Podcast Transcript
The Heal Podcast
Thu, Apr 20, 2023 9:57AM • 1:07:37
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
mold, building, musty smell, mycotoxin, problem, lyme, spores, day, mold remediation, fungi, wall, people, test, water, find, environment, good, chemicals, home, growing
SPEAKERS
Kelly Noonan Gores, Jason Earle
Kelly Noonan Gores 00:04
Welcome to The Heal Podcast. I’m Kelly Noonan Gores and every week I speak to the leading doctors, healers, spiritual teachers and scientists to find out what is truly possible when it comes to healing. I also interview real people with extraordinary healing stories. My philosophy is what’s possible for one is possible for all. On today’s episode of The Heal Podcast, I interview Jason Earle, the founder of Got Mold?. He was also the youngest licensed Wall Street stockbroker. So that’s kind of a fun fact, but more so he is an expert on mold. And it is such an important conversation because mold and the health of our buildings really is a huge problem in the health of our bodies, and you will find out so much life changing information.
I, myself, was diagnosed with mold and Lyme, which is a common cone infection. Jason himself had a childhood ridled with health issues and asthma and severe allergies. And he realized along the way that it was because of his moldy environment. And so he took them off of Wall Street and put them into a life of cleaning up people’s home environments and learning so much about the health of our environment, or buildings, mold and what it does to our bodies. And it’s just, it’s a fascinating conversation, but more so it is so important for you to know this information because it is truly life saving. And it’s something we take for granted, these homes that we live in these buildings that we work in. Our health is really reflective of the health of our buildings. So we’re gonna get into that today. Welcome, Jason, thank you so much for being on The Heal Podcast.
Jason Earle 01:50
Thanks for having me, Kelly. It’s great to be here.
Kelly Noonan Gores 01:52
So why don’t you start off by telling us a little about your background, and how you know, your personal health journey with mold, and what you’ve done, and then how you came to do the work that you’re doing?
Jason Earle 02:03
Sure, thanks. First of all, thanks, again, for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this. I’ve been following you for quite some time, very impressed with your work. So it’s a real privilege to be here. Thank you. So my story begins as most people’s do as a young child. But at around three or four years old, my parents noticed that I was having trouble breathing. And I was… I lost a lot of weight in a three week period. So my parents took me to the pediatrician who said, you need to take him to Children’s Hospital. This is serious. And so we were only about an hour away from there and upon the initial interview based on family history and the symptoms that I was presenting with the initial diagnosis with cystic fibrosis, which was, of course, devastating to my folks.
But especially my dad, because he had lost four of his cousins to CF before the age of 14. So this was literally their worst nightmare coming true. It was something that they had they even talked about. And so here I am their only child and facing a death sentence. So and having two little ones of my own, one of which is four, you have a four year old too. That just hits me squarely just even thinking about that now. But the day they spent six weeks crying, apparently while they waited for a second opinion. And the second opinion, thankfully, was that I did not have cystic fibrosis and evidenced by the fact that I’m sitting here at 47 years old. But rather I had asthma compounded by pneumonia, and I was allergic to literally every single thing that they tested me for. So this is one of my formative memories. I actually… they put you in a papoose or like a straight down jacket for toddlers, drew a grid on my back and then tested me with all the antigens.
And my dad said, I look like a ladybug, big red swollen back with dots all over it. And so the list was long but the you know, grass, wheat, corn, eggs, dogs, cats, cotton, soybeans, so my clothes are itchy. And I grew up on this little nonworking farm, basically an animal adoption facility. And we’re surrounded by all those things in great abundance. And we had literally had soybean fields, on the right and corn fields on the left and, you know, dogs and cats and, you know, horses and goats and all that stuff. And so I essentially lived on inhalers until I was about 12. At which point my folks split up, which was actually good for everybody involved. And all my symptoms and why. And, and I didn’t really think about it until fast forward until until after a career on Wall Street, but but a few other things occurred sort of in the interim there when I was 12. My folks split up when I was 13, almost 14. My mother passed away suddenly she actually committed suicide.
And that’s relevant for the for this story because depression actually falls into this into this whole this whole storyline. And it’s one of the most misunderstood aspects of all of this. And we’ll get into that in a little bit. And then and then I was diagnosed a year later with Lyme disease. And so I got my second big dose of antibiotics. The first one was for the pneumonia. And so you know, I look at antibiotics as weapons of mass destruction. And so I took me 20 years to get my gut back after after the Lyme disease fiasco. And then I was essentially forced to drop out of high school. And then I ended up getting recruited out of a gas station to go work on Wall Street. And that’s a fairy tale story for another podcast. But it did it for nine years and had a great career. And then one day, I wasn’t having fun.
Kelly Noonan Gores 05:37
You broke a Guinness Book World Record for the youngest licence stock broker, did you not?
Jason Earle 05:42
Yes. And did unknowingly. At the time, I didn’t, I didn’t realize I had done that until I decided to go on walkabout. I knew I was the youngest guy in the firm. And I knew I was one of the youngest guys on the street, but I didn’t know I was the youngest at the time. So yeah, then $1.50 by a half a slice of pizza in New York City, but it’s certainly good. It’s good cocktail conversation. But the big epiphany happened actually, after I decided to walk away from Wall Street. You know, my mom had always encouraged me to focus on contribution to the greater good, she was a nurse, and she gave to a fault but she did encourage me to volunteer, in fact, I would go to volunteer at the hospital where she was the director of nursing. And the thing that always it was, it was very fulfilling, even as a kid, I remember helping these people that were amputees and, and you know, I was delivering food to the different floors.
And so I found a lot of satisfaction in that and on Wall Street, that just wasn’t it wasn’t congruent, there was the only people that benefited my my success were the people in the stores where I shopped, right? And so that that always was somewhat unsettling to me. So I would volunteer at you know, go to Operation Smile, missions, international missions, and things like that. And I would come back, so fulfilled, exhausted, but fulfilled. And then, you know, I would, you know, just go to do what you do, you go to work and go for the almighty dollar. But one day I woke up, and I wasn’t going to do that anymore. And I went backpacking. It’s just right after September 11. And so I took a train from New York to LA but through Canada, and then flew to Hawaii. And while I was there, I was reading a lot of local newspapers because that a lot of time on my hands.
And a story jumped out, there was actually a lots of articles in the local papers about this huge mold problem that had been discovered in the Hilton Kalia tower, which is the big Hilton flagship property. And while it had been shut down for mold for something like six months, they initially thought it was about a half million dollar problem, then it became a $5 million problem. And then it became a $55 million mold remediation project biggest in history, at the time. And, and so of course, it was big news on the little island. And so there’s all stories that I had read, that one jumped out at me, and it was about this gentleman who at about 40 years old, blamed a litany of illnesses on the building. He had developed adult onset asthma, something I had never even heard of, as well as all these allergies and sensitivities to things that he’d previously enjoyed without issue.
And so I had this deja vu kind of a moment, right? Where I suddenly I was brought back to my three or four year old self and, and I thought, geez, I wonder if that was going on in our house. I wonder if we had a mold problem, not knowing anything about mold at all, not knowing I mean, I didn’t know anything didn’t.. I knew less than nothing. But I called my father from a payphone, which probably isn’t there anymore, and said, hey, Dad, do you think we had a mold problem? And he just laughed at me. He said, of course, we had mold, we had mushrooms growing in the basement. Why do you ask? And it was just so flippant, typical sort of 70s parent, right? It’s just, you know, mold schmold, wipe it off. And I said, well, do you think that’s what made me so sick?
And he said, well, it couldn’t have help. And to… you’d have to know my father. That’s his sense of humor, but he was right. I mean, it’s, you know, they just didn’t have… there was no knowledge or awareness around the subject matter at the time. And there certainly were no resources, even if they had known that there was a mold problem and that there was something that that was causing me illness, there was no such thing as a mold remediation company or Mold Inspection Company, or even Mold Testing. Simply wasn’t… it did not exist. So in, you know, kind of laughing and chuckling at what he said I had one of those epiphanies and I just immediately became fascinated with mold but more than mold, became fascinated with the concept of buildings. The buildings we live and work in can impact your health. That to me, that still fascinates me and it’s still a blind spot in so many people’s minds, especially the medical community where we live in these boxes that we store our stuff in that we live and work in. And we think of them as just these shells that protect us from the weather. And more and more as time has gone on, I’ve started to look at these building at the buildings that we live and work in as extensions of our immune system.
As an exoskin or an exoskeleton. We’re a lot like hermit crabs. We wouldn’t do too well without our shell for very long, you know. And so I became fascinated in that moment. And I took… I came back to New Jersey armed with a whole bunch of curiosity and took a job working for a company that was doing mold remediation, so to speak. They were actually doing basement waterproofing, and they were causing more, probably more harm than good. Because they’re just using chemicals, instead of cleaning, just ripping stuff out and leaving houses often worse than, than they then they found them. And it was right around that time that I began realizing that there was an opportunity in the marketplace to protect the consumer to maybe create an inspection company where I could intervene. So be the first person in there to help them, help consumers navigate this to protect them from the contractors because like, the contractors was a bunch of thugs, there was no such thing as an industry standard. At the time, the EPA had some very scant guidance.
So it was really the wild wild west. And so I ended up starting this little, it was basically for free, a free service that ultimately people started deciding they want to pay me for. And I, right around that time discovered that there was a guy training mold sniffing dogs down in Florida, which is a fun little twist, and went down to Florida and met Oreo, who I did not expect to come back with a mold sniffing dog by the way. And I hop on a plane come back with a $14,300 dog that had been two times on doggy death row and especially trained for detection and that opened up a whole floodgate of the press caught wind of it. Channel Six Action News, heard about it, and they came out to debunk me and then they hid mold in the house. Instead of debunking me they… we found it in like three minutes.
And so we got this glowing endorsement, hadn’t even started a company yet. So all of a sudden people are chasing me down, calling my personal phone, the whole thing just just mushroomed, no pun intended. And so I ended up going from not knowing anything really about the industry to this sort of immersion where it was like Trial by Fire where I suddenly had to really learn about these buildings and learn how to interpret this adorable four legged friend’s very subtle cues. And so really, I mean, accidental expert, you know, I became interested in passionate about it and suddenly it was like a slippery slope. And boy, am I grateful, you know what a ride it’s been.
Kelly Noonan Gores 12:24
Wow, I mean, Oreo. We’re gonna get a picture of Oreo up here in a second.
Jason Earle 12:29
Yeah, she’s the Queen.
Kelly Noonan Gores 12:30
That’s so cool. I mean, look, you you were you started that business in New Jersey, Florida, just anywhere I just want we’re gonna do the mold one on one here because I think you and I both believe it’s so important. I got diagnosed with mold and funny enough Lyme at the same time, I find it is a very common co infection and we don’t know what comes first the chicken or the egg perhaps the immune system is so burdened with mold that the Lyme, you know, bacteria or virus, it’s changed over history, whatever it is that they’re diagnosing these days, that’s Lyme, you know, is able to flourish. So I really think that’s another that’s that’s going to be our second you know, podcast about this because the mold, Lyme coinfection is very interesting to me. Just to wrap up my personal story, I decided because I wasn’t having acute neurological Lyme symptoms, but I had been exposed to mold my whole life. Growing up in Long Beach by the beach, you know, there’s mold in the water.
Apparently, there’s anytime there’s, you know, by the beach, there’s damp air, we had a basement, you know, so we’re dampness can reside, mold probably flourishes. So, think of that if you guys are having mystery illness, and you’re living in a place where there’s a lot of humidity in the summer or a lot of rain, that doesn’t get the chance to dry out whatever that is, you know if that resonates something to look into. But anyways, I decided to just treat the mold, which my integrative doctor did through and keep an eye on the Lyme. So we did it through IVs of high doses of vitamin C, vitamins, you know, Myers cocktail, and then a push of glutathione at the end.
And then after a couple months of that we introduced some binders along with the IVs to like pull the mold out of my system. And sure enough, you know, I tested like six months later or something and not only had like three types of mold mycotoxin was not showing up anymore a new one was so we kind of continued the IVs but the Lyme was no longer showing up that was no longer testing positive for this blue line. So that was interesting, right?
Jason Earle 14:37
Yeah.
Kelly Noonan Gores 14:38
Anywho, all of that to say it is… the work that you’re doing, Thank God, you know for Oreo and you and and everything you’ve learned and they’re gonna share here today because it’s true. We don’t. We’re not equipped yet to understand that our environment is this like, external lung we’re breathing in and there’s toxins in our furniture. And then of course, there’s mold in our, in our structures, and I love this metaphor of, you know, kind of the macro micro of our external structures as being part of our living environment and our, you know, biome, really. So, go into that a little bit and these parallels that you discovered and give us that imagery.
Jason Earle 15:22
Sure, yeah. So I more and more I think about the building sort of as an organism, which is maybe a little bit of a stretch, so you have to play with this with me for a little bit. So you look at the building as a system of systems, the life supporting systems, right, so the buildings have a an HVAC system, which you could argue is sort of like the lungs or the respiratory. The circulatory system is the plumbing and the electrical system is the nervous system. And you could look at the the siding, the actual the, that as dermis, right as skin, if you look at the layers of skin, it looks remarkably like the cross section of of a light frame construction building, where you’ve got a couple of layers of skin, and then you’ve got the fat right as the installation. And, so there’s, but there’s a missing element, which which people pointed out to me once and it was kind of funny, because, you know, they said, well, where’s the immune system? And I said, Well, that’s you, you’re the immune system. See, you’re the building’s immune system, see, the building has a birthdate. And it also potentially has a death date.
And its longevity is largely driven by how well it’s cared for. And so it’s your job to do that. And so when buildings get sick buildings, first, they develop some aches and pains. And so usually that manifests as a moisture problem, right? So a building’s primary purpose is to shed wind and water. And when it fails, it fails first to shed wind and water. So the first thing that happens as water gets in, and water man, and you know, this is one of the key points, key takeaway takeaways is that a mold problem occurs very quickly. It only takes 24 to 48 hours for mold to start to grow when something gets wet and stays wet. So it’s very, very quick, at day three, according to the industry standard, anything that’s gotten wet, that’s porous and absorptive that hasn’t gotten moldy, yet should still be treated as if it’s moldy should be discarded. And so you only have two or three days to move on things.
And well, I want to dig into that a little bit more, for a second, then we’ll go back to the building. You know, when it’s when something gets wet and stays wet for a couple of days, within that first two days, that’s free or cheap to fix, you know, insurance will almost always cover that almost up to the replacement cost of the building. Water damage is almost always covered. And you can even do it yourself, unless there’s a preexisting mold problem, you wouldn’t want to rip out stuff that’s got mold on it already, because that would create a really serious problem. But assuming that there’s no preexisting mold, and you’ve got water damage, you can rip that out and throw that stuff away. That’s something the weekend warriors can do. But as soon as you hit that three day mark, then it becomes a mold remediation project. Now insurance doesn’t pay for it.
And the costs just went up tenfold, at least now, you’ve also got a completely disruptive experience in your home where oftentimes people have to relocate. And a perfect mold remediation project from beginning to end, if everything goes perfectly is a month, because you’ve got an inspection, you’ve got to report you got laboratory tests, and then you got to find the contractors, you got to do the work. And then you got more testing at the end. The whole thing is very disruptive. And that’s if everything goes perfectly. In the meanwhile, if you just take an action on that first 24 to 40 hour window that would have been free or cheap and you’d be back and you’d be everything would be fine. You just be you’d be repainting and spackling and putting everything back together again. So it’s very important that people move quickly on these things. So when the building develops these aches and pains and that water gets in the first thing that manifests, of course, is a mold problem.
And when mold grows, it produces essentially three things. This is a hyper simplification, but it produces spores, which are the airborne sort of seeds, if you will. It also produces toxins which are known as mycotoxins, and they get they get a bad rap as being the majority of the cause of the majority of mold related illness. And we can talk about that more to the third thing that mold produces is also this microbial gas or what they call em VOCs. We know that it’s the musty smell. This has long been disregarded as just an aesthetic nuisance. You know, it’s the musty smell. It’s grandma’s basement, right? There’s just but actually recent research has as clearly laid out that the musty smell is neurotoxic. In animal studies, it is shown that that it produces with fruit flies in particular they stop producing dopamine, they stop reproducing, they fly down and set it to light. They develop locomotor dysfunction, mitochondrial damage, and ultimately premature death. And so and by the way that dovetails right in this is fairly recent research. Brown University did a study in 2008 and concluded that there’s a direct correlation between mold and dampness indoors and depression.
And they weren’t not sure whether it was the mold causing the depression or people have a mold. It wasn’t that they weren’t able to fix being disempowering. But clearly from the animal studies that the near the neurotoxic component to this oh, by the way, the the fruit pies also developed something that was characterized as Parkinsonian like symptoms. And so that musty smell is in my experience after doing this for 20 years, the cause of most mold related illness, mold and a wall will those musty smells will permeate through whereas the mycotoxins don’t. And so there’s a common misnomer that all mold related illnesses mycotoxin base it is there, there is a lot of that.
And a lot of it’s actually from food, by the way, not just from much of the mycotoxin illness that people are treated for is actually coming from their pantry, or from the restaurants where they eat, where low food costs drive, procurement of grains that had been put improperly stored. The UN did a study and they originally thought it was 25% of foodstuffs that are contaminated and a group of food scientists came in and debunked that and actually found it’s more like 60 to 80%. So you’re talking about dried fruits, nuts, grains, anything where you’ve got some tomato sauce, applesauce, these things that are that are basically the throwaways, they turn those into sauces, right. So a lot of these things that are in our normal food supply accumulate in the body. And so mycotoxins are not just airborne, they’re also in our food. And so…
Kelly Noonan Gores 21:34
Coffee, peanut butter.
Jason Earle 21:36
Absolutely, yeah, all those things. So coffee is big… Wine. Because, of course, the grapes are… the beautiful ones are sold separately. The other ones just go into the bin, right? So really, I mean, it’s we are we are, but by the way, we’re on a fungal planet, you know, I mean, 30% of the Earth’s biomass is fungi. And so you know, we’re not getting away from this stuff, we have to learn how to cooperate with it.
Kelly Noonan Gores 22:02
Right.
Jason Earle 22:03
And…
Kelly Noonan Gores 22:03
Just too much of anything is, you know, not processable or, you know, discardable by our bodies. So…
Jason Earle 22:09
That’s right.
Kelly Noonan Gores 22:10
And just like our buildings, right, it’s nearly impossible if you live in a humid or coastal climate to be mold free completely in your building. But if you have healthy ventilation and healthy immune practices as the human, you can, you can maintain, you know, stay in balance and harmony with the, you know, ecosystem,
Jason Earle 22:28
That’s the key is right is having equilibrium so that your body is not overloaded, because what we see with mold related illness or illness in general, but mold related illness is really tricky, because people tend to there’s there’s basically allergic pathways. And that’s the most common thing that people have, upper respiratory, itchy eyes, that kind of thing. And then there’s also the toxic pathways, right, where people are really overwhelmed. Their systems can shut down, they can have all sorts of toxin induced a toxin induced illness. And then inflammation. And inflammation is probably the number one thing that people complain about, because it manifests in so many different ways. So mold, does this thing where it brings out the latent symptom profile.
So if you’ve got an issue like an autoimmune disease, and then you’re chronically exposed to mold, what generally happens is, that’s what shows up. And so… and generally speaking, when you can rectify that, provided that you haven’t had really long term chronic exposure that will generally settle down too. So mold is the great activator. And it mimics other things and it shows up in different ways. And it shows up with in different ways for different people across the board. It’s fascinating, really, five people can live in a house and all have different symptom profiles.
One person is complaining. The other fours think that that’s just their natural baseline. Then the mold gets corrected. The person who is really upset really, really sick, it’s better, and the other people suddenly started going, wow, I’m sleeping better now. I’m not so emotionally dysregulated. You know, suddenly, they noticed they don’t have hives anymore, and they’re digesting better. And so it affected them all, but only one person actually really pin the tail on the donkey, you know.
Kelly Noonan Gores 23:15
and is it enough to just relocate because for instance, my girlfriend is living in a condo in Tennessee, and she has the musty smell and it was after I spoke to you and I was like, oh my god, it’s the musty smell, you must leave. And then she got the building manager to test for mold. They didn’t find any. Someone in LA just moved out of place because they smelled the musty smell and their neighbor was having all sorts of health issues and so we tested her mold.
They didn’t find any and so I’m a little concerned. I kind of want us to be our own advocates here even when the mold companies are not finding and you know, you couldn’t Oreo can’t be everywhere. So, you know, kind of what’s like is relocating into a healthier environment enough or do you have to treat your body to I mean, obviously, there’s a range here. But for you, it seemed like it was enough or did you ever have to go and do some cleansing,
Jason Earle 25:08
I was fortunate enough to have moved out and did not move into a moldy environment, I moved out into a place where, and I had a lot of other gut issues too. So I suddenly, because it was molded, and then it was, and then it was, then it was Lyme. And so I, I, it took me a while to unpack it all. And it wasn’t until I was really 18 or 19 years old, that I suddenly realized that the diet was the key for me. So I adopted a no sugar, no grains diet. At that time when I was an early young stockbroker actually, and, and notice my health just transformed. I went from I used to if I ate a bagel, I would have an out of body experience. I mean, literally on the train, I would be disconnected, you know, it was it was unbelievable. And it was fermenting in my gut. And so that wasn’t from the mold.
That was from the from the antibiotics. Right. But over time, what’s happened is, because of the fact that I have gone on, you know, I’ve been on a health mission, my whole life, essentially, I think what’s happened is I’ve just taken great care of myself, and I’ve slowly detox in natural way, I would not recommend anyone take take their time on it. You know, it’s certainly not something you want to meander about, if there was no knowledge or awareness around about about this diet, then. So the first thing you want to do is you want to fix the underlying cause and fix the environment if you can. And you want to do things like use air purifiers, HEPA filtered air cleaners, but also ones that have carbon in them, because that will remove the musty smell. But if you’ve got a musty smell, you’ve got a moisture problem. musty smell is only produced by actively growing mold.
And if in fact you do and but people always ask what’s the best test and we sell a test kit, right? But but the best test is you, you you you have these precision instruments known as your senses. And oftentimes even this visceral thing, this gut this this gut brain, it will give you the signals that you need to know that the place isn’t right. And you have to be… you have to be willing to trust your intuition, you have to get into step into that. We’re taught not to trust ourselves, we’re taught to trust pharmaceutical companies and doctors and all these parties that have a financial interest. But the reality is that it’s upon you to take your own awareness and cultivate that. And it’s also especially important if you’ve got children. But the reality is, is that you can you can do only so much to protect yourself, if you’re in a building that’s got a moisture problem or a mold problem.
Relocating is usually a very good idea if you can’t, if you if especially if you’re renting. And by the way, there’s really powerful laws in places like California, for better or for worse, but that there’s an implied warranty of habitability. A musty smell is enough to break a lease. So if people know that, and unfortunately, that’s buried, people don’t usually know that. So so it is sometimes enough to move it is not sometimes it’s sometimes for some people that have a genetic predisposition to, to an inability to detoxify from in general, but also specifically for biotoxins, which runs in… which is what causes a lot of problems with Lyme and mold.
That’s why a lot of us have a problem with that both of those sets have biotoxins. And then those people usually need a little help, they need a little bit of a push. And so but I would I would always advocate that before, before pursuing any of the detoxification processes is to remove yourself from the environment or correct the underlying conditions. Get yourself some good air purification and HEPA filtered vacuum cleaners and things like that, get your house in order, so to speak. And then and then look at your pantry.
And seriously considering no sugar, no grains diet, because again, if you’re concerned about mold related illness and mycotoxin related illness, you cannot ignore food. And food is your medicine with this in general. I mean, across the board. And so you can’t be expected to fight a valiant battle. If you’re feeding your troops, you know, low quality food, right? And so your troops inside need need to be sustained. And so that’s always my advice. However certain people do need a push.
Kelly Noonan Gores 29:17
Yeah. Like I did so. And you did so when you did it years over time, due to just learning over time. I had a test by a doctor that showed I had mycotoxins and he had a solution on how to treat so you know, functional medicine doctors, integrative medicine, doctors know how to test for this stuff. naturopaths I was exposed I was probably exposed my whole life but I was specifically exposed to black mold and you can go into the details of black mold. I assume it was black mold. It was black and it was coming through the door of you know the walls of my apartment. But in college me and my friend who I grew up with we rented this damp, I mean it was so dark and damp it is like repulsive that I’m like thinking back on it now. but we’re on a budget, you know, which leads us to another problem, right?
A lot of these issues, you know, are, you know, for lower economic housing is just probably riddled with mold. So that’s something that we need to tackle too. As far as, you know, changing health in poverty, impoverished communities, you know, that’s a big part of it is is the mold remediation and just healthier buildings, we need to, we need to provide healthier buildings for those communities. But so I was exposed when I was like, I’m gonna say 21/20… 21. And so we moved in, couple months go by I’m noticing there’s like a chalkiness to my lungs. Like, it’s like, you know, it’s like breathing in spider webs or something. And that’s, it wasn’t really must. It was just like, I just felt like there was chalk in my lungs.
And so then I was then looking around, like, why is it feel so weird to breathe in my apartment, and then I saw the mold coming through my closet. I mean, it was just awful. So we moved out right away, but then you just think like, okay, without the environment, it’s just going to clear itself up. And then, you know, eight years later, nine years later, they’re testing me. And it’s still in my system, right? So it’s just something to be aware of, and like you said, interestingly enough, my roommate tested later for Ms.
Like, and so and he’s, he’s fine. And it’s one of those, you know, mild versions or whatever. But it was just, it was like lesions on his brain, whatever the whatever the symptomology was, he got tested because he had symptoms. And I’m sure that this was because of black mold exposure. So, so many of these autoimmune or mystery illnesses, you’d have to look into and rule out mold and mycotoxin exposure, at least treat at the very least, if your diet hasn’t been great, or your environments, you know, have been in those kind of very obviously probable, moldy climates like humid or coastal or you could probably name others. But so all of that to say, you’ve mentioned your mother, is this a good time to talk about mold and mental health? We’re talking a lot about physical health.
Jason Earle 32:16
Yeah.
Kelly Noonan Gores 32:17
Can we talk about mold and mental health?
Jason Earle 32:19
Yeah, so actually, I would like to unpack a couple of things you said, and then dig into that, because you talked about black mold specifically. And I think that that’s a really important point to sit on for a minute. So black mold, or stachybotrys, which is the most notorious one is a very potent toxin producing mold. It’s a late stage colonizer. In other words, that only it only grows after a fairly long period of chronic dampness. So we talked about the initial leak in a building being being a concern. When that persists for two, three weeks or longer, you end up with different kinds of moles to colonize.
And so it goes back to the building of the body, that first that first leak is like, generates the musty smell, which is kind of like a pain signal from the building saying, Hey, pay attention. And if you ignore that pain signal, then it continues to perpetuate just like with your body, if you ignore pain signal, chronic inflammation, acute inflammation is one thing, chronic inflammation is his own disease. And so when a building experiences that first inflammation, or if that first, you know, aches and ache and pain, when that persists, it becomes its own disease. And I would argue that black mold and building is like cancer to a building. It’s where you start to see rot deterioration, right, it’s a real threat to the longevity of the building. And so that’s those toxins are basically trying to force you out of the building. Mold toxins are chemical weapons used at a microscopic level, to kill other microbes. We are very genetically close to fungi, by the way, so we’re affected by that. Right? So antibiotics work well with us because it kills bacteria, but not us antifungal medications don’t work so well with us because it also harms human tissue.
So we happen to be you know, we’re usually on the winning side of this but sometimes we’re not and that’s when we get knocked down. So I think it’s very important that when you see that kind of manifestation when you see any evidence of significant color, especially if it’s black in color, although not all black molds are toxic and not all toxic molds are black. It any any sort of significant moisture problem that’s persisted is a real concern. And it needs to be dealt with promptly. So you know, when I look back at my mother’s situation, my mother was also an alcoholic. And the but the question is, Which came first? The chicken or the egg? And so you wonder whether or not I often, I used to wonder and now it’s pretty clear to me that she was she was depressed chemically. The chemical imbalance was more in her building than in her brain.
And, and then it causes this imbalance, which I think she’s self medicated against. And I think it was ultimately I think it accelerated her demise in a very, in a very rapid fashion. And and this is not an this is not an unusual story because you know, my, my parents didn’t have any money. And when you look at what’s going on, you know, you brought up the poverty cycle. You know, people who live in moldy buildings generally have a hard time maintaining employment, they can’t their kids, they can’t learn, the kids can’t learn. If you can’t learn, you can’t ascend in our society.
And so, and of course, if you’re living in a public housing, or substandard housing, that landlords business models are to invest as little in the property as possible and to charge as much as they can. And so that’s pitted directly against the occupants. And so we have a society that’s unfortunately, a segment of our society, where healthy indoor air is cost prohibitive.
That to me is crazy, right? So I mean, of the four basic human needs air, water, food and shelter, unfortunately, most of those things are cost prohibitive, basic human needs, right, that doesn’t sit well with me. And that’s why I’m in this business is to help create solutions for people of across the entire spectrum. Because again, this is this is not something that should be a financial issue.
Kelly Noonan Gores 36:26
Yeah, basic human needs and rights, right. basic human need. Is there like a… I mean, you mentioned that home insurance doesn’t cover mold remediation. I mean, this should be there should be some sort of kind of shift in that area as well. Right?
Jason Earle 36:42
Yeah. It’s it’s tricky. And there’s there’s good reason for it. Because there was a there was a lot of… there’s a lot of ridiculous, a lot of fraud. Back in the late 90s, when insurance was paying for mold and it generated… Well, it was it was so bad that all the insurance companies said nope, not anymore, you know, not mine. But you know, what it does do is it pushes people into having to be port more proactive. The biggest problem is that people who are renting have no power, because they’re often scared to tell their landlord that they’ve got a mold problem at the risk of them being kicked out. They think that but it’s actually the opposite.
If you’ve got a mold problem in almost any major city, you actually are in the pole position, you’ve got the implied warranty of habitability on your favorite anyone who’s got this issue go look it up. This is this is this is a secret weapon, that most even tenant and even landlord tenant lawyers don’t even know about this. But it gives you the ability to notify your landlord, let them know that what they need to do if they don’t according to the industry standard. And if they don’t do it within a certain period of time, you can do something called a constructor eviction, where you actually can kick yourself out of your apartment, break your lease without having any, anything showing up on your credit, and without having to pay any penalties.
Kelly Noonan Gores 37:52
And so what this is again, so people can look it up.
Jason Earle 37:54
Yep, yeah, it’s called the implied warranty of habitability. In fact, I wrote an article about this, I gotmold.com, which I will, which we can put in the show notes. It’s a powerful tool for people that are that are going through this. Because the biggest impediment, the biggest obstacle to people getting fixing a mold problem is fear. In cases where their landlords where their tenant rather, the fear is obviously them you know, having to move, you know, they’re already on a… they’re already it’s… already spread thin, right?
You know, this is just a disruptive thing. So the big fear is that there’ll be kicked out when they have no resources, but even people who do have resources are scared to find out whether they have a mold problem because then what right then how much is it going to be then you know, all that then whats?
Kelly Noonan Gores 38:40
So we just had this crazy, I don’t know how long it was maybe two and a half months of rain in California, which is beautiful, filling the reservoirs but also flooding farmland and doing all sorts of destructive things as well because it’s too much too fast. And so we were sitting it was actually New Year’s Eve, I think and we had a major flood in our in our house leak through the ceiling of my daughter’s playroom and then through the door jamb. And I know what’s going on and I’m like guys, we need to address this like right now and then in through the balcony like it was coming through the balcony of the bathroom upstairs.
And so what is the best way what’s like to come out like what do you do to test for mold because it’s a big ceiling area. You can see like the wet wall next to the fireplace. My instinct was to turn on the fireplace to heat and dry up the air but then some mold expert was that someone knew was like no, the heat is going to actually make the mold grow faster. And I was like… so we haven’t addressed it. It’s just there. It’s not leaking anymore.
And so for most people, including, you know, someone that I was like, we got to check into this. It’s just like out of sight out of mind, right? And you know, we live in a well built home but it’s continued to rain, it hasn’t leaked. So I’m just wondering like, do you cut a hole in the ceiling and like, test? How do you check what’s so just to kind of diffuse fear for people? Let’s see what it entails. So we can just like, Okay, now we can handle it the day after it happens, you know?
Jason Earle 40:20
Well, there’s good news and bad news. The I’ll start with the bad news. The bad news is that it doesn’t, there’s no easy or affordable way to assess mold in a wall cavity. The best way to do that is of course, and this is just based on my experience with a mold detection dog if you have one. And by the way, they’re not exactly abundant. And then if you actually go through the process of testing, if you hire a professional, that’s the only real way to test for mold in a wall cavity. They will come over, they will drill a hole in a wall, they’ll put a tube in the wall, and then they’ll run the air through an air sampling cassette, much like we test for ambient air. And they’ll determine whether or not there’s unusual types or quantities in the wall.
The problem with that is that oftentimes they get overloaded with sheet rock dust, and you can sometimes show into a cavity where there’s no mold here, but then six inches over there is. So there it is very inaccurate. In many cases, that’s why the dogs are so helpful. But with mold in a ceiling or with water damage in the ceiling. I did have a couple of circumstances where Oreo brought me into a room and did a circle and then sat and pointed to the ceiling. But she was specifically my trainer told us that that’s not what they do. But then she learned how to do that. So it was it was an off label use, let’s say. But no it’s unfortunate that there is not an easy or affordable way to do mold assessments inside wall cavities. And so it’s in that case, you really want to find a professional if you can afford it, and you know, an average inspection is going to cost you $1,500 or more and that includes some lab analysis.
So that’s out of the realm for so many people, which is you know, which is the challenge, which is why we created our test kit. But even that doesn’t deal with the fact that mold can be growing in a wall. There’s kind of two kinds of mold problems really, there’s mold in a wall and mold on a wall. Again, hyper simplification, but mold it’s on a wall spores can break free and cause high spore counts. And that can be detected using typical testing methods, including the ones that we are for mold into law, require specialized, experienced inspection methods. And so that’s when you start getting into the cost prohibitive zone.
But this is what, when I when I went back to the 24 to 48 hours piece, if you’ve got a significant amount of water damage, the best thing to do is actually to rip it out. Day one, and nobody wants to hear that either. So in other words, there is no good news. The only good news is that there is a way if you get to it within 24 to 48 hours. But the people are so reluctant, by the way, I am guilty of saying I live in Minnesota, we had four feet of snow in the last, you know, 90 days or so. And as it began to thaw, water came down and went up under my siding and down into my kitchen ceiling. And so we had.. I was in there and I was this water on the counter, somebody must have spilled something looked up, um, you know, that was very clearly water coming through the ceiling. And so did I go up there and rip it out? No, you know, what am I talking about on the podcast?
You know, so so it I know very well that this is the right thing to do. But also what we also know in the industry is that generally speaking a one time event, especially if it’s limited in scope, generally can be left to if it’s very limited. Under 10 square feet as the rule of thumb according to the EPA, for professional mold remediation, I would say that if you’ve got one or two square feet of water damage, that’s just a one time event you can usually leave that be okay.
I mean, if it’s just a one time event, if it persists beyond that, it needs to be dealt with. It needs to be dealt with very, very quickly. Because then it will start it’s it’s one of these things which grows geometrically, right? It’s one spore becomes 1000. 1000 becomes a million, a million becomes a billion, right? And so it’s just and it’s we’re talking about hours and days, not weeks and months. Right. So it’s it’s a one time event and it’s limited in scope. You can sometimes go okay, you know, it’ll dry. Keep an eye on that. Yeah. But beyond that, you have to you have to take action.
Kelly Noonan Gores 44:58
Okay. All right.
Jason Earle 44:59
And do quickly, and if you do it quickly the insurance will pay for it. And if you don’t do it quickly, the insurance won’t.
Kelly Noonan Gores 45:05
Yeah. Got it.
Jason Earle 45:07
Yeah. Now it’s, it’s tough. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. There’s this… this is a very, very challenging subject for anyone to navigate. And especially if you go online, I mean, 99% of what you read out there is misinformation. It’s all fear based. And so, you know, this is might be a good segue into talking about remediation, what it is and what it isn’t. Most of the time when people talk about remediation, what they’re talking about is treatment. And treatment does not exist. Treatment means kicking the can down the road. What remediation is, is fixing the water, the root word of remediation is remedy, which means to fix the underlying cause root cause.
And so what’s the root cause of mold and this is a problem this is a super important takeaway to mold is not a mold is not the problem. Mold is a symptom. The problem is moisture, right? So a healthy building is clean and dry. And so as soon as you introduce moisture of any significance, mold can grow very quickly, especially modern construction. I mean, the reason we have a problem with mold in our society. And this is not a this global problem, but it’s not nearly as bad elsewhere as it is here is because we build buildings out of paper mache.
Right, we literally build buildings, self composting buildings, just add water. sheetrock is a perfect growth medium for mold. And, you know, we had this huge boom, the baby boomers where we needed to build all this fast and cheap housing. And so we had all this fast and cheap building materials that were created to meet that need. And then in the 70s, we had an oil crisis, and we had to close them up tight. So now water gets in the walls, and it gets into the fluffy insulation and stays there. And it grows against the sheet rock and the stuff that builds off of that the musty smell, not to mention the VOCs and chemicals from all the building materials that that we in the chemical companies make our building materials. So you know, you know what’s in the building materials, and then all those things accumulate in our in our environment. And we wonder why we’re so sick.
You know, we wonder why, you know, the statistics on this, by the way, are fascinating. And I’ll get into the remediation again in a second. But from 1960 until now, respiratory illness in the United States up 165%. And death associated with respiratory illness is up 30% In that same period, yet smoking is down 80%. And you just have to ask yourself, why is that right? If the number one cause of respiratory illnesses has been largely eradicated, then Where’s that coming from? And it’s very clear to me that it’s from the VOCs, it’s from the mold, mold and VOCs. We live in chemical boxes that get moldy very quickly when they get wet. And so it’s very important that people take action on these things.
But it’s also important to use HEPA filtered air cleaners with carbon, because it will remove those things. It’s also important to you open your windows, you know, there’s something that we don’t do in our society anymore, we turn our AC off, turn our heat on, turn our heat off, turn our AC on. And we’re so disconnected. You know from our true heritage, the word human comes from humus, which is soil. And we’re so far away from that, you know, so for some remediation, root word remedy, fix the water problem, and then clean up the mold. And so that means removing the building materials that are supporting the fungal growth.
And that means find cleaning of all the affected areas. And so that usually requires some testing to be able to figure out where that find cleaning is necessary. But mold remediation is a very, very methodical process when done according to the industry standard. Most remediation contractors prefer to use chemicals, because they think that that’s going to be more effective. And it’s also faster and cheaper.
And they’re getting paid by the project. Yeah, bump, bump, bump bump. And what they often do is leave behind chemical a chemical burden in the home that can’t be remedied, you can’t get the chemicals back out and leaving behind a high fungal load. Because if you don’t remove the mold, you can’t just kill it. There is no killing mold is actually a farce. If you kill mold, you leave behind dead mold. And oftentimes these killer some old killers are water based. And so they and so you leave behind dampness. And so oftentimes it actually and it also does something called competitive release, which is where you kill off the weak molds and the strong ones are there to survive, and then they eat all the dead ones.
And you end up with this proliferation, which is why we have similar situations in hospitals Mersa you know, these these, these antibiotic resistant organisms, same kind of thing because they’re they’re sanitizing those hospitals, knocking down all of that stuff, killing it all. And the only stuff that survives is the nastiest stuff, right? So the same thing happens here. You know, by the way, it’s important to note that that the the data on this is really clear. You want a lot of… you want spores in your house. You want spores in your air. Yeah, this is this is a week, by the way. Yeah, ready for this one. So check this out. This is these are some fun statistics. So Kingdom fungi produces 50 Mega tons of spores every year.
So that’s macro and micro fungi, which means that’s mushrooms, and molds and yeasts and things like that. So 50 megatons, is the equivalent of 500,000, blue whales. Okay, that’s every year, the single largest producer of biological particulate is Kingdom fungi. And, and so literally, anywhere you go in this world, if you take a deep breath, you’ll be inhaling hundreds, if not 1000s of different types of molds.
And that’s a good thing. In fact, the data on this is very clear that high microbial diversity in your home, by the way, also in your gut, but high microbial diversity in your home, meaning lots of different kinds of microbes is directly correlated with a lower incidence of asthma, allergies, and autoimmune disease. And the opposite is also true a low microbial diversity, which is huge, which is caused by overuse of anti by anti microbials. And this, this need to sterilize things Yeah. shows a very high correlation to higher cases of asthma, allergies and autoimmune disease. So we need lots of microbes, but we don’t need any of them growing in our house. That’s the distinction. Right?
Kelly Noonan Gores 51:27
So it’s, yeah, it’s good to breathe in some homeopathy and get a biodiverse, you know, microbiome in and out. And that’s why, you know, as we both have young children and four year old, I mean, and obviously just went through COVID, like this whole hand sanitizers thing I you know, we didn’t touch it, I maybe let her touch it twice, because she asked, but I was like, no, no, let’s just do soap and water.
And, you know, let that. I mean, she licked a shoe one time, and I was like, dog poop, like, oh, the nastiest stuff. But at the same time, it’s like, you want kids to be in the dirt and do those nasty things, to get these little homeopathic samples of the biodiversity, you know, so that they do so that their immune system in small doses, gets that Intel, so it can flourish and have a much more strong army. A diverse… a diverse Intel.
Jason Earle 52:20
Yep. So they’re like hormetic stressors, right? So your lungs, if you think about first of all we breathe 13 to 15 times a minute, which comes out to about 20,000 breaths a day, right? So you think about every breath is a dose? Right? You’re right. And so if you take 20,000 doses of anything, it’s going to be cumulative. Indoor air is either healthy or unhealthy. There’s no neutral, healthy indoor air is life giving it’s detoxifying, it’s energizing, right, oxygen is a fuel, you can burn it, right? It’s truly… it’s powerful stuff.
Unhealthy air, it will sap you of your vital forces, right? It is toxifying. And it will lead to early death and demise. And so the reality is, there’s no neutral, you either have healthy air, or unhealthy air. But you’re… you’ve got this beautiful open spirit. I mean, you are naked to the world inside your lungs. And so every time you take a deep breath, if you’re providing it with the same thing that you would get in nature, then your body’s being trained, that this is normal. This is good. We’ve moved into these boxes, we sterilize things we overdo, we overuse our HEPA filter, air cleaners and HEPA filtered vacuum cleaners, not to say you shouldn’t use them all the time. But you should open your windows, HEPA filter, air cleaners and HEPA filtered vacuum cleaners are actually really don’t think about spores. Think about the building materials that we build buildings out up there are laden with chemicals that are constantly shedding, right? If you think about your hardwood floors, occasionally you have to refinish them.
Where did that finish go? It’s in the dust in your house, which by the way, your kids are crawling around and they’re licking their hands. The pets are also licking their hands. This is why pets and kids have the highest exposure. Because they also breed more rapidly, they have more than 20,000 doses and per pound they have a much higher degree of exposure. And so that’s why you often see pets is the canary in the coal mine. They also have something called incidental ingestion where they’re actually licking their paws and getting these chemicals into their into their system. So it’s not the mold that you’re protecting yourself from really when it comes to HEPA filtered air cleaners and HEPA filtered vacuum cleaners. It’s really the chemicals Yeah, it’s really chemicals in your building. But then you want to use those things very religiously to keep your building clean, but then you want to open your windows and get back to this our nature.
Kelly Noonan Gores 54:39
Reconnect with nature.
Jason Earle 54:40
Be wild, yeah! And bring that in your your indoor air when we do air testing. We do an outside air sample and an inside air sample, right. And many insider samples or as many as as as it’s necessary. But we take an outside air sample because your indoor air should look very similar.
Kelly Noonan Gores 54:55
Comparing to…
Jason Earle 54:56
Yeah, and when we see higher quantities or different types cuz then we know that there’s something brewing, right? We don’t want to have a completely different ecology in our building, believe it or not, I mean, depending upon where you live, right? If you live in the Everglades, you know, you might, you might want to have a little bit of a different ecology, but it should look very similar because you should not have anything growing in your home. Right? Because then it’s sporulating. And then all the other chemicals that are being used on a competitive basis, you’re caught in the crossfire again, right? So the idea is that we want to get closer to nature.
But we don’t want to actually be propagating these things in our home, which means to do one thing, control moisture, it’s the only thing you can control in this whole thing. You’re never gonna get away from spores. In fact, they found out there was a weather balloon. We talked about the 50 Mega tons and all that a weather balloon that was doing air samples found clouds of spores 13.7 miles above the earth’s surface, there’s no getting away from spores. Yeah, there’s no getting away from them. And that’s a good thing, because that’s what we need them. without, without Kingdom fungi, we’d be in big trouble, right? It’s nature’s great recycler. But ultimately, the key is to have balance, and recognizing that we need to put we need to live in harmony with them.
Kelly Noonan Gores 56:06
Okay, so I think a good thing to do is like, kind of sum up what we can do. So, like, for me, I think, really, what you said is, you know, we’ve outsourced our expertise. And at times, you know, level two, yes, hire the expert to do the deeper dive. But trust your senses, feel how you like feel how you, like sit in your living spaces, start to pay attention, how you feel when you are in your homes, you know, obviously, open your windows more, and then when your windows are closed, turn on those HEPA air filters with carbon. And I’ll let you summarize the rest. But really, I really, you know, my signaler for that damp dark apartment was my lungs, I felt like I was breathing chalky lungs, you’re talking about the musty smell.
And then energetically, like you said, we’re taking these 20,000 doses, if we’re indoors, windows aren’t open, and are in we’re feeling depressed, we’re feeling our you know, low energy. You know, obviously, there could be other things going on, but let that bring you back to awareness and go, Okay, let me check my environment. See if I need, you know, see how I feel my environment, if it feels stagnant. If it feels like it’s hard to breathe, if you just get a sense that there’s like, lots of chemicals, or you smell a musty smell like that’s when you need to take action, you know, and dive deeper.
So give us kind of a summary of what you recommend for the Average Joe, who doesn’t necessarily want to start tearing into walls but can do things to, you know, and then and then obviously, the other thing that I can recommend also is if you’re, again, if you’re dealing with autoimmune or mystery illness, or allergies that came on suddenly your asthma. I would always I mean, I think any anyone with any chronic illness, even something as serious as cancer and Parkinson’s should rule out mold. Get tested for an entire mycotoxin test, right? It’s a urine test.
Jason Earle 58:02
Yeah, there’s urine tests, and there’s their blood tests as well. So yeah, getting tested for those things can be very useful.
Kelly Noonan Gores 58:09
Because it wipes out your immune system silently. It’s keeping these these If mold is in your system and these mycotoxins are in your system, depending on the level, it’s it’s just your immune system is working on high alert at all times. And it can’t do that, you know, the normal thing, it’s just overwhelmed. And then that’s when cancer can flourish or inflammation or, you know, all these other host of issues and allergies. So…
Jason Earle 58:33
Yeah, so all of the things that you said, and you know, trust your intuition. I always say if you see something, smell something or feel something, do something, and do it quickly, because again, you’ve got two to three days, really before you start getting into the danger zone where you start having to deal with specialists. The other thing you might want to consider is making investments in some hardware. Again, you know, proper air cleaners, like you said, that have a HEPA but also carbon HEPA filter vacuum cleaners very powerful. Also humidity gauges. This may seem like like it’s such a simple thing. But just to get some humidity gauges and you want to keep your humidity in your home between 40 and 60%.
That’s according to ASHRAE which is the American Society of Heating Refrigeration Air Conditioning Engineers, but they’re… the guidance on that is pretty clear. Above 60% you start to get condensation and dust mites and things like that. Below 40% starts to get too dry and then you can actually have he gets sick from your mucous membranes drying out. So that’s that’s the safe zone. And you want to watch that. One of the things I recommend is getting a base unit that with wireless sensors, and put the base unit in your kitchen where you see it every day and then put the wireless sensors in places that are outside and out of mind lay crawl spaces and basements and attics and, and things like that. The other thing that’s really good is leak sensors. And this is something that you can get on Amazon.
They’re cheap. And there’s little devices that you can just put them in the corners of your basement where water sometimes gets in and they’ll either send it a text message to your phone or pop up in your app and send you. And sometimes they also have audible alerts, I use them in my basement, and they come in really handy. I mean, when your water tank goes, or, you know these things, especially when you’re away, because by the way, there’s a federal law, I think that what major water damage only occurs while you’re on vacation.
Kelly Noonan Gores 1:00:16
Yeah. It’s called Murphy’s law.
Jason Earle 1:00:19
it’s unbelievable, but but it really is true. So you want to make sure that you’ve got, you know, the basic equipment in place to help manage, you know, you’ve got a symbiotic relationship with your building, you know, and when buildings get sick, that people get sick, and when buildings heal, so to do the people, right, and so, so really, I’m also encouraging people to get more familiar with your building. You know, we made a welcome page for your listeners at gotmail.com/heal. And so there, we actually post our new ebook there, which is called How to Find Mold, but it’s got 46 pages of inspection checklists, and various other resources, frequently asked questions and things like that. And I highly recommend that anyone who’s early in their mold awareness journey go there. It’s a free resource, we get a lot of positive feedback about it.
And it gives you it gives you the ability to take a walk around your house and see things that you would never see because you’re too busy worrying about paying the bills and feeding the kids and get them off to school and stuff. And if you and if you do that and get more familiar with the building the same way you you’re encouraged to get familiar with your body. You’re right. I mean, people do mold checks and things like that. But oftentimes people miss the thing that’s on the middle of their back. And so I’m encouraged people to just raise your awareness around this, in general, because you know, you’re not going to do too well with a building that sick. And so it’s it’s incumbent upon you as the building’s immune system to take care of that, right. And if you take care of your building, it will take care of you.
Kelly Noonan Gores 1:01:47
The one thing about mold is that it’s overwhelming, because it’s invisible, you know, but like you said, mold is not the problem. It’s a symptom, you know, so there is something to be said about, you know, I’m kind of demonizing mold, the mold is not the issue, mold is not nefarious, like you said, it’s not like out to get us it’s just this natural part of nature. Right? So tell us about that.
Jason Earle 1:02:08
Ya know, if if mold wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. Fungi’s much smarter than us, quite frankly, it really is. And, and so rather, it’s a, it’s a very repeatable, natural phenomenon. People think of it as if it’s like lightning strikes, like lightning strike. It’s something that happens to them. But it’s the very simple, repeatable, natural phenomenon of something getting wet and staying wet for more than a couple of days. And so, you know, it’s been such a mystery for so long that even all the way back to, you know, a couple 1000 years ago, the first mold remediation protocol is in the Bible, and I’m no Bible banger, but it’s Leviticus 14, you can look it up.
And you’ll see it said if the plague has spread to the walls, then the stone plaster and temperature can be scraped, and to be thrown out into the unclean place outside the town, meaning the garbage dump. And in if the plague is to return the priests is to examine it. And if it’s deemed to be the harmful, the harmful kind, then the house is to be knocked down with a stone timbers and plaster thrown into the unclean place outside the town. They they call it the plague, because it showed up a speckles on the on the actual, in some biblical versions, they call it leprosy, because it showed up as the speckles on the building. And they didn’t understand what was happening. But it was it seemed to spread. It seemed to happen all at one time. Well, of course, there was a flood. And so things got wet. And they didn’t correlate the dampness to this phenomenon. This seemed to be all these buildings suddenly got it right.
Yeah. So this has been a mystery that has plagued societies for 1000s of years. Now we have microscopes and the science and the research to at least not at that. But we still have so much mystery around the subject matter, such as the Internet gives us the misinformation. We’re just as bad as the as the people that were experiencing, you know, leprosy on the walls, because we go to Google or Facebook for our answers. And so therein lies part of the problem. Most of the information people are getting online is fear based, or it’s based on something someone’s trying to sell you a mold treatment product or something like that. And the reality is that mold is a moisture problem, period, end of story.
Yeah. And it’s part of nature. And it’s a great signaler. And it’s it’s not the enemy. And it’s you know, but it is it could be an issue of left on treated and absolutely, absolutely in our bodies and in our environments. It is a powerful alarm that tells you when something is wrong with your building. And so again, trust your senses, be aware of your environment, you know, take care of your building, and it will take care of you.
Kelly Noonan Gores 1:04:49
What a great way to end it’s so eloquent and so helpful. Again, it’s one of these things that you’re not aware until you’re aware and then it’s like it’s just everywhere. You know, it’s just something to check. So it’s this, this has been so enlightening. And thank you for that the landing page for the listeners. And once again, it is gotmold.com/heal where Jason and his team have put together just an amazing mold resource page for all of you guys to go check out if you have questions. What else? Where else can they find you? But it’s got mold everywhere. Can we hire like a got mold? Inspector here? Is there a dog out here that you can…
Jason Earle 1:05:30
Not right now. No, we… due to COVID actually, we suspended our inspection services. And so we’ve transitioned all of our resources over to our at home test kit, which people can learn more about at gotmail.com There’s also a 10% discount at the on the Welcome page for your listeners. Heal10 is your code. But know if anyone wants to get in touch with us. You can find us on social media. I’ve been reluctant to be on social media but it’s a good place for people to to learn more. So we’re on Facebook and Instagram @gotmold.
Both those platforms, people can post questions there. I often do ask me any things. So you know, we keep your eyes open if you if you actually really want if you’ve got a pressing question. I’m more than glad to answer also at gotmold.com The bottom of the homepage, there’s a contact form. And I don’t answer all the questions, of course, but I see them all. And so I encourage people that want to get in touch if they’ve got specific questions or concerns they can always they can always reach me there too.
Kelly Noonan Gores 1:06:30
Awesome. Thank you so much. This is going to be so helpful for my audience. So thanks for coming on and sharing your expertise.
Jason Earle 1:06:37
Thanks for having me, Kelly.
Kelly Noonan Gores 1:06:42
Thank you for listening to the heal podcast. Be sure to tune in for more empowering wisdom and inspiring healing stories. Oh and make sure you hit the Follow button on Apple Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. so you don’t miss that one episode that holds the answer you’ve been searching for. And if you feel inspired, we would love you to rate and review us so that we have the opportunity to reach more people. And of course you can follow us on Instagram for some behind the scenes fun and more inspiration at @healdocumentary and @kellygores. Thank you so much and be well.
