Dhru Purohit Show - Get Rid of Toxic Mold Before It’s Too Late with Michael Rubino

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth and Air Doctor.  Over seventy percent of homes in the United States have a species of mold present, and this trend is only expected to rise. This statistic becomes even more alarming when we consider that mold can affect individuals with autoimmune conditions and neurodegenerative diseases and lead to chronic inflammation, fatigue, and brain fog. Today's guest is here to dive deep into the topic of mold, educate us, and ultimately empower us to take action to keep ourselves and our families safe. Today, on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Michael Rubino to discuss the increasing prevalence of mold in our homes and the reasons behind it. Michael highlights the four most toxic mold species, what should raise concern for us, and the top three actions we can take to protect ourselves. He also reveals the results of Dhru's Dust Test and guides us through methods of removing mold from our homes. Michael Rubino is the Founder of HomeCleanse, President of the Change the Air Foundation, and Host of the Never Been Sicker podcast. As a council-certified Mold Remediator, he specializes in helping immunocompromised individuals with mold exposure reactions. His upcoming book, set for release in 2024, serves as a comprehensive guide to mold remediation, reflecting his dedication to improving global indoor air quality. In this episode, Dhru and Michael dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Mold is the number one toxin in the home (2:33 / 2:33)  What is the source of mold that most people are dealing with (6:31 / 6:31) Memorable client testimonials (11:51 / 10:44 )  When there is a cause for concern and what to look for (17:00 / 16:00)  The four most toxic molds (18:56 / 17:36) How mold damages our body through self-preservation (22:20 / 20:46) Why some people are more impacted by mold than others (24:57 / 23:38) How do you know if you have mold in your home (26:48 / 25:59)  How the Dust Test works and Dhru’s test results (31:49 / 32:38) Top three actions you can immediately take to protect yourself (42:45 / 39:48) The top sources of water damage in homes (35:30 / 42:30)  How to remove mold (49:07 / 46:23 ) How Michael started his journey (58:15 / 55:23) Bacteria and their impact on your health (1:15:40 / 1:12:50)  Naturally detoxing your body and simple actions you can take (1:22:00 / 1:19:10)  Also mentioned in this episode: Dhru’s Dust Test Results https://www.themichaelrubino.com/ https://www.thedusttest.com/ Never Been Sicker Podcast  Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code DHRUP. AirDoctor is offering my community $300 off. Just go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ to clean up your home’s air and feel better today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The EPA and HUD did a joint study together called the American Healthy Home Survey. They did one, which is the American Healthy Home Survey 1, and that was in 2006, and they did the American Healthy Home Survey 2 in 2019. So a 13-year gap. Almost every single mold species, with the exception of one, had went up significantly in prevalence, which means that we're finding it more and more common inside of our homes. Today we're talking all things mold and toxic mold. Could it be connected to some of the mystery symptoms that some of you are dealing with?

And if you think that mold isn't your issue, just remember over two-thirds of all homes in North America have a mold problem. Is yours one of them? Hi, everyone, Drew Prode here. Today's guest is Michael Rubino. Michael Rubino is here today to talk about the mold problem. It's a big one and it impacts people of all class. backgrounds, races, ages, we are all not immune to the problems that come along with mold. Now, let me tell you a little bit about Michael Rubino.

Michael Rubino is a prominent figure in indoor air quality and mold remediation. He's the founder of Home Cleanse, the president of the Change Air Foundation, and the host of Never Been Sicker Podcast. He is the guy that celebrities like Gwyneth Poutro and many others call when they think they're having a mold issue that's connected to some. some of their mystery symptoms. He's helped people from all walks of life. And on today's podcast, he's going to help us understand just how big of an issue mold is and most importantly, what you can do about it. Now, a little bit more about Michael. He's a council-certified mold remediator. He specializes

in helping immunocompromised individuals with mold exposure and reactions. And his expertise extends to being able to communicate clearly and synthesize all the latest science that we know about this topic and present it in a way that makes sense and gives you clear action items, which is why, of course, we have them on the podcast today. Stay tuned for a fantastic episode with Michael Rubino on all things toxic mold. Michael, welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to have you here. Today we're talking about the number one hidden toxin that's lurking in people's homes.

In fact, a mind-blowing fact that I learned from you is that over 70% of homes in North America have this toxin, which is mold. We've done a couple episodes on it. You're going to take it a lot deeper. Tell us why mold is so toxic to the body. And then let's go into why is it the number one toxin in the home that people are not talking about, but should be talking about. First of all, that is sadly crazy and true. It's sad to hear.

The recent studies we're seeing out of EPA and HUD show this prevalence increasing, which is pretty alarming, especially when you hear the rest of what I'm about to tell you. Let's start by saying what are the top three things, right? Pick an autoimmune disease. I mean, anyone, just Google any of them. You will find a correlation between that disease and mold. I don't know if it causes or exacerbates. Right, we don't have the data on that.

We don't have the data on that. We're not studying it on humans, unfortunately. But the reality of the situation is every single person in any autoimmune disease category becomes sensitive to mold. And when you test their body, test their house, you're finding this correlation of mold going on inside their home, going on inside their body. So mold could be one of the reasons, could, we don't know, that encourage their body to maybe develop an autoimmune disease. And if that's uncertain, more research needs to be done, it definitely is

making their autoimmune disease worse. Is that what I'm hearing from me? Even if it's not causing it, it's definitely making it worse. I mean, if you talk to anybody who's in a moldy environment that has this autoimmune disease, they are really feeling it. They're having extreme flare up. which is affecting their quality of life. The second thing that we see is chronic inflammation. I mean, there's an entire disease called chronic inflammatory response syndrome, which was born out of these waterborne mold illnesses. So that's another big thing that people see

because pretty much everyone on planet Earth right now is fighting some level of inflammation. And last but not least, we're dealing with brain fog, chronic fatigue, and these neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Dale Bredesen does a great job talking about inhalation. Alzheimer's or the early onset of dementia, which all equates to having these mold toxins inside your environment. And the craziest part about this is when you think mold, you think like, okay, I'm walking

into this building and it's going to smell and it's going to be dark and dreary and maybe there's ghosts or something. But when you walk into these buildings, they're clean. I mean, a lot of my client's homes are sparkling clean. The place should be in a magazine. You would never suspect that there's mold, but it's behind the wall. It's in the HVAC systems. It's in places you would never even know.

It's scary. And the thing is that nobody is immune, whether you have living in an apartment complex that you might be renting, you know, a studio apartment, whether you live and you bought your first home, like a mutual friend of ours, Christina Baer, who's been on this podcast, I told her story, or whether you are a celebrity that has a $20 million home, a lot of these individuals have had experiences with mold. In fact, I just saw something shared on social media, which we'll put up here on the side that people can go check out and we'll link to in the show notes. Priyanka and Joe Jonas, right?

Yeah, the Jonas brothers, whichever one she's with, I'm not in the celebrity news. They are dealing with a lawsuit with their home here in Los Angeles, not too far away because their own home had toxic mold. And from what I could gather from what was being written about is that they were experiencing symptoms and their newborn baby as well, too. So nobody is immune. And today, I'd love to talk about the intention of this podcast. You know, we brought you on because you know not only a ton about this space. We're going to talk about your background and how you got into it. But more importantly, you're going to share with us what we can do to protect ourselves

and things that we should be aware of so that mold doesn't even develop in the first place. If it does develop and somebody who's listening today is dealing with it, you're also going to talk about what steps and action items we can take to move forward from there. But let's start at the beginning. What is the source of all this mold that everybody is dealing with? So it's just water damage. I mean, that is the source. So when you're talking about water damage, a lot of people think like, oh, I had a leak or something like that.

And of course, yes, that's part of it. But you're also going to have things like high humidity, depending on what part of the country or what part of the world that you live in. You might also have things like moisture intrusion, which is not really the same thing as a leak because it might be so subtle that you don't actually see it. And this could be coming in from outside. It could be coming in from up underneath the floor into the slab. And it could just be coming in from outside because your house is under negative pressure and you're actually pulling in moisture from outside to inside. So there's many different culprits. You have to look at it

from this perspective of how do I control the moisture? Because if I can control the moisture, then I won't have a mold problem. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth. You know, something I've been really thinking about lately is the fabrics I bring into my home. If you've been watching the headlines or looking on social media, PFAs, plastics, and other toxic chemicals are freaking ubiquitous in our clothing and everyday household materials. That's why I do my best to limit my exposure whenever I can, especially when it comes to my bedroom. That's why I switch to cozy earth for all my bedding essentials. Cozy Earth's no-pill bamboo bedsheets are made with viscoated.

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But what's been going on that it seems to be exploding the amount of people that are reporting or talking about the fact that their home might have mold like Christina, who came on our podcast and is now defending families who themselves have had toxic mold and have had to go and sue builders or HVAC individuals. Is the problem getting worse? How long has this whole history of mold toxicity been around? Yeah, so the problem is getting worse. We have the data to prove it.

So the EPA and HUD did a joint study together called the American Healthy Home Survey. They did one, which is the American Healthy Home Survey 1, and that was in 2006, and they did the American Healthy Home Survey 2 in 2019. So a 13-year gap, almost every single mold species, with the exception of one, had went up significantly in prevalence, which means that we're finding it more and more common inside of our homes. And I have tons of different theories as to why, one of them being the fact that we build these tighter homes now. They're more energy efficient. They're insulated. So they're the perfect breeding ground for mold to grow.

Yeah, because there's a lot of dark areas. that are not monitored. You have no idea what's going on behind the wall because it's covered in spray foam, for example. The ventilation is very poor. A lot of these homes have been built with hardly any ventilation. And so a lack of ventilation

is going to allow particles to accumulate in our environment because there's no dilution that's occurring, which means that not only is it impacting us with every breath that we take, about 20,000 times a day, but it's also this accumulation of particles is that the second there's moisture, there's so much of it there are already to start to grow.

It's like living in a giant petri dish. On top of that, we have been building homes, maintaining homes, restoring homes improperly for many, many years. And it's been getting worse, of course, with the building and the cheaper building products we have today versus 20, 30 years ago. All of these compounding issues are really making this problem much more prevalent. You know, even though it's much more prevalent, another thing that I learned from you is that we've been battling mold as, you know, homo sapiens since pretty much as long as written history is there.

In fact, I learned from you that there's actually a protocol in the Bible that is related to mold. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So in Leviticus, there's literally a mold protocol in there. What they would do is they would scrub the stones clean because they built houses out of stones primarily back then. and they would have the priest bless it, okay? If it came back, they would actually tear down the entire house and take these tainted stones, like a mile outside the village and dump them

because they didn't want that fungus spreading across the entire village. So they knew that this was a problem even thousands of years ago. But, you know, history repeats itself and we tend to forget things, don't we? We do, we do. Talk to us about some of, or maybe there's a case study or some individual that contacted you and was concerned about them having mold? You know, what symptoms were they dealing with? You know, just as just an example or a story that might come to mind. I know you've worked with a lot of celebrity clients as well. So is there somebody there that's given you permission to talk

about their story? Yeah, I have tons. I'm going to talk about Shannon first. There's a woman named Shannon lived in Florida. This is one of the most profound stories for me. And probably it will never lose my memory because Shannon was really, really sick. I mean, for three years her health was declining. She was a nurse practitioner, literally practicing medicine. And she went from that to bedbound 95% of the time. She actually was so sick. She was diagnosed with pots. She had a G.J. feeding tube installed into her lower intestine, literally to give her the nutrients to keep her a lot. She was depressed. I mean, who wouldn't be depressed that severe of a health decline that fast? She couldn't do things for her kids or her husband.

I mean, to go from happy and healthy to that is very difficult. Within seven days of moving out of her house, she literally rented an RV, put it on her property to move into the RV, weird chair and all, to be able to remediate her house because we saw really high levels of mold and bacteria there. Within seven days of her moving into this RV, the G.J. Feeding tube is gone, and she's walking again. I mean, no joke, is one of the most profound stories that I've ever encountered of seeing that remarkable transformation that fast.

It was Shannon's story really that I think left a real deep mark on me of how important this is because a lot of people, they deal with chronic symptoms or acute symptoms. It's always life-changing, but it never feels so profound as when I saw it with Shannon. And I think that's the story we start with. And then, of course, Christina Perry. Christina Perry, famous singer-songwriter. I mean, she was dealing with infertility issues, blood clotting disorders. We finally fixed her house.

She had a happy, healthy baby, which is remarkable to see. You have Gwyneth Paltrow, who's dealing with perpetual long COVID, gets COVID, and it just never goes away. We find all kinds of air quality issues at her place, fix up her place. She says in a podcast to me that, you know, she feels. better than she felt in her 20s. You know, she's now in her 50s. You start to see these things transform people's lives. You can't unsee that, you know?

And this has repeated itself thousands of times for me. From when I first started up in New York right after Hurricane Sandy, seeing my first client was an elderly woman who reminded me of my own grandmother, who all of a sudden was having issues walking. Joint pain was completely severe. She never had joint pain or walking. shoes. And sure, we can chalk that up and say, it's because she was getting older, right? I feel like as a society, we tend to normalize that. You know, we're getting older. This is the way

we're supposed to feel. No, it's not. That's hogwash. She shouldn't have felt that way. And as a matter of fact, after we actually fixed her place up, she didn't have this joint pain again. And she was walking without the walker. So these are the types of things that I see in people that makes me realize more people need to know about this. Because if they did, I don't care what anybody is going through. They're probably going through something. And if they fix their air quality and it made even the smallest difference for them, I think that's important. You know, part of our podcast's mission is to sound alarm when it comes to all different areas that might be environmental toxins that we're dealing with. Mold is one of them. And both inform

people about the truth, which sometimes can be scary. It's scary to think that's 70% of buildings in homes are dealing with some form of mold. But then we also balance that with the education that's there, which is the nuances. And so part of the nuances that I want to share is that while today's interview can be scary for some people, the component that I think is important and I'd love you to expand on it is that every home is dealing with mold in some sort of way. Now, within that, there are molds, which you're going to talk about, and you've actually helped develop some testing to help people figure this out. There's types of molds that are really damaging to our health. And there's other ones that are quote unquote sort of normal, right? That they're just in our

environment. They're not known at least right now to be as damaging to our health. And even somebody who's very meticulous about air quality, like myself, I have filters in every room, I keep the windows open often, et cetera. I write about this stuff. I interview experts. you're still generally going to have some level of mold in the home. The issue becomes, and you correct me, if anything I said here is incorrect, the issue becomes when you're dealing with some hidden symptoms. You may not be getting better for something that you've gotten treatment for. You feel like every time you come back to your home,

especially after a vacation, you feel off or you don't feel as well, which was also happening to Christina again, and she shared in her story. and then you start to pull in these threads and maybe do some testing, and you see that you have some of the worst strains that are there. That's when we know, and the data is very clear that something has to be done. Would you want to add or edit anything that I shared there? No, I think you did a great job, by the way. You could be a mold expert too very soon here. You want to be careful about the molds that produce toxins. That's called toxicogenic. I think that really too much of anything will kill you on this planet.

You know, there's thousands of different analogies we can make on that. The reality of it is, when you have a more toxic mold, you want to make sure that those levels are lower, right? And you hit the nail on the head when you said you can't really have mold free, right? We're not building bubbles around our houses and making it so that we don't have a fresh air exchange from outside to inside. It's actually the opposite effect of what we want to have. We just have to understand that we want to control our environment. So if we start seeing these toxic molds grow out of control inside of our homes, producing a lot of spores and toxins that are entering our body, it's going to have an effect. There are, you know, more, there are molds that don't produce toxins and they might have more of an allergenic effect, right?

But I would still say, if you see those in the millions or tens of millions, you know, it probably is going to have some sort of impact on the body that's going to affect our quality of life, whether it's just coughing and sneezing all the time or getting rashes or whatever else. may be happening that's unique to us, I still think that, you know, the information that we have, the power of that information to be able to make real decisions on how do we improve our environment, that's the real value mark, you know? Can you list off a few of the most toxic molds that people should start to be aware of as we go further in this conversation? Yeah. So there are probably four main molds that I think need to be on people's radar. There's a couple of other. ones that I'll give some honorable mentions to.

Stachybatra shatarum, that is the, you know, media's favorite coin toxic black mold. Then there's ketomium, which is basically its cousin. It's also a toxicogenic mold. It's also typically black in color. It also takes three to five days to grow. So they kind of grow in the same locations. You usually see them actually growing together. It's hard to find a house that doesn't have both in it.

If it has one, it typically has the other. Then you'll have certain species of aspergillus that can produce okratoxin A or aflatoxin. Those toxins I see prevalent in people that are experiencing symptoms when they do, you know, the testing of the body itself. And those molds can easily grow out of control because it only requires typically about 60% relative humidity or more to start to grow inside of a home. And unfortunately, parts of the country you might live that might have those levels perpetually. We also see mycophenolic acid as another major issue. That's typically produced by penicillium, species. Microphenolic acid for those that don't know, it's very interesting. It's actually what we

make immune suppressing drugs out of. So prime example of this, if I were to get an organ transplant tomorrow, they would likely pump me up with mycophenolic acid so that mycophonelic acid so that my so there are, you know, life-saving, immune-suppressing drugs that we take. The problem is, is that if I'm not getting an organ transplant and I'm breathing in high levels of mycopenolic acid all day, I'm going to suppress my immune system, and that's going to happen by accident, not on purpose, and the effects that happen with that perpetually are not good. And so we have those typical molds that we see that I see the most prevalent in people, just looking at people's lab results all day long.

And then the other honorable mentions, we have fusarium, and seeing some of the toxins out of fusarium are a little bit troubling. It's a little bit harder to test for, so you don't see it as much. much. And I think we got to do better on the technology side to be able to include that more and more in some of the testing technologies. And then mukeur. So like in COVID, in the pandemic, when we're dealing with COVID-19, in India, you were seeing a lot of people die from mukeumomycosis. And this is actually a mycotoxin that is produced by a mold species called mukear. You don't see it a lot on this part of the world. But recently, I've been seeing it pop up on

client's testing results, and it's been pretty cautioning for me to say we got to remediate that area because that is another toxicogenic mold that we want to be on the lookout for, even though we don't hear much about it over here. So I'm giving them honorable mentions. We're on the lookout, and it's definitely an evolving science here. So we're going to talk about how to find mold, what to do with it, what you can do on your own and where you might need an expert to come in. But before we do that, just a couple other questions I want to do to lay the groundwork. So you mentioned, that one of the areas that you often see mold inside of these homes could be in the drywall or some place that has exposure to ongoing water damage. You have a leak, you have a pipe, something

in your HVAC system. So let's say that there is some of these toxic mold species in my HVAC system at home. How is it that those molds, if you're not interacting with them yourself, touching it, putting your hand in the HVAC, cleaning it yourself, how is it that they actually damage our body. I don't think any, I don't think a lot of our audience actually knows about the sort of superpowers and defense mechanisms that mold has to preserve their own life and how those defense systems can actually harm our health. Yeah. So mold is going to sporulate. That's how it reproduces. So if you put it like this, it's, it's a colonizing organism that's constantly reproducing and creating particles. Well, the other issue about mold specifically is,

that they produce toxins typically to fight over the same real estate with each other. Let me give an example. We have some ketomium growing. We have some stachy botchus going. They're actually trying to kill off each other and take over the real estate because in their mind, if they had a mind, it would be to survive. Well, to survive means killing off anything else that's a threat near them, which is going to be bacteria, mold, other microorganisms that they're fighting for that same earth's life source water. And so we actually are typically, innocent bystanders of chemical warfare happening inside our walls, inside our HVAC systems. And we have no idea because these particles are 50 times plus smaller than what the eye can

actually see. So that's where those things come into play. But they're also producing particles. Now, the larger the colony, the more particles that's going to produce. And one of the biggest like myths of this century has been, well, if the leak is stopped, the mold will just die off. No, I mean, I've seen tests where the client told me that leak happened 10 years ago. There's no way. But yet the test shows that it's still sporulating because we were able to pick it up in the air right nearby. So what we're learning is these things constantly create particles to reproduce. They might go dormant and produce less.

But in the right conditions, a.k.a. more humidity comes in or there's a little bit of a sprouting leak happening. They come right back blazing and unfortunately creating a lot of particles. which is entering our body. Now, if it's in the HVAC system, which is the lungs of the home, that is spreading everywhere. I mean, think about it. Look up right now. You're going to see an HVAC system. You're going to see duckwork. That is going to go from room to room to room. So that's how problems in the kitchen become a problem in the bathroom, become a problem in the bedroom, is now it's impact in the air that you're breathing all throughout the house. why is it that some people seem to be more impacted by these toxic spores that mold will spread

throughout the home and some people seem less impacted? What have you learned and what have you learned from some of your colleagues and colleagues and experts in the space? Yeah, it's really interesting. It's kind of like anything else. You know, the thing about COVID for us for a second. I think COVID taught us so much. It's always worth mentioning. My wife and I both had COVID back in the pandemic. My wife lost her. sense of taste and smell, okay? We probably had to have had the same strain. I would only imagine.

We live in the same house. We go to the same places together. We both get COVID. She loses her sense of taste and smell. I have my sense of taste and smell. I am bedridden with like these flu-like symptoms that last probably three to five days. She is up exercising every day and is like completely fine, right, except for the taste and smell. Why do two people with the same strain not get the same illness, right? Totally different

symptoms. It's because we all have different epigenetics. We all have different diets. We all have different immune systems. I mean, we're all inherently different. And when you put that into the puzzle here, we're going to have different body fat compositions, which, by the way, where toxins stored in the fat cells, right? So you typically see women being impacted more than men. And I have a wife. I'm not going to say that women are fatter than men by any means here. But what I will say is, naturally, there is a higher percentage of body fat, typically, than in a man. So when you look at these different perspectives, you're going to see that if you have the ability to store more toxins, you also have different hormones from person to person, different imbalances in those hormones.

You have different genetics and epigenetics. You can see how there's an infinite of variables of how it might impact two different people living in the same house. Let's start off with how do we actually know if we have mold in a house, especially if we're saying that this is a hidden toxin that's there, a lot of people will say, we were just chatting about mold a little bit earlier in preparation of this podcast, I'll say, oh, I see some mold in my bathroom sometimes, right? But I just go in and kind of like clean it out or get rid of it a little bit. So for the person listening today, how do they actually know if they have hidden mold in their home? Yeah. So one of the biggest confused.

of everything with respects to understanding the environment is the archaic way was somebody would come over and do like an air sample in the center of your house. All right. And they would tell you off of that one sample, most likely everything's fine. That's because they're collecting 75 milliliters of air. Now, you know, think about a two-liter bottle of Coke right now. I mean, if you have a two-liter bottle of anything, that's a pretty large volume of air compared to 75 milliliters. Well, most of us live in homes that you would need to replicate a thousand of those tests to essentially collect the same amount of air that we'd be breathing inside of our home,

which means that a very small microcosm happens in the actual center of the house. So unfortunately, it doesn't tell us enough information. So really what I had to figure out and help figure out for people was, how can we get accurate information with one test so that people can utilize, it as a screening tool to really understand their environment. And out of that test, we, out of that idea came this test called the Dust Test, which I think you've had the pleasure of trying as well. I tried it and we're actually going to talk about my results. I think I did it last year before we got connected. But we'll chat a little bit about my results and my home and everything.

And I mean, how easy was that, by the way? It was very easy. Yeah. Yeah. So we had to make it easy for the average person to be able to take this test, not need a professional, and collect it and get real data so they can understand their environment because so many people get scammed by these people and they spend thousands of dollars, by the way, to just do an air test or two in the center of their house or the center of their rooms and tell them everything is fine. Is that typically called an Ermi test? No, it's called an Air test. Air test. Okay, got it. So Ermi is different. Ermi is different. Air tests have their place.

Yeah. They are used in finding strategic hidden spots, but not the way in which most people use them, which is, again, testing in the center of the room. So in seeing so many people get false negatives, right, and think that their house is fine when maybe it wasn't. And that actually takes time away from finding the real problem because now they're off doing other things thinking it must be something else. And then circling back to their house and realizing it was their house the entire time, I mean, just the amount of time that takes being sick, going to doctors, trying to figure out what's going on when you could have had the answer that you needed ahead of time, that's way more powerful, right? So I know you said earlier, this could be scary. And I hear you,

but so is getting sick, right? And so if we can develop something that empowers people with information to make it less scary, because I think for me, I would be scared of something I didn't know anything about. But now if I have information and I can do something with that information, I'm no longer scared. Now it's just a matter of figuring out the logistics of getting it done. And so that was what we wanted to put together for people because they were really getting bad information for far too long. This episode is brought to you by Air Doctor.

You probably think that the home you're in is pretty safe from air pollution, right? But did you know that indoor air is often two to five times more polluted than outdoor air? Crazy, I know. Buying new furniture, installing new carpets, painting your living room, and even owning a pet can dramatically affect the air quality inside our homes. Toxins found in polluted air can contribute to everything from cardiovascular disease to neurodegeneration. When I found out how toxic the air in my home could be, I started to use the Air Doctor professional air purifier. And I saw notable improvements in how I felt immediately and when I measured the quality of the air in my home using special devices.

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And in preparation of that, you know, of course, my wife would be pregnant, etc. would go through all the steps. And with how much I've learned about mold over the years, I thought, you know, I don't know, it's a condo building. You're kind of sharing a lot of your HVAC systems are kind of like linked up a little bit. You know, you are somebody's water damage could encroach on you, you know, I don't know the history. But even if we moved into a home, I would have done the same thing. So I got connected with a local group here in Los Angeles, and they recommended and they use your, you know, dust test. I paid for it. This is not endorsement. You didn't pay to be on this podcast. It was just something that I'm fascinated about.

and I ended up doing the test. And it came back and talked a little bit about the test, and we can kind of link to my results if people want to check it out. Yeah. So it uses PCR technology, again, coming out of COVID, I think we all know what that means.

But essentially it's DNA-based analysis. And the whole premise of this test is, whatever's in your air, no matter where it's coming from, it's going to settle amongst your dust, eventually becoming a part of your dust. And then as it's part of your dust, recirculates constantly,

unless that dust is removed. If you've ever sat near a window on a sunny day, you know exactly what I'm talking about when you saw all those dust particles floating in the air, you're like, whoa, it's a lot of dust. So our dust is everywhere. What's in our dust is all kinds of stuff that we probably never knew.

It's not just dead hair and skin cells. It's microbes, it's mold, it's bacteria, it's toxins, it's probably microplastics. I mean, there's all kinds of things, right? But we wanted to be able to look at that information as a screening tool to, again, if our dust is everywhere, if we collect dust from different parts of the house, we have a pretty good average of what's in our dust, which means we're going to have a pretty good average of the

crap we're breathing in. Right. When I was doing the test, there was a few sort of swabs inside of there and instructions of like, hey, go to this room and take swab, dust swab from high, go to the, you know, take a dust swab from low, then go to the next room. And I think it was like three or four places in the house that you want people to take samples from. Exactly. want to get a good average of what we're being exposed to.

That is way more effective than that little 75-mol-liter of air in the center of your house, right? So with that being said, after analyzing over 1,000 different samples in people's homes, you got a good idea of what's the normal and what's in the top 10% and top low percent. So we have this little mold code here. Because again, just to go back to it, everybody's going to have some amount of mold that's here. exactly. So four is sadly, but truthfully, the average. And it is higher than what we would like to see as experts. So it's a scale of one to five, and four is unfortunately the average you're saying. Yeah. So four is where the most amount of people sit. And it would be really amazing if the average

was like one or two, right? But unfortunately, it's on the higher end of the spectrum, which doesn't surprise you if you go back to the American Healthy Home. So, survey that HUD and EPA did, we know it's a growing problem. So four is where people typically are. So from this perspective of if I have a four, am I scared? No. If I go anywhere else, it's probably also going to be a four. But are there things we can do to get from a four to a three or from a four to a two? Absolutely. And that's what I want to talk to you guys about today because I think at the end of the day, people need to know how to improve these scores to get a better result and breathe better quality air. So let's talk about my test that I did in my home. Tell us what I scored.

And what are some of the main things that you saw on this test? And why did my home score the number that it did? All right. So starting on page two, we have the mold score, right? You score to four, which again, that's the majority of homes. So you have an average home in terms of air quality and the particles found. You're basic. We go down to the next page is page three. This is the actual data, right? So this is 36 different species that are typically found in a water damage environment, and this is all based upon the EPA's American Healthy Home Survey data. And we have a good average of what a home should have. There's one thing that I want to be very clear about, because you have quite a bit in the yellow, which means 10 times higher than what it should be.

However, I see this all the time, and it's not something to be alarmed about, because remember this, something's so small, right? 10 times higher really isn't a whole lot. It could be the difference between like 15 spores and 100 spores, not going to be a huge detriment. The thing about it is is that we can improve this and make it much less very easily. So it's not like we're starting at a massive high point

where there's millions and millions of it there. You have a few species of Aspergillus that are 10 times higher. You have one species of aspirinous that's 100 times higher. You've got catomium and stachy botrys, right? So they're very low counts. But it's something that if I'm you, I'd be just paying attention to water damage. There might be like some very small leak happening that maybe you haven't discovered yet, or maybe it happened a while ago and it dried out and nothing's really happened since

and it hasn't been disturbed. it also could be in the HVAC, right? So we have some variables here. But at least we understand, if these numbers were off the charts, I'd tell you, this place has a lot of water damage. We need to bring somebody in to figure out where all this water's coming from. You don't have that, right? So this is good news.

You have some penicillium species 10 times higher. I typically see these growing in HVAC systems. When's the last time your HVAC system was clean, by the way? I was talking to you before the podcast is that we've been trying to agree on a date in our condo building, and we've not been able to agree on a date. So it's been kicked down the can. I don't think since we've moved in, the HVAC system has been cleaned. I mean, Drew, you're not the only one. Now, how many people listening have been kicking down the can, cleaning their HVAC system, servicing their HVAC system? It happens all the time, right?

So as human beings, it's just another thing we have to worry about. But based upon this test, I would tell you, my gut instinct is saying, this HVAC system's got to get cleaned. and we have to look at installing a better filter on there. Do you know what Merv rating your filter is? No clue. Okay. I don't know. I've never even heard of the word Merv.

Good. How many people have heard of the word Merv? Right. So it stands for the efficiency rating of your filtration system. And the higher the rating, the smaller the particle it removes at a higher highest efficiency. So typically you want the highest Merve rating you can get that your HVV system can handle.

And that's the name of the game. So a lot of people listening right now might have. have MRV-8, because that's like the standard filter. If you went to Home Depot and got that or something, that would typically be it. Some people might be more aware, and they have a Merv 13. I have a Merv 16 in my house, and that's pretty much the highest you can get in a residential setting. And I highly recommend anyone that can get a Merv 16 gets that, because, again, the higher,

the number, the less, the more particles it removes at a smaller size, which mold and bacteria and toxins very, very tiny. I think if you did that based upon the results that I see and just keep an eye out for stachibotris of ketomium, any sort of water damage event, I think we'd be in good shape. I would probably tell you start there, retest. Let's see, if this ketomium and stacobotch are still coming up, then we might have to find something very, like I said, it's got to be very small because you picked up 16 spores per milligram of dust.

There's not a lot. So that means it was, it's a small leak somewhere. if it's not coming from the HVAC system itself. So how much was this test? I paid for it, but like about how much was this test? 275 door to door. Okay, great. So when, you know, I wasn't experiencing any symptoms that I know about that were things that I, even

though mold could be connected to a lot of different things, I didn't have for me a specific reason to say, hey, I think mold might be the cause of this symptom that I'm dealing with. I wanted to more have the proactive effect of, hey, we're going to have a family here one day, then probably move somewhere else, knowing how toxic mold can be. I don't want my wife or her future baby or, you know, the baby in my wife's stomach to be able to be breathing in and being exposed to this toxic mold. So for me, 275 was a no-brainer to get kind of a little bit of that piece of mind. And also preemptively address these things, because if there is a leak and that leak got worse, maybe in a couple years I would have a much

bigger issue if it wasn't addressed. So that's how I saw it, right? I know a lot of my friends have done a similar test or this test because they have symptoms, but I just wanted to share a little bit of the reasoning of why I chose to do it, which is I have some, you know, I'm lucky to have some, you know, resources to be able to, not that the test is crazy, expensive, and I wanted to do it, but there's also this other thing is that having many people, including a former business partner that suffered tremendously from mold issues and knowing. knowing that mold or mediation can cost the bigger your houses can be in the tens of thousands, if not the hundreds of thousands, depending on how bad the issue is. It felt like $275 is not a big

deal to spend to get a little bit of peace of mind. So that's my background and also explaining to the audience of what prompted me to do this test in the first place. Yeah, look, I mean, you know, in this type of scenario, it's very possible that this could be life-saving, right? Because if we get to this before it gets bad, not only you're going to save money on remediation, like me telling you, clean your HVAC and put a better filter on, that's not going to cost a lot of money. And that's amazing. Because if it gets worse and it continues to get worse, the average person spends about $56,000 at this point of, I've got a bunch of problems, I now got to confront and fix at one shot. Because as this gets worse and worse, it just ends up

costing more and more, because more problems and more problems start. to develop. So it is way better to do it in your situation, right? Because now you're ahead of the curve. You found problems while they're minutia, right? And you're going to be able to easily solve them without massive investments. Yeah, people that are really sick that have tons of problems. You almost got to tear down parts of the house to get to fix those, right? That's where it starts that up. So let's say somebody can't do this test, right? Or doesn't want to do it, or is thinking about doing it and we'll do it one day, are there things right now that people can do to immediately protect themselves and their homes? It's stuff that they can do themselves.

It's the stuff that they could be on the lookout for or generally with the normal maintenance that would happen in a home or an apartment or a condo. These can be things that they can work into their normal routine. Listen, if I'm balling on a budget, here's the three things I'm going to do. A, I'm going to clean my place frequently. Now, remember, I said all of this stuff that goes on in our environment becomes part of our air, settles amongst our dust, becomes part of our dust. So if I let dust accumulate, I'm going to be breeding these things in much more frequently than if I were to stay on top of dusting.

Now, I'm, myself, I'm not the biggest fan of dusting. I don't know many people that are, but it's very important for our health. So I'd say dusting is probably the number one thing people can do. number two thing people can do when weather permits and when air quality permits open windows why is that because dilution is going to help with the pollution the reason being is because that we have tons of particles that we're breathing in more fresh air is going to dilute the amount of particles are breathing in therefore we breathe in less particles that's going to help give our immune system a break because we're constantly trying to remove these particles so opening windows doors when it's nice out not too humid

not creating problems to solve problems, right? That's a great solution. I would say the last thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to just look for any signs of water damage, do the best that I could, even if it has to be DIY. And, you know, I'm at an unfair advantage. I know quite a bit and can do a pretty damn good DIY job. But doing something, you know, studying some stuff, downloading the IICRCS 520, learning how to protect myself and, you know, opening it.

The IICR, what? The IICR, CS 520, it's the, like, the Bible for remediation, right? But just like learning how to open up walls safely and carefully, if I'm bawling on a budget and that's what I got to do, that's what I'm doing, you know? The thing is, like, I know it's always amazing to hire a professional when you can because you don't have to, like, put yourself through night school and try to figure out how to do this in a short amount of time. But if you can't, like, you got to do what you can do.

the thing is you can't just take this information and be overwhelmed and kind of become a victim. You have to jump into action or that's how you get sicker and sicker. On the topic of water damage, you know, you have teams all around the U.S. that go in and fix stuff. What would you say are the top, one, two, three, four, five, if there's five, sources of sort of the leaks or the water and damage that's there that people are kind of either ignoring or not paying attention to? Like, is it the sink in the kitchen? Is it underneath the sink? Is it a bathroom? Is it a bathroom?

Is it the HVAC? Like, what is the most common? And run us through a couple of those. All right. So I will say the HVAC becomes the most important one. Even if it started in the attic, got into the HVAC. Because the HVAC consistently condensates, it becomes a very big, vulnerable weak point that impacts the greatest amount of air quality because it literally is the lungs of the home.

It's got pathways all throughout the home. every time you're breathing, if that HVAC is contaminated, it doesn't matter where you are, you're going to pick it up. So I would say that becomes the most important part. And I don't know a house that didn't have a little bit of mold, didn't have mold in the HVAC too, like it is so prevalent. Addicts and basements, they're going to be kind of tied for number two, roof leaks and stuff like that.

But we also have ventilation issues in addicts. It doesn't matter if you've got a conventional ventilated, home or if you've got spray-phoned home, if it doesn't have some sort of means of ventilation or humidity controls, you're going to see mold up there. Couple with roof leaks, couple with, you know, how many door knockers do we have over the last decade that said, hey, let's improve the insulation in your home. We're going to come up and install new insulation. And they just put new insulation over the old insulation, blocked all the vents, created a mold problem. We've seen that happen a bunch of times too. Basements and crawl spaces, which are kind of tied for number two there.

I mean, they're below grade. Most of them, at least half of them, can be below grade, which means it's underground, which means that every time it rains, that pressure of the water is pushing inwards and it's drying to the drier side, which happens to be our basements or crawl spaces. Notoriously, they have severe issues with moisture and humidity, and then 30% of the air we breathe upstairs, which is a pretty large portion of hair that we're breathing, is going to come from the lowest point of the house. So if that lowest point of the house, like our basement or crawl space has not good air, has a bunch of toxins in it, that stuff's rising up and we're inhaling it all day long. Because a lot of people, when they think about their crawl space or basement,

it's like, oh, I don't go down there much. Okay, but it's still impacting the air quality you breed. So you have to be mindful of it, unfortunately. Kitchens and bathrooms, I'd say those are probably the most obvious spots for people to think about. And bathrooms typically are lack of waterproofing behind the tile. Unfortunately, like pretty much every house before 2015 didn't have good waterproofing. So they would either just tile on top of drywall or they would tile on top of cement board, which is better than the drywall, of course. But without waterproofing, moisture does seep through the grout and get into the wall cavity. Right. So waterproofing has been an amazing invention in modern times, but unfortunately not everybody has that.

And then kitchen, same thing. Waterproofing in the back splash hasn't been done. Water gets, and every time we use the sink, we're splashing water. It happens. That water gets into the wall cavity. It starts to grow. Sink leaks, of course, in both bathrooms and kitchens can be little small drips and be no big deal, or they can be, you know, pretty massive spills that seep into the cabinets

and kind of have a mold factory growing behind the cabinets themselves. So those are some of the typical issues you see, you know, in those areas. Let's say somebody listening to a source of mold in their home and is like, hey, while I get a bigger plan together, I want to get rid of this mold that I've found. What would you suggest to them? Yeah, first off, think about mold in terms of porosity. So if I have something that's porous like drywall. I want to actually remove it. I don't want to just try to scrub it down. And that means I'm going to literally have to cut the drywall out, inspect. I might have to remove insulation, right? And I might see mold growing on the lumber behind that or the cement behind that.

And I might have to scrub that clean because that is semi-porous. If I see mold growing on like glass or plastic, which is non-porous, great. I can easily wipe that down with like a disinfectant, and a microfiber towel, and I'm good. Now, the reason being is because if something has pores, mold that has roots called Hafei can grow into it. Now, what happens if we go outside and chop off our weeds in our front lawn or our back lawn, right? It's going to grow back. We have to pull it from its roots out. Unfortunately, if mold's growing into your drywall, your insulation, you can't pull it from its roots out. You have to litter. In order to do that, you got to take the, entire piece of wall with it, just like if you were to take the entire piece of soil with the root

structure. So you kind of get stuck into the situation where I'm looking at how porous is it, can I effectively remove it, or do I have to physically remove the porous material? And unfortunately, if we're talking drywall insulation or even fabric couches, right? We have mold growing into that. It's got to go. Should people be wearing some sort of protective gear when they do this? Ideally, yes, because if you're not wearing a mask, for example, these are very tiny particles. They can enter your body. And unfortunately, when you're disturbing it, there's a lot typically there. So remember how I said molds like 25 to 50 times smaller than what the eye can see?

At least I think I said that. I say it so many times that I just always imagine I say it at some point. Well, then think about it if it's growing on a patch on the wall. There's millions of it there, right? So if I take a hammer to that, I've just released millions of it into the air. Now, if I'm not wearing a mask, I'm going to inhale a lot of that right into the body. And that's going to be a pretty high concentration compared to the probably hundreds or thousands I might be inhaling just through the dust. Right.

So when you're working in it, you're in a much higher risk. So you definitely want to wear a mask. Now, I also wear like a Tyvex suit. Now, you may have seen it. They look like, you know, people wear them painting, but they also wear them in remediation. It's where I, you know, kind of look like a space monster coming into your house. And the reason being is because I don't want this stuff getting on my clothes and then I bring that back to my family, right? So we want to protect ourselves too.

Now, odds are if you're remediating your bathroom or something, you don't want to protect yourself. So you're not getting that stuff from your bathroom over to your kitchen, over to where your family's eating, et cetera, et cetera. So it's good idea to wear protective stuff. Do having air filters in the home make a difference? Absolutely. Yeah. So it's like we filter our water. We should be filtering our air.

the more we filter our air, the more particles we're moving from our air. Obviously, not all filters are created equal, but I think it's really important that we pay attention to filtration because protects our HVAC system, protects our lungs every time we're taking a breath. Having these filters, I think, is really paramount. Do you have a recommendation for the type of filter, meaning, you know, HEPA or this or that? You see some filters even marketed as, I'm not going to name any names, being able to sort of destroy mold in particular. So what's your recommendation? Yeah, I think things that say they are

designed to destroy, I think they're looking at the puzzle pieces incorrectly, maybe a little upside down even. The goal shouldn't be to destroy. You know, first off, particles themselves cannot be destroyed. This is like, you know, law of conservation of energy here. But one of the first things we understand is you can't destroy a particle, but what you can do is you can make it smaller, right? So if I try to destroy something, odds are, I'm just breaking into the smaller and smaller pieces. I can't observe it with my eye, so I think it's gone, but actually it's just smaller. That's why I can't see it. The problem with destroying things is that we don't understand how these smaller fragments impact the human body. Heck, we barely understand how the original particle impacts the human

body. So do you really think we have the capabilities of this current technology to really understand how fragments impact the human body? No. And the people selling those devices, products, whatever, they're not doing the research either. They're just trying to sell you a product. The bottom line is, we want to remove this stuff. Now, how do we remove it? Microfiber towels, soap and water. I mean, you know, just physically removing it. Just like if we had crud on our countertops, would we spray something to kill the crud? No, we would spray it down with something probably that has a surfactant in it, a little bit of a disinfectant, and we'd be wiping it down with paper towels or microfiber towels. We need to start treating things in our environment the same way we would treat

how we clean our kitchen countertops, because it's really the way we should be doing it. All these things that kill and everything else, I think it's too early to be weighing in on stuff like that. I think it's, I'm just, I'm too cautious of a person. Maybe some of these things have, have great potential behind them down the road. But for right now, I'm telling people, just remove it. That's all you got to do. Filters, right? They remove particles. They trap them in the filter. You can get ones that remove as small of a particle as possible. That's the goal. Like an ultra heppa. Ultra heppa. You know, HEPA is actually based on like 1940s technology. So we can do a lot better. And we're starting to see better.

and better filtration systems come out, revolutionizing things. Unfortunately, filtration hasn't been a very big industry. You know, it's... I feel like it's getting more attention. There's more people that are starting to like get into the space. There's a lot of really cool devices that are looking at different measurements of, you know, air quality inside of there. But I don't think we have the ability to sort of detect mold because it's so small. You know, I... Through like a home device. Totally. And you know what it is? It's just large. money hasn't come in. You know, pharmaceutical companies haven't rushed in and started creating, you know, mold detox medications, right? We don't have these big trillion dollar companies coming in and

taking over the air quality space because the demand's not there, right? If we don't understand how big of an impact this has on health, then we don't understand how much of demand should be there. Right. So that's why awareness is so important to me, because if we all become aware, then we start investing in our health through the power of air. quality, which has worked for so many people, then as a movement, we actually get cooler stuff at a result because companies will come in and start to innovate. I'm doing the best that I can innovate with what I have. I'm just one guy, right? We need tons of people wanting to come in and make really cool, amazing products that are going to benefit all of us.

one of the common things that people see is some mold in their bathroom, sometimes in the corner, nearby like the cocking that's been done or by the sink. If you see mold in those sections, which are often the visible molds that people see, should you be removing it? Should you be removing it? And how do you remove it? Like what type of disinfectant do you recommend? Yeah.

So I think if you see mold, you should always remove it because not only is it on but you don't really know how much is actually there colonized. You know how deep it goes. So the caulking and the grout and all that kind of stuff can be a bit of a difficulty because I'll just give you an example. If I were to clean it and it came back a week later, I would know for sure there's a deeper problem there. Maybe it's actually growing from behind the wall through the grout, through the silicone.

And that means that I had a lack of waterproofing there. and to fix that the right way, we're talking, I'm ripping all that stuff out and redoing it. I mean, tile and all, right? Because I want to get to the waterproofing, which is going to be behind the tile. Now, if I clean it, and a week later, it's holding up fine. Well, then it's just normal trap moisture, right? You're, at that point, I would probably just rip out the silicone, redo the silicone. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg. But just to make sure we get better bonding between the different materials so that we're not trapping moisture behind it perpetually. And look, cocking, it will separate a little bit. The grout, you'll get some mold growth.

Unless you seal it every single year, you're going to have that moisture come in, get trapped, and allow mold to grow over time. Let's talk about your background. How did you get into this space? Ever since I was, you know, a very small child. I always dreamed of being a mold expert. You're obsessed with mold. You used to play with mold in the corner?

Just play with it, yeah. It's a really interesting story. So my dad's been a restoration contractor since I'm five years. old. So I've pretty much been around construction my entire life. Buddy Amon, I went to college with. His dad was a mold inspector. He ended up becoming a mold inspector. Hurricane Sandy happens. I'm pretty much wrapping up college at that point. I move home. I started working for my dad. Here I am. I think I'm, you know, I'm going to, I'm a marketing

guru at this point. I think I'm going to revolutionize my dad's business. I come in, I help him create a new logo, new website, you know, and I'm off to the races. Well, he's like, listen, I think you really should be going, you know, door to door and help him with the sales process, get some of sales experience. I'm fresh out of college. I don't particularly think I'm a sales guy, but sure, I'll try it. I start going door to door. And that was what really, I think, made an interesting mark on my life because that's when

I started seeing people sick inside their own homes. And I would have never had that experience, if not for this, you know, unique sales. opportunity working for my dad very quickly and seeing how many people were impacted. This, like, I already kind of briefly told you the story about the woman with the joint pain. She could have reminded me of my grandma. Sandy, right? Yeah. Well, you know, it was really interesting to me, the other side of the technical part of the story

was I go into her home. She gives me two reports, right? One was the lab results similar to how we just looked at lab results of your place. The other one was the scope of work. Now, the scope of work is the protocol that, whatever company that came in after the hurricane had followed. I looked through the scope of work. I didn't really see anything abnormal.

It looked like it was like they were doing the right thing. They set up plastic. They cut open walls like, you know, the protocols you typically see. And then I saw the lab results, which were tested a year later after that were like off the charts. I'm like, how could that be? If it was remediated, why would it be back like this? So I told her, look, I don't really understand this.

To be frank, like, this is my dad's company. You would be my first client. But my dad's been doing this forever, so he says, companies to help you. But I'm really interested in this because I don't understand how you could have these high levels if your house was remediated. She agreed, we need to open up walls. The only way to do is to check.

When I opened up walls, I mean, they were literally blanketed. It was like a black carpet of, fungus growing behind this woman's wall. And mind you, like the wall was completely freshly painted just a year ago. And on the surface, you couldn't see anything. Like the wall looked fine. So it wasn't until I cut open the wall and you saw behind the wall. And it was at that moment that I was like, oh my goodness, I'm pretty sure all these companies that come in and do this water damage thing, I'm pretty sure most of them are not doing this properly. Intentionally, unintentionally, is it a scam Is it a lack of awareness?

Is it a little bit of both? I think it's two things. I think it's the perpetual squeeze from the home insurance companies on other companies to just get in and get out. It's this perpetual squeeze of I want to pay you as little as possible

to fix this client's home with no regard to science. I think that's one of the problems. The other problem is that, you know, most... Have you ever hired a contractor? Yeah. Okay. They ever seem like they have

a good science background or no disrespect but no that's not their forte so they probably don't know about that fair enough and you know i'm i'm now in this industry so you know it's it's easy for me to say you know these contractors following me around and coming after me you see when you have a conversation with these people they always tell you things like it's behind the wall you can't can't come in front of the wall don't worry about it we'll just paint over it i threw some bleach on it like this is where all this stuff came from and you think well he's a contractor. He knows this home stuff, right? He's got it. Bro science passed around from person to person that was also in that industry. Yes. Well, you have this bro science, as you call it, which I love that

term now, might be using that in the future. And you have this perpetual pressure from the insurance company to get this contractor in and out as quickly as possible. So a lot of steps get missed. And unfortunately, you have a lack of a science background in construction. There's no regulations in the construction industry making them aware of certain scientific elements they probably should, especially considering people who build homes or restore homes have a unique impact with respects to the water damage and the air quality that that water damage creates. That impacts the human health, right? So all these things are disjointed. I started realizing there's a whole pattern of this. And here's how this really went. So it started with this woman, right? And then there was a pattern

that developed. But I had to go to these classes too at the same time, right? And these are the continuing education classes that I get to be called an expert. And in these classes, I'd be asking like the teachers and stuff, hey, what is, how do we get rid of mycotts? toxins. And they'd be like, micotone. What's a mycotoxin? You can't be using that word around here. What are you talking about? You start asking scientific questions and what you're supposed to be doing to avert these crises and they have no idea what you're talking about. And I was like, well, the mycotoxins exist. We have to remove them. I'm seeing them in homes. You are not, you cannot be seeing those in homes. Like they didn't even, they weren't even realizing the

technologies we have available for these types of testing. So they had no. no idea how to actually handle these or get rid of these. I realized in 2013 that I was on my own, on an island with associates that had no clue about the scientific methodologies that we have today, even back then, and how to actually deal with this. So what I had to do was basically develop a process through trial and error following different protocols from different industries to figure out how do we get this stuff out of people's house. Because here's the other thing. We talked about the HVAC. We talked about how these particles are generated and they kind of travel all across the house, right? There's nothing in these protocols, even to this day, that tell people what to do

about that. It's just, no, you got mold, throw some bleach on it, paint over it. You got a real gentleman, okay, cut it out, cut it out properly. But nobody's acknowledging the fact that that organism, that living organism has been creating particles and toxins that have been getting in your HVAC circulating however long it's been in your wall all this time. And so people would get their houses remedied and still feel sick. Why is that? Because they just worried about that spot on the wall. What about the rest of it? And that's what made me realize we've got a massive problem here. Nobody knows what the heck they're doing. Take us to a place of, you know, your stepping into your dad's business, you are helping yourself and your dad too, because it sounds like

your dad wasn't fully educated about all these ins and outs, and you're helping your team get fully educated, right? How do you now become known as one of the go-to people in this space? So my career started in New York, essentially, and I feel like, you know, would a Jay-Z say, if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere type of thing? I mean, when you do good work in that metropolitan area, it's like your name travels like wildfire. And so I started getting calls from, you know, anyone and everyone, doctors, their patients. I just became known as like this mold whisper up there. And that quickly spread to L.A. and Miami. And next thing you know, I'm like, I got to build like a network of people here to start to be able to fix all these people's

homes because it just became bigger and bigger and bigger. Next thing you know, I get, I'm on a Zoom call with Gweth Paltrow helping her with her home and Christina Perry helping with her home. I mean, it's, it took 10 years to get where I'm at. So I don't want to, it wasn't like an overnight success. It was a lot of work, still a lot of work building a nationwide company that on this scale that's helping people. But it just kind of organically happened over time, you know, doing good work.

that's the type of success you get. You know, we had a mutual friend on the podcast. I mentioned earlier, Christina, and she was talking about one of the challenges that keeps this issue continuing to grow and prevents families from getting the help that they need and being exposed even in the first place is that we have all these incentives that are designed to sort of have everybody be able to wash their hands of any blame or responsibility. that's there. You mentioned one of them, which was a lot of the inspectors that come in who might be doing some version of a remediation, like on this individual, Sandy, who you ultimately ended up helping,

those individuals come in and they're getting squeezed. They're getting squeezed by insurance. And often, if we'll be honest sometimes, because the homeowner themselves, who even if they might be suffering, is just being told, you know, especially if somebody's wanting to sell their place, they maybe don't want to spend a bunch of money. And so, you know, somebody's being, because again, they're not fully educated about how bad mold is and how deep it can go. What are some of the other incentives that are there, right? Like, talk about insurance, talk about any other incentives that are there that kind of perpetuate this silent killer from continuing to rise every year. So we'll start with home insurance.

There are two major problems. The first problem is this. they quietly put caps on mold coverage, told nobody. And this happened in the 90s. If you look at the history of mold and the mold coverage is in the insurance industry, you'll see in the 90s, pretty much everybody had coverage up to their max policy. Put it this way. If I had half a million dollar coverage on my house,

it didn't matter what happened to my house. I was always covered up to half a million dollars. Well, somewhere along the line, they started losing millions of dollars and liability claims for mold. And so what they did was they started capping it at 10,000. I have 50,000 because I know how to ask for it. But 50,000 is not enough for my house. And that's just the way it goes.

With that 10,000 cap, let's say I had 10,000, I have a water damage claim. Let's say it's $56,000 to remediate it properly. I have to pay $46,000. They give me a check for $10. That's it. That's their coverage. So they quietly, just completely,

changed the entire game overnight. Nobody knew until they had a problem and then realized they only had $10,000 in coverage. And they're posting, I mean, like $4 billion a month in profits. I mean, you know, we could probably come up with a compromise, I think. The other issue is the landlord side of things. Now, let's say I'm an investor. Let's say I own 10 houses. I could only live in one house, right? So the other nine houses are considered second homes. I have no mold coverage in a second home. Now, let's talk about incentives. If I'm a landlord and I own 10 buildings and nine of them flood,

I'm in a pretty serious financial situation because my insurance company is not going to cover any of the mold coverage on those nine properties. That's going to incentivize me to want to cut corners, right? Because I'm kind of in this financial position. So I think you hear a lot of horror stories about landlords and not doing the right thing. And I think, well, we need to create a system here in the U.S. where we don't incentivize people to be financially compromised in that regard. And I think if we can do that by offering landlords mold coverage, just like if they were to live in that property, what's the difference? right? Well, then they wouldn't be put into this situation to try to stif the tenant for making

complaints. They would say, well, if you have a legitimate complaint, well, we'll call my insurance company, let's get them over, do an analysis, let's get this figured out. But unfortunately, it all falls on the landlord. So we need to create financial incentives that help each other as a community, not taking advantage for financial gain. So that is two big issues. We also have the health insurance, I'm ragging on insurance. I'm sorry, but the health insurance industry. Now, they have what's considered ICD codes, right? These are the international codes that diagnosis codes, right? So there is what's called the ICD10 code, which the World Health Organization has for mold toxicity. That code has not translated itself into the U.S., which means that if I have mold toxicity and I go to the

doctor, my health insurance is not going to cover that doctor visit. It's not going to cover those supplements or that medication that I need. So what does this become? I have to pay all this out of pocket. So wait a second. I got to pay to fix the mold remediation, okay, because that's not covered, or maybe only a very small portion of it is. And I'm sick. So now I got to pay to go all these doctors to figure out what's going on with me. That's not covered. And now I got to be on supplements maybe a year or two to really get it out of my system, that's not covered either. I mean, it's like a bankrupting endeavor when you're dealing with environmental illness because of just those three facts alone. And, you know, I don't want to make this a three-hour

podcast because I could easily go off the rails here. But there are other problems within our systems, especially inside the U.S., that we could just be doing better on. And it takes, again, it starts with that awareness. If we have to stand up as people, of this great nation to demand the changes that we want to see. And I think that if more and more people become aware of this, we can really get there. Well, the good news is, I mean, since the birth of the Internet, and unfortunately with these crazy superstorms that we've been having, and more and more people, unfortunately, getting sick, it's the perfect storm, so to speak, of all this explosion of awareness in mold.

you have even very prominent figures, celebrities, doctors themselves talking about, I thought this whole idea about mold was overblown or I was undereducated about it. And then I found out that it was the source of my, you know, symptoms that were there. Can we know that definitively no? But can they see that when they address the root issue or moved in some cases or, you know, did a proper remediation like how you and your team talk about that a lot of these individuals, their symptoms went away. And of course, there are integrative and functional medicine doctors who use testing to look at urine. I know this is a whole other episode. We've done some interviews with like Dr. Ann Shippey. You can test to see are there elevated levels of mycotoxins in your urine.

They're not perfect. There's a lot of different lab companies, but you can go online and you can kind of find some of these doctors. One of them is based in Austin, Texas. She's a great resource. She's written a lot about this. It has been on the podcast. Her name is Dr. Ann Shippey. I believe she uses a few different tests, but one of the laboratories, she uses real-time lapse, which will help look for some of the main, some of the toxins that you mentioned, the worst offenders in the mold space and see if they're in your urine. And a few of my friends that live here in Los Angeles, not a particular city that is known to rain all the time.

It's raining right now, but in general, it's not known for raining that much. We're having these hidden symptoms. or their autoimmune issues were getting worse, and they started asking around, and I helped them get connected with the right clinician. And their mold tested home came back, elevated. Not only that, but their mycotoxin test from like a real-time labs came back, you know, very high for all the species of mold that are there. And when they got to the root of it, clean it all out, which in some cases, unfortunately, can take a little while, they sort of finally feel like they had some relief. So bottom line, the word is getting out, not nearly as much as we need it to, but slowly people

are starting to realize that this is a problem and that things need to change. And obviously, you're a huge part of that with your advocacy and education and all the people that you're helping out. While we have a little bit more time here, I did want to touch on just a couple more topics. You want people to know that are even a little bit aware of mold, that mold is part of the issue, but there's other things that are often associated with mold. and I'm even learning about this. One of them is bacteria.

We all know in general, you know, wash your hands, keep your place clean, et cetera. But what bacteria are you talking about that in particular can be most damaging for our health in the same way that mold is? So when it comes to water damage buildings, you typically also see what's called actinobacteria, which are grand positive bacteria.

Now, just for some familiarity here, strep and staff would be two examples. of that. And we've all had, you know, strap or staff infections, right? With that being said, these become abundant in people's homes when they have severe water damage issues. So it's not just mold that we're actually concerned about. They're both going to be growing in the same locations. The nice thing about mold, and I think why mold gets, you know, a higher popularity, if you will, it's a lot easier to detect. There's a lot more technologies available today that help you identify where the mold actually is. That's not as easy as bacteria. Bacteria, really the best that we have

is testing the dust for bacteria and looking at it kind of like the dust test, where we see how much of it is there, what species are there, what quantities, et cetera. But it's not going to tell us where it comes from. The technology just hasn't gotten there yet. But the good news, the good news is that if you can find mold, you will also find bacteria because they're going to grow in the same places. The other thing about actinobacteria is we've got to be mindful of taking our shoes off at the front door. I mean, actinobacteria is pretty prominent in the soil. So is mold, by the way. And so when you're playing around on the dirt walking around all day and you just start walking in your house, you basically are turning your house into a playground. You don't want that.

It's too much bacteria, too much mold you're bringing in. On top of that, our drain lines. You know, we talked about HVAC systems. When's the last people put Drano down their drain lines, if they will. Not unless they had a clog, right? Well, actually, your hair, and your oils from your skin and everything that collect into the drain lines, bacteria starts growing and eating and feeding off of that gunk inside the drain lines. So it's actually good practice to flush out your drains probably at least once a year. With what? I mean, drain-o.

There's like green alternatives to drain-o, but like I'm just going to say it because people know what it is, kind of like talking about Band-Aid here. Like you need to clean your drains out. And you're not just supposed to wait until you have a clock. You're supposed to do it pretty regularly because, I mean, look, I shave my beard all the time, right? All those little hairs get stuck in the trap, the pea trap. Over time, that's going to, you know, clog up and be enough material for bacteria to start to thrive. So we've seen crazy how that was a vactinobacteria in places where there wasn't water damage,

but there were plumbing systems that haven't been maintained. Just like another thing. to kick your can down the road on the HVAC cleaning, well, people don't even realize there is a can to kick down when it comes to cleaning out their drain lines. They think you only do that if there's a clog. No, no, no. We have to do that more frequently

because that bacteria is coming up and impacting our air quality as well. So clean your drains, but definitely take your shoes off before you come into the house or have a little section in the front, keep all the shoes there, don't be treading around your house. You know, I grew up in,

my family's Indian, so Asian household. And, you know, all my Asian friends, we would always, you know, take our shoes off. And it was a very common practice that were there. And I remember, like, watching TV here, I was born in Kenya, but my family mostly grew up in the States. I remember being a kid and, like, watching TV, like, full house or step by step or whatever. And you're like, oh, man, that's no fair. Like, these kids on this TV show, they get to jump on their bed with their shoes. and they walk around their house with their shoes and other stuff.

It wasn't until later on when I really understood why. It's like, that's actually pretty disgusting. You don't want to be doing that. You want to be taking your shoes off at the front of the house and not be treading around all around your house. And ask your guests to take off their shoes too. Yeah. If you want, you can have some like slippers or the things they could wear.

But, you know, protect your home. Have everybody to take their shoes off. Yes. And especially considering a lot of these particles, again, are very small. They can get into the HVAC system. It just, you know, you create all these. unnecessary problems that could be easily solved by just taking your shoes off at the door. The other crazy thing, I saw this recent study about how much bacteria is in our pillowcases.

Oh, no, you're freaking everybody out here. Like literally more bacteria than what's in your toilet seat, like 17,000 times. If people don't wash their pillowcase? This is after one week of not washing it. Wow. Yeah. So wash your bed sheets. So we got to wash.

Yeah. Wash your pillows. Another thing to add a list. We got to wash our bed sheets like more than we wash them. We have to be honest with each other and just, you know, we don't watch them enough. So you basically just told everybody who's listening, y'all are dirty and you need to get your stuff together. You know, I didn't realize how dirty that we actually are until I really started looking into the science behind everything that I do and realizing, oh my God, we have some things that we can improve upon here. Well, there's that old phrase, cleanliness is godliness, right?

And you understand why so many cultures throughout history have put a priority on making sure that the environment is clean. And obviously now we're taking even a step further that even if your place is clean, and I keep a very clean house and going even a little bit further because the way that our homes and our buildings are designed, as you're mentioned earlier, that there are ways that things can seep in and mold is being the biggest one. I also want to say in because, you know, I mentioned the beginning. A lot of this stuff is scary and it should be scary because it is impacting the health of a lot of people. And unfortunately, a lot of people don't find out until it's too late. And a lot of people never find out. They never find out that mold or environmental toxins of some sort are playing an active role in their health issues. And just as a reminder, we all are going to be exposed to some stuff.

There's going to be mold in our house. and that's why so many of the top experts in the space that I look up to talk about the importance of activating your body's own detoxification systems. And that comes from, of course, eating a diet that is not high in ultra-processed foods. Fine, a little bit here and there is one thing. But if the base of your diet is ultra-processed foods, which is 68% of the base of the diet of, you know, most Americans, and almost 70-plus percent, 80, almost 80%, the percentage of diet in many kids are eating a lot of ultra-process foods.

So staying away and greatly minimizing ultra-process foods, making sure that we sweat and having some sort of form of resistance training as a regular part of your routine. It could be yoga, Pilates, whatever, could be some weightlifting, band workout, but some aspect of your life where resistance training is a regular occurrence and your sweating at least for a total of about 150 minutes a week is the recommendations that I've seen, right? If you have access to a sauna of some sort or a friend as a sauna or you can use a sauna at a fitness center or facility or you go in, you know, I have a few friends here that went in on a sauna together and they keep it at one friend's house. You know, sauna is another

method that's also important that's there. You know, of course, getting good quality sleep. So taking care of ourselves because we're all going to be exposed to all these hidden sources of toxins is important. We don't want to just throw up our hands and say, ah, well, it's in our cosmetics, it's in our homes, it's in our drain, it's on my goddamn pillow that I didn't wash, you know, it's everywhere. I'm not going to do anything. Well, no, we can do things. And a lot of those things are these lifestyle aspects that still, they may not get to the root of it, but they're going to help us be a little bit more anti-fragile. Would you generally agree with that? Yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot of things that you can invest in when it comes to money, right?

But there's also a lot of things that you can invest in when it comes to time. And a lot of it's just taking the time to do things, taking the time to clean, taking the time to wash your sheets, taking the time to take your shoes off of the front door. Like these are things you can do, everybody can do, that you only have to invest your time in. So you don't always have to worry about, well, the things that money can't buy right now because I don't have the money, fine. But do all the things that you can do. And I think that's where you start.

You have to start somewhere. I don't know if you know this. I actually lost like 40 pounds last year by doing sauna work, like literally some. So you think that that was the main thing? You didn't change anything else? You would think I ate like four cheeseburgers a day. I'm telling you. Like I was not though.

It's the craziest thing. My wife makes pretty much all my meals. All right. So I eat nothing but like tofu, cauliflower rice, cauliflower rice again. and then again cauliflower rice. Are you vegetarian? No, no, I'm not.

I'm actually, I love meat. Why are you eating so much tofu over there? I love meat. You know, my wife loves tofu, so, you know, that's the thing. I get stuck on the diet, you know. Salmon, of course, beef, chicken, okay, but like I don't really eat carbs. You were eating clean, you're saying. Yes, I was eating very clean.

But 10 years of going into people's houses, breathing in all these different things. you know, trying to protect myself, but also, you know, nothing's ever perfect. And I never really detox before, you know, here I am friends at all these doctors and everyone's always talking about detoxing, right? But that's just not my, that's not my field. I'm an expert in the home and home wellness. So I never really thought anything of it. And it was literally, like it just happened over the course of a year. I gained like literally 50 pounds, not changing anything in my diet. and I started doing the sauna and I started taking

niacin and B vitamins and sweating. I was in the sauna like I went in a lot. The first week I'll tell you like I was barely sweating. That's how I knew something was off because I'm like 140 degrees in here. I should be sweating. After that week, it was like something turned on like I just started sweating profusely

like the way I should. It was like a faucet turned on or something. And it was there. Thereafter were the weight. I didn't change my diet. I just was doing sauna and detox stuff. And all of a sudden, the weight started falling off me. I lost 40 pounds last year. Wow. Congratulations. First of all. Thank you. I gained like 10 of it back over the holidays and then lost eight. So I'm still, I think I'm up to or something. But I still have weight to go. And I still want to be healthier than I am today. But I'm taking steps towards that. Right.

And so Rome wasn't built in a day, whether it's creating this perfect air quality oasis, whether it's losing weight or getting healthier in some aspect of life. You know, do what you can and just realize that it's a journey. And as long as you're having more wins and losses, you're going in the right direction. And so it's, I think people can do so many different little routines right now, right this second to make a difference in their lives. and they should be doing that. And the sauna for me was, I tell you, that was like the thing, because it was the one thing that I changed that made all the difference. That's awesome.

Michael, this has been great. How can people follow along? Where can they get the dust test from? And how they stay in touch with you on this journey? Yeah. So definitely check me out on Instagram because I'm posting free tips, tricks, all the things pretty much every single day. You could also go to my website,

the Michael Rubino.com. You can go to homecleans.com if you need someone to actually service you in your home. And you can also check out Change theairFoundation.org. I didn't really talk about that as much just because it wasn't opportune. But for me, fixing one house at a time, that's great. But we have systemic issues, which I've already mentioned earlier, that need to be fixed, and Change the Air Foundation's actually doing that. We have six bills proposed in six different states, to change laws in Congress to protect people. And we have one federal bill called the Healthy at Home Act of 2023 that aims to actually appropriate enough funds for the research we need to really prove, is this causing or exacerbating and really get down to the bottom line of

how is this impacting our health, how broad it is, and let's do something about it. So, you know, putting my money where my mouth is and really trying to make change on a broad scale there. That's incredible. Well, we'll have the links to all the things you mentioned, including the dust tests and the nonprofit below and your social media handles. You have great content, a lot of great videos and other things you post. And you maybe have a documentary in the works as well, too, that people can stay tuned for. This has been fantastic, Michael. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and educating our audience about this topic that is scary,

but there's a lot that we can do about it. Totally. And thank you so much for having me and for having this amazing platform to educate people. It's very, very important. Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this. podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.

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