated clothing and things, I usually recommend that you put it through two cycles instead of just doing one like most people do with the several rinses. Put it through two cycles of laundering and rinsing, adding soap in between so you've got two complete rounds of it. And then, Ketomium lobosum is a special organism. It's very sticky. In fact, if you look at it under a microscope, it looks almost like Velcro on the outside of it. Actually, the parathesium that it forms under a microscope, you know, when you walk through a field and you get these burrs in your socks and pant legs and how hard they are to get out, it looks very much like that under a microscope. And so typically when ketonium globosome is involved in a house, when our sampling has told us that that's one of the contaminants, in a case like that, then I would probably put it through a third cycle.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:24

And that's to do the trick.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:26

But if you've actual growth and it's probably not going to be able to be cleaned and you know you clean it even if you get the stains out the fibers have been weakened and so if you pull on them they're probably going to tear um okay you've you've you've got a piece of clothing that has a greatly reduced life so I see no reason to try to say but under those circumstances although I did have somebody who had a wedding dress that had been used by their great great grand I don't remember how many greats there were, but it was a family heirloom. And in their case, it did end up getting water damaged with mold growth on it. So they spent a lot of money getting it restored and having it sealed into a nitrogen enclosed case just to preserve it. It became a piece of art in their home. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:18

amazing. Got my mom's wedding dress. She just found a box in their basement and it was completely riddled in mold. if she just had to get rid of it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:29

Yeah, I mean, it probably could have been saved, but would it be worth it to you to spend the$10,000 to do it?

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:35

Exactly, exactly. Well, one of the things that you talked about was 24 to 48 hours for washing the clothes. You had done an experiment in the book where you tested some carpet. Can you share a little bit about the results of that test? And so if somebody were to have a water loss event in their home for one reason or another, how much time do they really have on the clock?

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:01

So this was a study that looked at the bacterial amplification of mold and bacteria in carpet dust. And for that study, we were actually donated some 10-year-old carpet that an apartment complex had about 50 yards of it that they were going to replace. And so they told us if we came and picked it up, if we They harvested the carpet that we could have it. And so that's what we did. And we learned so much from that study. The first thing was the tenant, after they gave up the apartment or while they were giving it up, they had it professionally cleaned. When we went in there, we went in with a vacuum cleaner that had a weighed bag and we vacuumed the carpet really well to see how much dust we could get out of it. And for that 50 yards of carpet, we only got three grams of dust. That was amazingly small amount. So we then pulled up the carpet, we pulled up the pad, and what we found underneath the pad was just all this really thick layer of dust. So we had a second bag that had been pre-weighed, and what we discovered when we vacuumed the floor, we got three pounds of dirt up from the floor underneath that carpet pad. Now, some industry experts assured us that it was sterile, or practically sterile, I think was the words they used that, that it was just the rubber pad under the carpet that was starting to break down after 10 years. And it was, you know, it wasn't going to be a big deal. But of course, we have a microbiologist on staff, and we don't take people's word for things like that. So we sampled, we took a little bit of the three grams of dust, and we took a little bit of the five pounds of dust. And, and we had that cultured. And what we found was that the same types of organisms and the same quantities of organisms were present in the stuff that remained on the top and the stuff that was underneath. So that basically tells us that carpet tends to hold this stuff in and it's difficult to get it cleaned once it's filtered down through to the floor down below. But what we did was we went back to our warehouse, set up four different areas that we put this used carpet and pad into. We installed it in there. And then we had one area that we flooded and we left it flooded. We built kind of like a pool-like liner, put it in there, flooded it. And at that time, the industry standard was saying 72 hours. If you can get to a water damage and start drying it within 72 hours, it's not going to be a problem. So we had that area. And then we had three other areas that we used three different methods of extraction and drying on to see how well those worked in terms of getting that carpet under control. And first off, all three of the drying methods, the extraction and drying methods worked really well. But the one that we flooded with the water, what we did was we tested the water before we added it, and then we added enough water so that the carpet was, it wasn't floating, but it was you know, saturated so that if you put a syringe down into the carpet fibers and sucked water, you'd fill your syringe with it. And we let it sit. And we had the warehouse, you know, the ventilation fans venting to the outside and everything like that. So we thought, you know, it's not going to be a big deal. Let's see if we can go 72 hours. We got to 32 hours and the smell was so horrendous that We added extra negative air to be exhausting it to the outside because the office staff started telling us, we're smelling it. We're smelling it here on the other side of the building. By four hours later, by 36 hours, it was so bad that it was a mutiny. The office staff said, we're going home until you get this taken care of. And we were exhausting it into the outdoor parking lot and people were walking around out there. It was going through a HEPA filter. So it It wasn't particles, it was just the gases, but people were staring over it, our building. And so we halted the study at 36 hours. And that resulted in our recommendation that if you're gonna effectively dry a building, you gotta be there in the first 24 hours to get started. Otherwise, there's no way you're gonna get it dry enough to. And that has become pretty much the standard of care. You need an immediate response. If you call a company up on an emergency water damage basis and you say, I flooded, you know, I've mopped it up what I can get up. But, you know, it's still it's still very wet. And they say, OK, we'll be there around noon tomorrow. That doesn't cut it. They need to have an emergency response. They need to be out there that same night. Sure, they're going to charge an emergency fee, but I would say most of the insurance companies these days, if it's a sudden and accidental loss, insurance does cover water damage. They may disclaim the mold, but they recognize that an emergency fee, a few hundred dollars for an emergency fee is actually an economy because it's what's necessary to get a building to so that it doesn't develop. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:53

And you have an amazing section on insurance. And this is a question I get all the time. I would love to touch on that. I wanted to read a quote from your book that you said, according to the Insurance Information Institute in the United States, approximately 14,000 people experience water damage emergency in their homes or workplaces every day.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:12

That

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:15

is insane. That is absolutely insane. So what But what do you know from your work with insurance? What should people be looking for in their own insurance policies? Or is there anything that people can do when it comes to insurance to protect themselves?

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:34

That's such a tough question. I know. I mean, every policy is different. You may be able to get a rider that will give you mold coverage, but most policies these days have what's known as a cap. And so whereas 20 years ago, it's more like 25 years ago now, if you had a water damage that was covered by insurance and mold developed in that water damage, then the insurance company was going to cover that mold. However, if you had preexisting mold, then that would fall under the mold exclusion and they wouldn't cover it under that circumstance. And things went through an evolution. There was a court case. Basically, the courts ruled that insurance companies had to cover mold if it developed as a result of the loss. That's why they started covering it like that around 2000. But they very quickly figured out that they could put a cap on it. And so most policies these days say that they'll take care of the water damage coverage up to the policy limits for water damage, but they're putting a cap on mold coverage of, usually it's around$2,500 to$2,000 or so. And that makes it really tough to, get it insured. The other thing is the riders can be expensive. So what that means is most people these days that have mold problems that develop are on their own, that most of the work that's going to be done is to take care of the water and dry it down, which will arrest additional growth, but it's not going to take care of what's there already to a large extent. And this is one of the reasons, you know, with 14,000 and water damages every day in the United States. I've not done the math to figure out how many per year that is, but what that means is that our housing supply is disappearing with regards to homes that don't have mold problems. And 25 years ago, I found a home that didn't have a problem. At the beginning of COVID, we sold our house in California and moved to Arizona, looked at 50 homes, over a 90-day period, and every one of them had problems of one kind or another. I didn't reject them all because of mold, but it was bad. And we ended up buying a house with full knowledge that it had three visible areas of mold growth, and I suspected two additional ones. My wife went to live with our youngest daughter for six weeks, and I basically dove in and started doing the remediation. And the problem with that was this was another learning experience. If you all think back to the beginning of COVID, we didn't have respirator cartridges. We didn't have Tyvek suits. We didn't have the personal protective equipment available because it was going to all the emergency responders and everybody else that was dealing with the whole COVID issue. Plus there were a lot of people that were stockpiling so that when we bought the house, I had three sets of respirator cartridges that I was supposed to only use for one day before I replaced it. And I did six weeks worth of work. So during that time, I know I was being exposed to a lot of mold, but I'd been working with it for 35 years and it had never made me sick. And so I figured I have to back off from that statement a little bit. I never got anything more than a headache that might last 10 minutes to a half an hour and then it passed. It was something I could deal with. But In that house, I ended up with some very large mold exposures while I was using a set of cartridges for two weeks instead of one day. And I know that I ended up exposing myself, but I figured, hey, I haven't been sick from it so far, so I should be fine. I'm convinced that that was probably the thing that primed me so that when I got the COVID, it pushed me over the edge and caused my genetics to come out. So it's one of those things where, you know, I've heard medical practitioners that practice functional medicine say that they don't like to do the genetics testing because, first off, they don't think that it finds everything. And it probably doesn't. There may be other situations. But if I had known then what I know now, I would have probably thought differently about how Although we were basically, I mean, we weren't homeless. My wife's brother allowed us to live with him for 90 days, which goes way beyond, you know what I mean? That was a very, it went beyond kindness to mercy. But yeah, it was one of those things where the house turned out great. And it was a great experience. I hadn't done mold remediation all by myself in a long time. And so it refreshed my memory on what it takes. And at that time, I was 65 years old and I was able to do it. And so I figured, you know, it's not that taxing for a healthy person to be able to go in and do it. But in hindsight, yeah, I think it probably, well, it was preordained. I had Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:03

in a weird way. But I am curious, like with all these homes that you've gone into, one of the last episodes, one of the first episodes I did was on what to look for when you're looking for a home. And it's really can be disheartening because one of the things I tell people is almost, you know, buy something on the lower end, knowing it's going to have problems with maybe good bones, if you can see, you know, as good as you can find, and then do some, sorry, renovation. because almost everything is gonna have some form of remediation. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:41

It's unusual these days for it to not. And the question is, is it gonna be easy and cheap? Homes that are being flipped, they're almost an automatic no. The home that we bought in Arizona, if it hadn't been bought by us, it probably would have been bought by a flipper. And the difference was that they were asking full market value for this dog of a home, had good bones, loved the layout, loved the location, loved everything about it, except for it had lots of surface blemishes that needed to be taken care of. And I mean, the roof leaked. We had to replace the roof. It had bad stucco in a lot of different areas that needed to be replaced. The carpet was 30 years old and had not been replaced since it was built. Windows, I talk in my book about longevity. How long do these various materials last? And the windows were original, so they were about 30 years old. Most windows start going bad somewhere around 20 years or so. So even though I think a couple of windows had been replaced, why do people replace windows? Well, it's because something's happened to them that makes them replace them. And so it was apparent that the windows were starting to go bad already. And sure enough, those two windows that had been replaced had mold inside the wall cavity under it. It was cleaned up and painted and it looked beautiful. But there were three other areas where I was able to see actual growth. And, uh, so, um, For somebody that doesn't have my knowledge and skills, it can be tricky. I and my colleagues that helped me with the book and others, we are working very hard to try to get a group of trained individuals out there that understand these things, understand how to work with people that have medical sensitivities. The area of California from Sacramento to San Jose has some really good companies. that do medically important remediation and in fact specialize in it. They also have a majority of companies that don't understand this stuff. And yet a lot of people doing the work, they think they get it. It's not what you know that gets you in trouble. It's what you think you know, but don't. And there are a lot of companies out there that think that they know and they don't. And so we've prepared a 16-hour medically important remediation course for companies that do remediation. I did that in conjunction with with SIRS X. So, you know, there's 16 hours of training that they can get. It's been approved by IICRC for continuing education. So anybody that's been certified to do regular wool remediation, they have to have 14 hours of continuing education training every two years. So this satisfies that requirement. So they get their continuing education. They learn what the secrets are to doing this kind of work. And I know that there are some companies that have had one or two people go through the course and they've decided, no, this isn't for us. We want to stick with the insurance work. We want to use the chemicals. And in that situation, I think that it's still okay that they got the training because at least educated them so that if they're taking that knowledge and when somebody says, hey, I've got sensitivities, I've got mycotoxin illness or whatever the description is, they're going to know enough to say, well, we're probably not the company for you. I would hope that they do that. Although I know there are plenty of companies out there telling people, oh yeah, we get it. And man, they just don't.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:58

Yeah. What is the cost difference between maybe regular remediation and someone who's following the guidelines of medically important remediation?

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:11

It really depends on the situation. The older the building, one EPA study showed that the older the building, the greater the risk that it's had water damage and mold problems. And homes that were built pre 1970s with the energy crisis, a lot of them have had things done to them to tighten them up, to add insulation. And those renovations and retrofits have not been done in a way that preserves the integrity of the building when it gets wet. So a hundred year old building, it wasn't built to be able to shed water. It would get wet and it was very drafty and so it would dry out quickly enough. And companies doing this kind of work, they learned where to put the lead-based paint because lead is a wonderful antimicrobial. in terms of preventing these things from growing. Never mind that it prevents our kids from growing. But, you know, I mean, they figured out how to make those buildings work. You take a building that was built, you know, back around the early 1900s and you put insulation into it. In order to put the insulation in, you're pulling out the interior lath and plaster. You're putting the insulation in. You may not be taking taking care of the vapor barrier that's not there on the outside. You put in gypsum drywall for the interior, which is a paper-based product, and the water comes through the exterior siding. It soaks up in the insulation. It can't dry quickly. It soaks the gypsum drywall, and the next thing you know, you've got a mold problem. I love old buildings. I bought a building in the early 80s that was built in 1906. And I had a wonderful time fixing it up. And it didn't have mold problems. But I managed to poison the family with lead-based paint in that building. That was before I started doing the type of thing that I do now. And, you know, I oftentimes get asked, so what really stimulated you to get into this? Well, I think the thing that really pushed me over the edge was when my A number of years earlier, I poisoned the whole family with lead-based paint. The whole family, including our two-year-old, ended up having to undergo chelation therapy to get the lead out. And she ended up with dyslexia as a learning disability. She was a non-reader until she was 12 years old. But we tried her with public school. We tried her with private schools and the whole range of things. We finally ended up homeschooling, and we found a special ed team who understood lead poisoning and how to use, you know, once it got chelated out, how to use physical movement and various things like that to basically reheal the parts of the brain that were separated from connecting with one another by the lead. Not physically separated, but, you know, they weren't communicating. And And so she would meet with us on a regular basis and give us our lesson plans and what needed to be done. And she kept saying, so every time I evaluate her, she's doing better and better. I know you're not seeing it, but one day it's going to be like somebody flipped on a light switch and she's going to go from being a non-reader to a reader. She was 12 years old and I came home from work one day and a before C-spot, C-spot run would have been too much for her. Uh but there she was curled up on the couch and she's got this book and it's not upside down. So I'm scratching my head and I'm thinking okay is she pulling a fast one on me? What uh what you doing? She said I'm just like it was you know no big deal. I'm reading. I was like okay okay she's I I mean at 12 she had a real sense of humor and she She liked pulling fast ones on her parents. But I said, wow, what are you reading? She said, The Hobbit. Well, I'm going to start. She went from not being able to read at all to reading The Hobbit. And I didn't even believe her when she said that. So I asked her to start reading to me. And she read like she'd been reading her whole life.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:21

I'm sorry. I'm a crier. I

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:27

can't help. I can't help. that I started crying with them.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:35

It's just so amazing to hear these stories of transformation and hope. And I think a lot of this podcast, a lot of what we're talking about and a lot of people we work with, it's the energy of mold and environmental toxins. It's dark, it's heavy, it's emotional. And I just love hearing these stories of encouragement and hope. And I was poisoned and I was healed. There is that possibility. Yeah. So, so let me finish.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:04

Yes, please. My 12 year old was, I'm going to lose it again. She was going for her black belt test in Hakurei Jiu Jitsu. And so I was there to watch her test. She goes out on the mat. Her sensei says, so, you know, I'm going to attack you with a knife. And she says, yes, sensei. And he says, you want me to use the real knife or do you want me to use the wooden knife? She looks at him and crosses her arms and she says, go for it. The real knife. He backs up. He goes 30 feet away. He takes that real knife. He raises it above his head. He comes yelling. And she takes him down, takes the knife away from him. I never, never worried about walking any place at night with her with me ever after. Oh my

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:04

gosh. So proud. That's truly an accomplishment. Amazing. Anyway. Well, this actually really ends us on a beautiful note because one of the things that I like to close out on my guests with is sort of like, and you've already shared so many of these. I really want to weave in this environmental piece with the piece of self-development and how we develop as people through learning things that we learn in this work, learning what not to do. I'm just curious, how has your time doing this work through all of your years, how has it changed you personally What is a lesson you have learned? Something that other people can take away as a lesson as well. It's

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:49

a loaded question. I already talked about them all. No, I haven't. I

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:52

know you did give so many. So if you don't have one.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:59

One of the things that we know about mold sensitivities is that it can cause almost like PTSD types of symptoms. And from the standpoint of people that are grieving um you know they they'll go through denial and bargaining and i mean there's the whole seven stages of that and i don't remember all the all of them you know but the same sort of thing can certainly happen uh with with people with sensitivities and um it's very common for them to be faced with a family member that's not you know on board and um and understanding this stuff. It's changing. I'm seeing a lot of improvements out there, but it's very difficult for somebody who's alone and having to face these types of issues or has a family that is basically, you know, putting up roadblocks for them. I see so many divorces and

UNKNOWN: 1:33:12

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:13

and just all kinds of things that go on. But at the same time, I see a lot of people that they go through their own denial and bargaining. And there was a time when I felt I had to try to bring them around. And sometimes you can't. I try to give people hope. That's one of the reasons I tell the stories that I do. And some people hate my stories. That's It's probably the biggest criticism that I get at times is, you know, we just want the facts, skip the stories. And it's like, this person is probably not ready yet. Or if they're on the phone and the person who's sick is not on the phone. You know, I know it takes a lot of energy to go through one of these sessions with me. But... they need to hear it too. And of course, there's not enough of me to go around for all the people that want to talk about these things and deal with it that way, nor can everybody afford the hourly rates for that type of consultation. So that's one reason that I wanted to write the book is to get it out there. I've probably given away over a thousand copies now. It's selling very well, but I I want to see it in libraries everywhere. I want to see it out there and available and make it available in every way that I can. So it's one of those things that I know it's expensive to put out$65 for a book like that. But I've had so many people come back and tell me that they've saved 10 or 100 times that amount in the mistakes that they've already made. And if they had known that, that it could have prevented that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:24

I'm going to link both of your books in the show notes of this podcast, and I will also link it in the shop on my website as well. I think everyone should have it. It's a great, great information. Exactly right. The money that you will save by having this information is invaluable, truly. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, John. This has been absolutely incredible i love your stories keep on telling them because that's what makes it stick for people and so i just thank you so much for the work that you do well

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:57

thank you take care

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:59

bye everybody Thanks so much for tuning into today's podcast. We have one more thing before you go. We are giving away one spot into our Conscious Construction Container Program, which is our signature program that helps you build and renovate your home from the ground up to reduce your exposure to molds, chemicals, and electromagnetic radiation. And even if you're not building a home, we've had a lot of students who have gone through the program who are not building a home who have found immense value in going through the program because now they understand how their homes work, and they're able to spot issues in homes that they're looking at potentially to buy, and they just understand how to make their own home healthier through understanding these basic principles. All you have to do to enter to win is to listen to one episode of the Awakening Spaces podcast and subscribe and follow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcast, and we'll give you two entries if you do it on both Comment on the Instagram post that we have linked below and tag a friend who you think would love this podcast or could benefit from the podcast. And every tag is another entry. I just want to say thank you so, so, so much for being here, for listening, and for leaving a rating and review because this is going to help us get better guests onto the podcast in the future to provide you with more value. So we really, really do appreciate every comment. star, every like, every comment and every subscribe that you can give us because it really does help us bring you more value in the future. So thanks again for being here and we'll see you on the next episode.