Mold hurts us in three ways. One is a full spore, like active spores coming out, getting in our bodies. Right? Two is mycotoxins. And then mold fragments, broken up mold, old mold.
You take a mold spore and you break it in half, and now it can go deeper into our tissues. If you or someone in your family is struggling with mystery health symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, sinus issues, skin problems, or even behavior issues, it's possible your home might be part of the picture. I'm here talking with Mike Fisher, who is the founder of a company called Vital Home Solutions, a home remediation and mold inspection company. He is a CIRS aware mold inspector who approaches things very differently. He uses specialized testing, has a mold detection dog, which I love, and really understands how mold impacts people dealing with chronic illness who may be particularly susceptible.
We are talking about why mold is so often missed. We talk about how to spot the subtle signs in your own home and what to do if you're starting to suspect something might be off. The thing I love is he shares with us simple low cost steps that we can take to start making our own spaces safer, things that are accessible and don't require a full home overhaul. This is really one of those episodes I feel like everyone should hear. Even if you don't think mold is an issue, it's worth knowing how to find out if it's an issue and to protect your health and your home and your family's health.
If you find this episode helpful, I would absolutely love it if you would subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who might need it. It really helps us to spread the word and helps us to keep producing good information to help people live their healthiest lives. So thank you so much for being here. Let's get started. Treating mold isn't quite it if it doesn't work for sensitive people.
Right? Because you still leave the mold bodies there. If you're leaving the mold bodies there, they still can get in our body. You've gotta understand that it hurts us in multiple ways. The goal is to actually have it removed.
Well, Mike, thank you so much for being here. I am so excited to dive right in. We're talking all things home and mold. So thanks for being here. You bet.
You bet. Excited to be here. Now we're gonna have a little context otherwise when it comes to mold illness, and we won't dive too much into the physical side of it. But we know that when people have mold toxicity, mycotoxin illness, mold illness, that it comes from somewhere. And that's really what we're gonna focus on is where does that come from and what can we do about it?
Before we get too much into the home aspect of mold, I really would love to hear about your experience. How did this come about for you? How did you get into this? Well, I owned a remediation company, a water remediation company for years, twenty five years now. And by default, we end up doing mold because we run into it.
And for years, we just did it the way we were taught by the IICRC, which is a a a organization that teaches you and certifies you in water damage and mold restoration, things like that. From a construction standpoint. Right? Not from a health standpoint. Right.
Right. Exactly. So how to take care of those things. And, what we found, and we found this years into doing it is we actually had this woman that came in or that called us up, and, honestly, we thought she was a little crazy. And we said and we thought, man, she, you know, she just says too much.
She knows more than, you know you know, about how much mold is in her house. And, we came in. We found mold in her master bathroom, and we took care of it. And she said, no. There's still mold in my master bedroom.
And we walked around, looked for it, had thermal imaging, had everything thinking that this is you know, she's kinda crazy again. And, and often, what we're finding now is our clients feel that way. Like, everyone thinks they're crazy. Their doctor thinks they're crazy. Mold guys think they're crazy.
Water damage guys or restoration guys think they're crazy. And, so we did a couple other jobs for her. We found a mold dog. This was back in about 02/2008, and we brought the mold dog dog in. And he found mold behind her headboard or right next to her headboard.
And, we're like, okay. Well, we Was it not visible? You couldn't We couldn't find it. We looked with flashlights, with moisture meters, with thermal imaging, with everything we had at the time. And we just kept saying, alright.
You're okay. It's here. And and the dog found it, and we're like, okay. That's weird. Yeah.
She was right. And, we had done a few jobs with her by that time, and we are doing that job. And, we went in and cleaned it best we thought we could. And then we, we realized that or, well, she came in and she said, it's not good enough. And luckily, we loved her by then.
Right? We all fell in love with her, and we're like, okay. She's not crazy. She's actually really great. And so we came in and cleaned it, and we we took a different stance on it.
We said, let's go clean it like it was a sewage loss. And so we just What does that mean? Just deeper cleaning. K. You're rinsing sill plates.
You're doing everything you can to just get every ounce of it, not just kinda what we were taught in at the time by, the institutions we're learning from. And then she came back and she's like, that's better. And we're like, okay. So we don't know how to find it, and we don't know how to clean it right. And so how do we do that?
And so then at that point is kinda when we started, okay, let's focus on how to get this because she's not the only person out there that's dealing with this. Yeah. And how do we do that? And so that's kinda how we got into the medically important remediation. Sensitized individuals.
Mhmm. And we got that. And then we a lot of the people I followed that are, super into the medically necessary remediation, they would talk about doing it without any sort of, any sort of chemical. So they're doing it with water and soap, and I'm like, they're crazy. Like because we relied so much on chemicals.
Yeah. And then I met, a CIRS doctor, and he said, hey. Have you gone to the CIRS x thing, you know, conference and or would you? And, and he had spoken at it, And he said, we need to find a remediator that can do that. And so we went in, and we found out they had an institute.
They had a class. We took the class, and it was all about no, you know, chemicals. And we're like, gosh. I went in kicking and screaming, and then I left saying, okay. I believe it.
And so that was kind of a big moment for us, and that happened about a year and a half, two years ago, the the no chemical side. Because so many people with CIRS or with toxicity to mold, they can't handle it. Tell us no. Just chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And so most of our clients that have CIRS are super sensitive.
Mhmm. And so they can't handle chemicals. They can't handle odors. They can't handle, you know, our the lady I we still talk to the lady that started us down this journey in February, and she bought a house that was, that had caught on fire. She called us, like, two, three years of maybe three or four years ago and said, hey, Mike.
I did what you probably would have told me not to do. I bought a house that caught on fire. I'm like, yeah. That's probably a bad idea for someone to sell stuff. With water?
With water. And that's how they put it out. And so she's like, but they did such a good job. They tore it down to studs. They did this and that.
Right? And we came in and we found it. It was behind the furnace. And so they didn't take that out because they woulda had to take the furnace out. And they probably just thought, nah, it'll be fine.
And so we, you you know, we still talk to her, but she's, like, one of our most sensitive clients. And, and we find that there are those people with CIRS are just super, super sensitive. So you use a bunch of chemicals to clean the mold, not mold is gone, but then they're reacting to the chemicals. Right. And so even then, what we learned is treating mold isn't quite it it doesn't work for sensitive people.
Right? Because you still leave the mold bodies there. If you're leaving the mold bodies there, they still can get in our body. Mold hurts us in three ways. One is a full spore, like active spores coming out, getting in our bodies.
Right? Two is mycotoxins. So we always hear about people testing for mycotoxins. It's a product that mold makes, and not every mold makes it. And even if it did make like, even if it could make it, it doesn't always make it.
What it needs to be is a thriving colony of mold that's just growing and then it has to be threatened in some way. So in nature, the threat is another mold colony coming in. And so another mold colony comes in like a a a spore lands on it and they say, okay. We're being threatened. Create a toxin to kill that.
So it creates the toxin. The new mold spore lands on it. It kills the toxin, consumes the the mold, and is fine. And so not every mold colony will make mycotoxins, but that's another thing that can wreak havoc in our systems. It's a toxin.
Right? Yeah. And then mold fragments. And so broken up mold, old mold. You know, I hear from a especially here, we're in Utah, and we hear from a lot of the farmers and they're like, oh, it's old.
Don't worry about it. It's dry. It's not wet anymore. Yeah. And it's like, well, sometimes that's worse because you take a mold spore and you break it in half and now it can go deeper into our tissues.
Yeah. And so that's, that's definitely something that, you know, you've gotta understand that it hurts us in multiple ways. And if we leave bodies so if we're treating it with a chemical and you leave a body there, the mold spore, it can still get in our bodies and wreak havoc. Mhmm. And so that's our the goal is to actually have it removed.
And, really, just you extract it where you need to cut it out or or remove it, and then just soap and water is enough. Soap and water. Sometimes what we do yeah. Because we're not killing them. We're just we're using soap and water.
We're using, like, seventh generation. Right? So a clean and clear. Mhmm. And then and we're only using five drops per quart.
Mhmm. So that's not enough to make it sudsy. Yeah. And so all we're using is the surfactant to loosen that up. Uh-huh.
And then when that's loose, we can pull it off. So And then you're scrubbing it off. And then we're scrubbing it off. We're wire brushing it off. We're using HEPA vacuum.
So as we do all that, we're sanding it off. We're doing a number of different things to just pull that away and get it out. Okay. So I wanna recap just a brief bit here. So one of the things that makes your company so different is that you are actually taking care of mold remediation from a physical health standpoint, from an from an illness, a human illness standpoint, instead of from a construction standpoint.
Right? Right. Will you just tell us a little bit more about the difference? Because we see a lot of people who say, well, I already had my home inspected for mold, or I've already had my home remediated for mold. I'm fine.
Or from my perspective, if I'm thinking about mycotoxin illness, I'll say, have you had water damage? Like, did you ever have a flood? And here in Utah, we have a lot of basements. Yep. A lot of basements flood.
And they say, well, we're in Utah. It's too dry here. Like, it it couldn't possibly be a problem. So first, tell us about the the way you used to practice and the way that so many mold, inspectors and remediators are practicing compared to what changes when you're actually doing it from a human illness, you know, trying to make sure that someone's not going to be ill from it. You mentioned a couple things of what you do, but what are they doing that's that's missing the mold?
Yeah. Great question. So you there's a whole array of ways people remediate with mold. Right? And and often, when we come into a, into a house or a a company who has had something done in their office, what we find is they said, hey.
We called up a remediation company. They came in, and they treated the mold. Yep. And so that's with antimicrobial or antifungal or something asporacide. Yeah.
And that's what they're saying is we treated the mold. They see it, they treat it. Sometimes they wipe it away, sometime or what they can see, and then they just leave it. They dry it then. And so that is what we we've seen it a million times, right, from others.
Shoot. We did that initially. We come in. We just do what we thought we was important. And sometimes they set up containment.
Sometimes they have negative pressure. When I get called in as as an assessor to see if like, to have a post remediation valuation or verification to see if they've cleaned up the mold correctly, what I find is they're you you know, we had a here's a good example. We had a woman call us up and she asked for, a remediation bid. And she had already had a company come in and test. And their test was an air test, and it was just in the bathroom because that's where she told him to take it.
Otherwise, he wanted to do it in the hallway, which he wouldn't have caught this. In the bathroom, they had 60 spores of stachybotrys. That's black mold. And so that's high to be in the air. And so we came in and we said, okay.
Well, this is what it's gonna take to remediate it. And her husband had Asperger's. And so he could not get over the fact that we didn't put it all back together. He said, I want a company that remediates it and then puts it all back together. And so he interviewed 11 companies.
And then one of them said, okay. We'll match the price of Vital, and we put it back. That's you. Uh-huh. And Vital yes.
Vital Home Solutions is where who what I own. And so he came in, they came in and they remediated the mold. And then she said, okay. I'm calling the this other company to do a PRV, a post remediation verification on it. And so we came in and, you know, you could still see dust all over the place, pieces of tile that were supposed to, you know, that were just left there.
And we said, and they had a HEPA filter stand sitting there blowing. And I said, look. We need to have them clean it up. Right? Like, it has to be clean.
And she called them up and said, hey. I'm bringing these guys in. They have a dog if necessary. They're gonna come in and test and make sure it's clean to put back. And she went in there and she's like, I can tell you right now it's not ready.
And they're like, no. We've had a HEPA filter blowing for three or four days. And that was their solution. Oh, it's gonna take care of all the mold. And and even, you know, even the client's like, that's just not possible.
And she is so frustrated. She's got a little girl with pandas. Yeah. And so she's a a meant a brain illness, brain inflammatory illness. And and can be often set off by mold.
And so she, was just like, I just know this isn't enough. We and they said, nope. Go ahead and test it. We came in and tested, and it was 600 spores. So 10 times what it was before remediation was done.
And this isn't cheap. I mean, when you get to this point, it's not like they've paid a couple hundred dollars. No. That was that I think that started off at about $2,800 for the remediation alone. K.
And then they whatever they're they were gonna do to put it back. And that was just in the bathroom. Then there was a kitchen below it, so it had another probably $1,600. So Yeah. Almost $5.
Yeah. Right? And they came in and, or or we said, hey. Like, this, failed morbidly. And we looked at we looked at their containment.
Their containment on the door was fine, but then they had their tube blowing out of the window with a hole in it. And it's like, well, now you've just put mold all through this other room. Mhmm. And so we tested that room. It came up high.
And we went downstairs where their the containment was in their kitchen. That, she said, that wasn't set up like that. I turned that around. They had it I mean, it was just a mess. Right?
So they just don't understand the idea that people are actually responding physically to the mold spores and the mycotoxins that as they get blown all through the house. So when a a typical mold remediator or inspector comes in, they're going to do things like use plates and, you know, maybe do an Ermi test. Explain what So that's a great question. That's a great question. And what their best way to do it is.
A typical mold inspector won't use plates Yeah. And they won't use Ermi. But I've talked to even industrial hygienists who are here Yeah. And they don't use IRMI. Yeah.
And an IRMI is an environmental relative mold index. Yeah. And so that was put out by the EPA. It's not really made to do come in and say, okay, you have a big enough mold problem that you you know, because of this score, that means you're gonna be sick. That's not what it was made to do.
It was made in the nineties for, research reasons, and it says that on the EPA site. And so but what we can do, what I like the ERMI for is it's taking a dust sample. It's like taking a Swiffer, a dry Swiffer, and wiping your baseboards, wiping different areas of dust in your house. Mhmm. And then you can take that that mold or that dust, send it in, and they'll say, okay.
Here's 36 molds Mhmm. That were found in this. And that 36 molds, then we wanna look at those. We don't really care about the final number because they take one number of commonly found outdoor molds, versus commonly found indoor related water damage related molds, and then they subtract it. Mhmm.
And I think a good way, that you can look at that is and I that I heard recently was it's like drinking alcohol or or let's say wine and then trying to sober up with beer. Mhmm. You can't that's not that doesn't work that way. You look at the whole picture. And so the thing I like about a dust test is it's just catching what's in your house.
Right? Let's look at what's in your house. And that's the Ermi test. And that's the Ermi test. So I like that test for that, to to see what kind of dust or what kind of molds are in your dust.
The problem with an airborne test, and too often is a mold inspector or a home inspector or someone who's gonna come in, they'll come in and set up a a mold trap. So it's an air test, and they'll set it up at about four feet high in the middle of a room. I I got a call from an attorney that said, hey. I know there's mold in this house. This house is flooded, like, five times.
And the HOA sent in their own person, which was a hygienist. And the hygienist came in, and he did a test in the kitchen. He did a test in the living room, and he did a test outside. So you wanna have that outside sample because we wanna know, are you in an area that has a lot of high molds outside? And then are you just finding those same molds inside and they're lower?
So maybe that's not elevated. Right? Because you have the I I Doesn't mean it's growing in your house. Right. And so he did this test, and it came back with virtually nothing.
And he said, Mike, just go in there and tell me where the mold is. So we brought the dog in. So we have a mold detection dog. He came in, and he pointed out a number of areas in the house. And we came in, and we then took our samples at those locations.
So stachybotrys is black mold. Not all molds that are black are black mold. And so we took the samples right next to these things. And stachybotrys and another really highly, toxic mold is ketonium. And those two are are what they call hydrophilic molds, meaning they require a lot of water and they require more time.
So instead of growing in hours, they're growing in weeks. Mhmm. Couple of weeks, maybe even a week. And so we have we put the samples near that. We took another sample just like the hygienist did in the same areas because we wanted to show, we're likely not gonna come up with a ton here, but we are if we go into the areas.
And so we found 36,000 spores of stachybotrys right next to a source problem. Yeah. And eight feet away, literally eight feet away and four feet taller, we had zero show up because stachybotrys and chutonia are heavy and sticky. They don't wanna be airborne. Mhmm.
Right? And then we found some in a wall. We took a sample out of the outlet. So we put a a straw in there. We sucked air through that.
We found, like, 3,600. We found in another one six hundred and fifty or something like and of stachybotrys. So the and ketoneum. So both very highly toxicogenic molds. You wanna find someone who's actually gonna go to the source and then test.
I don't love using an air sampler until I'm right at source. Which is part of the problem as a consumer if you say, do you know what? I'm gonna go test my own home for mold. It's fine. Certainly, I think you recommend this as well.
If you're worried about any sort of mold exposure, if you have someone in the home that's ill and you're trying to figure out why, look around your house first, see if you see mold. But if the next step is then I'm gonna buy the air plates from Amazon or from from these other places you can get them, and you just set them up around your house. If you find it, great. But if they're negative, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. %.
Because we don't know if those air those, mold spores were active and and airborne at the time. Yeah. Especially those highly toxic molds that are the black mold, which is stachy and ketoneum. It's, that's a % right. The other thing is, as we train our dog, we wanna make sure we have all the molds so they're imprinted on that.
So I bought a whole sleeve of those petri dishes, And I didn't refrigerate them. I forgot about them. I set them on a shelf in my garage. And then, like, two weeks later, I'm like, oh, crap. I I gotta find those.
Where are those? I pulled them out. They're all individually wrapped in plastic, and then the sleeve is wrapped in plastic, and a third of those have mold in them. So who knows? Right?
Is this mold coming from wherever they were in in, you know, the plant had them? Or is this new mold? Is this mold that came off my clothes when I set it out? Mhmm. Because one spore can populate and make that whole ugly mess.
Right? It just takes one spore. It looks terrible, but it's not like a million spores just landed there. Mhmm. And if I'm growing mold so I I wanna go back to what you said, what what I want you looking for.
If you say, hey. I might have mold in my house. What I want you looking for instead of visible mold, let me go back to if I have a petri dish and I have a square inch area Mhmm. I can have a hundred thousand spores in that square inch area and not be visible. Mhmm.
So I can't be looking for mold be visible. To the eye. Uh-huh. So you can be looking on that petri dish. You can have a hundred thousand spores and not square inch and not see it.
Mhmm. And so what I want people looking for is where are rust stains? Where is bubbling on baseboard? If you have MDF baseboard, it kinda bloats, and it keeps that bloat. That's nice.
That's about the only thing that's nice about MDF baseboard, and that it's cheap and easy to work with. But it leaves a story, which I like. If there's carpet and we know it's been wet or we smell something, we might pull back and look at the tack strip. That tack strip's gonna tell a story because it's got metal nails and it's steel nails in it, which will rust. That tack strip will mold.
It'll mold before the carpet. The carpet is synthetic. The tack strip is wood. So I want us looking for bubbling, staining, rusting. One easy trick is you take your flashlight.
Instead of looking down at your cabinets, like straight on at it, take your flashlight and put it right against the right against the, cabinet bottom, the base, and have it shine the light across it because then you'll see definition. You'll say, oh, okay. Wait. Look. That has been wet because you're you see that that particle board bubbling bubbling or bloating.
Mhmm. So that's what I wanna look for. I'm not looking for mold. Mhmm. I'm not looking to see visible mold.
If I see visible mold, I know it's that's been a big problem, but you can have mold and not be able to see it. How concerned should people be when they see a little bit of mold? Because I think so many people in their bathrooms, you know, as a little bit of grout comes out or will have that little bit of mold around the bathroom or maybe around their kitchen sink. And is that necessarily, a sign that there's way worse mold, or is that just can that mold just be right there? So we used to think that or we used to think, like, if you lift the toilet tank off and see mold in there, oh, that's an indicator that you have a big mold problem in your bathroom.
We used to think that. I've gone away from thinking that, seeing as many toilets and being in that situation as many times as I have. All we know is that each situation is kinda different. Right? So a sink, if you have that caulk is constantly wet, then that that's going to end up being a problem eventually.
Right? So it's about, you know, we those crevice tools on Amazon, they're just they're they're little brushes, really skinny. Those are great to just scrub with. Right? Scrub that, get and take care of that.
If it's in the grout itself and it's not coming out with that scrubber, then I want you to replace the caulk before it fails and then water gets back to places we can't get. Right? So just cut it out with a razor blade, pull it out, and then re caulk. Mhmm. And so same thing.
Now that's a little bit different on showers because often a shower will fail without the grout. The grout's failing and coming out because the shower failed with a micro crack that we don't see. Mhmm. And then it gets behind there, and then it causes a problem to break the grout. So the easiest way to find out if your shower has failed is a $20 Amazon non penetrating, moisture meter.
So you just get it on Amazon super cheap and it's a non penetrating so it doesn't have the two prongs. You're just putting it up against it. So you go to the top of the shower and you're gonna test up there and you're gonna get a baseline. Everything will have a reading, right? There's a masonry little, mode on it.
So you'll put it up on the high area, and then you'll start bringing it down. And as you bring it down as if and as you go down to the bottom, if you start if it starts jumping Yeah. You know water's behind it. Because water is pouring down to gravity. Yeah.
So it goes down and then often comes up or Mhmm. You know, however it got back there. A lot of times, it's by the knob. Right? Or if you have if you have a tile shower and you have a little nook in there, those are known for failing really easily, or seats.
That's another thing. So you'll just go down. And if it's, like, sixteen, seventeen up here and you come down and it's thirty and fifty, your shower has likely failed. Now we don't wanna test that. I always say test it.
Give it five days to dry. Right? So that everything that you right. Don't use that shower. So anything there's no possible way of you misreading that, water.
And so we just came upon one, that they hadn't used in over a year. And we could take the meter, and sure enough, it's still wet behind it. Wow. Because it just can't dry. I mean, it's made to keep water out.
It's gonna hold water in. Okay. This is so fascinating. I don't wanna get too far without learning more about your dog because Yeah. Yeah.
This is something that makes your business so unique is having your dog, whose name is Chap. Yeah. And his YouTube videos are pretty fun to watch. Oh. Tell us a little bit more about why you got the dog trained and what that training is like and and what that adds to the way that you are inspecting and remediating homes.
Yeah. Great question. So he is one more tool we use. Mhmm. So we have a ton of tools we use, and he is one of the tools.
So we're mold remediators first mold assessors first. Right? And so we bought so we worked with a dog back in the day. He retired. His name was Duke.
He was a tiny little silky terrier. He was adorable. It's not what you picture as like a go get him sort of dog. No. He was just a great little dog and we used him a ton.
The guy the guy who owned him was named Art. And, then when that dog retired, we actually I took him home and brought him to because I was like, maybe I'll bring him to my house and proof a dog off him, you know, to train a dog. And the dog was deaf and I'm like, oh, my kids will literally run around a corner and kill this poor dog. So we're not gonna take the dog. And he was just, you know, he's he was retired.
And so we went out and and looked for a dog. And so we bought another a different dog. It was a a hunting breed. Didn't love the dog and he had already hunted so all he thought about was birds. Yeah.
And so then we found a dog. He's a Belgian Malinois. So it's most commonly the dogs you see on police, canine, or military dogs. He's an amazing dog. Brought bought him.
And then at two years, I sent him to to what we call college, which was a guy in Kansas City. And he, just outside of Kansas City. So he had him there for three months. He trained him. He imprinted him on all these molds.
And that was a that was a hard thing to do is get all the molds so that we knew he was imprinted on everything. Because So he will not miss any. So he won't miss any. And that's what we find is other dogs aren't imprinted on everything. Everything.
And so they miss any. Recognize a couple molds, but they don't they have a different scent. But yeah. They they apparently. Because, we've been to jobs where other dogs have run, and our dog comes in and finds a whole lot more.
And so, so we got him trained. And then I went out there and spent a week out there working with a trainer to learn how to handle him. Mhmm. And then we brought him back. And it's just been awesome because as mold assessors, we are going to find mold.
Right? And so we find mold that the dog doesn't find. Yeah. And then the dog Especially mold that's higher or, like, he's not inspecting anything higher up in the wall. Right.
Yeah. And so we find molds that he won't find. He finds molds that we don't find. And then at that point, we take a look and we say, okay, here's your bulk of your mold. Yeah.
Right? This is what we think your mold is. And then we break that down, and a bunch of those molds are what we call low hanging fruit, and that is molds that pretty much every house has. Mhmm. And people just don't know it.
And so we give you videos to learn how to remove all that mold. And then we and then another part of that mold that of that % is, just settled secondary settled spores. So it came off of a colony somewhere and then just settled. Mhmm. And so getting all those out of your house is another huge chunk out of that that mold content in your house.
So if you have all these little areas that are low hanging fruit, you have a big chunk that's the dust content in your in your house and it has that mold in it. And then you have, let's say, a kitchen sink that has a problem. You or, you know, under the cabinet. You have maybe a couple of bathrooms that have a problem. Well, you've re you've moved the needle on that from here just on that low hanging fruit that we teach you how to clean.
Yeah. And so often, this makes it so that our clients start feeling good enough that they can now mentally and emotionally handle this part. Right? Yeah. And that's that's what I wanna not lose sight of.
And we have an episode coming up with another mycotoxin illness expert who will teach us more about the body side of it. But the the point is in all of this that some people living in mold, not everyone, but many people who are living in homes that have a lot of mold will not feel well. And they'll have all sorts of different issues, whether whether it's chronic fatigue or autoimmune disease or weird skin issues or mental health concerns, like like early cognitive changes. There's all sorts of way ways that this can show up in the body because the body is just reacting to this toxin. It's reacting to this foreign thing that's not supposed to be there and activates the immune system.
And once the immune system goes awry, inflammation ensues wherever your body happens to put it. So for one person, that might may look like cognitive changes and memory issues, brain fog. For another person, it may look like skin issues. For another person, it may be gut issues. So I just wanna bring that context back of, like, this matters.
This isn't just like, oh, interesting. Mold in my home. I'll spray it with bleach, and then it'll be fine. That's another thing I hear a lot is, like, yeah. Our basement flooded, but we sprayed it with bleach.
We we got those fans. We pulled the carpet back, left the fans there, and and so we took care of it. There's no chance it's a problem now. So going back to the dog for a minute, so one of the things that I have found is using other mold remediation specialists is they will come in and say, well, we just have to drill holes. We have to drill holes everywhere because how would we know?
Like, we can see. I mean, they're looking for the same things that you're looking for. But after that, we just have to start drilling holes in your walls, which gets expensive. It gets really pricey, and then it's still kind of luck of the draw of did you drill a hole where there was mold or didn't you? Do you have any examples of where the dog, that you can give us where the dog has found mold that would have been really, really difficult to find any other way Yeah.
Other than luck? One of my favorite examples, we get a call from our home inspector, and he said, we have super high mold in the hallway of a condo. And they're on the Bottom Floor of a condo, and he's like, I have gone through this place. I cannot find it. He's like So he's measured it?
So he's he's measured it with an air sample, and he's like, it's super high, and why would it be this high in a hallway? Like, that makes zero sense. Right? And so we come in, we came in and it's luckily, this was a vacant house because maybe we would have missed it if there was a bed in the way. Yeah.
Right? And we came through and we're, you know, just taking a look at everything. Right? We're with our flashlights first, with moisture meters, with thermal imaging. And we're like, yeah.
We see some stuff on the sides of the bathtubs, you know, that baseboard that's always a problem. Mhmm. Right? And we're like, that's not giving you the numbers that this is. And we went into one of the rooms the bedrooms, and we noticed that the hardware on the doors was rusting.
The hardware on the holding the blinds was rusting. We're like, okay. It's gotta be closed here. And under the window, there's a piece of baseboard, and there's probably about four to five inches of just a water stain. Mhmm.
And we're like, it's gotta be it. Right? And so we then go get the dog. We run the dog. The dog hits, he first comes over the window.
It's like, you you can tell he's in odor, and you're like, okay. And then he goes to the corner. And I'm like, weird. There was nothing you saw in the corner? Nothing you could see at all in the corner.
And I'm like, this is weird. Okay. We're like, okay. We broke the dog. What did we do wrong?
And so we pull him off and, you know, we he he gave all the signs to say he was involved. So we rewarded him, brought him off, and said, okay. Let's do that again. And but first, let's do the closet on the other side. So we hit the closet.
He hits that. And we're like, okay. Weird. I'm like, okay. Pull back the carpet.
Let's see. So the carpet, they pull back the carpet. You can't see any staining on the carpet. You can't see the the nails are not rusted. It looks fine, right, on the tack strip.
And we just sat there going, gosh. What is it? We're like, it's gotta be that odor. Maybe the odor is coming out from over here over here easier for some reason. Right?
So because odor does its thing. Right? So, depending on how the house is set up Definitely. There might be more odor coming out of a corner. So we're like, okay.
So we get permission to do the remediation. And we come in, we set up the containment, we set up negative pressure, they take the baseboard off, they look, they're like, it's a little mold, it's certainly not enough to give us the numbers out there. And we found in another area, we found something behind a refrigerator in the kitchen. So we're like, that still doesn't feel like enough. And I'm like, just take off you already took off the baseboard.
Take off a little bit of drywall in the corner that he hit and just lift up the insulation, see what you see. And they opened it up and they're like, oh my gosh. Black. Like, just black rotted wood, black, you know, visible mold. And I'm like, okay.
Go two and a half feet or two feet up. And they cut that up and they're like, steel goes. Ends up going to the ceiling. And what's happening is from the Third Story, the the downspout's broken and it's coming down the stucco. And then when it hit the rock, it's going behind the rock.
Mhmm. And then it's going down through the second level and the first level behind and just rotted out that. So there was just no way I'm finding that as a mold inspector without a dog or without doing something like there's another test called pathways testing. And that's where you take tests every four feet, linear feet of every wall. And you take this test, and it's looking at proteins.
And so you send that in, and then you clean all those, clean all those areas, and then you test it again immediately. So you send all those in at the same time. Mhmm. And then you wait a week, and then you test it again. So it's a super extensive way to find it.
That would've found it. Yeah. But I I can't think of any other way someone would've found that without the dog. Now why does that matter? Because it's all behind the walls.
Right? So how does that affect us if it's if it's covered by drywall, it's covered by baseboards, it's all there. Mhmm. Yeah. Well, it still comes.
Houses breathe. Mhmm. And so that air is still coming in, and it's bringing the contaminants that's out behind there. Mhmm. So, I mean, as we could see, in a hallway outside of the bedroom Mhmm.
Is where that came up. Mhmm. And so that that whole house had a ton of mold in it from that wall. Mhmm. And so we took care of that.
We got it all cleaned up. They ended up having to take rock off the outside of the house to be able to get to the rest of that. And it was just a it was a nightmare. Now I will say this because it's too often my all my clients think that's what's happening to their house. That is a rare thing.
Right? It's not a that's not but in our minds, it's always the $50,000 remediation. It's always, it's growing behind my walls, and we just don't know. Right? That's So you're saying more often, it's visible mold.
More often, you're not opening walls. Is that what you're saying? Often, it's not the kind that we can't see any sign of. Yeah. Because the way that came down the wall is, you know, you have your drywall here, you have insulation there, and then you have OSB.
That's the the plywood that the Yeah. The stucco and the rock is attached coming down that, and then it was going out of the house. And they have these huge bushes here where we couldn't see. It's not like we could go out and see where there might be some dark staining of it coming out. That was very rare for that water to come go down through the house and then out of the house.
Normally, it comes down through the house and then goes into the house, so you're able to see the stuff on the ground. Right? You see all of a sudden, you start smelling the carpet. You start smelling now in this particular house, it was a rental. So it's not like the homeowner lived there.
They were getting ready to sell it. Yeah. One of the things you and I have talked about before is when people say, you know, we couldn't have mold. We just our house is old, but it's been completely remodeled to the studs. It was done right.
There's no chance there's mold here. What are some of the ways that you've found mold showing up in those newly remodeled or newly built homes, that may be an error by the contractors who have who have done work? So it would be the lack of containment, proper containment to contain it into the area we're remediating Mhmm. And then lack of environmental controls, meaning we wanna have negative pressure. We want a certain amount of negative pressure inside here so it's blowing out.
And not blowing back into often, we'll go to a job site and you have a and we used to do this, and we're guilty of it as well back in the day, was we'd have our HEPA blowing into the house. And so we're like, it's cleaning everything. Well Yeah. Because the HEPA is catching everything. Catch catching everything.
Yeah. It's not catching all the mycotoxins. It's not catching molds fragments, not all of them. Mhmm. And so you're blowing those things right back in.
That's something that happens. You're spreading it through your whole house now. Instead of taking it outside of a window. So take it outside of a window. Go through a HEPA.
Go outside of a window and let the you know, let those little fragments go out and let the But you're speaking about remediation once you know there's mold there. If you have someone who's just going through a home remodel, they say, oh, we bought a nineteen fifties home and we gutted the whole thing. We remodeled it just for aesthetics. Right. And they say, therefore, everything's new, so there couldn't be any mold.
Where are the ways that you find mold in those ways? I think you mentioned when contractors may make mistakes when they maybe have a little leak and they fix it, but they don't necessarily fix where the water damage occurred. Yeah. You know, even with new houses, probably the biggest thing like, we go through a lot of new houses for clients that are building so that they have a new, clean, fresh house. Yeah.
Yeah. And so we'll go through that. And when we find mold there, it's because a contractor made a mistake. Yeah. A plumber did something, and this could be on a remodel.
Right? But they did something, and spilled water under something or on something and then didn't try it properly. Mhmm. And then just thought it was gonna take care of itself. And so that's that's sure is one way that we find it that they just didn't they don't pay attention enough to the water because they see they dry what they can see.
Yeah. And if they can't see it, it's not something that that's so much of an a, concern to them. And, really, most people and most contractors believe for mold to be present, it has to be visible. Mhmm. And so Mhmm.
That's just not the case. Yeah. And so but we the other thing is when when contractors come in and set it up, if you if you're not a mold remediator, you're not setting up the right proper con containment. You're not setting For for breaking it all down for To demoing it. Yeah.
Mhmm. And so and then they're carrying it right through the house often in buckets. We were at a house that they were doing a remodel. We're taking care of a few bathrooms on remediation. And somehow there was a mix up with, communication.
And the contractor sent his guys in to start demoing this bathroom, and they were literally taking it down in bins, and it had visible mold all through it. Yeah. And it's like like, hey. You know that we're here to remove remove mold. Why would you think you should be touching anything that had mold on it?
Right? Mhmm. But it I mean, to them, they're like, oh, I didn't even think that was mold. It's just all their constant you know, their focus was, how do I just get rid of the tile? The garbage.
Yeah. Yeah. To get so I can put a new one in. Hey there, listeners. Just a quick break to tell you about something that could make a big difference in your life or the life of a woman you care about.
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Right? All of this can feel a little alarming. Yeah. I think you had mentioned when we spoke before that you rarely, if ever, find a home with zero mold. Is that Yeah.
We haven't ever not found mold in a house, even the brand new houses, like I said. And, normally, it's someone who's super concerned Yeah. That we're not getting called in on every brand new house. Right? But it's it's true.
We we find it I I've never been in a house where we haven't found some sort of mold. So then how do we just not live in fear nonstop? You know, I think I have had patients and I have had colleagues who will say, like, you know, our basement just flooded a little bit, and it is like sheer terror. Like, their life is now going to be over because, of course, they're going to become deeply chronically ill, and and it can become this really terrible event for them. How would you approach that?
You know, would you say, like, we should all be deathly terrified of mold in homes? Or would you is there some reassurance you can give us in in how to manage this? Because it is everywhere. I mean, mold is everywhere. It's going to be everywhere.
Tell us how you approach that. Yeah. So there's two things I think that you need to manage in order to not have mold in your house. And and and that is, number one, water outside of its intended area. If it's supposed to be in a drain, it needs to stay in a drain, in a sink, in a toilet, in a bathtub.
It's just if water is outside that, big red flags. Right? So get rid of my four year old then. Get rid of or or just be vigilant on that. Right?
Yeah. And so you've seen the videos, I'm sure, on Instagram and such of people, squeegeeing down their shower each time they use it. Yeah. If you're that sensitive, that might be what you have to do. Other people, I find that they don't have to do that Yeah.
As much. There's also I just saw in a house that had a fan over their shower that wasn't a fan pulling out. It does both. It pulls out, but then it also blows down. And so and then you can also buy fans that are humidity controlled.
And so it hits a certain humidity, it turns on. Once it gets down there, it turns off. That's a good way. And bathrooms should take care of it. So if you already know that you've struggled with mold, you've moved, and you're moving into a new home, that could be So water is a big red flag.
Right? The second thing is dust. Mhmm. So it's all about dust management. We always call it the the canary.
It's somewhere in everyone's house, there's a canary. Often, it's a like a black piano Mhmm. A black piece of furniture, a piece of glass thing that just accumulates molar dust. Mhmm. And and as you see that, you're like, oh, I gotta dust that.
And sometimes it's the piece you're like, I'll just dust this. I'm not gonna dust the rest of my house. Right. Because it's bothering me. What we find is if that's starting to accumulate and you get that feeling that, oh, I should be have already done that, the person who's sensitive is already feeling bad.
So it's about dust management. It's about vacuuming with a HEPA, as frequently as you need because each house is different, you know, as far as how quick they that it accumulates dust, but it's just dust management is a big deal. Dust and mold just are buddies, and they hang out together. That was my question. So if there's dust, there's mold.
Mostly like If there's dust, there's mold. Just like the Ermi test. If you're testing that, I don't think I've ever seen a, Ermi test that's come back with zero mold. Yeah. Right?
It might have lower levels. Mhmm. But I've I've never seen it not come back with something. Right? And so that is that ermy or I mean, the dust and the mold just kinda travel together.
It's not like either one of those have little appendages that are making it swim to come in and find water and get you. Right? It's just it goes up and then it settles, and it just keeps resettling. And so the dust is food for mold. So you have food and mold spores traveling together.
All it needs is water and time, and now it's a problem. So can the mold spores and dust cause you issues, or it's more the mold then gets wet and then Yeah. It has it has to be wet. It has to be wet to grow. And it also has to be wet.
I often hear, even doctors say, as they're kinda getting into this mold world, they say, well, if you have mold floating around your house Right. It's creating mycotoxins. If you breathe that in, it's gonna create mycotoxins in in your body. What we find is that's not the case. It has to be a thriving colony of mold, and then it has to feel threatened.
And then it creates a mycotoxin. It doesn't it's not an individual spore floating out there and saying, I'm gonna create a mycotoxin. A mycotoxin is actually a chemical. So it has to have moisture. It has to be thriving to be able to create that.
Mhmm. So I'd say less worry about that. And often you hear, I see a lot of fear mongering out there Mhmm. With mycotoxins and mold and get rid of every single thing. Mhmm.
That's not my experience. My experience is people are on different spectrums of Yeah. Of the mold sensitivity. And houses are also on different spectrums on how much mold is there. Is there is there a time where you have to get rid of all your semi porous and porous things?
That happens. Yeah. But I feel like the overwhelming time overwhelming percent of the time, that's not necessary. Yeah. And, you know, it's an easy answer if as a mold guy to say to someone that I can't help.
Yeah. Just get rid of your your porous and non or semi porous things because that is an answer. Right? What would those things be? So they you would even say, you know, carpet, anything that is semi porous.
So if it's not nonporous, it would be tossed away. And so that's pretty much a lot of your belongings. 80% of what you own. Right? And we would see that.
We see people saying that. That's a super easy answer for me to say, and I'm not wrong. Yeah. Are you getting rid of the mold? Yeah.
Yeah. But is that reality? Right. I don't think so. Live in a stainless steel home.
Our our our experience is you can do things to certain items Yeah. That you can save. And that it's gonna it's gonna take work, but you can do things where it doesn't have to feel like you have to get rid of everything. Now what would you say when people do get some water damage? Because a lot of people will just dry it out.
You know, if you get a little leak and it leaks down to the carpet, they'll pull back the carpet, dry it out, and call it good. Before you get mold, what would be the best way to dry something out? I think anyone who's sensitive should own a couple of air movers, like those carpet fans that dry things. Mhmm. And your rule in your head has to be, I have had to have caught this within hours, not within days.
So if I find water in my basement, I don't know how long it's been wet, and I notice it because of an odor, it's too late. But if I find water in my basement and I know that of an incident that happened upstairs with the kids that overflowed the toilet or or the tub or whatever, and now it's in my basement, first thing I do is start drying that immediately. Get it sucked up and drying immediately, and then I'd call someone, a remediation contractor, because they're gonna need to look into the ceiling and into the walls and be able to dry that properly. But Mhmm. On the little things, it's it's all about timing.
If we give it too much time, then you start colony growth, and then you're you could be making it worse by drying it. Mhmm. Right? Because now you're blowing stuff over and around. If it's, you know, pretty quick, then I say dry it as best you can and dry it for way longer than you think.
Where Would you treat it with anything? Because you can't use soap and water at that point. There's nothing Yeah. I I think I would just at this point, I would just dry it. I would dry it the best I I can.
There is something called decon thirty. So decon thirty is using thymol, which is thyme oil. Mhmm. So it's a botanical. We call that a botanical.
And so you could use, like, decon thirty. There's a bunch of them, that may that use that thymol for their active ingredient. And you can just come in and treat it with that. That's gonna get rid of bacteria and things like that. It might impede mold growth Yeah.
You know, start of growth. Is there anything they can do to watch then for for issues coming up? If you say, like, well, okay. I think I caught it early. I think I dried it really well.
But how do you know then? You have to go pull the carpet back up and see if it won't work. And moisture meters. Another thing I think you should own is that little moisture meter I mentioned earlier. Is you should own that and you should be able to see that.
The problem is if it hit a wall, that's a bigger deal than we wanna admit. Mhmm. So if water hit the carpet and we're just drying carpet, that's super easy. But if it hit the wall synthetic, it's not gonna grow. Synthetic and it's super easy to dry.
Uh-huh. Right. And often what we'll have is, let's say we have a window here and the water comes in through the window and we just see it on the ground. So we dry what we can see. But the problem, the mold isn't gonna doesn't wanna grow here.
Right? And, like, it's gonna be much harder. It wants to grow on something super easy to consume. The backside of drywall is cardboard. And so if you have cardboard and that got wet because it came behind the wall Yeah.
That's a big deal. But yet, we just dry what we can see, the baseboard. Where the cardboard from the drywall and the baseboard, often MDF, is also cardboard, hard cardboard, that's gonna be an easy place for mold to grow. Mhmm. And it just needs time.
Mhmm. And so that's, yeah. I I would say most areas, you can have a remediation contractor come out and look for free. Mhmm. Just give you a diagnosis.
Mhmm. And they'll come in with moisture meters, and they'll tell you if it's wet, and they might come in with thermal imaging. Yeah. And, I would probably call someone, have them come out and take a look. Okay.
Now have you as we wrap up, have you had do you have any other stories that you feel like are helpful for people to hear? I know you mostly you're you're looking at the home side, not the the person side or the sensitive person. But do you have any examples where you were able to clear mold and you might have heard back from them and said, gosh, our health is so much better? Yeah. Yeah.
We were at that Be Healthy Utah, conference. Even the year before, I I saw some people. I saw a couple. I'm like, I recognize them. I don't remember where.
I can't remember if it was work related or what whatever. And and I had a big thing with chat behind me, you know, a big banner. So they had an unfair advantage. They came over and they're like, that is funny. We were trying to figure out where we knew you, but it's because you brought your dog in and then you remediated our bathroom.
And she's like, our life has changed, like, a %. Like, I used to everything I did was mold worry. You know, it was all about worrying about mold, worrying about are we gonna be exposed, are we gonna how are we getting it in our lives? And now it's that we're here just to learn more about being healthy. You know, like, just to see the conference.
It's not mold related. And she's like, that felt like two years ago. I'm like, it did feel like forever ago. We figured it out. It was eight months before.
So eight months of difference Wow. Is what changed her. And so she even had a kid that had behavioral issues, and she said her behavioral issues, her kids' behavioral issues went away and which was just it's just so great to hear. We love hearing those things. My guys love hearing those things.
This is not fun work. My remediation team has such a good attitude because they hear so many people saying what success stories they have. Yeah. We have a wonderful family in Sandy that has a kid on the spectrum, and he has, I think, pans. And he his reading level, he's in fifth grade, dropped from fifth grade to a first grade reading level.
Or breaking. And then we took came in, took care of the house. He actually be because he wanted to have a, like, a less sensory room, he went into a room in their basement that doesn't have any windows. It stepped down three steps, and he just loved it. And but and so when we came through and ran this house, I said, you want let's run this room.
And she's like, he's it kinda has a problem with people being in his room. And I'm like, buddies, this is where he's sleeping. Right? Yeah. So we ran him, and he hit right next to where the kid sleeps.
And it turned out to be this moldy mess right where he left where where he slept. We came in, took care of mold, and within a few months, two, three months, I think it was, his reading level was back to fifth grade. His behavioral issues were were better. His it was just it was just awesome. I well, we I could tell you story after story.
And, we're actually meeting with one of our clients. We're gonna be doing a podcast on our side. Bless her heart, she has a kid with pains. She has her husband who has gone through just some serious psychological things. She he sees things.
He sees, insects. He sees, rodents. He's and then she had the the swelling in her face and her lips where she could barely talk, her lips were so swollen. Mhmm. And as we've been remediating that house and they've gotten out of the house.
They've moved out while they do this. Mhmm. But, I mean, it's just things like that where they get out of the environment that things change. And, you know, really, the first pro first step in most protocols for mold is get out of the environment. Mhmm.
And whether that is leaving the area or having the area remediated Mhmm. And then doing your small that low hanging fruit and then this, fine particulate clean. That changes so many people's lives. We just love it. I love when we come into a family, we're meeting with the family and she's probably feeling she hasn't told us this, but she's probably feeling like she's at 25% of her capacity.
She does the things we teach, and now she's feeling like, hey. I'm at 70%. Now let's tackle this, this, and that. Or that's just so great to see. Yeah.
Well, I'm so glad you're doing the work that you're doing. It's we've spoken about this before, but I find it to be very annoying, frankly, the idea of mycotoxin illness and mold illness. But also for a while, I lived in denial. Like, I'm not I'm not doing that. I'm not gonna test for it.
I'm not gonna take care of it because I'm not sure it's sort of in this, like, middle ground of of validated science. Right? But I have had some of those stories too, and it doesn't take very many stories before you say, like, you can't ignore these people because they're not getting better any other way. You know? These are not people who have not gone to the doctor yet.
These are people who have seen five, ten, 15, 20 doctors doing test after test after test. And and if the home is really the source, then it's there's a cost there, but get it done. Get it figured out, and then move on with your life. And and sometimes it will be the the key. And Yeah.
Sometimes not, but a lot of times it is. Yeah. I walk into houses that, I feel like they say the the whole feeling that they have is this uptight. Please don't find it. Please don't find it.
Please don't. And I'm like, wait. Wrong attitude to have. Yeah. This is something super solvable.
Yes. Right? Let's find it. Yeah. Let's fix it.
And then all the money you're spending on your doctors that, unfortunately, right now aren't covered by insurance a lot of times, you'll save all that. You'll save a lot of it because you're not continuing to do it over and over again because you're still be having toxins flow in. So Yeah. It's just that mind shift of, hey. If it is mold, that's a pretty simple fix in most cases.
Yeah. It it's it can be expensive. But as far as being able to fix a problem that you can then feel better because of is a pretty And if you have to fix a problem in a house, it's way better than trying to fix a problem in your body. Right. You know, like, pay the money.
Go cut out the drywall. Go do those things rather than take supplement after supplement and medication and not being able to work and all of those things. Especially when it's with kids. Because kids Yeah. There's fatigue there.
Yeah. After a certain amount of time, we keep hearing kids the parents are like, I can't get my kid to keep these taking these these supplements because it's just too much for them. They just hate it. And it's like, man, if they would've just got us first or sooner Yep. Then they wouldn't have that fatigue.
Yeah. For sure. Well, I really appreciate what you do. I appreciate your business practice. I've worked with a couple inspectors and the the this world of home, I think, especially as people realize that it's causing more physical problems, I think there are a lot of people cashing in on it and taking advantage of people who are sick.
And I've had people I've had patients who have hired mold remediation where they come in and they they just demo the entire home and say, sorry, we We couldn't do anything about it. And then they also are getting paid for the repair of that demo. And you just always wonder, like, are you taking advantage of me? Yeah. Are you doing more than you need to do here?
And so I really appreciate you're you're thorough, but you're not extreme. And you you really do try to keep it to a minimal of find the mold, get the mold out, but don't don't destroy the house if you don't need to. Yeah. Is there anything you wanna say about that? Because I really appreciate your level of honesty and integrity when it comes to doing this work.
We quit doing put back. We did put back years ago, and we quit doing it because we never wanted a client to think they're telling us to demo this shower Yes. Because they're gonna get a shower. And that's exactly what happens. Yeah.
Yeah. And and even just having that feeling Yeah. While you're going through something like this is the worst. Right? It's like, gosh.
They're they just they just make it it always benefits the contractor if there's any reason to tear out everything Yeah. Or anything. So Yeah. It's it it's this is a tough world, but I will tell you, people who come in and do what we show them to do Mhmm. How to get rid of that low hanging fruit, the the small particulate or fine particulate clean, and then get rid of those areas Yeah.
It just changes their life. Yeah. It just it's amazing. So it just I'd say just do the best you can. And not every situation is in a you know, not everyone's in a situation that can do that.
So we come up with different things. Okay. This is what you can do now. This is what you can do, you know, next month or next year. And and but at least there's momentum.
I appreciate that. Yeah. The needle is moving to reduce it. Well, one of my last questions is how do you and your staff take care of your own health now that you see so many people who are getting sick from mold and you guys are willingly going in and tearing out mold? How do you take care of your own health so you're making sure that you and your team aren't aren't getting sick from it?
That's a good question. It's something we probably ought to look at more. I keep saying, I keep telling my wife I'm a crispy dad, but it's crunchy dad. Right? And I'm and I'm not even that.
I was just told by a client. I was telling her a story, and she's like, you're a crunchy dad and you ate there? I'm like, yeah. Good point. But, it's it's a tough one.
You know, we we need to keep looking at ourselves, and and luckily, we're not the guys that I have working for us aren't super sensitive. We wear PPEs. We wear the right things when we're there. Mhmm. And we just try to protect ourself because, we see the bad things that happen to people, and it's just it's sad.
Nice thing is you're not living in it. I mean, you're exposed to it many days, but you're not Right. Not sleeping in it. Have you inspected your own home? You know, the funny thing is I brought Chap home.
I was so excited. This is the first time after you went to college. And I brought him home, and I hid some mold in a closet in my front room, like, in my coat closet. And I was gonna have him walk around and then hit this coat closet. And we started walking, and he hits this wall.
And I'm like, oh, shoot. He doesn't work. And I'm like, what's this about? And I'm like, wait a minute. The bathroom is there and it's on the other side.
And We found your mold. And we found mold there. And so it was like but the first time when I saw that, I'm like, no. Like It didn't it didn't work. Like the word broke.
You had Yeah. Like mold growing up. Well, more more like I broke this dog. Like, this dog doesn't work. And then it was like, wait.
He's not wrong. And then we look at it and sure enough, we had mold back there. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being here. Is there any final any final comments or thoughts that you wanna share with with people who are listening?
Yeah. So too often, we can go to social media for answers or we go to, you know, AI or something like that. Yeah. There are a lot of things that you can mess up your head with. Right?
There's the whole physical, I feel bad with it. You know, like, you know, I feel terrible because I I'm having mold issues. And then there's also the mental side of it that you kinda have to close loops on so that your meant your brain can be in a place so your body can heal. And too often, spending too much time on some of these groups I see that are fearmongers Mhmm. It's as bad as being exposed to it.
So it's like, get away from the fearmongering, Try to get your body and your mind in a place where you can then heal. And often, that is just getting away from those sites that are saying that it's the end of the world if you have mold. Yeah. You should educate yourself. I I realize that.
I understand that. But there are some out there that are just pretty much just putting you in a position where you can't heal. And so it's these loops we have to close, and they just keep opening these loops. So you have now a million things that you're thinking about in your head, especially when it comes to moms and their kids. Yep.
And so how to close those loops are going in and taking a flashlight and looking in all your bathrooms or wet areas, hiring someone to come out and take a real look at your house. But get something that's closing those loops so that it doesn't have to just be hammering on your head there. Yeah. I I agree with that a %. I think it's such a valuable part of healing, so I'm glad you brought it up.
This has been so insightful and really interesting. I love hearing all of your stories. Will you tell people where they can find you and where they can work with you and and learn more about working with you? Yeah. Yeah.
We have a new website that's gone live that, has a lot of great information. It's vitalutah.com. You can find us on social media. Chap has his own, Instagram. So follow him.
It's Chap Mold Detection Dog. Love it. I think there's some underscores in there. But if you write Chap and mold, it normally comes up. And then Vital Home Solutions has another Instagram.
But, really, our website, has all our Solutions has another Instagram. But, really, our website, has all our contact info there. And then the YouTube videos too. I know there's some. There's some there.
YouTube. We have YouTube there too, and that's probably Vital Home Solutions there Yeah. In Vital, Utah. Yeah. So good.
Well, thanks for being on. It was so nice to talk. Thank you, Mallory. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. A huge thank you to our guest for sharing their insights and time with us.
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