 Alright, so unfortunately I have a little bit of bad news. One of our panelists, Bob Crandall, was flying in today and his flight got canceled, unfortunately, so he won't be able to join us. Yes, which is a shame. He's very sorry that he can't make it, and he did want me to pass on to you guys that he said he would be happy if people have questions specifically for him to email him or call him, and so he's open to hearing from you guys and answering your questions just one at a time instead of all at once. So if you do want to contact him, feel free to just email the main conference email and I'll shoot you back his contact information. But we do still have our other two excellent panelists for our Float Sanitation Panel, so please join me in welcoming to the stage Mr. Rich Martin and Jason McDonald. Thank you guys. So basically this is kind of one of the big topics that exist in the industry. I'm sure many people, even if this is your first time here, have kind of realized at this point that there's a lot of conversations going around Float Sanitation, and it was one of the reasons I wanted to have a panel of people together here. To kind of get started, I just wanted to give a few introductions here. This is Jason McDonald on the left here. He is a health regulator from up in Canada. If you haven't met him yet, really fantastic guy. He got into floating in the last few years and actually came out to the conference last year and has been incredibly devoted to actually learning about what is happening here. Which you know, there are some people out there I'm sure who haven't had excellent experiences with health regulators out there. And so it's really amazing to see someone who's willing to see what's going on. He actually floated and just kind of actually attempting to understand what's happening here before making judgments or kind of laying down the law or anything like that. And it's just been great, a very good friend of the industry. So thank you so much Jason McDonald. On the right we have Rich Martin, Rich is with NSF International. NSF is for those of you unfamiliar an organization that makes safety certifications so people will take various products there to get certified. And recently, and I guess recently at this point it means in the last three years or something, there's been a safety certification that is in development for float tanks. Rich has been a big part of that since the beginning of it and through the process has become incredibly knowledgeable about float tanks. And also just through his years of experience working at the NSF knows much more about bacteria and all the specifics of that stuff than pretty much anybody I know at this point. So thank you so much for joining us, Rich. Hey, that's great. Thank you. To start off, is there anything I missed about you guys that I just didn't say that you'd like to share with people? I think you did a good job. Yeah, I think we made it. Nailed it. You kept it PG-13 and pretty clean. Yeah, that's true. That's good, thanks. Great, so actually before I kind of delve into opening this discussion up with them, I wanted to fill people in a little bit on I guess the context of what I see for float sanitation and especially regulations, which I feel like is going to be where a lot of the conversations go with these gentlemen here. People in this room have probably experienced a number of things as they've approached their health departments or found out what's required of them. There's kind of this changing tide as to how float tanks are being handled by regulations. When we opened Float On in 2010, I actually went around and I tried to call a whole bunch of different states and just ask the health departments there how float tanks fit into their regulations, basically. I was just trying to figure out what was going on and I pretty much met with a cold shoulder everywhere I called. People had no idea what I was talking about. It was very rare for someone to give me the time of day and that was kind of the scene all over the place. It was extremely unusual to see anything in writing that involved the words float or floatation on regulations anywhere. That's kind of from my perspective when I got into this, what I started seeing and over the last five or six years, it's been amazing to watch that kind of transform. We're seeing health departments approach float tanks in various different ways now. There's some places that decide to go unregulated. There's other places that decide to kind of regulate them as pools and there's other places that decide to actually create float tank specific language, which was almost unheard of when I first got into this, like someone actually at the health department deciding that it was worth their time and energy to create code for this, which I think is a good sign that they're recognizing that this is getting bigger and something to pay attention to. Basically now when you look around, there's still a lot of question marks out there where states haven't really approached this topic yet or even various countries and provinces in Canada where we don't really know exactly what's going to happen and it hasn't been brought up in certain spots in a big enough way to have concrete information about it. We're starting to see the other things too, like British Columbia, I believe, has kind of a written guideline on float tanks now. The state of Washington is in the midst of writing a guideline. Other places have kind of more firmly adopted unregulating their places like Alberta, where Jason McDonald is from. So we're kind of starting to see the quilt of what's going on with people deciding how to interact with the float industry, come together and develop. So that's just kind of my take on where we're at right now and there's still a lot of questions and a lot of mysteries to uncover in the coming years and that kind of takes me to my first question was, I'm really curious, I have this perspective myself of being in the float industry and kind of watching this develop and I'm curious from your guys' perspective how unique this process is to the float industry or if this is kind of run of the mill, like when a new technology emerges that raises questions for health departments in terms of regulations and codes and safety and stuff like that, is what we're seeing in the float industry where there's a lot of uncertainty and different people doing different things, is that what you've guys seen in the past or is this kind of uncharted territories, there's something different going on here with the float world? Do you want to go first? No, you better. All right. From my perspective, the work or concerns that maybe public health officials have, they just don't know. They don't know the answers. I'm sorry, I'm speaking totally out of school here. That came out wrong. I mean, the issue is that when codes are created for other things and then someone wants maybe the government either to pass a judgment. So you've heard, as Ashkan mentioned, some areas where the government said, oh, that doesn't fit in our current reg, and they kind of do that. And in some ways, that's a good short-term solution to get the business open and maybe everything runs great for a long time and nothing ever silly or whatever happens. But then I think early on, this industry was exposed to people considering it a pool or a spa and trying to put some silly requirements on your businesses, whether it was certain marking things, but the no diving sign, stuff like that. So again, they're trying to jam the square peg in the round hole because that's all they got. They got this code and they were like, wow, things got webbed feet. It's got a duck's bill and some feathers. It's a duck. I'm going to treat it just like a pool or a spa because I don't have anything else. So until they have something else, and that's where the Float Tank Association and this conference has been fantastic for bringing people together to allow the industry, potentially with some input from public health officials, to put some more common sense operational guidelines. Maybe you call it a guideline because you're just not sure exactly what is the best practice. Maybe there's not one way to get stuff done. Maybe you can achieve an end with more than one treatment process or maintenance frequency. So there's these three fascinating documents that the Canadian government released just like a month ago. And they did a great overview of citations and different research studies that it wasn't conclusive. They didn't say, oh, this is how Float Tank should be operated, but it just gave great insight that they were trying to help and call together a bunch of information. So that's something that, as it relates to the regs that are currently out there, when you have a new industry, someone's going to try to either stick it in the wrong box. And that's messy. You've all seen that. But it takes real time and effort and a lot of work, potentially, to create something new. And in some ways, the public health officials, they don't have the budget for it. They don't have the time for it. It's not that they're bad people. They're like, oh, that's not in your job. And if Jason tries to do something, and management's like, no, you've got to go over here and do this. We don't have a reg for that. But they want to help. And that's what's been fantastic. You'll see the folks from Washington, the folks from BC, they're really trying to be diligent, but not overly restrictive. And I realize that other people might feel differently about that. But I really feel they're trying to help and facilitate to let this industry flourish in a safe environment for all the obvious physiological, psychological benefits. I'm sorry. I should never speak again. I just wasted my entire, I'm done. See you. From my perspective, what public health inspectors do, and we're really passionate about it, is I mean, everybody here eats food. Everybody here drops their kids off at daycare. Everybody here jumps into swimming pool. And you just assume it's safe. You don't do testing of your burger before you eat it. You don't swab the surfaces that your children are playing on before you drop them off at a daycare. You just hope that, often, government agencies are the ones making sure that the public is safe. And that's our job. And when I broke into the industry 11 years ago, I had an idea of what environmental public health was all about, where food and daycares and pools, like I said, we inspect those environments. We also inspect tattooing facilities and nail salons. And in drinking water, this is our bread and butter, but this is new. Like even though Alberta had a standard in 1996 for flotation, we called it sensory deprivation back then. It's new to my generation of health inspectors, and it's a real challenge to know what to do with your industry. And so that's really why I'm on board, is because I want you to respect us, and I want our decisions, like Rich says, to be common sense and make sense. And so this is a special moment in time where I feel like the legislation that whatever it is, legislation, regulation, guidelines, best practices, whatever we want to call them, really should be about flotation. And I feel it's an error to start with pools and then evolve it to flotation. I think it's about flotation. Your industry is completely unique and quite different from swimming pools. And that's sort of the message I'm trying to get out to my inspectors to help them understand what you're about is don't, if you start with a pool of mentality, it's not gonna set us up for a very good relationship because there's so many reasons why you're not swimming or hot tubs or any of these things. So I think it's unique and it's like I said, it's a cool moment in time. We get to go right back to the beginning and start with the evidence. What is the evidence telling us? Does sanitation work in there? What works? What organisms are we concerned about? And so it's raw public health. But at the same time, a lot of public health measures are created because people are getting ill or infected or things like that. And we don't see that in your industry. And like Rich alluded to, there's two evidence reviews that were just conducted and they sort of set the stage of this is a very low risk environment, as I think is a really good place to start from. We're not talking about a body count that we got to deal with. So yeah, I would say that it's unique for my generation of inspectors to have a new industry emerge that's not anything we've seen before. But we can definitely sort of utilize our risk assessment expertise based on evidence. So that's what I look forward to exploring more. Yeah, definitely. And it brings up an interesting point of this kind of basing this information off evidence because I think as people start to look out there, one thing that they realize is that there are a lot of places with kind of more questions than there are answers. Certainly in my own pursuit, I'm always trying to figure something out. I'm like, oh great, nobody knows that. That's perfect. There's the edge of human understanding right there. And yeah, I guess, in terms of what maybe is optimal for safety or from your perspective or just in general from what you know about the research, specifically about float tank sanitation that exists, what do you think is kind of the biggest gap of knowledge right now? Like what piece of information is the most critical that we need to, as an industry, start working on finding the answer to? I can start with Jason. Rages, yeah. There's a few, and I'll save some for Rich, I'm sure, but I think what your industry really wants to know is and what public health wants to know is the idea of in this environment that's not swimming, can we accept other technologies other than halogens like chlorine and bromine as a way to sort of reduce what might be a risk in there? Infectious disease transmission or sort of germs landing on one client to the next, to the next. And so we need to sort of get evidence that what you think works and what 40 years of sort of practice sort of seems to allude to works is that a UV lamp would work when you circulate your float water through a UV lamp that's enough to sufficiently reduce the microorganism count for the next customer to feel safe. And we do other things in there. We filter the water, we maybe add hydrogen peroxide and things like that, but it's really that, does the UV lamp work and how can we be assured of that? And alongside that is what organisms would be the ones we target. We've got our traditional pool ones, like the coliforms and the E. coli and the pseudomonas, but maybe that's not the target organism. So I'd say that is a little bit more testing around the sanitation technology that we all feel is best. Just some more evidence to show that, to tell health departments, yeah, this does work. Cause right now it's a bit of a, it's not really locked in yet for me. And Rich, what do you think is kind of the biggest gap in knowledge and the research right now? You know, I think there's different ways companies would like to, the facilities want to run their floatation center and treat the water. I think it's, most people are using cartridge filters at some level and I know there's claims about micron filtration rate and everything like that. You know, so you're basically specking those in and I think that's pretty common. And then there's the use of, let's say the mag drive pump to get a certain number of turnovers, maybe between users or continuously. But really it's to Jason's point that I think is the biggest opportunity to have some useful data that's really going to add a lot of comfort and confidence for the facility operators and of course the patrons that would like to know that yep, this thing's been shown, whether it was like a single research project or what have you, that using a certain amount of hydrogen peroxide and or a certain UV system as part of the entire float tank, once you've got some proof or some data like that, I think it's a lot easier for the public health officials to support those companies, to support those installations, because maybe they've got these fledgling guidelines and it's not really a code, but maybe they're trying to, and again, I think if you read these documents the Canadian government put out, you'll see they're trying to nudge the industry to take some action and get some good data that's relevant for your industry as opposed to always having to colluge something from another industry that's not exactly the same and may not be, like you might draw conclusions from what you read of hydrogen peroxide concentrations and disinfection efficacy, but to me there's that issue, the disinfection and then the oxidation, so there are two different things. One is, does the treatment cycle or the process, which could be the chemicals, could be the UV ozone, whatever people are using, does it kill certain bugs? You got your filtration, but a lot of these organs are so small that it would kind of go through the filters, and then there's the potential for like organic matter buildup and what I mean by that, it's not something that's alive, but it's almost like the stuff that can become biofilm, which might get caught in the filter or elsewhere in the system, so to know that whatever the treatment process that's being used does a good job of doing some oxidation, so you don't start to foul the system, because if you've got a UV lamp, the UV lamp can be putting out its energy, but if it can't get out of the sleeve, because the sleeve is fouled, you know, it's not able to do its job to do that disinfection, so that's where maintenance comes in, and I'm sure the float tank association and or the manufacturers of these systems would have recommendations like, hey, when your system's new, it's perfectly clean. It might not stay like that. We all have to do something when we're maintaining these systems, so what are those best practices? So those are two things that I'm interested in for, I think it'll answer a lot of questions, and then, again, everybody's lives will be a lot easier when they have that type of perspective that's applied for your industry and simulating the kind of bather load, and what I mean is not stuff coming off, but if you're laying in warm water, stuff's coming out of your skin. It's not, I mean, goodness everyone, of course, showers really well, but if, like, I'm kind of sweating up here under these lights, and it's probably only, like, what, 75 degrees here, but, you know, it's 93, there's more material coming out, and not necessarily any bacteria, it's just stuff that could, like I said, foul the sleeve of the UV system, so if you're doing good maintenance and checking that to make sure that's not an issue, it can help you ensure that you're doing everything you can to make sure your system's functioning, you know, at its optimum. So anyway, those are some issues I think that should be looked at, oxidation, and then, again, simple disinfection for a couple of systems. And so far in this conversation, you know, we've been kind of making this assumption that, you know, that regulations are maybe either inevitable or necessary, and I guess my next question for you is do you think that there is kind of an argument to be made for kind of like what you were saying, Jason, the fact that, you know, we don't really see mass outbreaks of illness so far, at least, you know, in the industry, is that, is there something there that maybe says that this could be something that is unregulated in a way that wouldn't actually have harm to people? Yeah, that's a good question. I realize I'm asking a regulator if you can answer that question. Like Rich said too, it's not just about setting out rules so that health inspectors know how to inspect you. The rules are made so that you know what objectives to follow. So if there's a regulation in your state or your province, those are the rules by which the state would like you to operate. So that's not written so that health inspectors have an easier time with their job, it's written so you know the expectation. But do states, counties, cities, countries even need to be the ones to write those? I don't know, I honestly think there's such a great opportunity with the feeling you get when you're here, everybody, it's like you're a roomful of public servants in a way, that's our common ground is that, and we saw it in your video this morning, just the reason why would you go through the heartache of opening a studio? You know, it's never goes right. There's always problems, it's expensive, like double the cost you thought it would be. Why do you even bother? You're not gonna bring home a ton of cash either. It's because you feel indebted to get, people gotta know about this, this changed my life. You know, like someone carried me into a float tank and I walked out, you know, those are the stories that inspire, you know when you talk about public health, it's not just about testing the water, it's about like keeping people out of hospitals and keeping people out of like taking drugs and all that system, right? So easing the burden on the system. So, do you need the state or the government agency to set those rules for you? I'm sort of starting to think this should start with your organization and huge opportunity for the float tank association to sort of take up the cause and say, if you're following these rules, we've got 40 years of experience behind us to say and here's some evidence to support what we're saying. If you follow these rules, follow these expectations, you should have a safe outcome. I really think that that's what I would like to see. Like Rich said earlier, it's a lot of work. Once you set a regulation in your state, there's this expectation that inspectors need to go and check on you and that costs money and time and there's already areas we're not inspecting enough. I come from what I inspect mostly is things like nail salons and tattoo studios and I would love to get to those facilities more and I just, I don't wanna be drawn to a facility where there's not a lot of risk. So I would say the industry has a chance to take the reins here and if other health related disciplines regulate themselves, you see it with nurses, doctors, chiropractors, they all regulate themselves and until sort of proven otherwise that following the industry best practice is not good enough, then maybe the state should step in but just because my colleagues in public health don't aren't familiar with a flotation center doesn't mean we need to make a regulation to make their life easier and the regulations written for you so you follow the rules and keep it safe but I'll leave it at that, hopefully that answers your question. Great and Rich, I guess same question for you and I'll modify it slightly just to make it as difficult for you as it was for him. Do you think that maybe with float tanks being at least having an appearance so far of being kind of a low risk activity that there's an argument to be made for some sort of certification like what is being made at the NSF right now to be potentially overkill or unnecessary? I think that would be a concern because when we were asked to create an evaluation criteria, we didn't wanna come out with something that was gonna be laughed at, we wanted to make sure it addressed some of the things that were already in the Alberta and the Vegas regs and what we saw in North Carolina so when that was developed from 2011 to 2013 we were already aware of things that were being done because we work with all the public health officials, not directly, but there's a number of them that are on our oversight groups. And so we said, well, what would you want? What do you think is prudent? And some people didn't really have an answer. We said, well, here's some things you might wanna consider. And they're like, oh, yeah, shoot, you're right. And I was like, no, we're not pushing agendas, just we don't want this thing to get laughed at. So the intent wasn't to create something that was like lowest common denominator kind of like just rolling over, tried to create something that was fairly robust because then once it was created and I guess made public, then the intent was there to be a debate to understand whether people were into design criteria or some kind of validation confirmation type test. But at least get the conversation started because it seemed like from my experience, I kind of look at the spray park spray pad industry and the cluster that that became in certain areas because it was public health officials turned to block and they're like, no, no, no, no, I don't know what that, that's not a pool, it's not a spa, it's some spray stuff. It doesn't fit in our rag. And then there's huge outbreaks. We haven't seen that with the float industry, but there are some colossal ones in Seneca Falls, New York in 2005, like 5,000 confirmed cryptosporidiosis cases. Again, different stuff, but essentially these things were designed with a certain kind of water treatment, but then it's like someone didn't fill up the chemical feeder. Okay, that's egregious failure, right? They normally did something and someone was, I don't know, I don't know, I don't wanna get into this because there's a big lawsuit in New York about it, but in that case, then the state got sued because they weren't regulating something and they put in some really draconian requirements that basically made them treat it like drinking water. You have to have these UV systems with calibrated sensors, really expensive stuff, and then do other things. So that to me is like a small kind of concern that something like that could happen in this industry. I don't think it's the same because again, it's very small volumes in any one place. You got a float center with not, maybe at least one tank, maybe 10, 11, what have you. And then there's just not the same kind of massive numbers of people that are gonna go through there. Things are like, you got persons on site, which gives you a great advantage over some of these other industries where maybe they weren't staffed full time. There's multiple staff, they're trying to take care of these float facilities. So going back to it, it's more, what are the best operational practices? I don't think there's just one best operational practice. It's kind of like, well, there's probably a lot of ways to get it done, the whatever, disinfection, oxidation, and having the users have a good, safe experience. But the concept there is that, again, the public health officials don't have all the answers. They're not infrastructureed in staff to figure all this stuff out. But if the industry can take the lead on it, I think you'll find that the public health officials will want to kind of follow the suggestions. And maybe a regulation's never created. Maybe it is just guidelines. Maybe they're just looking for some data that they can show that they've done their due diligence to look and consider it. Maybe they won't do inspections. It's gonna be variable until some of those best practices or reasonable follow-up and oversight get better documented. And I guess, as Justin Feinstein was saying yesterday, research doesn't always move so quickly. And I feel like that is something that, is maybe gonna be something we're gonna face, too, as we start pursuing more research into this water sanitary system. We're doing more research into this water sanitation world. Would you guys have any advice to people who are gonna open their centers or are planning on opening their centers and approaching the health department? And I kind of think there's, you know, probably the biggest fear people have is that they'll go and talk to the health department and what they'll end up with is those draconian requirements of, you know, no diving signs and kind of the ridiculous things that you hear out there. Is there maybe like a breast practice, like a way to approach or a certain type of information that people should be providing to the health departments to avoid entering into that situation where they're kind of under these regulations that don't really make sense? I'll start with you, Jason. Yeah. Yeah, we're all different. You're not gonna get me every time you come. And so everybody's approach to relationships is different. And so, as we've alluded too many times, typically your health inspector you get is a generalist. They have to be sort of a jack of all trades, inspect restaurant, daycare, tattoo studio all in the same day and then they get this phone call saying, can you come and check this out and there's nothing to draw on for resources, right? So I think what I, my contribution to your industry, I hope can be, which is in a way, a contribution to my own profession is how to help you speak to us in a language that makes sense to us. And so one example of, it comes so far in a year already, really just trying to document why you're not swimming and we can list 20 plus reasons why you're not. And I want you all to be very articulate in explaining to people like me why you're not swimming. So you, from a common sense standpoint, you're not categorized that way, right from the start. So you don't drink the water, you have a beta load of one versus 200. All these reasons why the risks should be really low and it makes your industry unique. And again, I foresee the best way to get that information. I can tell my colleagues that but through the FTA, I mean even health inspectors look at the FTA website for information or they come to people like you and Google like who knows anything about this and your name comes up. And we'll, we need to sort of get everybody in this room really articulate in what makes you safe, what makes you unique from any other industry, your flotation, your nothing else. The other thing we need to do is gather data that to Rich's point sort of sets our mind to these because we deal in evidence, we don't deal in experience, right? So we need to know that your disinfection system should work. We're not comfortable with UV alone. We're not comfortable with that. We never see it in our daily lives. We don't see that in drinking water or swimming pools. There's always chlorine or bromine in those environments. And so we need to be told, here's why this system works. The manufacturer stands behind this system as it was as it slayed out. And ultimately we can sample the water and show you there's no bacteria in there of concern. These would be the things that we should, you know, get the industry really aware of. And just from last year to this year, like the knowledge of the people that I've been talking to has increased. And I think we can keep going that way. So yeah, I would say it's all about relationships. Your common ground with my profession is that health is good for business. You all believe that. You wouldn't be here if you didn't believe that. And that's what we want too. We want your business to thrive and succeed in a healthy way. So you've already got that. And like I said, I learned today, you know, dawned on me watching your road trip presentation is that you're all public servants too. You're not here to make a million dollars. And I hope you do. But I know you all want to, but I mean you're here to tell the story of flotation and get people in there and ease the burden on the public health system. And that's our common ground. And so that's the, I would say, approach public health with that common ground in mind. So I think that's probably fair. And I guess for you Rich, I mean you guys do a lot of interaction with public health through all of your various, you know, work in a whole number of industries. Is there a certain type of information that you see them always curious about that might help people kind of get through the process or a perspective that they're kind of looking from that you've noticed being a little bit outside of that world? Yeah, I think the public health officials or even maybe some of your more particular clients at the float facility, and maybe it's more the science geeks, but they'll want some kind of quantification when I say want, they might not get it. They might not need it, but they might be curious. And then the public health officials, maybe they don't want to have to have codes and really detailed stuff, but if they can see that you have done your due diligence to document your process, like your maintenance schedule and monitoring and kind of how you try to help ensure that there's not risks, that there's not standing water, that there's not excessive humidity creating mold in the facility and a legionella potential and all these other types of things that could go. If stuff isn't done properly, you can create risk, but that also might be too much information, might scare someone to like think about that, like, oh, I've heard that, that's bad. So to have, again, I think there's a great opportunity with the float tank association or some, that concept of a trade association, maybe some things can be done in a very general sense that helps people open their businesses, install their systems and get that green light. And then there's probably the counterpoint, like over time, okay, what is the best operational or maintenance? What should we really be doing to make sure everything's still running well over time? So having some quantitative data on those aspects, and I'm kind of like a broken record on that, like the oxidation and disinfection, you have those two things and that's the biggies. Some people are gonna know about electrical safety and require that you use like licensed electrician to put everything together or maybe the company that made the float system already went and did an entire electrical certification on it. And then they'll be like, most, I'm sorry, most officials are more like on the public health side or they're the electrical building inspectors. So it's not like one person knows it all. There's not a chance. There's different disciplines within the government, whether it's the building inspector, but normally after a structure's built, they don't come back. So a lot of these float tanks might get retroactive. You might have an existing structure that gets one put in and it kind of doesn't get checked out. But for new ones, they might, and I think that's more of an issue to be considered for some folks. And so if the systems are maintained in a certain way to help prevent that wild and crazy magnesium sulfate from getting into everything and causing stuff to expand or kind of suffer some degradation over time, those would be other lower level things to look at. To me, the biggest ones are more the almost indoor air quality, not from a disinfection byproduct standpoint because I don't think most people are required to use the chlorine or bromine, and therefore that should help prevent that from being as big of an issue, but having some of the disinfection oxidation performance to show that, yep, this thing actually does a good job under these conditions. That's gonna be really helpful and you're gonna be talking the language they understand and they'll be like, oh, you know what you're talking about. Then they might say, you're not the droids we're looking for. You're okay. Rich, you've mentioned a few times these kind of Canadian papers that have come out very recently in regard to flotation. They're actually so recent that they came out, I think just a few months ago, I haven't had a chance to read most of them because of this whole crazy thing going on, but yeah, can you just explain maybe what those are or either one of you, whichever you feel more comfortable, explain what these kind of Canadian papers you're referencing are? I thought it was really nice because they didn't tell people what to do. They just tried to collect information that appeared to have some correlation and they tried to do different, bring almost like a summary of different citations and publications or incidents or whatever. And their overall summary was like, hey, float centers are not inherently risky. So it was like really positive, but it was more of a cautionary suggestion to consider these issues or make sure you're thinking about certain issues. So I thought it was like really helpful and gentle. I mean, to me, if Bob Crandall was here and if he was able to speak to it, he'd be like, wow, that's great. Someone actually took the time to go and do this literature search. I think it was like looking for citations that referenced certain kinds of water quality testing and testing to the last 30 years. And who is just to clarify, who is they that you're talking about when you're talking about these papers? There's, it looked like the, oh boy, what's the acronym like, National? National Collaborating Center for Environmental Health. They published two of the papers you're talking about and the third one is Public Health Ontario. So we might call that PHO. And is this like they just, was it just that they saw that floating was starting to pick up to the point that they personally kind of realized they had an incentive to look into this a little bit? Is that kind of what led to it? To me, it's what they sort of self ascribed as this is not a regulation. This is just information that should be considered. So to me, it's pre-regulation. I mean, it's clear that they're like, hey, maybe we don't have to create a regulation, but here's some information that we want all of our provincial staff to consider. And we're trying to offer guidance and help because they don't probably have the infrastructure to come up with the regulation because they don't know what the answers are. They were trying to create a document that showed the knowledge gaps. So that was fantastic. We all recognize that as you indicated earlier, oh, looks like I'm on the edge of human knowledge again and my float center operation and trying to answer questions that people ask. So I think we're all sensitive to that and wanting to make sure that, again, regulations don't get created. That some more data is generated that helps people make the right size type. If a reg is gonna get made, that it's actually a right size to not just like a, oh, this thing's close enough. Just apply that criteria to your industry. Not ideal. Yeah, and the one that I read at least, and it sounds like maybe the other one's kind of, I guess to boil down the conclusion they came to, it sounded like they kind of said that these work fairly low risk devices to be in. Am I kind of accurate in summing that up in that way? I think so. It was kind of cryptic in the way it was described. It was like, wow, what are you really saying here? So I thought it was, it's almost like, all right, when this water bottle was new, I know that there's no microorganisms in it. But since I opened it up, Genie's out of the bottle or Genie just got into the bottle. So you figure that one of your float centers are new and everything hasn't been touched by a human. That's kind of like the joke in the pool and spa industry. Man, these pools and spas would be so easy to maintain if people didn't get in the pool. That's the biggest problem you have, right? People are getting in there doing stuff and stuff comes off. So that would be useful information for the industry to kind of start putting together, whether it's working in tandem with the public health to do some sampling. I could have sworn some of that was happening in Canada. I really just seemed that there's more even-handed, thoughtful engagement with the Canadian officials. And I know I always think of Canadians as like being really friendly and just good people. Just gonna leave it there? Yeah, it's like, oh, is there any evidence? Is that evidence-based? They just seem more polite. Like a little bit more formal. And I guess from your perspective, Jason, these documents that are coming out, are these kind of for health regulators and inspectors? Is that their target audience? I think what Public Health Ontario and certainly National Collaborating Centre, just to paint a picture of what they might be, they're not the equivalent of the CDC in Canada, but something like that, like an independent, Public Health Ontario's provincial National Collaborating Centre, of course, is national. But their job is to collect, synthesize, translate data, and put it in front of public health inspectors and policy makers and say, here's, we scoured the world with that, for the evidence you might need, make your decision. Do you want to regulate it or not? So that's the job I see, like in front of us right now, is I've got these papers that sort of say, you know what, there's four. I think when I read this, four studies, like maybe peer-reviewed studies or published studies that speak to your industry specifically, and then beyond that, there's, you know, we could look at, you know, a hot tub where they used UV and peroxide and something went wrong one day or other recreational water activities and there was this outbreak you should know about or you might want to be concerned about what gets into the air when you use this technology. So now it's almost, the answer's not in front of us. We have to decide what environmental public health has to do is conduct a risk assessment based on this evidence that was collected, decide like what evidence is relevant, what evidence is too extraneous from the actual topic at hand, and go, is this risky enough to regulate, you know, to put all of our deploy a bunch of inspectors towards it and update regulation all the time. That's a lot of work. And so that's the task in front of us. So that's the foundation is, you know, collect the evidence and then you decide, is there enough evidence here to say this is risky that we should actually regulate it. What I think, you know, these are my colleagues and friends, of course, that put this together. So I'm very respectful of the amazing work they did. And I know you echoed that backstage. It's like whoever did this did an amazing job. Yeah, they're like saints in this industry. Seriously, I encourage you guys to read these things. Each one's only like five or six pages. You'll want to read it a couple of times, but just great references and like truly even-handed assessment without passing judgment, but just trying to draw attention to certain issues or opportunities that one might want to consider further. I was like, wow, I only think Canadians can do that. They're the only ones that can be that diplomatic. So I think what's left to be done, and this is the hard part for us in my role, is a lot of it was silent on what's inherently makes your industry safe, if I can say that. It didn't speak to that nobody, we can use swimming pool environments as a way to sort of say, well, maybe we want to be concerned about some technology, but at the same time, no one ever drinks your water. And that really wasn't referenced in there that like swimming, when you swim, you take on average about a mouthful of water, about 37 mils of water down your throat, even though you didn't intend to. That's gross, yeah. Yeah. In here, maybe you have to float to understand, but you get it in your mouth, you're like, there's no swallowing of that water, right? So it's a huge difference in your industry. We also, when we do our risk assessments, we go, the papers were silent on how many germs do you get rid of in a typical shower, in your industry, the chances of taking a good, thorough cleansing shower are much higher. Like I'm not going to spend $50 to $100 per float to just go and poop in it. You know, I'm not going to do that. So that's a reality of your industry that's not factored in. So we look at that evidence and we go, okay, in the real world, from the time you arrive to the time you leave, you stand up, oh, I got a pee. That peeing, expelling that urine might prevent any sort of risk of a urinary tract infection, if that's what we're concerned about. So we have to take that total risk assessment of the whole system and not just base it on the other words in hepatitis A outbreak when a bunch of rugby players were in a hot tub spitting water at each other. You're like, yeah, that could happen. That's so far removed from what's going on in here. You know, that there's this, again, it comes back to common sense. Like that's evidence we might want to consider and we might just move that aside and say, this is the evidence I want to deal with. So hopefully that's fair. Excellent. Well, I'm actually gonna open that up to questions from you guys as well. So just to give you a heads up on what we'll be doing for that, we have a microphone here and a microphone there and I'll just have, for you guys on the top floors, you'll have to kind of wind your way down if you wanna ask a question, but feel free to just kind of line up in the wings and we'll go back and forth. And while somebody's coming forward to ask a question, quick follow up on the Canadian papers, what's the easiest way to find those? How do people actually find those and read them? It'll be on the FTA website. It'll be on the FTA website. Okay, easy, great. Cool, so does anybody out there have questions that they would like to ask the panel? No? Do we have some questions for you? Okay, well, I got more questions. I got Laska questions, so. There's actually another one that I have. I did have some questions emailed into me from people before the conference. And I'm actually curious kind of how we answer some of the more pragmatic or specific questions that come up when you're operating a float tank center. And this to me is a really good example of one because even me personally, I don't really feel like I have a solid comfortable answer for this question. So knowing that there is this lack of data in some places and kind of this gap in our knowledge, how would we answer a question like how often should people actually change the water entirely in their float tanks? How would you kind of approach answering that? We'll start with you Rich, how about that? Yeah, sounds good. Yeah, so when NSF released that CCS document in 2013, we wanted to make it clear that this was basically an evaluation of a new system but it didn't, it alluded to, you know, follow the manufacturer's recommended instructions for this, that and the other, but it didn't try to impose those because we always felt that that, wow, you know, you're probably gonna need a little collaborative input from this industry and some actual long-term data, like how many user hours should we go before we actually dilute down? Like in the pool and spa industry, it's real common that people backwash a filter and when they backwash, they're losing some water. Well, they're throwing away a little heated water, little chemicals in the water, but they're diluting down the TDS, the total dissolved solids, the gunk that comes from your body that doesn't get caught in a filter. It's not necessarily that that gunk has got anything alive in it, it's just, you know, stuff. We'll just leave it at that. It could just be salts and some other things, like not like epsom salts, magnesium sulfate, but, you know, the other materials that come from our bodies, there's like at least, at least 15 compounds that are kind of leaching out. Urea is a real common on that. Everyone thinks, oh, what's that salty stuff that comes out when you're sweating, you know, warm environment? So, you know, that issue for, I think folks to consider is maybe worthwhile, but I don't know if there's other, other suggestions or other questions though. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's kind of what I'm trying to get to the root at. Like we have these very kind of practical questions that we need answered to kind of operate our centers, and a lot of times a difficult path towards getting practical answers to them. Okay, well, like in the pool spa industry, they'll say when the TDS increases, 1500 passed startup, and the water quality is variable that you're filling up from like tap water typically, and then chemically treating that and balancing it for a pool or spa again. Different environment, different use, but the compare contrast is essentially what's of value here. In that industry, they would say when your TDS level goes up by 1500 part per million, it's time to dilute down. So you try not to ever go above whatever your starting TDS was in the pool and spa industry, because basically you're just making it harder to manage. And again, it's a different industry. It's harder to manage your pool and spa water chemistry when you start to get all this other stuff in the water. And it creates challenges for all the water quality test devices, and I know that's an issue near and dear to your heart. So I don't know what the magic numbers are for the float industry, but it's gonna be a, it's an issue, but I don't know if it's really a big issue or significant issue. Like, does your water get harder to keep clean or the salt water tanker? Maybe there's just, hey, after X number of user hours, scoop out a certain amount of that and dilute it down. I don't know if that's necessary. We don't know. I don't know that there's like any data that shows that it really is a problem. Because again, this is the experience in the pool and spa environment, but that might not be the same for your industry. So you don't wanna have that stuff applied to you, but you wanna consider it. You wanna think about it and say, okay, as the float tank association or as an industry group, who could potentially investigate this issue? Who's been running a float tank for a really long time and all they've done is add, you're gonna have makeup water. You know that stuff's getting dragged out all the time and you're gonna add some magnesium sulfate at some level to maintain that specific gravity that's best for floating. So you probably get a little carryout, a little splash out. Maybe that's enough. Or maybe that someone who's running a facility for a long time has found that, wow, it got pretty funky after a certain number of user hours. We just decided to dilute some down. So again, that's the thing where I wouldn't expect that to come from standards writers that have experience of, oh, here's how you assess stuff. We know how to do tests and whatever. But we're not sure what the user experience is gonna be in running a system long term. And then public health officials are closer to that type of data because they're gonna go potentially out where it is actually regulated or at least considered and inspected to make sure there's nothing really egregious going on. Maybe they would see that. But again, I think everyone here is gonna see it. You guys are gonna know if there's an issue and be able to influence your own guidelines. I would just add on, I agree with that. You might know better than we know, to be honest. But as a public health inspector, there's sort of two things that jumped to mind for me. One is if somebody is a loose diarrhea in the pool, like don't even bother, super-chlorinated, just drain the thing. And then all that can happen. And I think the other one is basically that the end point that matters to me the most is what organisms are in there. And so if you're doing routine sampling of your water and you just can't get rid of an organism, that's probably time to start again would be and then examine the system as a whole and say, well, why is this here? So those would be the two things. Thanks. Thanks. Come here with our first question. Well, just relevant to what you two were speaking of. Get a little closer to the mic. Oh, sorry. Just relevant to what you were saying, Jason and Rich. As you might have pointed out or alluded to some of the chemistry symptoms of high TDS, or total dissolved solids, just what are some of the symptoms out there that would indicate that it's too high and what are some of the facts? Yeah, some of the things that could happen in that sense. So I think it's gonna be really difficult because the total dissolved solids in a float tank are like a billion. It's just like, yeah, you've got supersaturated solution that's got like an amazing amount of stuff that's been able to fit into that little body of water. And then I think to actually be able to measure that, I don't even know if traditional TDS meters, which are normally like little electroconductivity type products, if they would be accurate in that range and that kind of a matrix, a magnesium sulfate solution. And if you could actually see stuff build up, like, oh, yeah, I've got a lot of salt coming out of people, like sodium chloride as well as potassium and other stuff, those other TDS things that are gonna come out of your body and it won't get caught in the filter. It's not gonna get oxidized because it's not oxidizable. I don't even know if those are issues or just like, hey, these are probably interesting things to almost come up with a list of goofy potential study or investigation issues and then prioritize them. We've kind of had those kinds of conversations in the past, like, what are the knowledge gaps or what are things that we might wanna look into? Different folks have alluded to things like, oh, there was a concern in the 80s and everyone was worried about HIV being potentially transmitted in a float tank and they think that might have caused that industry to take a downturn at that time. Well, maybe HIV or other things aren't even gonna persist. So there's some data that's already been put out there for folks testing ups and salt solutions, just to see what they can do by themselves, like the background solution. What can that be effective on? Then you add in hydrogen peroxide and UV, it's like, okay, you're probably gonna have a really good story to tell there and again, not seeing any kind of massive outbreaks, those are all good positive things. So again, I think there's a good story and relative low risks, but then over time, if TDS or other things start to kind of go a little wobbly, when the facility's had a lot of throughput of user hours, that to me is maybe the biggest kind of risk, but we don't know what the magic numbers should be. So that's where it's like, I don't know if, there's some people here that have like little CO2 monitors and they're doing testing, like Jim Heffner talked about that yesterday and then other people might be doing other things. And again, I think the float on guys are kind of on the cutting edge of that sort of mindset as well. But I don't know if the TDS issue is really an issue for this industry. I'll add on to that and thanks for your question. It really, sort of what drives me nuts about the prescriptive requirement to add any chemical to your tank is what exactly Rich said, like there's no factual reliable way to measure any of these numbers. And that's, your industry is all about not adding chemical, it's about deprivation of sensory stimuli, adding one chemical to something means you're gonna have to add more and more and more to balance it all, right? So I would just say that sort of like, your point about how do I measure TDS, we don't know. And if you wanna ask me how to measure chlorine and bromine, sort of effectively and reliably, I don't know either. You know, and that's why I sort of would like to find a solution that's sort of non-chemical based because I sort of have this hunch that the UV does the trick for us. So it's a good question. You come back next year and maybe we'll have a better set of answer for you. Very good question. Or we'll have the same evasive answer. All right, come on up. Well my question kind of like piggybacks on that actually. I was gonna ask if you could speak to the potential negative effects of adding bromine to the tank and how, if there's any studies or anything we can use in talking to our health people that come in and convincing them that bromine isn't the answer for the float tanks. You can start, I guess. Where I come from in Alberta, we don't even recognize bromine as an effective sanitizer in swimming pools. So there's some history there. And like chlorine is what we require. The other side of it is it's not just, and this is what dawned on me this weekend was it's not just about adding bromine. For bromine to be effective, you have to have it in the right pH range. There's a certain range where those halogens are most effective at killing germs. You add a chemical in there, your pH has to now be balanced. So to balance that, you have to add pH up or pH down that's gonna depend on your source water. You're nodding, you know? And to keep that in line, maybe you have to balance your alkalinity. So now you've got this elk, up, elk, down chemicals. We're talking about like five or six chemicals all of a sudden, right? And we're going, yeah, but PODB running UV and peroxide, I'll scoop a sample, take the lab, nothing's growing. So for me it's, does bromine and chlorine work to keep germs down? Sure they do, but are there other alternative strategies we can embrace? I think that's the question in front of us. And there are certainly studies. I mean, it's no mystery that there's sort of health effects linked to as much as we wanna shower, like a shower well, you're still gonna bring in some germs, outside chemicals and things like that into your tank. And when that reacts with bromine and chlorine that creates disinfection byproducts, we're not sure. What that does when you close this chamber, all that's really been studied is what happens in an open swimming pool setting where that can just sort of get away. But when you're in there for 90 minutes plus, I'm not sure what happens there. So there's a study that was circulated by Bob Crandall in the last few months that sort of showed the mutagenicity of disinfection byproducts. And that's not to say carcinogenic, but it starts down the road of should we be concerned? And so I think those are the sort of the studies we can put in front of health officials and say, are we creating a problem by trying to maintain one? And maybe there's another approach we could look at. From my perspective, I would think that the public health officials don't like to hear the, hey, we think this stuff's bad, but if you could show this stuff's good, this works. Now you're talking about a positive and you actually have data behind it and they will, okay, you're authorized to use that. I think they're just dying to be able to write a variance to other things, but if, until they have some other data to lean on that's applicable for this industry at your cleaning process, your little cleaning cycle, whatever it is, your hydrogen peroxide level and however often you put on hydrogen peroxide or maybe you're measuring it, maybe you can actually get a certain measurable in there. You know, maybe with your UV system. That thing's been shown to do the job to kill a certain amount of microorganisms and then again, there's that other issue of maybe the bugs are dead, they're still floating around, there's some sludge, you know, maybe it's getting caught in the filter, but just kind of could biofoul and again, get your UV lamp sleeve kind of all scummy. So like, you know, the UV light's on, it's doing its thing, but you just want to make sure that surface is clean. So again, the UV light can get out of the lamp through the sleeve into the water or solution, whatever, magnesium sulfate solution to do its job. And if those things are enabled, that might enable us to not have to use chlorine or bromine. You know, maybe someone would still want to do some kind of white down with hydrogen peroxide or else, you know, and these are kind of like float tank association guidelines recommendations for, now that let's get waters taken care of, now let's think about the other things that might potentially be a secondary lower level risk. Thanks, I'm gonna do one more question over here and then I'll jump to you. Thank you, Ashcomne. No problem. Hey, I'm Trey Herman with Float Brothers Floatspaw in Florida. We've just opened up in January and it was a bear to get through Florida, it really was. And we have to have bromine in our tanks to pass the Florida Department of Health Code. And I really just was sitting up there and I had kind of general questions and you've kind of alluded to some of them. But my first one is, and if you don't mind, I'll ask all four but they're very short questions but hopefully you can give me one general answer. But what are the best, you've kind of alluded to it as far as UV and peroxide as the kind of your way to sanitize, but what are the best ways to sanitize? How do we gather the data to certify that best practice? How do we present the best practice as a group to these health departments at, you know, not just in Canada but all the state levels and how do we implement these practices once we can get them on board as an organization? So I think you've talked about the float tank or the association of us all gathering as different states and what we require and possibly getting the points of contacts at the state level to if we can come up with the best practices together and maybe with your input on what those best practices are, maybe we can gather some data and talk to them at a higher level with all these folks to kind of come on board as one big team to fix this problem. So anyway, I just really just wanted to see what you think the best ways to sanitize are and how we can kind of gather that data to sufficiently meet what the Department of Health is gonna ask us to provide. So thanks. We've done a bit of sampling in our province and throughout Canada and a lot of people in the room taking their own samples and for me, there's like four, like chlorine and bromine certainly like I said before work at reducing microorganism growth in the water and also ozone very effective at disinfecting the water and then ultraviolet light is very effective. So what I would say our insufficient strategies are just relying on the salt alone with no disinfectant strategy is an insufficient way to come to the Health Department also relying on or using the word sanitation or disinfection as it relates to peroxide and I think that's been something we've uncovered over the last year is that hydrogen peroxide is not a disinfectant but it was sort of posed by the industry to Health that it was and so we've gone to great lengths to sort of tell your industry, it's not. So for me, there's four, there's ultraviolet which can be supported by peroxide as well but ultraviolet light, ozone, chlorine and bromine for me. I'm also with Folk Rose. I just had a follow on to what you just said. Do any of these sanitation mechanisms conflict with each other? For example, as the bromine is degraded by the ozone and for people like us that are in Florida where all they're gonna be testing is the bromine, we have to have it five parts per million, there seems to be a conflict with the different sanitation mechanisms. So keeping the level up to where we need it to be. Yeah and from my perspective, we don't, and I think you've said this in the past, we don't know what the right answer is and that's why we're all kind of dying for some folks to get some data to show that this works because maybe there's again more than one way to get the job done and you can do it but I think in general the industry does not want to use chlorine or bromine so let's try to find something else that is proven to work and when you have that data, you can present a very convincing argument to get your way. Without it, you're gonna create a real nasty shoving match with people that you can't beat. You gotta show some data, show me the data. So when you get that it's gonna be a lot easier to do what you want to do and they're not trying to be problematic, they don't wanna get blamed and sued because it's happened before. So essentially who's gonna get blamed if anything goes wrong? If they sue your company, they could probably only get 100,000 from you maybe. But if they sue the state, hey that's the deep pocket. So that's where it's gonna go. Oh you didn't sufficiently regulate this entity or this industry and that's what happened in the state of New York with again, a slightly different thing that was considered different and outside the pool in spa regs. Excellent. So I would just end that in order to get a question coming. Just that's what we're talking about and stay involved with sort of this group and this organization because those are the exact sort of questions like how best to regulate and where to spend our money with our money, it's your money. Where to spend the money for the right testing to answer the right questions, right? We can do all sorts of tests but there's probably only two or three key tests we need to do or third party labs we need to engage to help us get those answers to your questions. So I think there's enough effort in Groundswell to get it soon but just stay involved and keep in touch. I think that's the best way to get there. All right. I don't really have a question but more of just something I think needs a little more light that's Sean on it but a lot of this has been talked about water and water quality and water sanitation but I don't wanna forget about what's not in the water. So those walls and those gaps, I know a lot of these float tanks, even some of them here, there's a lot of trim and there's a lot of gaps within those float tanks. We've been fortunate enough, we're from Alberta, we've been able to do water samples with our water and we've actually seen pseudonomous come up in our water and we've done different methods to get that to disappear. And one of the things we did, we have oasis and where those tops meet, we found that there's a lot of stagnant water that would get caught in there. So we had to pull those apart and absolutely clean it out and then we would silicone everything and every single gap, every handle, every hinge, everything in there, I believe that's behind that if that's not silicone that has potential to cause the bacteria growth in there. And viewing online photos and viewing other float centers, I see a lot of those gaps in those areas in the float tanks. Can you shine any more light on outside of the water sanitation and what we should be doing then? If you, well. You know, humidity control. Okay, so again, read these Canadian documents. They did a great job of calling a cautionary tale to UV and hydrogen peroxide. No, it can work. If you're using sufficient UV energy and at a certain hydrogen peroxide, we don't know what the magic numbers are. So they just say you can think you're doing stuff, but maybe you're not. And then to your point with the other above the water line, that's where the wipe downs and trying to not keep a nice 93 degree moist environment. That's where stuff grows. Yeah, we were thinking that stuff was falling off those sides or rolling in right before we do our sample or whenever. There was showing up in our water, but we have, it's came up multiple times and we've got rid of it multiple times. And I'd love to share with you what we've done and how we've done, like how we've got to that point. I don't know how to share that information. So that's out there, but. I think coming here and talking to the manufacturers is key too. And sort of what I've seen even year over year, the two years I've been here is just improvements in the designs of your feedback. Everybody's feedback on how to make things a little bit better every year. Again, I go back to this like special moment in time. The industry is like flourishing and growing and there's always great minds on it and we'll solve it, we'll resolve those problems, but you're exactly right. I mean, cleanability is huge when it comes to sanitation and any nook and cranny creates an environment where these things can grow. And maybe stuff's growing there, but maybe it's not actually a risk to the user. It's like there, but it doesn't ever get to a critical mass. So you, because you're taking care of the equipment, you notice these things and address them before. So it's like, oh, that's good information, that experience, and that's really what we see with this conference, like, wow, these people are all still benevolent and taking care of each other, being excellent to each other. So again, I just think you guys have a fantastic opportunity with this float tank association, this conference, to do the data sharing, experience sharing. Maybe if someone that hasn't been here hears about it, they might be like, what, it sounds a little hokey. There's a lot, but there's like powerful stories and experiences that people have and it's like, yeah, that's real. But you wouldn't understand it if you're not here or you're not seeing the videos. And I just want to give everyone a reminder. We have now a strong presence the last couple years, but there is the Canadian Float Collective too. We are a fully registered non-profit association that has collectively got together to help spread awareness and work at the health inspectors and do all these things. So we're also out there, there are other entities, there's also people in Europe, the Swedish Float Tank Association, and they're working as well to do the same thing. So yeah, I'd love it if you guys reach out to us, actually the Mandela booth upstairs, if you want to help us, you can actually sign up with Trika behind that booth. But I'd also love to have both of you on the Art of Float podcast one day too. There's tons of knowledge, and I think a good refresher five, six months ago or six months from now will be perfect before the next conference, but thank you. Thank you guys. Hi, I'd like to know if you have a history of tests that have been done on our salt solutions at hopefully at an accredited or reputable microbiology lab that has actually identified the species of any microorganisms that does survive in our salt solutions at the densities we maintain and more than just a plate count where they actually identify the species and whether they're pathogenic species and preferably in a condition where they took fresh unused salt solution and maybe another set of tests where it had a bather load of maybe 50 or 100 people. And that's really what I would like to see is out there. I don't even know what grows in that salt water. And I also wanted a second question that you might address is, what do you think about testing with spectrum analysis where it's not really for the biology of the water, but to give us a true picture of the chemistry of the water where you could actually have a battery of tests with maybe a pristine salt solution that was dissolved in distilled water and what is the chemistry of that and then maybe a battery of tests where the solution was dissolved in city water, which we know as chlorine in it and then a battery of tests maybe with bather load of 100 floaters and whether spectrum analysis would be a valuable test for that and how expensive those kind of tests are. I see we've only got a couple of minutes, so I'm sure we both want to jump in on that, but how I would answer your question is we've done through NSF, you have done, operators have done testing of flow tank water where organisms have been inoculated into the water and to see what happens. Does it grow? Does it die off? And we've answered a lot of good questions there and the key message for me when I reviewed those was that nothing was shown to grow versus if you inoculated hot tub water you would see exponential growth perhaps, but it's important for industry to know that salt creates a very inhospitable environment for growth of a whole suite of organisms. Did we test them all? No, but it does help me as a health official realize okay, well that nothing's growing in there. Does it die off? No, so you're certainly left with some bacteria to deal with in your sanitation strategy, but I think that's really key information for you to know and I think that's the goal of say the flow tank association or through Ashken to get mobilize that data for you so you know how to interpret it and have those studies on your fingertips because I don't think it belongs to any one person. That data belongs to your industry, sort of in my opinion, even though Ashken paid for it. But... I haven't actually paid for it, that's that. Sorry, or whoever paid for it, right? Yeah, yeah. So to Jason's point, we had done some work years ago for the one company that's got some stuff certified with us, just informational to help them and then last year working with folks from Float On and really this entire association because they were kind of serving as a representative for you. We did some testing for them with, I can't even remember, was it two organisms we did? I think just a gram, positive gram, not gram tally, but you know, the other. It's a type, it's a type of bacteria. And then just exposed a high level of those bacteria because you don't want to start with like small amount, you want to start with a high amount and then see what happens over time. And you know, if there's no food in there, yeah, stuff's not really gonna propagate and grow. But the idea was, does this solution do anything to the organisms? And one of the organisms showed a pretty good fall-off because we did a much more real-world based type study where it was meant to be, you know, expose the organisms to the salt solution and then after an hour, go through like a shaking, like a 10-minute shake, kind of simulating a cleaning process and then did that over 24 hours. And then took readings that I think, I don't know if this is time zero, four, eight, 12, 24 hours, something like that. So you kind of see what happens over time. And one organism did show some fall-off. You know, it actually dropped, let's say it started like a million. There's a million organisms in a certain volume of water and then it went down to just a thousand or something like that. It was a three log reduction. Honestly, I haven't looked at that study since last fall, but you guys have that. Yeah, I can probably answer that a little bit more specifically. There was, and I guess to answer your question in some sense, like a lot of what you're asking does not exist yet as data. As far as I know, there's really only two studies that we've done just generically on Epsom salt water and they were very similar to each other in studies. One was just regular water that was tested versus Epsom salt water with some bacteria and the other was basically the same thing except the water was shaken to kind of represent a pump moving. And yeah, Pseudomonas, which was one of the things did seem to be affected by the salt but not really fast enough for the salt to be affected by itself. And the Enterococcus, which was the other one, didn't really care that the salt was there. It acted kind of exactly the same. And this is just really beginning information and in terms of how much it would cost, as far as I can tell, to do what he was talking about would be a lot of money. And that's kind of one of the difficulties we have to choose wisely exactly how we do these tests and what we test next because even a test as simple as that with two bacteria, I think we just tested at zero, one hour and 24 hours. I mean, that alone ended up being several, several thousand dollars. So it's one of the challenges ahead of us, I think, is to really be smart with the way that we're deciding how to use testing and what we're looking for because certainly all the questions we want answered will be kind of a robust amount of data to collect. And we are actually out of time in here, so apologies for making you stay in there the entire time, but these fine gentlemen are gonna go up to the fourth floor as soon as we start a break and if anybody has any more questions, you can go up there and ask them up there as soon as we take a break here. But just quickly a round of applause for Rich Barton and Jason McDonald. Thank you so much for coming.