 Well, hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dr. Jill live. I am so excited to talk about my favorite topic again with a repeat guest, Brian Carr. Brian is a second generation indoor environmental consultant who specializes in working with hypersensitive individuals with complex medical conditions. I'm a kind of environmental specialist that we'd like to work with because a lot of times in this industry, we'll talk a little bit about this. It's hard to find the kinds of remediers like Brian and his company. We inspect that really understand how sensitive some of our patients are and and really go to the lengths that are needed. And again, we'll dive into all that today. So if you are suffering from mold related illness or have had a question about maybe mold in your home or workplace. We're going to talk, we're going to get into the details today with Brian. He helps patients clients understand if mold mycotoxins or other endopathogens exist in their home. And we'll talk about all the types of things that can exist. And the things that can contribute to health conditions. As you know, from hearing me talk a lot of these things are invisible. And we were just talking before we went on so often patients are like, no, there's no mold my home. So we're going to talk about like why you might be missing the source of your health condition. We become a go to mold and biotoxin resource for many, many medical practitioners across the country and helped over 5000 hypersensitive individuals worldwide to create healthier living environments. Brian is a co founder of we inspect and an expert at identifying indicators of mold growth, including but not limited to strategically sampling sampling, validating and developing remedial strategies for mold growth and biotoxin production in all areas of the home or building, including walls, floors, ceilings, cross spaces, basements, addicts, and HVAC systems. Welcome Brian. Great to see you again today. That is so long. I got to fix that. That is out of control. I'm surprised we even got through all that. I'm like, Oh my gosh, please shut up about me already. I know I was like, Yeah, here we go. I got to get that fixed but hey thanks for having me. I'm super excited. You're welcome. So we have talked before but let's just give a brief background and we all have a story. How did you get into the mold remediation business. So we're actually not in remediation so we're inspections. And it's like a super common, like thing to confuse because everybody kind of thinks of it as the same thing. It's very very much not the same thing as a good place to start kind of. Perfect. Actually, I'll start with what you asked and then I'll go into that. So my background. I have a story like a lot of other people do. Mine didn't involve me getting nearly as sick as a lot of people do, but it involved some health reactions of things that were going on. Basically, I lived in an apartment building in LA there was a leak in the ceiling in my apartment building it almost fell on top of me while I was sitting in my. I go out of the way, falls down have this massive thing the pipe up for the bathroom upstairs. And long story short I'm working with the landlord trying to get it figured out and then you know they get somebody in there to look for more like oh there can't be mold we dried it now there's no mold there it's fine everything's fine in the meanwhile there's still big old freaking water stains on my ceiling. They didn't even like paint it. It's like that's how bad it was months go by time goes by I start having symptoms right I start not being right I first like, I'm not as quick like I'm pretty quick with it and stuff and I like I wasn't as quick and then like, it's like all these things that happen and one day I wake up I go in the bathroom and I have like eczema psoriasis where we want to call it on my face, like holy crap what the hell is going on. So, luckily at the time, my wife who I was dating at the time, her dad is like one of the best well known guys that does this in the whole country. And she connected me with her dad. He came over to my place he was at my 800 square foot apartment for about four hours or something. That my ceiling issue it might have been dry right around where the problem was but what happened is when water hits a horizontal surface it goes sideways, it went all the way across my ceiling, all the way down all four of my walls. Oh, you were in a. I was in like a mold the toxic mold box. And I was like all the stuff. So basically figure that out he found a couple of things in my apartment and I was just kind of blown away by how that went and just significant difference between like you know local inspector Joe guy and then like, and then like this guy who's like a nationally like, like this guy knows what he's doing. So I just kind of got connected with them I loved it. I asked him on the spot if I could work with them. Wow, because I felt like I don't know I just felt like I had to and fast forward and here we are. And that's kind of unbelievable yeah it takes a very unique perspective and my medical stuff it's curiosity for helping the patients get to the root cause. But in your place is the same same skill set really this curiosity to go a little bit deeper. So we could go so many directions but one of the things I would love to start with is that clinical visit I'm a patient I see the markers on the labs that make me a little nervous there might be mold some maybe inflammatory markers new auto immune disease maybe a change in my health when they moved to a new location. And you know the story, and then I'm asking them and I know this if I say do you have mold in your house. 99% of them are going to say no, there's no mold, or they might even say we thought there might be mold because we had this thing happen leak whatever. And we had an inspector come and there was you know one air sample and it was normal, right. So we know that backstory and I know often I'll ask much more detailed questions but tell us why that's often why mold is so often hit like let's set the stage of of why your job and mine too can be so hard because it's not usually that obvious and yet it can be causing a massive problem. Yeah, can you see the flu. And you see any of this stuff. No, this is all microscopic stuff that you can't see mold and bacteria are not different right they're just not a virus they're mold or bacteria. We breathe it all in the same way, we breathe it all in the same way. So, what happens is that people here mold, and you know it's funny like if you search like literally if you search Kobe I think all of us now know what that little thing looks like. So basically they create an image that you can then associate with whatever it is because people don't understand stuff they can't see. So a marketing tool, anybody wants to market something, figure out a way to have somebody visually connect with what we're talking about and they can now have a better understanding of it because we all rely on our senses to do things right. That's why the Kobe spike thing with like the orange and purple colors everybody knows exactly what it looks like. Right. Nobody knew what it looked like before, but everybody knows what it looks like now. So with mold it's kind of the same thing like if you search mold online what do you see you see black covering walls. I'll tell you one thing the little covert guys are not that big and purple and green flying around here where I can see them and mold is not covering your walls but they do that because they're selling mold cleaning products and they're selling this and they're selling your title stuff and how do they sell it to you. You have to connect where somebody can see what they're purchasing and they can wrap their head around something they could see better than a concept that they don't understand. And so that's why people think that mold looks like that but the reality is this is what mold looks like. There's a little bubbling paint on the wall under a window. My baseboard just pulling off the wall a little bit. My floor in front of my dishwasher is like a little bit. It's like worked a little bit. There's a little stain that's like this big on my ceiling. That's what mold looks like because what mold needs to grow is water. Those are the signs of water damage that we can see and our eyes can actually see those things. We can't see mold. So the way that we go through a house is we understand what water damage looks like and not water right now. Water from 10 years ago that worked your floor can still have a hidden mold problem under there if it wasn't immediately mediated. And that's the big secret to this whole thing is to not actually look for mold when you go into a house is to look for signs of water damage and ask the right questions to understand what's happened historically to the house as well. You put all that together. It's just like what you do. It's just like what you do. Yeah, gosh, it's a great explanation because it really is most of the time very hidden. And it could be like in the case of your box of mold in the apartment in LA like you're living in this place that is absolutely exuding mycotoxins. Let's talk a bit about that. There's nothing on the walls by the way. That room looks look just like this. That's the thing, right. And what you said I think is such a great analogy I've never heard that but I love the viral flu analogy because these are 2.5 microns and less when you look at viral particles in microns of mycotoxins. So with the mold spores, right, they're pretty large. They don't actually go into our bloodstream through our lungs are too big, and even our good filtration systems like HEPA they're going to pull out the spores if there's any spores in the air those are pretty large. And those are not the dangerous thing. Those are even visible, the invisible mycotoxins which is what a mold secret which can go right through the wall and can remain after a mold is taking care of or cleaned up right. Mycotoxins are 2.5 microns or below and it's the same as the virus is literally the only kind of filtration system that will take that out is a VOC filter, which is that carbon or whatever. So with all this invisibility and the concept obviously people who listen to my podcast know about mold a lot of them have suffered from mold. Before you start, say I have a client who is you know I see all these signs and I'm like oh Brian, let's see if we have something in your environment and they call you and say Brian come over, pay to you to inspect and look at this. Take us through the house like with them how would you walk through and what would you be looking for. We'd have like a 30 to 60 minute conversation before we even show up right so like, again, everyone think of this the same way. We're, when you go and work with like Dr. Jill, and there's like an onboarding form of all of your medical history and there's all this stuff that they that she needs to know before she could sit down with you and say okay, here's what I'm kind of seeing to start with you tell me what what's going on with you. And okay here's just going on with you okay here's the test that I think we need to run based on your history, and what you're telling me is going on with you cool then I get the results back from the test okay. So here's what we found in the test we know what's going on now. Here's a plan in a priority form of order of how we attack this problem. Right, that's that we do the same exact thing it's literally the same exact thing except for inside of a body it's inside of a house. It's inside of the living system just like a body right it's all interconnected and there's if something's happening over here can have an effect over here the same way in the body. So the first thing is a conversation. What's going on why are you even reaching out about this right usually people I get to us are sick. Right, like, that's the reputation we have everybody knows like I've been looking for this for five years and can't find it. Right. And so that's kind of where it starts. And then we start talking about what kind of, what kind of symptoms are there. What's going on, because the testing panels in terms of what we're doing in the house. It's not like a cut and paste sort of thing. It's, what's your symptom set what's going on so if you're somebody's like a multi system multi symptom problem right I've got, I got symptoms I've got brain fog and I got skin stuff my hair is falling out and my seven I'm just peeing the bed all of a sudden randomly and all of these things are happening. Well at that point we know we're expanding our testing panel. So look at a larger kind of look at water damage oxen and components that could be attributing to that. If you're someone that's way on the other side, like I don't know I'm just concerned about it and I have like a, you know, sniffing nose or whatever, then do you need to do as much. It probably doesn't align with your goals so much right so. So understanding why you're reaching out is understanding what your goals are, and then it's talking about the history of the house. And when I say history of the house. Where have there been leaks that you know of. Right and, and this is the one thing I say everybody, like, yes, and they always say like the big thing oh I had this pipe leak and this one have I had this but cool tell me all that stuff I want to know Now that we've done that, tell me all the teeny tiny things that you didn't think were a big deal. Yeah, well I had to drip under my sink cabinet. And I noticed it after like a couple weeks and then I just put a bucket under there afterwards. All right, that's a problem. Right, because you're dripping into a cabinet for my kids flash out of the bathtub and like the baseboards near the top are like a little, you know they look a little weird and funky. That's water hitting it. The thing, the thing that we do a lot as people is we normalize stuff that happens all the time. Yeah. So instead of us having a unique one time reaction to something. It happens over and over and over again we kind of numb and dull ourselves to that right so our reaction isn't as strong as it would be the first right. That means we start hearing oh we'll see sinks leak. It's normal, whatever kids splash out of the tubs there's no fixing that side note there is my kid doesn't splash out of the tub because I can't. All these areas of like normal water things that happen. We dismiss them because they're normal but those are the areas we should be most concerned about because there's a higher probability of the water thing happening. Or my college kids takes a shower for an hour and doesn't turn on the exhaust fan and there's condensation like that's kind of normal and yet, as we know, it's the wall surface and wallpaper whatever that condensation. Yeah, 100% and so to like to wrap it up it's like tell me all of these things let me get a list of all these things so I know certain things just from a history perspective going in that we're going to want to check out and then we do a deep dive with a house we're usually at a house, depending on the size anywhere from like four to eight hours probably on average depending on big it is every room, every closet, crawl space attic basement open up every air conditioning system you have five of them I guess we're opening them all up. Like all of that stuff because it's all connected and it's all part of what's going on. I love that you're describing this because people can realize and obviously I understand what you do how thorough it is and how much it takes because you have someone come in who comes in in an hour to glances around and then takes an air sample. There's nothing wrong with their samples it's one piece of data. It's a good piece of data. But as you and I know it can miss things just like any any tests that we're using can miss things. But I want to say this because I have a lot of patients who come in. I am sure from the labs there's some mold somewhere, and they said, oh we had a mold inspector or we had two or three mold inspectors and everything was fine I get that so often. So I want to kind of differentiate the kind of work you do and people who really know what they're doing in the inspection world versus someone who maybe has the base and really tell me this to with that with this industry. I understand there's not as much regulation so you don't always know what kind of inspector the qualifications is that true. Totally true. It's actually the whole thing is just kind of ridiculous like from top to bottom. The states don't even care if you're certified they just so the so it's a money grab by the states to get you to just pay a license like so if you wanted to be licensed in like New York or Florida or Texas or something you just have to jump through a couple of hoops and get your license it has nothing to do with if you actually know what you're doing. And there's separate certifications that are specific to our industry is not a state license that are at least teach you a little bit more right and they don't even require that so like the state licensing thing it doesn't really mean a whole lot other than somebody went through and did it. And then our industry certifications is all based on stuff that was written like 2030 years ago. And so you know imagine like in your field if you just stop learning 20 years ago like you wouldn't even be doing what you're doing right now. So it's really tough and it's hard and I understand as far because if I'm somebody who's out there it's like well then how do I find somebody right if I can't look because the the through line is like are they certified with a particular certification I look at the site it means that they have two years or eight years and they know X Y or Z or whatever. The problem is it's not hard to get any certification. They stopped getting certifications because they mean absolutely nothing and I don't want to waste my time said other stuff to do. So like I have you know I have but like there are people who are like loaded with certifications and it's just kind of funny to me like I just don't really understand the point of it, unless your job is I'm going to go out and be a legal expert and so I need all the certifications to be an expert witness right like that's that's the deal. The thing, the thing to keep in mind and you're saying it to so most the story that you told us a story that happens all the time, and I see a lot of time to so doctor tells someone that they're sick. They're like, first off, someone sick doctor doesn't get it takes them two years five years 10 years to find the doctor that's like okay. Here's what's going on it's a mold thing so ever long that took for you to get there let's assume you just started today and you found found you right. Well got a mold thing going on so then what do you do so then you go out and you look where do you go to look for anything you go to yell you go to wherever because that's where you look to find stuff. Hey this guy's got five stars column up. Oh yeah it's you know it's $800 we include three samples we come out we do this we give you cool. We come out and they do exactly what you said is what happened in my apartment they come out they do two samples you one outside they do one in one room maybe you're lucky they do one or two in another room you're lucky whatever. And then they come back and those samples pretty much always say there's no problem. Why do they say there's no problem because air samples are a good tool. If they're used in the right way, you should pretty much never use an air sample in the middle of a room for an air quality test, it is not what it is good at doing. So what is good at doing is knowing is there a hidden problem behind the wall that's not visible. And can I put a tube through this wall and collect air from behind the wall right where I think the problem is. So air samples the further away you get from source, like exponentially less effective they are accurate they are. So like we did I did an internal study for like a year on this I won't go through the ins and outs of it but like if I thought there was mold in this wall I would then come over here and take an air sample three feet away 70% of the time that sample gave a false negative when there was a problem right here. Okay, so first off if anyone's watching like I've had somebody come in and they did air sample did everything was fine. I'm sorry, but that kind of doesn't mean anything, unfortunately, like a mold inspector should inspect something for the love. Like, maybe just go out there and try a little bit. Like, when these guys come in they're like air sample air sample air sample and I'm out in 45 minutes or an hour. Where did you look. And if that sample came back and said there was a problem let's say it did let's say it was a 30% of time where it did show something that was there. Where did it come from. What do you do. They'll give you one of two answers one got your entire room because I have no idea where it's coming from, or two, I have a magic fog that just gets rid of everything and then it'll never be a problem again. And that doesn't work either. Right. So you have to find source you have to find root cause you have to know where it's coming from or else it's going to keep coming and keep coming as relentless and just going to keep beating the hell out of you. If you walked into a house, and some do punched you in the face, would you just keep walking in the house letting him punch you in the face like no you'd be like yo get this dude out of my house so I said I'm going to punch in the face. Like, that's what's happening to you guys, right. And so that's what we're trying to figure out and that's kind of the difference in the approach like how the bottom. Yeah, and I everybody I just stopped by to let you know that my new book, unexpected finding resilience to functional medicine, science and faith is now available for order wherever you purchase books. In this book I share my own journey of overcoming life threatening illness and the tools and tips and tricks and hope and resilience I found along the way. This book includes practical advice for things like cancer and Crohn's disease and other autoimmune conditions, infections like Lyme or Epstein bar and mold and biotoxin related illness. The first thing you need to keep is that as you read this book, you find transformational wisdom for health and healing. If you want to get your own copy stop by read unexpected.com. There you can also collect your free bonuses. So grab your copy today and begin your own transformational journey through functional medicine in finding resilience. Yeah, and I love the real key there is even I am not the expert and I will always admit that but I know just enough to ask them the right questions or if I was walking outside know the kinds of place or even my own place right the places to look and I again I'm a novice I am not the expert, but that inspection the actual looking at under sinks in bath and it's crawl spaces. I've done that if I've looked at homes to buy I'd had someone come in and go into the crawl space and look at those places because the visual inspection with is which is what you're saying is really the core of finding the route and you can still be human and miss those things but there's no inspection without a really good knowledgeable visual inspection. And like you said just to reiterate a lot of times there's these spores and things contained behind the walls, and you and I know the really toxic black molds they love a water source and they love to stay put under floorboards behind walls. It is extremely rare to get stagibotus or ketomium and air samples unless you have post hurricane, you know completely flooded home that's filled with with those things so it's actually even more concerning because the really toxic molds that are causing the neurological problems are even less likely to be in the air samples. So, so obviously there's air sampling there's I still like the qpcr because I feel like somebody that gives a historical. Is that something you typically do as part of the inspection. Absolutely, so I'll kind of walk you through so there's basically two goals of an inspection first one is figure out where sources. That's how the source has kind of migrated into the living space, which is what you're breathing right so imagine factory factories the source smoke coming out of the factory. That's the cross contamination if you live in a house over here. Somebody might tell you like oh you live in a place with a pollution problem you're breathing all the smoke from this factory. I live in place with a factory problem. That's my problem my problem is a factory and this is, but this is the direct impact on me from the factory. You have to address both things. You can't only go after the smoke, because more smoke will come. You can't only go after the factory, because the smoke is still there and you're still going to breathe it. So you have to go after both things. So from a source perspective, we talked targeted air samples right so I probably bash air samples all the time because most people use them incorrectly. If you're using them properly they're one of the best tools that you can have. I love that you said that so we are real clear they can be very, very appropriate it's just knowing, like you do how to use them appropriately. And we use them in every single inspection but they're never just sitting in the middle of a room. They're in an isolated cabinet, they're in a wall, they're in I mean it's just it's just targeting as close as you can so that's why it's targeted or source air samples and I always differentiate them like an ambient middle of a room sample from like a source targeted air sample or a different so you have one of those, or you have some sort of surface testing right there's something you think is something going on you you swap it you tape it whatever you do. That's your source ID those are literally the only two things to do for source identification. That's it, you figure out if there's a problem there. Now the next piece is how is the smoke coming out of these factories and moving to your house if you think of your house, your house kind of has three levels of the house top levels you're heating air conditioning system. Okay, your heating air conditioning system is like the lungs of your house it sucks air in from the house, and then it's breeds it out everywhere else except they're having one mouth that has like 50 miles for all the vents and so it's sucking everything in and spreading it out, your air conditioning system can either be its own source, or it could become cross contaminated and just start spreading stuff around all over the place it could be either one it just depends how impacted it is so you have that your second level your house is all your structural surfaces wall ceilings floors cabinets all that stuff that's where the sources are right, and then the third level of the house is the settlement that comes down on all the surfaces in the house. Don't worry about it, you sit down on your chair to bump your desk you do whatever you're popping up little particles constantly up in your breathing time this is called the personal cloud effect there's research papers or there's literally home science papers on this stuff. This is how you get exposed to things. Okay, so you have all three levels of the house that means that in a proper inspection and remediation plan. You can address all three levels of the house, if the goal is to not be exposed to it anymore. Right. So that's the idea so we're talking about air conditioning system and settlement in the house that's where you get into dust testing that's where the research papers are on talking about basically what it's saying is as you move around the house. We were watch Charlie Brown and that little kid pig pen with the dirt around him all the time it followed him everywhere that happens to every single one of you walking through your house except instead of dirt it's invisible particles that are following you. And that's what you're breathing over and over and over. So dust collection is the best way to get your eyes on that PCR for mold. It shows you not only the spores right we just talked about the spores are bigger right but the spores are not really the problem. It's the tiny particles and fragments that break off the colonies and why are they the problem, because our filtration system in our body that's meant to protect our lungs. So it's hectic against particles that are that small, it's like a net, right, and the particles go right through the net, right through the net, right and they go right into the lungs, and that's where you can get into the bloodstream. So PCR picks up on anything with the DNA signature which includes a little particles and it doesn't matter if they're alive or dead to trigger the immune response. So the question of like, Oh, well is it alive or dead who cares. Most of the stuff in the house is actually dead or dormant and you know what, everyone is still reacting to it. So that's the deal. So PCR there then you can also do like chemical analysis and dust to microtoxin antibacterial toxin stuff like that and that's how you build up plan. Oh, fantastic. And I love that you said, you were the one who originally, I think we talked about this before we the dried flower arrangement. You know, like where you you disturb this stuff and you flick it or blow on it you'd fragmented and those fragments. I just want to reiterate because you said this but for patients that are suffering from mold related illness. Those fragments of dead dried old mold will still trigger immune inflammatory response which is why you do this inspection you find the source and that's your factory analogy. But then whatever was there in the environment in your HVAC system in your air conditioning system or your heating system or just the dust in your home if you don't take care of that after the remediation, people still don't get well and and that's part of the process as well. I think that it didn't work. This is the problem this is why if you're one of the hundreds of 1000 people and the surge and toxic mulled line group this and the lime and mold in this Facebook group that and all the groups with all the mold stuff. And they all say, it's impossible. You have to live in the woods I have to live in a trailer. It's not impossible. There's three things you need to do in a house. If you do all three of them it doesn't work you're going to walk in and feel exactly the same. If you only handle the sources, and you left the settled stuff in the house and the air conditioning system you walk in. The smoke is still there. If you only did one of the other. This is why remediation only doesn't work for two reasons one you didn't find the sources and two you just didn't clean it all up right. It works all the time, because I see it work all the time. So for all of you who are feeling like kind of down and like and what sort of like hopeless. Yeah, defeated. It's not that it doesn't work see we feel like that because we think we don't understand why it's not we're just like, oh, it can't ever work. I'm telling you this is why it doesn't work which means if you actually do it the right way it does work we just weren't doing it the right way. Gosh I couldn't agree more and I want to also reiterate something you said earlier that I think it's a big misnomer, someone comes in said oh we'll just fog and clear it out. That will take care that does the pig pen effect temporarily it will not get to the root, and it might what why it's probably felt like it's worked as people feel better temporarily because that does burden, and that particulate in their environment is a little bit better for maybe a month maybe a few weeks. Right and but it all comes back if you haven't gotten to the source. That's always the timeline. Yeah, it's like month or two later. And here's the thing is that they're going to tell you and remember you said live or dead doesn't matter. So like digging a little bit more. First off, let's let's pretend that it killed everything. Cool. It doesn't matter it's all still there that they didn't remove it. It's also there. Right. Now the second thing. These toxins are not alive. They are a chemical. So there's this magic fog don't let anyone sell you on this magic fog that's going to get rid of your mold, and it's also going to somehow denature a chemical compound because it apparently does all of those things. And it's going to somehow get behind your walls and get in there and do all that too, and make it all just disappear into nothingness it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. I think we're talking about this because this is a common theme. And I want to say, there is one caveat to that if you are really suffering, you can't move you have a landlord you're stuck. You don't know the source you don't have time and you fog you can temporary buy some time that isn't about it costs a lot of money, but say you fog and do a small part to get cleaning you haven't found the source, you will feel better for a few months. And again, it's money, but if you have the resources and you don't have an option to leave or remediate immediately, it could buy you time, but it is not getting to the root problem. So, love that you said that. Interesting. I want to talk to the pig pen thing back in my original experience with mold exposure. My contractor brilliantly put this 1970s building he remodeled my office and there's this old horrible carpet probably full of toxins and molds and the office was remodeled right over an unfinished cross space that had standing water didn't know any of this, but they put a beautiful new bamboo floor, right over that carpet instead of tearing it up and creating. And so can you imagine I'm walking every step bamboos very a softwood. So every step as I got sicker and sicker and they're turned out to be a massive mold issue. I was walking on this soft bamboo flooring that was put over this 20 year old carpet. I don't know how I mean it was just toxic but I laugh now because now that I know how crazy is that the shortcuts that happen. I mean it's not just in one industry every industry or show your industry does my industry does guys who do do bug stuff like our, I had a whole podcast on the guy who was doing my like insect whatever in the back yard, and I was so upset because all he did was spray. And then I go and I look under like these light canisters and I see all the spider eggs, like sacks. Like, the same thing. I sprayed instead of finding the source you know what's going to happen all these freaking spiders are going to break out and be everywhere because you didn't actually go figure out where they're coming from it happens in every single industry. It doesn't is the same here right there's got you have a mature arthritis here's methyl trexate that'll cover up your symptoms but it doesn't go to the root of why do you have arthritis in the first place. I always love talking to you Brian and the time goes like this. One last thing I want to just talk about is what's there's a couple myths. I want to be a myth buster today, new homes, multimillion dollar homes, you know, people are like, Oh, well I bought this really expensive or my home is brand new or I bought into a new condo that's brand new built. How often are you seeing mold issues in new builds and newer buildings, compared to older structures like what's the, the thoughts on that because obviously, no places is perfectly safe. It's tough because when you get into this than the reaction from somebody listening to it says there's no hope anywhere. Now we're back to the trailer and the work. Yeah, so I like to talk about it carefully like the point of these conversations I know I get like really excited this doesn't work this does work and sometimes people like Brian just like, it's like, he doesn't help he just says what doesn't happen what doesn't happen. The point is to let us understand what the reality is so then we can start making decisions based off of like the truth of how it works instead of not right. So with new homes. First off, any home can have a more problem. Okay, any home can have a more problem. Now the nice thing is talk pros and cons of new homes that way it's not just all like negative pros and cons. There's no history. Okay, so the dishwasher that flooded 40 years ago when grandma lived in the house that wasn't properly handled that can have happened, right. The more history of house has the more improperly handled water events are now in grained in the house right. So that's a that's a pro on the new house side right is that you're not inheriting all this stuff that happened before right that went on with that. Okay. On the downside outside of the mole front there's a lot of new building materials in there there's chemical off gassing there's kind of like the other thing that you sort of have to deal with on that side so some people are have more triggers but they haven't gotten all the way to the point where they haven't been able to deal with it yet and so maybe that's okay and they can deal with that because they're not so far down other people have triggered MCS and a host of other things off the end of being having all the issues. And so then the new house can't really work for them either because of all the off gassing. But the other thing with new homes is the way the homes are built. And I literally just talked to a client today I'm going to their house tomorrow. Their house when it was built the roof took two months to close the house and it snowed and rained into the house. Who knows how long and they were pushing it out with push rooms out of the inside of their house. And now we're wondering why the kids and everyone else and they're having all of these problems. Right. And they were told oh this isn't an issue this isn't an issue we've had multiple inspectors this isn't an issue right so in the build your house isn't always sealed and covered right right. So there could be elements that happen at the time, and it rains in and it causes a problem that could be one thing the other thing is the lumber and stuff that's being used is stored if you ever go drive by a site as we're just sitting in the dirt outside. And it grows like that's where it starts then they take the wood up and there's mold on the way they build with it so if you're able to, if you're like involved in the process from start to finish and you can kind of see it all happening. You could try to insert a space in the middle, where before they close with drywall, you come and just have the whole thing remediated. And you can actually get off the studs and off of everything you can get all the mold and everything treated and off there and then when you close, you don't have anything back there and you're starting from a clean slate right. Now let's say you're going into a house where you don't have that ability it's a track place or maybe it's like two years old or something or they just built it and it's fully built and now you're ready to move in and you can see it. So there's a couple little tricks that you can do to get a feel for like the type of wood that was used and maybe some of the elements might have happened keep in mind like you can't know everything right. But if there's an attic, go in the attic, look at the wood up there is their mold all over a lot of the wood, they use the same wood to build your whole house. So if you go up there and you see number of areas that's like a significant mold issue, you could kind of assume they're using the same wood to build the rest of the place like for me I'm out of that place like now show me another one show me another one let me go up and look at another one. And then, if you are going to go into a place, you can run, you can run a dust test, and you can see what the load of mold is in there. Right. So when they're building what are they doing they're disturbing their hammering their pounding they're doing this so if there's mold on the framing on the building material and all the stuff it's going to get out just like the smoke off the sources, right. Nobody find particle cleans a house before they give it to you they cosmetically clean a house right, which means all the all that stuff is still in there. So even if you move in a new house you absolutely should be doing a fine particle clean if you're somebody who's definitely for somebody who's sensitive, you should be doing that, but you could do, you could do a dust test in there, and you can see like how bad the load is you can even test from Michael talk you can do the whole thing in there. And the other big thing that you have to be careful of in new homes is the air conditioning systems. So, they run the air conditioning systems in the houses because the workers get hot. Yeah, they're running the air conditioning system all the walls are exposed and they're banging all the stuff that we just talked about it goes in the air conditioning system so I had a client years ago. I had a $5 million house some nice house in LA that I went up in the hills somewhere to this house. Beautiful house. Didn't find one thing that looked like a source anywhere in the house get in the attic their stuff on the attic like I just talked about the three air conditioning units every unit lives in the attic. I tested all three of the units for dust testing on the interior of the units, tested the attic, you know, framing and stuff that was in there, every unit, every air conditioning unit was was heavily contaminated. Wow. So, it doesn't mean you can't avoid it. It's, it just means that you have to know what to look for and like what to test and what to do before you get into a multi $100,000 million dollar thing is once you're in you're like, Oh, now I have all this money in here and move all your things in and if it really is can I love that you said that because my thought now is I'm in this condo and I love it as somebody I may move to a home. Because multi level just like my I don't know if I don't think I mentioned here but I mentioned before last summer, my neighbor above had a fridge leak went down into my condo and of course I had no control over that, kind of like your landlord LA apartment. But I wanted to say, as I'm looking for homes in the future, I have decided there's probably going to be some issue and almost anything I want to buy. So it's what am I willing to risk and take care of. So I'm going into it actually as someone who's mold sensitive knowing, no matter what house I want to purchase, I just had to find out is this something I'm willing to deal with because there's probably going to be some pieces of remediation. And even a new build like you said that I'm going to do. So I actually like to empower people that way because like you said it can be really discouraging. If you're mold sensitive, you just have to know you're in this environment. Number one, if you listen to some of the other podcasts, we can build resilience so that you aren't as sensitive that's a whole nother topic. But number two, like you said Brian, you can go in with a mindset. Okay, I need to find all the issues and then what am I willing to pay for or remediate or deal with and there's some big issues like foundational issues I wouldn't mess with. Some pump maybe maybe not but maybe a window that needs replacing easy right and fix that fogging the house so I like thinking about as you're probably going to run into something and what am I willing to deal with. Can I give a quick game plan on how to do that. Please. I used to work with a lot of people when they were looking for new homes when I only worked in LA so I was able to do that. And had this one particular client like she we ended up looking at 12 different homes she was really sick the whole thing. We looked at 12 different places, she ended up was she was just so discouraged at the end of it it took like a year and a half or whatever to like both those stuff that she ended up buying like the worst place. And then she gutted the whole thing. I'm buying the worst one that I can get the best deal and I'm just gutting the entire thing and we're remediating the starting from scratch. Now that's not the point of the story not everybody can do that but the point of the story is what I learned going through all the houses with her on how to identify stuff to save money, because when it started. I was going through it the same way I would go through like a house that somebody lived in. We got to test all the sources we got to know where everything is because you need to know what you're in for we got to do the a we got to do all these things because you have to know what you're in for before you commit you know an LA it's like a million dollars right, and there was validity to that right like it's like you need to know what you're in for, but there's a way to phase into knowing what you're in for that I learned on like house three or four throughout this process. So, the first thing is you do it you do a straight visual and I've done this for multiple people since then, you do a straight visual. And if, first off, you inspect your own house, you have to do this, if you're looking for a new house you have to inspect your own house why do you have to do this, you have to know how bad it is where you are. Okay, because what you said is true everywhere is going to have a problem. So if you're leaving and you're saying, Oh, I'm just going to go find another place but we know every place has a problem. Well, how bad was your place is the problem you're moving into the same level of problem. Is it worse is it not. So you have to know where you are right now and you have to know how bad it is. Okay, this is your starting point your goal is to not make a lateral move. Right. So this is to make a better move. That's the goal, right. So then you go through the house so let's say you go through and inspect your house you say I had nine source areas of problems that were found. Same cabinet this that whatever was there was nine factories that were found. Plus you have an idea of what the dust stuff is and what your exposure looks like right okay here's my starting point. You go start looking at houses first thing you do is a visual, you learn what water damage looks like which we can teach you how to do right so you learn what water damage looks like. You go through the house. All you need is a flashlight you need nothing else, literally all you need, and you could screen out houses just from looking at them if you know what to look for and where to look for it which is not it's really not that hard once you know what to look for literally taught people in Japan how to do this and they've done it and found like 30 things in their house it's not hard to do. If you see more than the nine things leave. Cool, I'm out I didn't spend a dollar on testing this house because the first thing I did was I looked and I learned what to look for and I got empowered and I figured it out right. So now let's say you go through houses you go through six seven houses they all have seven eight nine things seven isn't good enough if you were nine and seven is the answers not good enough, like it better five, three, four, five that's what you're looking for right. So you finally find a place you go through say okay there's a few things here keep in mind you're probably at minimum always going to find someone between three or five things in a house is probably not going to be any less than that. So okay cool so now I know what this now the next question you ask yourself to turn this into like a training or downloaders yeah I know you ask yourself. What areas are the areas with water damage just before you test anything you're still just looking at it what areas are that are they isolated areas, or the areas that look systemic and massive impacting, because that's cost to fix it. Is it a sink cabinet. That's an easy fix. Is it the ceiling below an air conditioning unit. That's a massive problem. Right. So not each single water damage thing is equal in terms of the cost to fix it right. So that's the next thing so then you look at it before you test anything. Say okay, could I handle remediating these five things if they were all bad. Yeah, cool. Okay, next step, I'm going to do an earn or I'm going to do a dust test in the house, and I'm going to test their conditioning system. The dust test in the house shows you how much because you might not have found all of them, right so you didn't find all the spots, right. So the dust test of the house is going to give you the overall load of everything that's been in that house that you're going to be exposed to right. You need to have done a dust test in your own house so you can get comparison point right you see it. So you do that. You do the same thing with the with the air conditioning system. Is it is it really bad contaminate if it is you're looking 2030 grand replace entire conditioning system know that is that feasible, is it not feasible if not walk. If you find microtoxins that any of them walk it right so like you ease into the testing you do visual first and you just basic screen testing before. Now if the screen tests come back in there good. If you find microtoxin sure there's some mold but that's going to be everywhere. I can deal with this there's only four sources. This isn't super bad. Then you go in, and you do the whole and you do all the source testing in the house and in between here you place your offer on the house right you do the visual. If the visual looks good. Put the offer and do it right there. And then you have a contingency that's anywhere from 10 to 14 days. And then each day, you do your dust testing right away you send it out to take seven days to get that you'll get those results before your contingency is up everyone if you don't know this, you can get 100% of your money back if you back out for any reason within your contingency period. You could back out because you said you saw ghosts in there, and it doesn't matter they'll give you all of your money back. Okay, so what you want to do is you want to lock it down and then you systemically work through the processing flow, all the way through and then the nice little kicker on this is if you do find which you will, if you do find a mold elevation and a dust test right it's always going to be there just no matter how much. Then you go back to the seller to say hey listen, I really like this place you're already in the deal with them now. You're already in the deal they want the deal to go through there's no other offers sitting here right they want the deal to go through with you. Okay, I really like this place. I have a mold allergy use use phrases that people can relate to right don't say I have toxic mold syndrome right like what is that. I'm a little allergic to mold, and I see that there's some here so I just love to get like a like maybe some testing can we extend this for like five days. They'll all say yes they want to close the deal, then you source test everything. Figure out how bad it is, then you go back to them, because now you have testing data tied to the house that they have to disclose whoever's coming in next. Now you say listen, there's sources here. There's this. I like this place. I'm willing to do it. I need X amount of a credit in order to do it. But anyway, if I walk away you know how to disclose all of these problems that I found the next person that comes in, you have leverage. Okay, it's just about using into it and like taking the leverage and manipulating the system and your benefit. So this has been a training I've been wanting to do for a long time. This Brian this is pearls of such great wisdom. Yeah this is, oh my goodness this is so great I know if you're listening out there. This is such valuable information because no one's talking about it. One last little clarifying question you talked about air conditioning your and all places you're going you're doing that are you doing are you cutting out a piece of the filter. Are you doing a PCR what are you doing with the units of air conditioning to test. So we're going in we're going to where the actual unit is and we're opening it where like the fan the blower fan is it spins around where the coil is in there and we're actually in there testing. Okay, are you doing an air sample in there like in the like intricate. No, we're doing dust testing. Most systems don't have mold growing in them. Yeah, they do you swab it and take it right. Most of them don't have mold most of them just look a little dirty. Yes, the composition of the dust. Got it. Okay, I think sure that was clear because I made that's a really really wise thing. Oh my goodness as always you are full of such great information. So people are dying to know where they're going to find you you've got some things coming out tell us a little about what you're working on because I always love. I just want to say to those listening Brian is brilliant and I love that you're helping us as doctors in this industry because you're making our job easier to help heal the patients. And what I love that you're doing is you're constantly getting how can people themselves be more empowered. You've got lots of things going on so tell us about that. Yeah, so I mean our, if you want us to come to your house we can that's what that's we do that all over the country that's what we do. Yes we inspect calm that's our website you can get a free phone console just click the button so that that's what it is. So as far as like what's going on so we have, we have two services out now and within about a month or a third one is we're testing it right now I'm super pumped about it it will be out. Me too. I know. First, we'll, we'll literally go anywhere. We fly all over the country. I have inspectors strategically placed in different cities in the country to make travel easy. Big question comes up. Are you outsourcing your inspectors know I literally am training all of them myself they understand our flow our sequence is all under our umbrella. So that's, that's one thing. A couple years ago I created a program called mode finders method this is a training program was 100% training program to teach people how to go through and find all of these things on their own like I mentioned. In there, it tells you about what are the five signs of water damage, where do you look for them in every room. This core program is what people on six different continents have used to find all kinds of problems in their houses. So, and it's, we're not coming there right it's a DIY program right so it's kind of like you do it on your own this entire training program you can do it is like so much more affordable than like having somebody come out. The downside is, we're not there, there's no consulting back and forth you know all of it right so there's a balance in between. Well in the meantime, I've been trying to figure out how to make some sort of hybrid version of that so two years ago at our meeting, I put out that our goal was to be able to service every provide a service and help every single person no matter where they live in the world and no matter how much money they have. And that has been something we've been working for for a couple years right now, you know, our company has been a so you know we're not we're not cheap to fly somewhere and do all the testing you need right and sometimes it discourages people and I get that, but you shouldn't be independently wealthy, or happen to live in a location where you just have more options like what if I live in the middle of Idaho, like, why can I get help right. And so that that's what we've been working on so basically what we've been doing is we built out our entire framework for how you go through every single room of your house. We built off the mole finders method training program, and then we merged in a lot of the stuff that we do in person as well, and we put it together, and an app that goes on your phone. And the way that it works is, you know, if you're concerned about certain areas or whatever's going on you can literally room by room. It will show you exactly what what pictures we need to see so the nice thing about this if you don't have to learn how to look for anything. The mole finders method was a training program yet to put some time and put some sweat equity in but if you did it really worked. This is, can you take a picture of this this this this and this are you capable of doing that on your phone, you are awesome. Do that send it in and we will look at it and tell you where the problems are. Right. And that's what the new that's what's coming out in like a month we've been working on it for two years. And it's I mean frankly it's going to change the entire industry, and also frankly, a lot of people are going to be pretty pissed off that we have it offered and there's going to be a lot of that happening out there but I kind of don't care because it's not about what our industry thinks about us, it's about what we can do to provide access and knowledge and price availability to everybody at wherever they are on their stage. So now think that you're a renter who is concerned about like one or two rooms, you want us to look at your house but it doesn't make sense to fly us out to your house to inspect the place that you don't own right and spend that kind of money. Now, there's going to be an app where you can just inspect two rooms and it's going to be a fraction of the cost. Right. So there's all these different ways that it's going to work. But no matter where you are and what your goals are and this is why we have to have these conversations up on what you're looking to achieve and what it is that we have something that's going to work and and it's all based in the same process of find the problem, validate the problem, remove the sources, clean up the mess they made. Wow, I love it Brian and so grateful that years ago I'm sorry that you have the experience in LA but what a blessing you have been to practitioners like myself patients that are listening and so many people and this will impact the always well of talking to you and I want to say to your analogies of how you describe are so helpful because a lot of this invisible stuff people are overwhelmed and they don't get it and you do a great job of making complex things. Simple. Thank you as always for being here thank you for joining me today. I will be sure and link up with yes we inspect that common everything that's coming out. Wherever you're watching this podcast or listening. Thank you everyone sorry I talked for so long, but thank you. Thank you.