 Hey everybody thank you for joining us this week before the holidays if you're live here or if you watch this recorded wherever you're at you might be watching after holidays but we're recording this just right before Christmas and the new year. And I'm super excited for my guests today. I will let you in a moment tell his story of how he got into doing what he's doing. But I know it'll be relevant to so many of you listening because many of you have had your own experience with mold, or with mold related illness or with your homes and we're going to dive into all kinds of questions that you might have for an expert remediator today with Michael. I just want to say for housekeeping sake if you want to find all my free content you can go to Jill carnhan.com. We're like 10 years of blogs are all free and I just love writing this stuff so a lot of people have found me because they're researching for mold related information about illness and it's all free so please go to the website. I also have a free mold guide, this is like a 20 maybe 30 page document that tells you what to do if you've been exposed to mold, and I wrote this specifically for the listeners that are out there that maybe don't have access to a doctor like me or a remediator like Michael, who are just desperate to find help and they need some sort of a guidance. So that's out there for free as well and all you have to do it's probably easiest if you just Google Dr Jill free mold guide you'll get to that landing page, and then you can download that for free. I guess I just lots of great information for you. I don't always mention this but because this is a mold related podcast I worked with a company called quick store to create a mold detox box as well and you can go and look at more information on mold detox box.com. That's just a great product once again I found so many people who couldn't see a great doc or a great remediator and we're stuck and we're like what do we do. How do we start and so if you go to mold detox box.com. I always find information about that kit. I always joke this is a terrible analogy but it's like the happy meal for mold detox, which of course I hope you're not eating happy meals but it's like all in one and it says 30 day because it has everything you need to start a 30 day detox. Stay start because if you're listening or you have mold related illness you know 30 days won't do it. I typically tell patients we're just getting started in the first four to six months. And again, Michael and I will talk a lot about if you have exposure what to do, please put in your questions I'll be watching for those as well as you can get more information. And then finally, my regular retail stores just Jill, Dr Jill health dr Jill health.com. If you need any products or things that are professionally, you know, screened, they're all there. I'm so happy about me, I am so happy to introduce my guest, Michael Rubino. We met it was really interesting. He's been doing this a while and just has a great story and a great view. And if you're out there and have dealt with mold. You know how hard it is to find your mediator who really gets mold related illness. They're like one in a million. And Michael's one of those one in a million. It was actually one of his employees who had gone through mold related illness herself. And she reached out to me and said hey you need to know my boss and here's his book. And by the way he mentions you in the book. So it was really special to get that and to see what you'd written and just such a concise guide. We will be sure and let all of you listening know where you can get information about Michael about his book about his remediation company and all of that during our podcast so listen here. But let me introduce him, and then I will turn it over to him. So Michael Rubino has helped over 1000 families heal from toxic mold exposure so far. Numbers keep growing. And this is just the beginning. He's dedicated to helping you have the resources you need to overcome poor air quality and create a safe home environment. And a little note on air quality, you've all heard me say so important clean air, clean water, clean food and this is the core of healing clean air is 80% of our toxic exposures and many of you listening know that and those of you who don't might be surprised at how big of a percent. That's why I talked so much about this because the air quality really, really matters to your health. Michael Rubino has become renowned leader in the mold and remediation space. If you don't follow him on Instagram. Is your Instagram, the mold medic. Is that right. It is at the mold medic. That's great. Great, great place for great information. I love what you post there. He's president of all American restoration and author of the mold medic. He continues to push the conversation forward for creating better indoor air quality. He's been featured in dozens of podcast and news channels as a leading expert in all aspects of mold remediation and air quality. And he's also console certified mold remediator by I I CRC and AC AC both organizations where I recommend you look for qualified professionals and a contributing member sponsor and speaker at the indoor air quality association. So long intro Michael welcome so glad to have you here. Thank you. You know you certainly made me sound cool, which I really appreciate but I want to highlight the fact that when I first got into this. You mentioned that I did mention you in my book. You know you were someone that I stumbled upon and really started to identify and understand, you know, mold toxicity as it affects the person and that really kind of cements the fact of why I'm even here in the first place because how I got into this industry is, I'm a second restoration contractor, meaning my father was it was a contractor before me. And he did fire restoration and if you know anything about fires they get put out with a lot of water so there was mold was definitely a part of it, but nowhere near the way that I look at mold today. And it was kind of that journey of really dealing with that after Hurricane Sandy and starting to see people get sick, where I decided to go down this rabbit hole. And you know, of course I'm thankful and I know the people that I help are thankful that I went down that rabbit hole, and you definitely came up and, and a lot of the research that I've done is because of you and the work you've done so thank you for that. You've helped pave the way for me to exist in the first place. I just just wanted to throw that out there. Thank you. That means so much like I said I was really honored and it's so funny because I'm just right here writing my blog scene my patients in clinic and trying to make a little dent. And so whenever I hear someone like you are a patient that's impacted it's always really precious because you never know who's listening or watching or like for you who's reading your book and it means a lot because sometimes it's when you're in that silent wall of virtual depression, you don't really day to day see all of the impact that's being made and it means a lot that someone like us out there, because for me in the clinical practice I can help heal the patients but what I know to be true is that they have ongoing exposure, there's almost nothing I can do that will really shift their illness. And so I really rely on people like you because I always say you know you have to start with a clean environment it doesn't have to be perfect but if you're in a really highly toxic environment, no amount of supplements will fix it right. So what you do is like the first step, you told a little bit about your father but tell us a little bit more about how'd you get into this and even that depth of understanding that you are, you have around the person who gets ill related to mold because that's a whole different ballgame than many remediators. I've been around construction pretty much my entire life, you know my dad was a master electrician went on to become a restoration contractor, specifically geared more towards fire because historically that's where a lot of the restoration work just existed in the space. I started to learn underneath his tenure ship just kind of really understanding the construction industry which led to building boss and how homes are built and designed. I started to see a lot of the flaws in the way we build our homes, but really it was after Hurricane Sandy when I lived in the Northeast at the time, and there was so many homes that were just decimated from you know the hurricane itself all of this water and what was really peculiar to me was seeing people who are sick, especially after their homes were supposedly already remediated. And so that was really what kind of started to make me question everything you know what is remediation. And what is it about remediation that really helps the person and kind of what I saw was that that really remediation traditionally is more of a cosmetic handling right it's kind of this looks like it never happened. It's not actually scientifically like it never happened as some of these slogans might end up being, but that's when I started to realize the disconnect between what actually makes someone, you know, exposed to contaminants in their home and born out of these water damage events versus, you know what the industry is actually doing to handle this, and just to give like a very quick example. So we look at I look at mold is two different things both the living organism and then the particle that gets created by the living organism. And so, a lot of these IIC RCS 520 I mean, they do a stellar job at kind of addressing mold. I think that the educational piece regarding that, it tends to leave off the byproduct side. And so, you know you're removing this wall and you know you're removing the mold that's growing into the drywall but you're not addressing the mold behind it growing into the studs, potentially the installation. There's a lot of confusion in that arena, and then certainly we know that mold that's growing in one corner of a room is going to transmit through the air to other parts of the home. Those remediation protocols or policies were not actually geared to address that side of things as a matter of fact, it was really just neglected overall so when I started to look at all these things and I started to dive more into microbiology and some of the health components of this. Well, it's clear as day we're just missing really the boat all together in the remediation industry. I ended up linking with some really amazing people on the mold inspection side that were doing some more progressive types tests that helped identify, you know, more of the cross contamination issue. We're talking 2013 I had no idea what a mycotoxin was at the time. Here I am I'm tasked with, you know, removing mycotoxins from someone's home. That's another rabbit hole I had to dive down and figure out what is a mycotoxin and how does it react in our environment. So, in that research I found out that it acts more like a chemical residue. So I started diving down this path of what how do we clean up chemical residues. Wow. And there and there was born out of this process that that is in the book that kind of talks about how do we deal with the contamination at hand created by the sources of mold, born out of these water damage events so that is the the long and short of kind of how I stumbled upon this and it's obviously a ball from there. Oh gosh I love that you're talking about this now just in my clinician I am not the remediation expert view I want to kind of restate that and then let's dive into some of the details because you'll be able to clarify more than even I can. So from my understanding, we've always thought about spores which are actually very large they're like I don't know 10 part particulate matter right versus 2.5 and the VOC ranges those lower. The 10s are like the dust and the dirt and the debris and the mold spores are quite large. They're actually easy to filter in general, like with scrubber system or whatever. And when I always tell patients and again you can clarify anything that I have not quite right, but you could have, especially some really nasty molds that like dark dank places and they're stuck behind either floorboards or in the wall, Stacky botchers ketomium these guys are dark and they need a water source and they often are not in the air. In fact, in my experience if you have Stacky in the air or ketomium you've got a really big issue right like they don't quickly throw their spores into the air easily unless you have an open place where there's a mold source, often they're hidden. But what you said is, while they're hidden behind the under the floor behind the drywall in your crawl space, they're secreting mycotoxins mycotoxins are more on the realm of the 2.5 particulate matter and they're invisible they're like almost like fumes I think of them like smoke and formaldehyde, they're not particulate in the sense they're like E coli I think is about 2.5 which is a bacteria so these really tiny little things. Now though is actually cause the organ damage the immune compromise the toxicity they are being studied by you know, in the, in the armed forces for chemical warfare some of the things like trichocything so these are the really nasty chemicals that mold was created to protect itself so it secretes these chemicals and they cause damage but most remediators, unlike you are not looking at that. So they might do air sampling which I think is a perfectly wonderful valid part of inspection, but they're not testing for mycotoxins and they're not testing for I still like qpcr and again I want your comments on these, because I think this picture, what I often see is I see in the qpcr some of these nasty things in the dust, or in the Emma test or some of the tests for mycotoxins I see much more toxic things than I do in the air samples and I want all three of those things but so what's your comment on that whole slew about like where do we find these how do we really get a good inspection and why do patients here's the number one question, why do patients often have one, two, three four inspectors that do an air sample and they say everything's perfect. You know, it's a great question. And then there's a lot of great questions in there. First off, I love qpcr technology because I mean we all we all have heard about pcr technology at this point with this pandemic we're living in. And it actually is looking at the DNA of what's there. So that spores fragments the whole nine it's all of the things that could enter the body, opportunistically, by getting into their breathing zone. Our homes are living breathing systems right and so what's in our dust ends up becoming inside of our body so it's really important we analyze the dust, not just the air. It gives you a snapshot in time in one in one particular area right so they'll have these pumps that get set up they typically set them up in the center of the room. They run it for you know five minutes and it just tells you within those five minutes what exactly had passed through that specific area. It's very limited because you can be three feet away and have a problem, and it's not going to pick it up nearly as much as if you were just three feet closer. So you really want to look for more signs of water damage and test closer to those areas. So you can really get a better view. I think air testing is very very limited and unfortunately it gets misused a lot. And I think that's kind of part of the problem because yes if you do an air sample in the center of the room and there happens to be nothing going on in the center of the room, it can give you this false and security that your house is fine. And I can't tell you how many times, you know people send me results and they're like you know what do you think what's the remediation plan the guy recommended no remediation. I said well you know we only have three air samples to go off of. Why did he take the air samples and those exact locations, and it was just oh it was just random you just did a random check. You know that's not really. Those are not really quality assessments that are going to provide you any data. It would be kind of like going to your doctor. Like I don't feel well. Cool I'm going to check your vitamin D level vitamin D looks great you're fine. It's like what about all the other things that you could check for. Let's say you know there's today there's technology we call them tools in the tool belt, you have all these different tools in the tool belt, we want to utilize those things, and that's actino my CDs it's mycotoxins it's you know army or qp cr. You know, Emma of course there's different variations of it. You have air testing of course but you want to test specifically based upon what you're seeing visually, and then of course you have swabs so swabs are pretty good if you have, let's say a water stain. And you're you're like well I'm not sure if that's mold or if that's just water damage. Well then you should definitely check for test for it right, and I think that's a good indicator. You know, he's followed you know someone like Brian car at mold finders on Instagram, for example, you'll, you'll see some really cool posts of him swabbing something that looks pretty innocent but by the numbers you're like holy crap there's a lot there. And I think it's really important to kind of to really utilize these tools in the tool belt to really help, you know, diagnose what's going on inside the home that could be causing or exacerbating chronic illness. She just did a great overview and the one thing that you mentioned but I want to emphasize is, there's no substitution for a great inspector because you need this computer just like I use it with my patients there's no, you know, but that you could read an article online but for me or someone who else who's a medical detective to go in there. Same as what you do Brian is basically all of the important stuff really comes from that inspection and looking at it so I want to emphasize if you're out there and you don't have a good you really do need to get someone in there but sometimes in the interim to get started, you can do some of these things to get started on your own I bet you have people Michael that comment that bring you testing, and they ask you then where to go from there. Let's talk to the people who are like, Oh, I think there might be an issue I've been feeling poorly in my house. What would you say, how would you advise them to start and give us just kind of a rundown of say you have suspect illness from mold in a home. What would you tell the client, you know, probably my first recommendation like if you're if you're not kind of sold on the whole idea of getting someone inside your home. You know, really doing a full gamut of testing. I would say the first place to start would probably be QPCR technology. I would analyze your dust is going to give you again an overview of what's in your dust, what's in, which means what's in your environment. I think it will it will give you the confidence that you need or the lack thereof of to move forward or not move forward on. Is there a problem inside my home I think it's, it's one of the most elementary tests that you can do to identify if there's an issue. And, you know, again, just bringing back Brian up in the conversation, developing this technology called like the army code, where you can then decipher that at a very respected cost. I think is probably a good way to go to identify really what's going on and do I need to take steps further from there. I love that you say that because as a clinician again I am not the expert I always tell patients but I've had to learn enough to help people get to people like you. And so my take on in the same in a clinic. I'm doing questions on mold symptoms and if they're positive than I do a visual contrast test either online or in my clinic so few screenings that are free. And then I'll go deeper with labs that cost more money urinary mycotoxins of blood work etc and look at a deep dive, but same at the point where I'm highly suspicious of mold, I will absolutely have him order an army. If you're listening you're like army qpcr what's the deal I'm going to explain and then I'd love Michael your thoughts on it, because I bet we'll be the same. Ernie was an old. It's not really old but the way they set it up they tested some HUD housing and some of it was supposedly moldy some of it was not. And they took a logarithmic scale to say these are the moldy homes these are not moldy homes and get a score. I just agree that that score is basically invalid it doesn't mean a whole lot. So when we say I've, I've turned to start calling it qpcr because all that means is that it's PCR testing DNA testing of the dust in your home, and it has no attachment to that and a lot of your mediators are like, that's not valid. So it's the same test though, if you order it, it's still called an army but the thing that Michael you and I do and this is where again I'm not the expert but I do have patients often start with that, because I've learned to look at those numbers, and I and I do a hurts me score and then I also look at this anything out of line right so I look at the individual molds that are on that sheet. And again I'm not the expert but I can usually see patterns and then I'll say you need to call Michael or someone like that. But I do find like you that for me in the clinic it's easiest way to give the patient some control over starting. And I would say 90% of the time what I like to do is actually match what I see in their dust to what I see in their urine. And if I see high tricose the things and then high stackier could tell me my bingo this is coming from your environment and then I can clinically say this is relevant. Go get an inspector because I don't know where it's at I just know there's something bad in your home and your dust. And then I will also mention no affiliation but if you're looking to do test and you can mention other companies I think right now in viral biotics and micro metrics are two good companies. What do you have to say about qpcr do you feel like that's in line with what your thoughts are. Yeah it's actually exactly in line I mean you know the scoring methodology that they're me has is very flawed. You'll have scores that are like an eight where the data is like I mean you almost can't get it better. And then you have scores that are like a negative four and it's like you know stackies off the charts and like this is not a safe house right so You can't you can't really rely on the score unfortunately but the data itself based upon the qpcr technology is really valid right because that's actual that that all is reliable that you can actually count on the algorithms and things like that if they're ever going to you know focus on updating that in the future or whatnot, you know it definitely isn't workable now, but the technology is very very useful and you mentioned this word screenings earlier, you know and kind of how you use that in your practice. I would say that qpcr technologies is kind of exactly like that it's it's your it's your home screening right and that'll tell you based upon that what you need to do, you know from there is it get a deeper dive inspection, or does this place relatively good and you know depending on if you're obviously a renter or a homeowner that can kind of determine your path to you know securing a lease or you know, going down that path of remediation before you move in if you're on the homeowner side. Great, great analogy. So then here's another question and again I've had this happen a lot I'm sure you have to but for those people listening. What if you get in you find out there's mold in your crawl space and maybe behind your wall, you get a remediator and they go in there they cut out all the mold plus you know margins and they do a good job. Then you repeat either the early qpcr some sort of air sampling and it's worse. I know there's more steps than just that why don't you talk about like why is there failed remediations and what the why the dust and during debris and the clean of your home matters so go through that with us a little bit. Yeah, so first I think the term failed remediations probably a really good one to bring up and talk about and kind of unpack because I hear that word a lot and I think it really stems from two different things one either. You didn't get the enough testing data, you know to really identify what what was going on inside the home so that the remediation could have been performed. And so, sometimes like a failed remediation can indicate that additional testing additional issues are needing to be found, located and remediated properly. And then on the other side of the fence you may have all the data you need, but the actual remediator doesn't understand what to do with that data. And so the work plan isn't really going to be conclusive enough to take that data and make sure that you're going to get the outcome you're looking for. And so that's kind of the other side of the fence of fail remediation. I see both, you know, a lot. Unfortunately, and it is pretty frustrating, no matter which side of the fence you're on. But I think it's really important to kind of do your due diligence, especially if you're vetting a remediation company, like all American restoration as an example, you want to make sure that you're, you know, that you feel comfortable that they're actually going to achieve the outcome you're looking for. I think contractually I see a lot of stuff that happens where, you know, they say one thing but the contract reads something totally different and so when you're trying to hold them accountable on passing they're like well I you know I don't guarantee that. I think always make sure the guarantee in writing matches up with their what they're talking about verbally, and just get clarity on what what's included because you know a lot of this stuff is unfortunately just traditional remediation tactics. They're opening walls they're taking care of the sources, but they're not dealing with what that sources created over time the mycotoxins the mold spores and it was correlating. So, if they're not specifically going to clean your home after to remove or reduce those things. When you do another army after the fact it could even get worse, because they're shifting stuff around there's all this equipment moving air around, even if they're putting a room under negative pressure. I actually did like this whole animated army video that you guys should check out to kind of see the animation behind what I'm talking about, but essentially imagine doing a bathroom on the second floor, you put that bathroom under negative pressure. There may be hidden sources of mold across the home that are behind you know behind walls you can't see them, but when you put that bathroom under negative pressure all the air tour in the house is moving towards that bathroom. When that happens, you're going to be pulling stuff into the environment inadvertently so then when you swipe the environment to test it, you're like, Oh my God it went up remediation you know so it's, it's unfortunately a lot of containers don't know or understand what I've just mentioned. So you're going to have that disconnect and being able to explain and comfortably what happened and make sense to you but when you're actually removing the sources, and then you start to clean, you'll actually start to gain, you know, net, net positive results, meaning the scores get lower and lower the counts get lower and lower everything gets better. So it's really the way I look at remediation is you're looking to kind of tackle those things and create what I call a new equilibrium, a lesson toxic load. And that's kind of the goal of remediation in general or at least it should be. Okay, so I love this. So let's talk real quickly kind of like, I'm going to talk about what I think might be kind of a steps and then you clarify because you're the expert here not me. But really though we need to find the source, we need to have an expert go in under negative pressure and, like I said cut out anything for us you don't want to treat stuff that's for us you cut it out. There are a few surfaces would it be like concrete or non forced material that you could treat or even studs in a wall scrub them. You really scrub them and then treat them right if you can't remove them. Is that correct so far. And then after that this dust and debris it before the remediation it was going around your house in your air ducts and things and then after you might have actually screwed it up. And what you said is real true because often that contains source, especially the spores are kind of their left undisturbed and they're secreting toxins so the person there may not feel well but they're actually fairly undisturbed. So no to remediate you're really blowing it up right like no matter how good it's contained. So the thing that I found to be key after and again I want your comment on this is the air ducts need to be cleaned at some point after. And the house needs to be cleaned in detail with a small particulate clean there's pretty good protocols now, because basically that dust and debris that's left behind that could be like parts of mold, or toxin residue from mold that can cause illness as much or more as the original source. So a little bit about that did I have that right in what order. Yeah, you have that you have it exactly right and I think that's kind of where I think most people miss the boat is you know they're they're looking at the source remediation as remediation because honestly traditionally that's what most mold remediators have been pushing for sales, if you will. The cleaning process at the end after the sources are eradicated is really important. And in that video I mentioned earlier I talked about how it doesn't matter if you were meeting one room or 10. You have to clean the house after because you're going to inadvertently pull stuff into the environment. You know you had what when those sources existed and most most of the time when I visit somebody's home, there could be sources for 10 plus years that were hidden in existence that were hidden that people didn't know about could even be previous owners, you know that that had this problem occurring and they didn't weren't aware of it so, you know, think about the lifespan of that and how air circulates throughout a house especially with our forced AC that we all have typically, it just kind of moves around the home. It gets into, you know these dust trappings, it gets caught in interstitial areas like below the baseboards. So, you know, once you are in remediation you're going to be putting that room under negative pressure because you don't want to what you're opening up to cross contaminate the rest of the house, but because your house is already essentially cross contaminated, you're going to be pulling that towards where you're remediating. And so I think a lot of people miss that fact or maybe just haven't really connected the dots on it. But when you look at it that way and you start to really wrap your head around it you see how important it is to clean thereafter because as you're pulling stuff to the center of the environment, you want to then remove it all the all the particular from the environment including the toxins. And you know, of course there's also potential for bacteria depending on the path the water came from. So all that has to be taken into account, tested for both before and after to really validate that it was done and I don't care how good of a remediator you are that you're dealing with microscopic particles you have to test after the fact to say, Okay, I can confidently say that this person is better off now that this place is fixed. Great, great overview. So a couple things first of all, what do you think is the biggest cause we've touched on these but a failed remediation like when you go in. And often I'm assuming you go after they've maybe had a previous remediation that's unsuccessful and you see the things that didn't work. And again we've touched on all this but what would you say like top three things that failed remediation might be caused from. So I mean, just I can give different examples for you. I'll give one example of a remediation project that was that I know of that happened in New York, and it was, I mean, when you went in there, there was still debris, drywall debris I mean chunks of drywall left behind which you know if you get debris on that level you know that they're not HEPA vacuuming on a molecular level right so you know you start seeing that things were missed, you know visibly you can tell kind of microbiologically it's not clean. And there leads to that neglect. I've seen you know situations where the remediation looked really good. The company did a great job. However, you know there was other sources that and we don't have all have x-ray vision, but there are other sources that needed to be identified eradicated and then the fine particle cleaning would then achieve that new volume so it's kind of this years of experience that I've cultivated that have kind of really allowed me to stay away from failed remediation, not to say that it doesn't happen where I get you know stuck in a project and have to you go through these procedures to figure out what the root cause is, but it's kind of like knowing when things should work and they're not so it allows me to pivot and say okay, there has to be another hidden source somewhere to get the inspector back in there to identify it so that's that's how you can avoid kind of scenario two. Scenario three I mean unfortunately it's it's tough you have to really vet the company to really understand if they know what they're doing because scenario three you have people that come in and they're telling you you know I can fog the place you don't need to do all this remediation, you don't need to do all this tear out that's over the top, and it's just it's just really misguided advice that leads you down this road where things just do not meet the outcome you're looking for. And so you know it's, I think it's just vetting people if you have a good report from an inspector, and there's all this clinical data and you have armies and you have mycotoxins. If the company's telling you you don't need to worry about that kind of stuff, you know that's not necessary. That would be a red flag for me to identify that that company might not be what I'm looking for because there is a really big difference between companies that know how to do this medically and I think you have to really understand and vet the difference. I love that last line there because that's really where it's at here is. Again, it's kind of like me with my little special focus and functional medicine versus general practitioner they're amazing for a heart attack or you need a basic blood work that's what they do and they do a great job. But if you want this very specific narrow deep focus and chronic illness mold lime etc that's what I do. And same as you and the remediators. And I love the honestly from me my perspective with the patients it's are they getting well. So I always if we're doing the plan that should detox them and at six months or not making any progress. I always have to go back to are they living in a clean environment, we have to go back to them they need someone like you to help me because, sadly, it's more common if I had to guess percentages I'd say almost 80% of the first time remediations are failed in my patients, maybe more is crazy. That is, that's depressing honestly. It is it's so sad so it is important and you know what the other thing it usually costs more, it really does because it takes more time to do what you do than to go in and go out and not clean the clean itself can take days right depending on the side of the house. So yeah, and the manpower and all that. Yeah, I estimate it's to do it right. It's about 500 square feet per day that that team can comfortably clean so you know, yeah, 5,000 square foot home for an example that's 10 days. If somebody's telling you they can do it in a day or two I don't. Yeah, I think, I don't think they're going to change rags often let's say that you know they're going to go through it pretty quick and you know this really takes a standard of care, you know and it's it's got it you got to take your time with it. And it's just a downtime alone with you know verifying things with post testing and waiting for those results and making sure that everything comes out good before you move on to reconstruction, you know doing it right. It's going to take it's going to take longer it's ready aim fire, but the result you get at the end of the tunnel is so worth it right because you can definitely feel the difference when you're looking at a standard cosmetic remediation versus a deep medical grade remediation. I love that and the other clarifying thing is, there's a lot of you who are not super sensitive and they might do okay with a standard remediation. So we're talking to the person who's very much ill from mold and they're maybe mass selectivation their hypersensitive their environment, they're the 25% that has more genetics related to poor detox of mold. And again the average person might not be as effective that the people that I see all of them are much deeper affected and they really need a very clean environment. One thing you mentioned that I've had personal experience with wanted to talk about fogging has its place, but fogging by itself in a severely, you know home that has severe issues is I had a personal experience we had a small water leak under my sink I found a little aspergillus in the air like oh let's get this cleaned up. And this was years ago before I really understood someone promised me oh we'll just fog and that'll be fine. And so what happened is I was having no symptoms before the fog, and then they fogged and I got really sick I didn't feel well. And in my mind I'm assuming what other enzymatic process they used in the air broke up those scores and things that were in the air, made them smaller fragments and actually cause more in my body in effect and I realized oh gosh we'd be really careful because you must always take care of the source. I have found in some cases when someone has no choice for a couple months that fogging can sometimes diminish the air, the amount in the air just temporarily, but if there's a source. Any thoughts on fogging its place because I feel like it does have a place in the cleaning and remediation at times but where would you put that in the order of operations and what caution yeah. I would put that more at the end when you removed all the sources and you're doing that deep cleaning I think it's valuable there because it's going to help bind to the particulate in the air, forcing it to the surfaces allowing you to vacuum and wipe them away. Where it's misused is when it's used in place of remediation. I think that's really the big thing I mean there's, there's white papers out there that that the fogging companies release. They actually look at the white papers it'll show you that this you shape kind of curve where the levels do go down right and mainly we're talking about through air testing I don't think it would quite make the mark on PCR testing, but the air test does go down in the air, you know, and I do think that it provides people some relief in the very short term. But it comes back with a vengeance and I'm sure that it probably speeds up the production of mycotoxins because I, you know, if mold feels threatened and you know we don't know all the ways mold feels threatened. Certainly I don't think this is helpful to the equation on that particular piece of the puzzle, but essentially, you know, that's really the simplicity of it it's going to come back it's going to come back with a vengeance so you have to ask yourself, is that money better spent than fixing the problem once and for all. Or, you know, do you want to go down this road of fogging every couple months. And, and, you know, kind of that being your plan. You know, most people I would say, when they buy into the fogging, it's because they're actually being sold on the fact that this is remediation. And, you know, for so many people and this is why it's so difficult for me to even call myself a remediator because when you look at the term remediation and all of the people utilizing it and what Howard Howard they utilizing that you start to think that it's all the same. So, if you think at $2,500 fogging is the same as I don't know a $25,000 remediation. Yeah, you're going to be skewed in the way you're thinking because you're going to say why would I spend 10 times more. If I can get the same result the problem is that you're not getting the same result, not even close. And, you know, and I think that's where I wish, you know, there was more care in the way companies marketed themselves. I feel like your industry is coming around, thanks to go like you but it's kind of like the Wild West, as far as it's starting to get more regulated but it's anyone could kind of call themselves a remediator and who knows how good of work they're doing. So that's super important. Like right now I do have an oil based fogger and I use it my home and office maybe once a year it's purely preventative I don't have any known issues, but I would never do that if I had a source. I mean you have to kind of go to that source. I do find it just keeps and we have all these wonderful filtration systems I always say my air in my office is cleaner than like a hospital, because we have five air filters all with the AC filters and they're always running in every room and so and same as my house so it's kind of neat to see just a little this is just a side note but we got through COVID, the whole entire pandemic, the 18 months, because I was a, you know, medical office with retail we were able to stay open with all my five air filters for the entire time, and nobody got sick, and I think part of that is the air quality, like we really had good air quality and air exchange and our filters would filter out viruses so even that quality. Any thoughts on air filtration or UV lights or what what what are your thoughts about say post remediation what would you recommend people do if they want the best air quality in their home. So first off we filter our water, you know we should be filtering our air. I think that it's important it just helps, again, keep the toxic burden that we're exposed to as minimal as possible. I think air quality and the efficiency matter. You're asking me what's the number one feature that I look for in an air quality device, such as an air purification system. I look for how small of a particle can it remove the smaller the particle can remove the better value it offers. There was another interesting thing I noticed about air purification systems there's a ton of like YouTube videos you can kind of check out like different efficiencies, but it's another Wild Wild West industry, but you have some air purifiers say they go down to I don't know three microns for example, right, and you have another product side by side that goes down to three microns and if you put particle counters in front of both they both say 99% effective. You get one that has more particles coming out of it than the other. I find that very strange right because 99% you would think you know it's going to be reducing the amount of particles, but some of them just happen to be more efficient than others. And again, it's back to this marketing tactics a lot of these companies are, you know, just get away with, as long as it's 99% efficient right percent of the time they're going to go for that right. That makes things confusing so I would definitely do my homework on them. You know, a lot of the companies that are well marketed. While they're there most of their money is spent in marketing so you got to wonder how good the quality is always verify that. Take a look, read the reviews, look at the videos see if somebody has put a particle counter in front of it, because you'll be surprised that YouTube is a wonderous place for that. And I think, you know, dive into how small of a particle can actually remove because if they can't remove that small of a particle, keeping in mind that mold can be anywhere between two and four microns might go toxins smaller than that. Of course you have the fragmentation that happens as well when the sport itself breaks up into smaller particles. So you want to keep all that in mind the smaller the particle the better. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I use Austin air there's many other good ones but just personally from feeling better perspective, it tends to work they've been around a while. One other thing I want to mention there are some of these newer companies that promise either UV filtration or ozone. And some of them even say we don't produce ozone but what happens in those types of machines is the interaction of their process with the particulate and the environment can create ozone. And there's just a caution, some people feel fine and do great with that but patients have lung inflammation or lung issues like myself five years ago. I did very poorly I felt burning in my lungs I felt much worse when I had that type of filtration system so for those who have lung inflammation, even the smallest bit of ozone and they are can be irritating so I would just caution. And they can be good. I don't want to say they're all bad but for patients who have inflammation. My experience is they don't do well with lung inflammation. So caution. That makes a lot of sense you know I particularly don't use ozone technology in my business just because of the fact that yes. There's a lot of those issues there's also some issues with just the sometimes it breaks down certain things that people have inside their home contents wise that can cause some problems so I tend to stay away from it for that from that reason. Good yeah I think it's again you and I are dealing with a sensitive population and they don't do very well with ozone. I'm not going to give you the hospital systems great whatever but it's all games so good gosh so much great information you mentioned a video a couple of times so when we're done you be sure and send me that link to it and I'll make sure I will wherever you're watching this there'll be a link to the video that Michael was referring to and of course all your websites, but before we go into where people can find you. What if someone is, first of all, do you do consults all over the US and can people call you virtual how do you work. I do do consults do virtual, you know, very sparingly do I hop on a plane and come in person but that that does happen from time to time. I, we are a nationwide company as far as all American restoration. I am the founder of that company I still in the acting president, you know definitely involved behind the scenes and making sure that our, you know our clients are well taken care of. We do travel, you know, nationally essentially consulting wise, I consult internationally as well. A lot of clients in Ireland in the UK that don't really have a lot of professionals out there with a vast amount of expertise, even less so than in the US unfortunately. So I've been, you know, doing everything that I can to help as many people as possible. There's only one of me so I get, you know, booked up and stuff like that but I try to respond as quickly as possible. And I do definitely respond a lot on Instagram, where I give a lot of free content and apparently tick tock now to because I got to keep up with the times. I know right and I've been so I need to get down there too but it's a journey. That's awesome and what's your main website, Michael. My main website is the mold medic.com for, you know, contact me learn more about the book and how to work with me and just unbiased questions that you may have in regards to how do I find a good inspector, how do I find a good remediator for the remediation side we have a ton of free information on what remediation should be. And you can find all that stuff on all American restoration calm. And then of course we'll link to those and I highly recommend your books so again that's how I found you as your one of your employees sent me a copy and it's like this guy really knows what he's doing I want to connect with him and we all need each other and so I definitely need to know like you, and so highly recommend and you were kind enough to send me a little stack and I've been giving them to patients because it's such a great little concise. It's almost like a handbook, and you probably wrote it for that purpose is giving. Just a simple guide, you know, and I tried to really cement the fact that it's, it's not all equal. I look at this as a triangle you have, you know you need a good inspection you need a good remediator, and you need a good healthcare practitioner right because without that you know it's really hard to make sure you have everything you need to heal. Totally agree. Well, thank you for the great work that you are doing in the world I'm so glad we connected so glad I could like last year. Any last minute advice or notes or anything else about what you guys do. You know nothing that's immediately coming to mind and we covered a lot of great topics here today you know if for anything that I've missed if you have questions please reach out I'm happy to answer. Awesome and if you're listening just look below wherever you find this I will be sure and include links and information. Thank you guys for joining us so much today and thank you Michael for your great work in the world. Thank you for having me.