WARNING: 6 SIGNS YOUR HOME IS MAKING YOU CHRONICALLY SICK

Stop Spraying Mold With Bleach

Dr Pompa 0:00

Most people do when they find mold in their house, they start spraying bleach on it, hydrogen peroxide.

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Oh, okay, big mistake. Part of the risk of that is that when you have sprayed it with bleach, if you don't reintroduce water, you now have a clear, invisible mold.

Dr Pompa 0:14

When you come in and you spray that mold area, it just launched biotoxins right in your face and throughout your house.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Mold can hibernate for hundreds of years and then add some water and it's right back.

Dr Pompa 0:26

People's homes oftentimes are under negative air pressure. Moist air is coming in and mold starts to form. And over time, you got yourself a problem.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Their defense is to produce mycotoxins to harm whatever organism may think they look like a treat.

Meet The Mold Remediation Expert

Dr Pompa 0:43

This episode, everything, mold? Okay, I know no one wants to learn about mold, but if you have brain fog, if you have pain, if you have fatigue, if you have weird anxiety, can't sleep, any weird symptom, even sudden diagnosis of autoimmune or something crazy, well, it might be mold. So that's why you need to watch this show. But we're gonna hit the myths and the pitfalls because you know what most people do when they find mold in their house? They start spraying bleach on it, hydrogen peroxide. Oh, oh, okay, big mistake. You're gonna see what to do, how to do it. And when you do find mold, okay, big mistakes are made. Not after you watch this podcast. Okay, this is everything mold, as I said, but I'm here with the expert, my buddy Jim Stevenson from Stevenson Restoration. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Okay. Uh unfortunately, um, you and I have had a lot of run-ins.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Yeah.

Dr Pompa 1:41

Weirdly large amount for uh meaning I've had a lot of yeah, I've had a lot of mold issues, right? You know, in in my past, not in my future, in my past. That's right. All right. But um fact is though, is uh there's a right way to remediate mold. There's a right way to kill mold, there's a right way um to deal with mold in general so you don't expose your home and all your children and your you know loved ones in your home. We're gonna talk about that, right? Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. First of all, but I want to back up. Um, how'd you get into you know mold? I mean, it's like who wants to deal with mold restoration? And by the way, we're also gonna tell you, wherever you live in the country, how to get the right guy and how to test for mold. We'll even talk about that, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Well, uh, for me, I uh I wanted to uh help people as far as a career goes. And I'd uh I'd learned uh uh a little bit about restoration work, uh flood, mold cleanup, um and during college as a job just on the side. But then what I ended up doing is I went into law enforcement and uh that didn't do as well for my family, and it was getting to be a little bit stressful on me, so I decided to so open something up on the side, and I I knew restoration work, so I started into that, and that's when I really dived into it and learned a lot more and uh and it took off, and and now that's that's where I've really found my niche where I'm able to help people out and be able to get their homes recovered and and really it's like a it's like a puzzle, their home, yeah. Finding out where all these sources are and yeah, exactly.

Dr Pompa 3:18

It's all yeah, so many, so many people are are sick and it's because of mold, right? And that that's my passion about obviously it's part of my story, part of my perfect storm. And I I became extremely mold sensitive to where if I'm even around little bits of mold, my body tells me very quickly. It's not that I it's not that I remain sick like the old days, but uh boy, I get brain fog pretty quick. Um and my body tells me bail. Um, so that's why, you know, I'm so passionate about the topic. Uh, you're you're a real geek, I have to tell you. That's why I love you.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Yeah.

Why Mold Testing Often Fails

Dr Pompa 3:54

I uh I do uh nerd out about it. Yeah, well, I'm and and it's it's important because let's get right after it as far as this is what happens, right? People suspect they have mold, typically do a basic mold test. Most of the time that comes back in negative, right? When I say to somebody, I think you might have a mold issue. Nine times out of ten, they say, Yeah, we thought so too, but we had our house tested, right? And it came back normal. So just kind of talk about that as a starting place. What you know, why is it difficult to test for mold?

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Well, it can be difficult because mold mold is ubiquitous. There's going to be mold in every environment. So you're going to have base levels and they're comparing against the outside. And so just because it it might be in balance with the outside doesn't mean it's in balance with what you're able to handle. But also it changes, it changes at different times of the day. It changes on the elevation of where the sample trap is collecting the uh the uh sample from. And so um, I mean, stacky battress is a more heavy mold spore, and that's like typical black mold, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So black molds and such, they're more heavy mold spore, so your traps are gonna catch more lower down than higher up, and then penicillium aspergillus, that's your usual fuzzy stuff. Um, but also uh very toxic.

Dr Pompa 5:18

That's that's the one that gets me, actually. Uh it's typically in homes behind walls, drywall, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Yeah, and that's a much lighter one, so you'll catch a lot more of it from a higher up test. So it can it can be very difficult with testing. It's a snapshot of the exact moment in time right then. And what if the pressure in the home at that moment was uh positive and it was blowing it out the doors and out the walls instead of negative, which it might turn to at night, or when you have your furnace on as opposed to your AC. So much can change.

Opening Walls Without Spreading Spores

Dr Pompa 5:47

Yeah, and the other problem is too, is like I remember my one wall. Do you remember that that whole thing? Um air tests were always coming back normal. Then we tested behind the wall, and it was like, oh, that's odd. And but we looked at you, we'll talk a little bit about this too, but you I you did um some of the uh the heat, what's it called? Infrared uh heating, and it always looked normal. But the problem was it was on the other side of the insulation, and so therefore it didn't show. There was no water damage, but the mold test in that wall showed it was high, and then finally I I had someone open it up um correctly. I was it one of your guys, I I I don't remember, but anyways, you we we opened it up correctly, so um, and then we found the mold, right? But here's here's the problem, right? So people then let's say they okay, there's a water spot, they'll typically have a contractor come out, they cut it out, they find mold, right? Because the leak was there before it even showed itself, and now they just expose their house. Talk about that because there's a right way to do this. So once someone finds mold, um, or even suspects, I'm gonna open up that wall. We don't know yet. What do we do? How do we do that?

SPEAKER_02 7:03

You want to build a containment, you need to contain the area because any even even a the smallest, like a centimeter square of mold can have millions of spores per cubic meter, or excuse me, per per square centimeter. And your normal fungal ecology, at least I'm speaking here in Utah, you're only supposed to be exposed to around 500 spores per cubic meter uh in totality, and much less of the of the toxic ones like penicillin or or black mold. And so when you expose it, when you're cutting open the wall, the vibrations and everything, and now you've exposed it to the air, you just you just kicked out like a field of dandelions, you just shook them out to the whole world, and so they're gonna blow everywhere. Yeah, and so you you end up with uh spore count that that just skyrockets for the whole house. I've done it to myself.

Dr Pompa 7:49

I I I've done that. I've found mold and did that and got very sick, much sicker. So that's the big mistake. And also it's it's not just about the mold spore, it's about the mycotoxin, aka biotoxin. And that's very, very small, and it goes everywhere. And that's what really makes you sick because we're not talking about a mold allergy here. We're talking about biotoxic illness. When I mentioned all the symptoms, the anxiety, the aches, the pains, the sleep, that's biotoxic illness. That's not a mold allergy, um, meaning you're responding a mold allergy responding to the actual spore, which can be very annoying. But we're talking about reacting to these toxins. Why does mold produce toxin? What tell me that?

SPEAKER_02 8:31

It's a self-defense mechanism. They're they're like any living organism, they have a um uh uh interest in defending themselves and uh and prolonging their own existence. And so um their defense is to produce mycotoxins to harm whatever uh organism may think they look like a uh treat.

Dr Pompa 8:49

Um it's it's protecting itself against other bacteria that might eat and other molds that might compete with it, or what else?

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Uh and well as far as I know, uh I'm not as uh uh directly, I'm not as expert on that as knowing all the other functions that the mycotoxins may have. Yeah. But I do know that um with them being so small and posing such a threat to us in specific, um, it's it's something that we can't ignore. So I'm afraid of it.

Containment Negative Pressure And PPE

Dr Pompa 9:21

Yeah, no, exactly. And and the these mycotoxins um really are the the problem because they they are so small, they penetrate and it is what makes people sick. And then here's the bigger problem, too, is once people become sensitive or hit or affected by the mycotoxin from Aspergillus as an example, now their immune system responds to even small amounts of that mycotoxin from aspergillus. Uh, so we'll talk about that because cleaning a home afterwards is uh, you know, really important. Okay, so step one, we identify the problem area. Step two, we build a containment, uh, which is really important. Talk about the containment because I think that people do this wrong. I I know people do this wrong because they'll say, Oh no, we put up some plastic, but you have to you can't just put up plastic, it's about creating negative air pressure. Talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

Yeah, so with the mold, um, it it's beyond the human's eye to see um spores and hyphal fragments. The dust that you see in the air is just that, it's much larger fragments, it's not the mold itself. So with it being so small and unable to see, you can't just assume you're you're able to get it blocked with the plastic. You need to have the pressure so that it's pulling inward from all directions. And you need to have it at such a high exchange rate of uh of air, airflow, that when you're going in and out of the chamber, uh you don't have any cross-contamination. You don't have it coming out the door with you. The pressure doesn't change. Anyone who's opened a door in their house where the pressure changes, they can almost feel it in their ears as the air goes in and out. Um, you need it as a good solid negative pressure, at least uh air exchange of six to twelve air exchanges and five to twelve pas uh five to twenty pascal on uh negative pressure. So it's very scientific how it's done, but it's got to be tightly sealed. You seal every corner and then you build a second chamber attached, a decontamination chamber, because like an airlock uh going into a space station. It's it's how you need to be able to do that.

Dr Pompa 11:22

So meaning like you have the chamber around the area where you're working, and then you have a chamber where you step into first, then into the inner chamber in the inner sanctuary, if you will. Yeah. Um, I mean, how how many mold remediators actually do a chamber correctly, or even that double chamber?

SPEAKER_02 11:40

I'm I'm not sure how many do. I know how many say that they do, but I also know a lot that say what they do and then don't do it. They just, oh, we're sufficient with this, we're good enough with that. And um I for seemingly I from everyone that's seen mine, they've gone, wow, you you really do a uh containment. And I'm like, Well, yeah, don't you? And like, not my past ones, no. Yeah, yeah. So I'm I'm I'm surprised at how often it's not done. But yeah, you need a solid containment.

Dr Pompa 12:08

Well, and I've seen this, it's happened to me. They build the containment, and then they're just like kind of walking in and out, tracking it in and out on their shoes. I mean, instead of when you come out of the containment, you have to take off the covers, right? And the person in there better be fully garbed with masks, otherwise, like what are they doing? But that's another story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Yeah. Well, I mean, even cross part of cross-contamination is all these spores. If you're looking at millions of spores per cubic meter that you've shook up inside that containment that are all over the place, they're going to be settling all over you, all over your clothes and everything else. So it's important that you're wearing a full Tyvek suit that covers from you know head to toe. You've got a a full-face respirator, you've got your own HEPA filters to protect yourself. And then there needs to be an entire procedure of getting out where you don't touch your own clothing and being able to doff or remove.

Dr Pompa 12:59

Yeah, so in other words, they can't come walking out in their protective outfit out of the chamber and they just contaminated the house. Yeah. So they have to take off the whole thing before they actually leave the chamber. Exactly. I watched this get violent. So people build the stupid chamber, then they screw up that and they walk out of the chamber or through your house. It's like, wait a minute, that makes no sense.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

Yeah.

Dr Pompa 13:19

Or the equipment that's in the chamber, you know, it's like you can't just be trying it, you know, bringing it through the house, right? I mean, you have to respect the fact that you're carrying mold or biotoxins into the home.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Yeah. Until you get a clearance test telling you, um, or uh a clearance inspection telling you that you have successfully taken care of all of the mold inside of that uh chamber and that the the levels of mold are are now negated to to at or below out outdoor uh levels, you should always treat everything that goes in and out of that chamber as though it was covered in radioactive dust.

Bleach Peroxide And False Confidence

Dr Pompa 13:57

I agree because to someone that's sensitive like myself, it it is radioactive dust. Okay, so then what happens? Then that what is the proper way then to remediate? Because there's a lot of mistakes made here. Uh, and we can even start like most people start remediating even without a chamber. Let's let's realize that, right? And they just start throwing bleach down on it, hydrogen peroxide. Yeah. Um, okay, so before we go, what's proper in the chamber, like with the professional, right? Let's hit on that because that's what happens most often, right? Someone gets mold, their friend comes over, their contractor, whatever, and the contractor already take took the wallet, no containment at all, and then they start hitting it with bleach, concrobium, hydrogen peroxide. I'm am I missing some? I, you know, maybe some of those things.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Dozen different uh chemicals out there that being able to handle mold. And um it they they all you know will say handle it this way, use vinegar, um, use uh hydrogen peroxide. And the problem is is is it's not sufficient. It's not sufficient. Some of those may be able to handle some of the mold, but when you have a colony growth, condition three is what it's called, when you have colony growth, condition three, that is gone especially into porous or semi-porous materials. That's deep into the into the meaning material drywall wood. Drywall and wood. Two by fours. When it's when it's down in there, it's deeper than the chemical's gonna get, and it will regrow. Proof. Proof. I brought proof. Just bring it up.

Dr Pompa 15:33

I uh I told you he's a nerd. So Jim Jim actually was at my house like nerding out, like he had all these videos, and uh uh we did a few Instagrams, look for some of the Instagrams I did with them.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Yeah, so what I'd done is I had I took several, so I I actually did several uh examples of this, but I took some uh bleach, or excuse me, first I took mold from a uh a customer's home that I'd removed, and I took tape lifts of that mold. Um it was uh stacky battress black mold, and I put it on a um uh microscope slide, and I took a video of it uh and um I put a dropper of bleach in this case. I did it also with concrobium. I did it with uh on and gone, which is a Concrobium you buy at Home Depot.

Dr Pompa 16:18

Yeah, it's supposedly a really good one, but maybe not so good.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

But anyway, yeah, it did better than the others did it.

Dr Pompa 16:24

Okay, all right. So it is better. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

But uh but even still, it's not proper remediation. Um but I I tried these different chemicals, and what ended up occurring is um they disappeared, they became invisible. It takes out the pigment, but the cell walls are still there, made of uh uh what is it called? Uh chitin chit uh I'm trying to remember the scientific term, but the cell walls of the of the spores are still there. Uh yeah. I can't remember the name of it, but there the point is that it although you can't see it, it's still there. So this this slide that you maybe out there, maybe they can see it better. Okay. You can see a little bit of darkness um on it right there. That right there was completely gone when uh one the side done when I sprayed it with the bleach. Okay, and so it was completely gone. Um, not a not a speck of black on it.

Dr Pompa 17:14

And then so someone cleaning up would be like that worked.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Yeah, that worked. It's gone. You know, the wall is clear. Well, then I introduced water, put it in the ziploc bag with it, and then uh uh also introduced some extra paper just to show that the spores can still germinate and not just be recolored. So um so it grew on the old spot back, it grew in the old spot and spread to the new spot.

Dr Pompa 17:37

Ah, so it showed that the spores were still there, still uh you know active, and then the roots that weren't killed or the parts that weren't killed grew again.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Exactly. Yeah. And so the the the bleach is a temporary uh solution, but even worse is it makes it so you can't see it. So it it your environment's now lying to you. What's the uh the the the show that oh the Ant-Man show? I I love that from Ant-Man when Hank Pym uh uh hits that one uh guy from I don't know if it was SHIELD or a CEO or something's head against the table, and then he's walking out, the the guy's like, Oh, we should uh we should arrest him or something. And uh uh Stark says he just kicked your butt full time, full size. You want to see what he can do when you don't see him coming?

Dr Pompa 18:23

Yeah, exactly. I mean like if you you make it invisible, it's like he just made it more deadly. Okay, so that was bleach. Um okay, what's the other ones you did there?

SPEAKER_02 18:32

So I also did hydrogen peroxide. This one, this one um didn't change the color of the mold at all, but also spread very quickly. Um and uh and it it almost completely covered the other drywall uh backing paper. Um hydrogen peroxide performed worse than the bleach? Yeah, very much so. But the bleach was a fail, but that was a bigger fail. Now that was only three percent hydrogen peroxide, which anyone on the internet's gonna just grab that, yeah, not knowing to maybe try something stronger. I'll try something stronger and I'll be doing this experiment over and over again with a few different chemicals. That's fun. But um I also tried uh things like On and Gone, which I don't even know what that is. It's it's basically a uh a bleach like substance from uh from a different company, different brand. Um, and uh it did the same thing, bleached it. Okay, it disappeared temporarily. Okay.

Dr Pompa 19:23

The concrobium was uh the one you buy in Home Depot. Yeah. What about kills? I haven't done confiance. Let's try that one in the future.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Yeah, see if it can still grow on the kills. But yeah, I I did the concrobium and I I sprayed it and then uh did the water and and it still uh ended up spreading and germinating over here. Um I do want to repeat this experiment just because as I was reading up on the concrobium, there is a factor about letting it dry prior to um getting it reweted. So I'm I want to make sure I give it more than ample dry time.

Dr Pompa 20:02

Did you do the um the thyme oil? The uh not yet.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

I want to uh try decon 30 next.

Dr Pompa 20:08

Decon 30, yeah, because that that appears to be a really good one.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Yeah, yeah. It's certainly the healthiest option of any uh part of the reason you don't want to use these chemicals, these um, these uh bleaches and and acids, is the damage that they can do to the house and to you. Um you if you fog your house with with an acid, um, it's gonna damage a lot more than just any mold you hope to get to. You're gonna be damaging um copper fixtures, you're gonna be uh and not to mention it's not exactly the healthiest thing to be breathing bleach. Yeah. Um, so there's a lot of reasons not to be just blanket, you know, throwing any chemical you find on uh YouTube at it.

Physical Removal Sanding Encapsulation

Dr Pompa 20:52

Yeah, no, exactly. Uh in and the thyme oil is a safe one. But I I think what this all says to me is okay, we want to use the safest thing, you know, to kill the mold. But if you don't get with the roots below, meaning if you don't remove as much of the the mold as you can, you're going to end up with a problem if moisture, even in the moisture in the air, is added back. So part of that remediation has to be removing every bit of that mold. Am I right on that? Correct. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Yeah. So in remediation, we want to chase the mold colonies and clear them by at least two feet.

Dr Pompa 21:31

So um in the most common there's a mold here, two feet beyond this, you have to go two feet.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Two feet out this way, two feet this way.

Dr Pompa 21:41

There could be mold roots and you just don't see the mold, but it's there.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

It I've seen it w uh travel behind backer paper of or excuse me, the the the drywall backing paper. I've seen it travel behind that, so you don't see it on this side of the paper, but you see it on the other. I've seen it but travel behind paint.

Dr Pompa 22:00

Yeah, meaning so you kill this, you deal with this, remove this, but on the back part of this, it just didn't show up yet. It's behind that paper. Oh God, I hate mole.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

Yeah. So that's why it's uh it's very important. Um you go two feet clearance and you you go in every direction. I mean, if you've got it on the baseboard, you should be checking your carpet, you should be checking your tax strips, you should lift up your wood floor and see if your subfloor and wood floor are also molding.

Dr Pompa 22:27

It's a big problem, right? So they take it off the you know, the what do you call it, the baseboards, right? And they do that, but they didn't look under the base floor. So, but that you have to do that.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

You have to check.

Dr Pompa 22:39

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, um you check by cutting it, cutting some of the floor away.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Yes. Uh obviously prefer to detach safely if you can, so you can reattach, but a lot of the time with L VP and things like that, you just um it just has to end up being cut out or broken out because it just can't come out in the room.

Dr Pompa 22:58

What if it's a um a structure-bearing wood beam? Then what how do you what do you do?

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Two different scenarios there. One um I I recently encountered uh is where that structure structural beam is so badly affected it's actually rotting. And at that point, there's no way to clear it because basically it's rot is basically almost just 3D mold. It's just it's gonna continue in throughout the whole thing. At that point, we involve structural engineers and we bring in a new, yeah. We have to come in, we have to replace that load bearing.

Dr Pompa 23:28

If it still has integrity, you could you I've watched you sand things out, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Exactly. So for that, we don't remove the load-bearing uh elements that are not rotted. Um for that we sand it. So for hardwood surfaces, for cement, um any surface that's a porous surface, a semi-porous surface, as we call it, uh we sand, we sand it using removing at least a millimeter of material by sanding off the mold growths. Uh, one is should be evident, just been the nature of sanding it, you're definitely getting it all airborne at that point. So that again, emphasize that containment. Yeah. But uh that sanding is the only way to truly get it away from that surface. Um, if it happens to go between two levels that you can't get to, but unless you remove that load-bearing nature, um, you can encapsulate at that point. That's often what is needed because it it uh might make more sense than taking apart the whole thing. Sealing it in. That's the only situation in which an encapsulate may be used. Um, but with certain sensitivities and certain levels of mold uh with how badly it may be affected, we may still suggest have a structural engineer come in so that we can lift that sill plate away so we can sand the underside of it.

Dr Pompa 24:45

What about ozone? Um, most people will just hit uh ozone gas on it. What's um we gotta test that. You gotta do a little test on that.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

I'll have to do a test on that. I've got actually a few I want to test. I'm actually uh in contact with uh our friends at Pure Maintenance.

Dr Pompa 25:00

Yeah. Um Pure Maintenance is they have uh a nanovapor, they don't like to call it uh gas, but um that penetrates very good, but we should test it, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:11

I want to test that as well, yes. So um theirs, they do viability sampling afterward, and and although there may still be spores in existence, they aren't germinating anymore. So I'd love to be able to test that. Yeah. Um germinating, I think, is the right word, but they're not living anymore.

Dr Pompa 25:25

Yeah, exactly. Um but ozone, so good, bad, ugly.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Uh in my observ I don't like it because it makes you think that uh anytime you're using any kind of chemical like that, people will think that that was sufficient when they should have removed it entirely. So that's usually when I try and shy away from them. Um jumping for to for an ozone instead of having it remediated. First step should always be remediation. If you want to follow up with an ozone, that is a good that is a good tactic to use.

Dr Pompa 25:54

Yeah, follow-up. Um the problem I have with ozone is well, a few, but it when you kill mold, you said that the biotoxins are their bioweapons to protect it. Guess what happens when they you piss them off? They send those, they launch those weapons. Same thing. When you come in and you spray that mold area, it just launched biotoxins right in your face and throughout your house, right? So that's why we build the containments. But ozone does the same thing. So, oh, I ran ozone in the room, it always gets rid of the smell. Problem is you just launched biotoxins everywhere. And remember, you're reacting to the biotoxin, not the mold spore. Yeah, so you could kill a mold spore with ozone, but you just launched biotoxins and pissed it off. And you probably didn't get the roots anyway.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Right. So total physical engineering removal is the only true way to get rid of those toxins. Yeah. Um, even like I mentioned, with negative pressure, we do it uh through a HEPA air scrubber, which HEPA goes down to 0.3 microns, and that'll take care of every mold spore because no spore is smaller than 0.3 microns, or not smaller than 0.5 microns. So this millionth of a meter is a micron. So it's it they're real, real tiny. The filtration's good enough for that, but it's nowhere near good enough for mycotoxins.

Dr Pompa 27:11

And that's why I like to vent it outside when I create negative air production. You know, where you're creating it with something that goes outside and then your containment has negative air, pulling that stuff outside. I mean, I guess the the worst case scenario would be, you know, if you couldn't bring it outside, you'd have to put it through some real tight filtration to create that. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

But I never like that. Best best case scenario is outside. If you can't get it outside, definitely it's through the HEPA filtration. I would also add a carbon filter in there as well.

Ozone HEPA And Mycotoxin Reality

Dr Pompa 27:41

I would, yeah, because uh at least that way you have some shot at take getting a lot of the biotoxins with the carbon. So yeah, couldn't agree more. But um, yeah, so these are the I would say the most common pitfalls. Did I miss any?

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Did I as far as uh people uh cutting it out themselves? Uh we talked about them using different chemicals on it. Don't spray it. Um, you think about when you spray anything on mold, if you think about it as a field of dandelions, I like that that expression, oh yeah, and you're basically hitting it, these small mist droplets are actually meteors, and you're hitting this field with meteors, and so it's just it's launching so much into the and by the way, another good example I've heard you say is if you use a weed killer out back and you spray the the weeds, you know, if you look at the weed, they're dry and shriveled, but all the spores are still there.

Dr Pompa 28:37

And then you come over and kick them, and guess what? The spores go off. And remember, it's the biotoxins, they're inert, they're not, they don't have to be living. They're they're weapons of mass destruction. It's like so, even though the plant is dead, it's still releasing these weapons of mass destruction right in your air. So dead mold is not non-toxic mold.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Yeah, dead mold is not a non-threat. Yeah, there's a lot of uh misinformation about mold as well. It's like, oh, it's not wet anymore, so it's not alive. Uh uh there's a term for it. I I forget the name, but it's it's basically hibernating. They mold can hibernate for hundreds of years and then add some water and add some water and it's right back. Absolutely.

Dr Pompa 29:19

It's a dormant state. I I think your your test proved that, right? There. I mean, you know, it's like, you know, because that would have been considered in a dormant state, if you will, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:27

And you know, they certainly thought I thought it was dead. Yeah. Yeah. But I I I had figured dead, but then it germinated so far, or I swear I'm using the wrong word there, but it it spread so quickly um that uh it it clearly doesn't, which I already knew, but now I know for sure.

Dr Pompa 29:46

I mean, I I I hope at this point people are going, okay, you know, um, I want to do this right. Okay, where can they go? First of all, give your information out.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Well, I uh I'm with Stevenson Restoration, Jim Stevenson, right? So Stevenson's with a pH. It's www.stevensonrestoration.com. Um as far as uh where to go to find someone in your area, uh, I would I would say go with the uh the your best bet is gonna be the IICRC, um their website, IICRC.com, and go to their global locator and uh enter your area and look for a mold remediation specialist.

Dr Pompa 30:25

I mean you you all of Utah um you have uh you know obviously serviced. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

I'm the only mold remediation specialist certified in Utah. Um and you can go on the global locator on there and it will only come up with one result, and that's me. Yeah. So um if you are looking for someone who's who's gone through the effort to get highly certified in it, that's where to go. But it uh so I do all of Utah. I'm actually also going to be flying out to California here um in a couple weeks to at least consult uh with a uh a joint client of ours, actually, but that is uh having their house remediated. I'm gonna go and fill the role of what's called a post-remediation evaluator, where I'll be um going in making sure that they did it all right and that their containments are good.

Dr Pompa 31:15

If I lived in a different state and um I hired even one from the organization there that you had said I would still be hiring you to come out and make sure they did it right. Um, just because I I know what this does when it's done wrong. And it's devastating, right? So it's not worth it.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

And I I can do that depending on the state. There's a couple with uh uh regulations that prevent out of state work.

Dr Pompa 31:43

Uh at least you you know, contact uh Jim and and perhaps you know get some advice on you know what these people perhaps that you hired said they're going to do, right? So um do you do a cons consultant fee like that?

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Yeah, so um well for if I'm going out and and flying out there for sure. No, yeah. Um but what about just like over the phone? I don't actually. I I uh if I've got the time, I I'm usually just happy to talk to people about it and make sure people have the awareness. Well, there you go. I'll just give me a call, I'm happy to just say, hey, yeah, send me their remediation plan, I'll look through it. You know, I noticed that they use this language here. That is a little odd to me. Or I'll say, hey, they mentioned they're gonna be monitoring the pressure on their air chamber and it's gonna be uh the it's gonna be maintained throughout the project. I know that your son had had a a remediation project uh be getting done uh at his house uh in the east there. And um one of the proposals said that they would turn off the chamber's pressure at night. And I said, that's red flag. That's that no what?

How To Hire The Right Remediator

Health Tests And Home Inspection Clues

Dr Pompa 32:49

Why would you do that? No, see that to me disqualifies them. Like you turn it off. Well, pressure changes. All of a sudden it's positively pressurized, that stuff's going in the home. That is the dumbest thing. That really irritates me. I didn't even know that about that. Did he know that? Did my son know that? I I I he didn't hire them, I don't think. Oh no, he went with somebody else, I believe. Yeah, thank God. Okay, anyway. But um, you know, uh so many pitfalls. There, there's yet another one. That's why people have to make sure uh, you know, that they get this done right. Uh, you know, uh one of my um, you know, big pet peeves, you know, it it falls around testing even humans, right? So a lot of people are doing this urine test now and uh functional medicine doctors, and I I know this is outside of your department here, but I I'm doing this for my viewers, but uh and it really shows more food borne mold. So there it's two ways. You're getting a lot of false positives because they're drinking their morning coffee and it has a lot of mold in it. You're really just measuring, again, you know, what's food uh that they're getting contaminated from food, but you also get a lot of negatives. So we tested these urine tests in my doctor group, and people that we knew were in mold exposures were coming out negative, and people that were completely fine and safe environment were coming out positive, right? So useless on that. Uh we utilize, Jim, something called a visual contrast sensitivity test. Uh VCS test, you can go VCStest.com and um give, I think it's like a$20 donation, right? So but that is still the best way. Now it doesn't work for kids. Kids can, they don't lose contrast. We're not measuring acuity, meaning your ability to see well. Uh matter of fact, you have to make sure you have glasses on if you need glasses for 18 inches to see 18 inches, because that's the distance. But this one's done on your computer. Now, uh the doctors I always trained uh in the past, they all had VCS tests in their office to test for people. But there's um on the one online will tell you if pass or fail, and then it will tell you, you know, biotoxic threat, right, you know, et cetera. Because when you look at contrast, there's two rows. If you can't see them, if you can't see them, like you're positive for mold. It's very accurate, actually. There's some other blood tests called C4A C4 little A, which can it's an immune marker, but there's other immune conditions and autoimmune conditions that could make that uh look positive and it's not, so not perfect. But this urine test that everyone's using, I just want to caution people on that. The VCS test is better. Um, I would say it's not perfect, it's not as good as when you do it in person, but it's a really good place for people to start. As far as testing at your home, um, I've interviewed Ryan Blazer here. Um, I don't know if that episode has got released yet, but he's really good. We've flown him in. Um, I just had someone use a mold dog. Um, we found one on the West Coast in California and San Diego area, but I think he came up, I think there um it was near Beverly Hills, maybe. But anyway, and the mold dog found it. So a good friend of mine who I interviewed here, he owns Wave Block um in uh Ben Shalom. You you could watch that episode. Um we talked about EMF proof. There's the here's his case right here, Wave Block. Oh yeah, that's Ben. This is uh actually the only FCC um tested one that actually works and it dissipates energy. So interesting. Yeah, so anyways, another subject. But so this guy, let me tell a story real quick. He had he had three experts come in and test his home. He's in the real estate business, he knows what you know what he's doing, right? Three. So what happened was him and his wife were both very sick, and he they had this gal coming in to give them IVs, and she came in and said, You have mold. That's the issue, that your issue. And he's like, Oh no, we had it tested three times. She's like, Nah, it's here. You need a new test. Have a mold dog come in. So they did. Mold dog was there maybe 10 minutes, looks up, guys like, problem's up there, it's in your attic. Goes up, finds an HVAC system, kind of stepped on a little bit, maybe, and condensation, the insulation came off. Condensation was inside, outside, there was their mold problem. Getting through their HVAC. Yet three mold tests showed negative, and it was upstairs in the attic and the HVAC. So, anyway, uh my point of that is just I think the best inspection, the best or the best test is inspection. Someone knows where to look. When you come into a home, this isn't your expertise testing, your remediation, but you know where to look, so do I. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's like you look for clues. One of which, did you see my YouTube video uh or my my Instagram video? Um, lift up the back of a lot of them. Yeah, you've seen a lot of them. Oh, yes, yeah. Lift up the back of a toilet bowl lid, the toilet bowl lid. Why? There's water that sits there always, right? There's moisture. If there's mold enough in the air, it finds that dang moisture in Black Ring. So I just had a situation in Tennessee where I was in a hotel room, I didn't smell anything, and I've got a good nose for it. And I uh was just not sleeping well, was just not sleeping well, right? And I was waking up with like headaches, and my wife wasn't sleeping well. And I thought it was maybe the sheets, and then I was like, oh, I didn't check because I've I've been in this hotel room. It's uh this hotel, it's so good. I didn't check the lid, so I went back, I picked up the lid of the uh toilet seat and uh the toilet bowl, black. Switched rooms, slept like a baby that night. So anyway, those are just some little tricks. But I just recently did an Instagram video.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

Check it out. But I was gonna say, um, my own experiences with mold, my uh son, uh my oldest son, very excited to move into his own room in the basement, um, and and was uh very pleased to be very adulting for that. He was about 10 years old. And um about the same time he developed kind of a chronic cough just all the time. And I kept looking at him across the table. I'm like, why are you coughing all the time? You just randomly, you know, and I'm like needs a drink of water or something. Then I I was thinking, I'm like, wait, I I know what this is. And so I went down and I went into my own basement and I I started looking around in some of the areas and went to the bathroom that uh uh was down there and opened up the walls, and sure enough, just tons of black mold in there, and he'd been sleeping down there with it. Oh my god. I remediated it, took care of it all, and uh he hasn't had any problem since. So um, and consequently, I started sleeping better after that because I was just gonna say, yeah. I had been having a lot of trouble sleeping. I'd I'd for me, I have a big histemic reaction to it. Um I don't think my cups overflowed yet on my mic, it ought to soon, just for my profession. Yes, but my my uh I I don't feel like my my immune system's yet crashed, but I know that I have a big histemic reaction to it. So I have allergies at night that were just killing me. Um but after we took care of that, um total recovery. Yeah, of course my bedroom's right above that.

Dr Pompa 40:07

Yeah, yeah, man. It's it's it's deadly, and and sometimes it does show up like that in the lungs, right? Where but again, I most of the time it's just weird symptoms. You know, it's it's weird headaches, it's weird pain, it's a sudden weight gain, it's low energy, it's et cetera. But okay, so here is um my son. Yeah, first of all, you always assess the roof because that's a big problem. That means someone's gonna call the attic look at the water down there. The age of the roof when the roof replaced, and things like that. Next thing is you have to work out the foundation before you get in the house and go in the basement. Always it should slope away. I also assess the age of the windows and around the windows in all the time. I'm gonna show you some other tricks, but we're gonna start there. Let's go. First test, smell test. Too much air fresher to tell. I'll get through the air fresh. Checks out. You want to always ask what the hatchback is and make sure, especially if it's in an attic space, it's insulated well. You have to inspect it. You have to inspect it. Especially if it's in the attic or a basement, that looks good. You always look around windows for any type of how much mold do you find around windows a lot? Fairly frequent, especially when black around here. Oh, there's a toilet bowl. Yeah. That's one of the tricks to see if a house has mold. Thanks. I'm always looking up. Yeah, and then I give some other areas that uh but anyways, yeah, check it out on Instagram, you'll see it. Um it's been the uh you know, just I'm in a black I'm I'm in a black coat, trench coat, so you'll see the uh the thumbnail. But um, okay, so when you were talking about your son's story, um it actually it it triggered something that I I wanted to ask.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

I can tell you that um when you're when your child's not feeling well, that that's scary. I know you talk a lot about uh pain to purpose here. And um I had uh right when I decided I was done with law enforcement and and started into this, I had uh actually um lost a son uh at birth, um twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Um and uh and that that pain of of losing that son was just earth shattering. Um and uh being able to help people who right now feel like they're because I've I've met with people who they're feel like their their kid they they're helpless or powerless to help their kid who's who's they're losing them almost. Their immune systems are being rocked, and I I feel a great deal of purpose in trying to prevent that and bring them back to the healthy side of that. So if I were to um I I gave a great deal of thought before the show about what my pain to purpose story is, and that would have to be it. Yes, trying to prevent that.

Dr Pompa 43:18

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I you know the thing that I hate about mold, I it's just so evil. And if you look in your Bible, Leviticus 14, yeah, I mean it tells you a paraphrase, but you know, basically if you find it, try this to kill it. Uh, if it comes back, like we're showing there, do this. And if it comes back again, basically take it to a place called unclean. I mean, meaning get ready to burn down the house. Burn down the house. Yeah, it's like that's paraphrased, but honestly, that's pretty much the truth, right? So I guess my point of saying that um is you know, have you seen some homes that just seem unremediatable? I mean, because remediation scares me for Really sensitive people sometimes. That's what I was going to talk about. We met we missed one critical thing, the cleanup. Meaning that the every horizontal surface, after you kill the mold, after the remediation, after they you know tear down the uh the thing, put the wall back up, right? You know, seal it, everything's great. There's one more step. Yeah. I almost forgot. Gosh. Um, and it is bringing a professional crew in to clean every surface of the house.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

Yeah. Every single surface. And and actually not just horizontal. You're looking at vertical. Yeah. You're looking at every single millimeter, every square inch inside of our containment, we do HEPA vacuuming with a uh nylon bristle head, and we throw away the nylon bristle heads when we're done. We throw away the wire brushes. We don't use these tools twice because we'd be cross-contaminating spores from a previous job. That's right.

Dr Pompa 44:55

So we have to and how many people that they hired bringing in other people's problems, right? Oh, right.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

Yeah. Uh it's often. So you have to help a vacuum every single surface, the ceiling, the walls, around light bulbs, everything. And then you have to wipe everything down with a microfiber cloth. I hesitate to say damp microfiber cloth, because although I do suggest damp, um, I'm afraid someone will interpret that as wet. You shouldn't be able to bring water out. Water is kind of the enemy in this situation. We don't want to provide a growing ground, but slightly damp will help it gather more material and wipe everything off.

Dr Pompa 45:38

Everything. And by the way, if if you become very sensitive, you may have to get rid of couches, soft you know, things like this, um, hard surface things you can do the wipe down. And uh is your what do you recommend it being wiped down with? Just like vinegar or what?

SPEAKER_02 45:56

I use Decon 30 because it's the uh it's the most gentle of all time oil. It's just time oil. Um, and so that's usually what I suggest. There, it's made by Benefect, and uh I think you can order it uh online very easily, but it's um it's what I use, and I mean you could drink it. It is is such a gentle uh solution. So if you're gonna damp with anything, damp with fat.

Post Remediation Cleaning Prevention Choices

Dr Pompa 46:19

Yeah, yeah. And there's something called EC3 that has a spray. Um, and even EC3 makes something you can wash your clothing in uh to make um, but you could I bet you could put some thyme oil in the the um oh yeah in there too. But uh very important. So if you are very sensitive, you know, literally, I I just had a client and he had a really good remediator because they were basically like get rid of the furniture or this and that, because he became he couldn't be in the house. I told him get out of the house, and um, they had to get rid of all their furniture soft things and uh kept all the hard things, treated it correctly, and had everything wiped down, big cleaning thing. I mean, it's a big deal, man. It's a big deal. And I know people don't want to hear that. That's why I hate mold. And I was saying that I hate mold because number one, typically you can't smell it, um, especially if you're in the environment, right? I might be able to smell your environment. Number two, you can't see it. It's behind walls, it grows in dark places, hates light. Sounds like evil to me, and makes people deadly sick. Oh, and most people just think you're crazy because you've tried everything and nothing works. That's why I hate mold.

SPEAKER_02 47:28

Well, part of being a remediator is some of us uh joke among each other is we're we're we're part um mold remediator, part marriage counselor, because you've always got the spouse who's home all the time and therefore has the highest exposures and therefore all the reactions, and then the spouse who's not at home as much, therefore thinks it's like it's in your head. You're not you're not having a real reaction here. Like, no, they are, they just get it a lot more than you do.

Dr Pompa 47:56

Uh and so it's it's hard to there is another test, so and I we talked about home, I think in really good inspection, testing behind walls, testing in the right places with inspection is good. Um, but there is something called an ERMI test, which is testing dust. Problem with that is it's really showing a history. Um, so it's you have to be able to know how to read that, right? So ERMI testing is okay. Dust kit testing, I mean it's it's okay. I I recommend people do it, but you have to understand how to read it, and that's really important. But I really do think um, like and some of my hardest things, Ryan Blazer, um, check my home. He comes out, man, and he he I I've had brought him on the cases and he finds it. Yeah. Ryan Blazer, check my home.

SPEAKER_02 48:41

He's he's got a uh he's got a nose for it.

Dr Pompa 48:44

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh no, I mean, because you have to know where to look, right? He he's done this long enough, like I was saying in that video, you know, looking around windows, going, wait, that's not right. Pull out the window. And that's because people's homes oftentimes are under negative air pressure and moist air is coming in and mold starts to form. Yeah. And over time, you got yourself a problem.

SPEAKER_02 49:04

Let me tell you, an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure. And that is so true when it comes to mold and water damage. Um, one thing I could I could emphasize to anyone if you don't have mold in your home, um, don't get it because you you didn't take the preparation of get some moisture alarms, put them in in some of those critical places like bathrooms and stuff. Yeah, you need to know, and then when it is wet, don't say dry enough. Have a professional verify that it did not spread, did not go everywhere else. Used 360-degree mindset just because the bathroom's wet doesn't mean the room below ain't or the wall, uh the rooms next to under that floor. Under the floor, yeah, it's many layers of floor. I just remediated a kitchen where they they uh wanted the mold out, and they found some on the counter, underside of the counter. And um, I go further, I found it then on the inside of that wall. I went further down to the floor, and then I found it underneath the flooring. Most remediators would have just dealt with what they saw right there. Yeah. So you just keep chasing, keep chasing.

Dr Pompa 50:13

And I found large swaths of it. And that's sad because people pay a lot of money for these people to come in. Oh, it's very sick, and then they think it's something else. So now I I deal with these people, and then now it's like uh it's not mold because we had that fixed. You know, it's like, ah, is it fixed? One of the things I always say when I my doctors or coaches that I'm I'm teaching is if someone is not well and nothing seems to still be working and they're doing everything right, there's still something else upstream. Invariably, we found that a mold problem that was supposedly fixed wasn't. The house was still loaded with biotoxins that their neuroimmune system still did not like. Um, and then that you get them out of the house for a length of time and their symptoms start getting better. And then you're detoxing them correctly. But I can't tell you how how many times mold is so hard to get at all. Or they got one area and they there's five others in the house because the way the house was built. Oftentimes, uh Jim, I tell people just just move, you know, they just get get have it remediated, sell it, and get out because there could be a level of biotoxin left there that they're still reacting to.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

Sometimes that might be the only uh solution. I know that um I was out at someone's house just the other day, he said, Well, it looks like it came back. I sprayed mold on uh bleach on it and it was gone for a while, but now the home now I'm selling and the new buyer wants this taken care of. And I I didn't tell him that when he sprayed it, he didn't do anything except maybe make it mad and make it worse. Yeah. But um part of the risk of that is that when you have sprayed it with bleach, if you don't intro reintroduce water, you now have a clear, invisible mold. So you may think that you're mold free, but if you did a tape lift on it, you would find that you actually have mold on some surfaces you never realize as long as you re-dye it. Um which if you must do an air sample, uh make sure that the people doing the air sample use a dye to bring back anything that was uh turned invisible by bleach.

Dr Pompa 52:16

But yeah, well, see, it's uh that's it, man. Okay, well, you know, you you need someone who knows what they're doing, and uh Ryan Blazer's really good. And yes um, so uh test my home. I you can Google it, but give them your information again.

SPEAKER_02 52:31

Um yeah, Jim Stevenson with Stevenson Restoration. So that's uh www.stevensonrestoration.com. Yeah, and uh the company numbers uh 704 8803. Excuse me, four three five seven oh four eight eight zero three. And then my line is uh four three five three two seven zero eight three five. And uh I'm always happy to consult. I don't always answer, but I do eventually get back to you.

Dr Pompa 52:59

Just might be busy. That's very generous. I appreciate you doing that. We have a lot of people out there looking for answers. And again, if you've tried everything, nothing's working, it could be mold. And if you tested and it said negative, you might want to do a different test. And if you have mold, do it right. Share the show, like the show. A lot of sick people need to hear this information. Thanks for coming in, man. Appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

Yep.