Transcript of Episode 106: Mold Illness and Mold Remediation
With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra, Phil Kaplan, and special guest Kevin Sutherland.
Meredith:
Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. This is Episode number 106, and Dr. Pompa and I have some very special guests with us today. We have Phil Kaplan who is no stranger to Cellular Healing TV, and he's going to be joining the show to share his personal mold remediation story. To further explain the story, we have Kevin Sutherland on the call, who is Phil's mold remediation specialist, who actually worked with Phil to remediate the mold from his home. We have Dr. Pompa here, of course. Welcome, everyone, to the show.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, thank you.
Phil:
Thank you -inaudible-, Dr. Pompa. My story is not that important here. What's important is that I finally found a guy who did it right. That's what's important. You know my story, and we've spoken about it, but I've got very sick from mold. I have moved 16 times, which is hard for people to believe but living in south Florida, it's really hard to find a place that does not have mold. There were different people that I hired, once mold was identified, to fix the problem. They don't come in and charge me money. They don't come in and remove something, but they didn't seem to fix the problem. What's interesting is one of those guys actually wrote the book on how to do mold remediation right. It wasn't until I moved into a new home, found some water, called Kevin, that I realized Kevin is doing it by the book. The guy who wrote the book didn't do it that way, but Kevin did.
What I want to tell you is so many people can prevent themselves from getting sick from mold if they know what to do when it's identified. That's the big if because most people don't know what to do, and there are lots of contractors out there, lots of people out there, business owners, who will take advantage, knowingly or unknowingly, of the opportunity to make money from mold. It doesn't mean they do the job right. I thought it would be good for you guys to meet, so Kevin can help coach people as to how to make the right moves once you find water, or mold, or suspect there's mold.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, Phil, this is one of the number one problems we have. Many people have watched the show that I've done with you, and some other mold shows, and we know that mold, heavy metals, and hidden infections, are these upstream sources that make people very sick. We also know that you don't get better until you identify them, and mold is one of those things. It's the toughest thing to find. People suspect it, we can't find it, and then once they do, the remediation goes wrong, or people come back in the house after spending major money, and they're more sick because they're that sensitive. Phil, that's how you ended up in how many homes?
Phil:
Sixteen.
Dr. Pompa:
Sixteen homes, so because you're pressed for time, Phil, so you're going to be with us here just for a short period of time. I want to turn it over to you to walk them through, our audience, our viewing audience, of what it really takes to remediate a home correctly. The things that they need to look for, to do, and you can do that even with your own story. I'm going to turn you over to Kevin.
Phil:
Let me start by telling how they did it wrong because you don't know until you see somebody doing it right. One example was there was mold underneath the kitchen sink underneath the cabinet. Of course, they came in, and they said, “We're going to charge you X number of dollars,” and X was a large number. “We're going to remove all of this, and then we're going to rebuild the cabinet.” They did. They came in, took some sledge hammers, and destroyed, and carried stuff out, and what they were doing was sending everything that was inside that cabinet into the air.
Sure enough, they took away the identifiable mold, but there's this very insidious thing called a mold spore that moves around the house and contaminates the air. Even thought the visible mold was removed, the problem from there got worse and months later, it was literally growing like fur out of the vents. When they come in, and they go, “We've taken care of the problem,” you want to believe them. I started getting sick, and I started to think it's in my head. They took out the mold. How could I be getting sick, again? Now, I understand why.
When I moved into this home, I had it inspected, and there was no mold. They did an air test, and they did some other type of test, an ERMI test it's called, where they take a dust sample. They said there was no mold. The week I moved in, I was standing in a doorway, an interior doorway, and I felt water dripping on me, and I looked up. That's when I said, “You know what?” I need help, but I'm not going to call the guy who I've called before because clearly he didn't help.” I went to Angie's List. That's how I found you. I went to Angie's List, and Kevin came up first, and I called him, and I started asking him questions. He sounded like he answered everything correctly, and he came out, and I'll let you take it from there.
Kevin:
I came here and first they pointed out the area where there was water dripping on his shoulder. The first thing to do is identify where the moisture source is coming from. In his case, it was a direct moisture source that's coming from the upstairs level. That's not the case in all scenarios. Sometimes, it is humidity, humidity caused by lack of air conditioning, lack of insulation, temperature differences between the inside of the wall cavities to the interior of the home. There's a few different reasons.
Phil:
This was actually a leak coming from the upstairs toilet through the ceiling.
Dr. Pompa:
I'm glad Kevin pointed out though that it doesn't need to be a leak because I see that, Kevin, what you said a lot is that they don't put enough insulation, or it's not insulated. It's just like when you have a glass of water, there's a temperature difference—if it's hot outside and that moisture forms on the outside, where did it come from? It came from the moisture in the air. That's what happens behind walls. I see that a lot, Kevin.
Kevin:
Yeah, that happens a lot. Actually, another incident that I run into often with the temperature difference and condensation arising is they say they use their air conditioner. I look at how the air conditioner is set right, supposedly it's where it's always the setting that they showed me. It's not changed just before I come and enter the property, but the windows, if they have single paned windows, and they sweat a lot in the morning, all that humidity eventually evaporates into the interior air, and that adds humidity. If it's not vented or exhausted right, then their humidity level will continue to rise.
Dr. Pompa:
Kevin, I don't want to interrupt you because you're making a point, but I just recently had a patient who the mold, they found it. It was around all their windows from the sweaty window problem. It was running down, in, and around it. Again, they had three mold people come in, and do three different tests, and all said, “Oh, it's fine,” because they just did air tests. Finally, someone looked, and they found it.
Kevin:
Eventually, it can build up where it's coming off of that window sill and then soaking, absorbing into the drywall, where it's going to retain much longer. It is an issue. Nowadays, they do make the windows double paned, but I would recommend if you do see them sweating in the morning, those mornings during the winter where you keep it warm inside and the cold outside, use a towel, use a rag, but wipe it and soak up some of that moisture, so it doesn't go into your air.
Phil:
Here's an important point. I had the house mold tested, ERMI test and air test, and it came back clean. When Kevin came in, and identified the leak, and saw where it was coming from, the water was running in a channel. It was a specific path, which was good because it didn't go everywhere. When he pulled away some of the wall, there was visible mold. A question I have is how does the house test clean if when you open up the wall there's mold there?
Kevin:
The air test that they take—there's a few different types of spore traps, but spore traps go for a certain range of square footage around where the actual sample is taken. That is also hampered by the blueprints of where there's a wall. To be certain and thorough, I don't know exactly where they took them when you had the guy take the samples in the property, but you want one in each room because that's going to give you the most effective means of knowing whether or not you have an air quality problem because the walls and everything can isolates some air in the area and not in the other. It'll mix and flow, but it'll come in at a lower number. If they didn't take it around that general area, it might not pop up.
Phil:
This is an important point is just because the mold test comes back clean, doesn't mean you don't have mold. Dr. Pompa, when you deal with sick people, and they develop, first, respiratory symptoms, then neurological symptoms, and it sounds like mold, if they went and bought a little mold kit at Home Depot, that mold kit may not really identify the problem. Now, in my case, I was very upset when I felt water dripping down my shoulder. In hindsight, I was really glad because it identified the problem, and then we were able to fix it. Mold tests is Step one, and I would say if you're experiencing symptoms, or if you smell mildew, or something musty, you've got to dig a little deeper.
Kevin:
Sure, if you have an odor, a lot of times it is mold. It's usually either a fungi, a bacteria, or a -inaudible-. The mold testing, bouncing back to that real quick, it can help identify—the ones that they sell in the stores with the Petri dishes are more or less going to tell you what's in that environment, whether it's naturally there or not. It really won't tell you if you have an elevated mold problem because it's not a comparative sample as the air samples are comparative. We have -inaudible- that's the environment of the property. The smell you should definitely have it checked out because all of them are a problem. If it's bacteria, bacteria have odors, the fungi do, and the -inaudible-, which the formaldehyde is now in the media pretty big. Those have odors and usually the first thing people assume is the mold, which more of the probability more of the time is that it is mold, but the -inaudible- is common, as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Exactly, and one of the things I want to point out is that we get someone like Phil, Kevin, they become sensitive to the biotoxin that mold produces. Therefore, he's not reacting to the mold spore like someone with an allergy. This is Biotoxic Illness. He's reacting to minute amounts of a biotoxin. That's really the importance of containing this. You're going to get to how to remediate, the proper containment. Once those biotoxins start moving in the home, he's reacting to that and not the spore. Most tests are looking at the spore.
Now, we have a new test that I just sent Phil, and we're going to do a future show on this. We're actually looking at the mycotoxin or the biotoxin in the person. It's a newer test and like I said we're going to do a show on it and bring one of the gentlemen in. That's the problem, Kevin, is that we're looking at minute amounts of a biotoxin making someone who's hyper sensitive in the home. Testing can only get you so far. Phil, what do we always say? The best test is the canary in the coal mine, meaning that if you feel better away from your house, you've got a problem, and you better bring in an expert like Kevin. If you get back in your house, and you feel worse, again, you better bring an expert in like Kevin because you've got a problem.
Kevin, I just wanted to state that there's no perfect test. The ERMI test, I think, is one of the best ones. Phil, the one that you did, where we're able to look at what's going on inside the house, and then we're able to look at normal mold spores what you're saying. In other words, there's mold, there's spores in the home, but what is normal and abnormal? That's what these tests show.
Phil:
Sure, and then we found, as Kevin continued to inspect by the front door,—Dr. Pompa, did you just get offended? He just ran away.
Dr. Pompa:
No, my dog just goes crazy -inaudible-. This little dog is such a nuisance for -inaudible-. I'm telling you. This is like the devil of self TV, right here.
Phil:
Mascot.
Dr. Pompa:
The mascot.
Phil:
He found by the door a little of the baseboard was peeling away. He stripped that away and found some water intrusion there, too, which again I was thankful for. The big question I have is can you fix it? Can you remediate it? He said, “Yes.” We set a date. I think it might have been the next day, and I think I might have been out of town. I gave you the key, so when I came back home, it was noisy in here.
Kevin:
Yeah, the machines they make do make some decibel levels, windy and decibel levels.
Phil:
The first thing you did is you—talk about what you did.
Kevin:
The first thing is to build a containment. First of all, as you were saying, contractors go in—for the viewers watching, they need to make sure it's a licensed remediator. Go ahead and check that. You can look up the licensing online on the Florida business website. A lot of -inaudible-, the maintenance companies come in, and they have their own maintenance men do it themselves, but they don't know what they're doing. Then, you run into future problems. It starts to -inaudible- air quality.
Dr. Pompa:
-inaudible- because most of our viewers are not in Florida, necessarily.
Kevin:
Regardless, they should check if their state has licensing, and verify that they know what they're doing. Then steps of it is also containment. The containment is the first step, building a containment, but that's only one part of it. That containment has to be pressurized. You want to make sure that the air is coming inwards, and being filtered, but not going outwards. There are times when there are quick breaches of that containment when you go in and out and if it's pressurized negatively, then any air is coming inward. You can verify that by the way the bow of the plastic material that builds the containment bows, and it should be pressing inward. You build a containment, you pressurize it, and then you don't really go in there busting—
Dr. Pompa:
Just describe, for people that don't know, the containment. What does that mean?
Kevin:
The containment is structuring walls. Usually, it's a framing through poles or furring strips, which are small wood strips. Then, it's just simply plastic wrapped around. It's all the way to the ceiling. It's tight. It's to the floor.
Dr. Pompa:
-inaudible- sealed, right? It's sealed, and then we create a negative air. Like you said, the plastic will suck in showing that the air is going out of the house, not in the house.
Phil:
It's got these massive air movers that, as I said, they're very noisy, but they're doing the job. I don't know if you remember in the movie ET, where at the end when they captured ET. They had him in this thing. That's what it reminded me of. That's what you built in the house.
Kevin:
That's exactly what it is. You need a containment, you need it pressurized, and you have to have air scrubbers running. As soon as you start to remove the drywall, baseboard, cabinets, whatever it is, building materials, that's been -inaudible- water damage. As soon as you start removing it, it's like pollen on a flower. You hit that little flower, all the pollen goes up in the air. That flower wants to make sure it can have the highest probability to reproduce. The mold is the same way. The fungi lets all the spores in the air as soon as you start to disturb it.
Your air quality actually goes from bad to worse before it gets better. You had to have a HEPA. We call them air scrubbers. It's an industrial sized HEPA filter that filters out the spores. That's got to be running when the building materials are removed, but you can't go in there, and take a sledge hammer, and start knocking it all down. You want to disturb it as least as possible. You want to make precision cuts, feel out where your studs are, and your furring strips, and be able to pop it out with as least disturbance as possible to that fungi. It all plays a part in having a clean product at the end.
Dr. Pompa:
Here's another mistake after that, great. How do we kill the mold? How do we get rid of it? I see people make this mistake, and by the way, those watching, if you think perhaps you're sick from mold, then obviously we want to detect that first. Once they are sick from mold, they become chemically sensitive. Now, we're killing with chemicals, and then that becomes a new problem.
Kevin:
Right, the chemical that you—the dog, again.
Dr. Pompa:
-inaudible-.
Kevin:
The chemical that you use is very important. A big mistake—
Phil:
Actually, Dr. Pompa, we should—tell me it has a bladder problem, so you very quickly -inaudible-.
Kevin:
The chemical that you use is very important. You need to use an antimicrobial. A lot of homeowners, I guess they hear it around, but they use bleach. They use a bleach-water solution, and then what happens is the mycotoxins inside the spore mix with the chemicals inside the Clorox, the bleach, the chlorine. Then, you have different mycotoxins that are produced. Use an antimicrobial is the way to go. Don't use anything but that for cleaning. First, remove everything that you can but which you cannot, make sure it's bio washed, which is a HEPA vacuum first, and then the antimicrobial, but don't use a bleach-water solution at all.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, okay. Those are classic mistakes that most people make. Now, Phil, I have to ask you. He remediated this. You got rid of the mold. Now, Kevin, I have to ask this question though. Let's say we see visible black mold or whatever type of mold it is. Do you just kill it, or do you actually remove the mold and then kill it with the antimicrobial?
Kevin:
Okay, if it's on the interior of the wall—the majority of the time it's more within the cavity but a lot of times you do see it on the interior where you have direct access to it. That area is presumed if it’s not surface mold, if it’s not from humidity, and it’s thick, and multiple types, it’s more than likely into the drywall, and it’s going to be in the cavity sides, also. The mold that you do see, you can do—we call it self containment—directly on top of that to prevent that disturbance that I talked about when we remove the thing. We can take a sheet of plastic, spray an adhesive around it, then put it right over it like a Band-Aid. Now, when we open that up, we’re going to disturb the mold inside the cavity some, and remember, we’re inside the containment that’s pressurized for that, but it’s still keeping down the spore level that could have been released that is on our side, and we have access, too, before we get into the cavity.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I was getting at. Another mistake that I see often is, great, they do all this, even if they do it right, but then they don’t address the moisture problem.
Kevin:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Phil’s was simple. There was a leak. You traced it back; you fixed the leak. If it’s a basement, for example, that has positive water pressure, where different storms come in, what are you doing to reroute the water from putting that pressure on the foundation or the humidity problems that you and I spoke about? Do you address that on every site? A lot of guys don’t address that. I get very upset about that.
Kevin:
Oh, no. We do. Majority of the time—and I believe we did it here for the window incident. We had it open. We didn’t go ahead with the rebuild right away. We left the containment up. We flooded the outside with the hose, found that it was coming in in a little corner of the window. It could have been soaked up from the bottom of the slab at grade level. It could have been coming in through the window, which it was. There’s a few different options. There’s a hose bib out there. If the line ran through there, it could have been from that. This one was a corner of the window when we flooded it, and we were able to use a thermal camera on the inside to see exactly where that leak was coming in through, and seal the leak, and then retest it.
Dr. Pompa:
I was going to ask you if you did that. Yeah.
Kevin:
We want to test it, find the leak before we seal everything, and then test to see if it’s not leaking. Always test to find the leak. That way, you know where you look for it after you do the sealing. If you just go ahead and seal everywhere before you even flood the wall with the hose, then you’re never going to know if you certainly got the water leak.
Dr. Pompa:
We got success with the thermal cameras, going around the basement drywall, and then—because if you find the moisture, guess what? You’ve found the mold. Am I right on that?
Kevin:
-inaudible- the moisture.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Those things can help find the moist areas, which is really important.
Kevin:
Just real quick, with that, they do find the moist areas, but what it’s really detecting is temperature change.
Dr. Pompa:
Correct. Exactly.
Kevin:
The water areas are cooler than the surroundings, so it’s able to find that, but it is used for the water detection.
Phil:
When somebody’s living in a home, and they detect mold, of course they want to get rid of it quickly. I think that makes people very vulnerable because people can come in and do very quick work. What Kevin is describing, it sounds like a lot of meticulous investigation and follow-up, and it is. It’s a lot of work, but it’s the right way to do it. Any other way is going to cause a future problem, almost guaranteed. It is a lot of work.
That’s why I’m saying if somebody comes to you with a better price and says they can do it in less time, that’s not a reason to make that connection. You got to make sure that you find somebody that’s going to really take care of the problem. Here in South Florida, -inaudible-, would you acknowledge there are lots of people who just don’t do it the right way?
Kevin:
Oh, absolutely. Everybody’s trying to save a dime. They get the lowballer in there, who could just get the job done real quick and move on, but he’s already paid and gone before you realize you’ve even got more problems now.
Phil:
We, on our recent episode of Health Seekers Radio, our radio show, we spoke about this, and I pulled up an article that was written by somebody very credible from a university, who said mold is not a problem. There are lots of remediators out there who will agree with that. They go, “Oh, that’s just not a big deal. We just have to get it out. It’s the black mold that’s bad. Anything else is okay. We just have to clean it up.”
After Kevin finished the job, I was upstairs in the bedroom, and I noticed a little bit of moisture right around the vent. I called him, and he came out the next day and sealed that up, too. It reminds me of when you came out to my old house that became problematic, you walked in, and you said, “Attic air.” Right? As soon as you walked in, you said, “Attic air.” When you have those little spaces—I’ll let you answer it—that’s a red flag, and thankfully, he took care of it right away. It wasn’t a problem, but had it been left there, it might have become one, right?
Kevin:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What we did is we put a weather strip on the scuttle hole. For you that don’t know what a scuttle hole is, it’s the board that you move over to the side so you can access the attic. Throughout the day, as the pressures change between positive and negative on the inside and outside pressures, pressure comes in through the scuttle holes and pressurizes the attic. That will push down and go in -inaudible- hole if there’s -inaudible-. We used a weather strip to seal that, and also around the frame, we put some extra caulking just to make sure that there’s not a little gap that the air could escape through.
Phil:
I’ll mention this, too. He went out of his way to find non-VOC caulking, right?
Kevin:
Yes.
Phil:
He understood that there’s a lot more here than just the mold sensitivity. This is why it’s important. This is why I felt it important to bring Kevin on. I think a lot of people who suffer with mold issues for a very long time suffer longer than they have to because they don’t find the right solution to fix either their house, or office, or wherever it was problematic.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. Yup. Phil, you know, you said it, too, is that if you have a mold issue and you became sick by mold or heavy metals, you end up with chemical sensitivity. Kevin, that’s the other battle. Great, we fixed their mold problem, but now these people are very sensitive to VOCs, volatile organic compounds, and chemicals in perfumes, fragrances, new carpets, caulking, paint. They come in with this remediation, and they put new paint, new caulking, all of these chemicals, and they’re more sick. Now we don’t know, is it the chemicals, or is it because the contamination—the containment wasn’t done right or something?
This is a big deal. Phil, I know you have somewhere to go, and if you have to jump off like I had to jump off to close the door for my dog, feel free. I have to say HVACs, Phil, that’s one of the things that kept you from finding a good home. Sixteen homes, I don’t know how many were moldy HVACs, but Kevin, I put that on you. We talked about this in one of the past shows, too. Especially in humid areas, the coil of the HVAC, and mold builds up in the HVAC like you said. They run the lines in attics, and if that air is escaping, you can get moisture just from the holes—the non-sealed vents, right, and the coils.
Kevin:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Talk about some of the HVACs because I know people watching this, that could be their problem.
Phil:
I’m going to let you do that. I can’t wait to hear your answer when I watch the recording. I got to go pick my daughter up at school.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re scared -inaudible-.
Phil:
I’m very glad I was able to connect you guys, so keep it going.
Dr. Pompa:
Thanks. Thanks, Phil.
Phil:
You can move to center.
Kevin:
All right. Thanks, Phil. With the HVACs—in the attics, they all have humidity issues just for the lack of the HVAC, but the plumbing is up there, and then you get the warm air next to the cold air, and you get the condensation again. The drain line happens a lot. The cold lines, as well as the duct work, too.
Dr. Pompa:
The drain line, especially when those darn things are in the attic—
Kevin:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Kevin:
They will back up a lot, too. One of the biggest problems we have is that drain line backing up, algae building up on the inside. Then the coils are draining where they should be, but then the pan just overflows because it can’t escape all the water. Some mold does come up in the attic, and then when the pressure changes, it’ll push in the house if it has a access.
We talked about the scuttle door last time, but it does also happen just around the AC vents. If you were to pull off the register where the AC blows through—we can’t exactly see it, but we’re sure there’s one there. If you were to pull off that register, the two screws, there is a box inside. They call that the can.
Dr. Pompa:
Right.
Kevin:
This is another place a lot of people are complaining about finding mold, and I get a lot of calls. That can, they need to cut in the drywall to have that line up exactly. A lot of times, it’s cut a little big, which it’s very hard to get it exactly right, but then you have the warm air escaping right were the cold air’s coming out, also. On top, it’s blowing on the metal. They’re either usually plastic or metal registers.
It’s blowing on the metal, cold on one side, warm on the other, very common place for the condensation, once again, the culprit. It’s going to grow mold. It’s absorbed into the drywall, and also the dust that accumulates on that vent over time has organic material to feed the mold. The mold needs water, which is either condensation or the direct water source, the leak, and they need something organic.
When it’s on the metal, usually it’s actually either the paint that it’s on if it’s painted metal as the organic material or it’s dust and buildup that it’s feeding on, even though it looks like it’s feeding on the metal. Definitely the drywall has the organic material, and all baseboards and everything do, as well.
Also, on the HVAC—and we need to do is if there’s mold in the house, we remediate that area, but before that area is remediated, we need to assume that some of those—that area has a concentration of spores, but we need to assume the spores also flew off elsewhere throughout the house. They need to be addressed, and we place some different air scrubbers around to grab those. What about the ones in the ductwork?
Dr. Pompa:
That’s right.
Kevin:
Yeah. That’s an issue. That’s a highway throughout the house. We do an antimicrobial fog that we shoot up through the coils and wait until it blows out the registers. The whole house is empty. There’s no pets, no humans in there. Four hours is our time for the antimicrobial fog.
A lot of people and companies are—what they’re stopping now is they’re cleaning with brushes. -inaudible- brush goes up in there, and that practice is starting to stop. A lot of the big franchises are stopping that. There’s lawsuits. People should be aware of it because the brushes are going up there. When they get to the first turn, they’re tearing the line. A lot of this ductwork is old. They’re tearing the lining of the ductwork. Then they’re in a whole new world of problems because it’s sucking in—when it turns on, it’s going to create a flow—a draw from inside that attic, so you get that moldy air as well as the fiberglass. Now you have little pieces of fiberglass you’re breathing in, which is another bad problem. Once again, the guy is already paid and down the road.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah, no. We see these pitfalls all the time, especially in humid areas like Florida. Most places on the East Coast, the HVAC’s the culprit. Here’s another tip that one of our experts on past shows gave: Keep your fan running all the time instead of auto, where it turns off, turns on, turns off. You’re running all the time. There’s less chance of mold building up on the coil because there’s air blowing across it all the time.
Kevin:
Right.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No. These are great tips. What I want my viewers to understand is if you have weird symptoms, maybe even just the inability to lose weight all of a sudden, or you gain weight all of a sudden, those are oftentimes mold exposures. You’re more sensitive to light, joint pain, morning stiffness, just anxiety, can’t sleep, lack of energy, obviously, but just weird and unexplainable symptoms. Mold is one of the typical culprits.
We’re not talking about a mold allergy here. We’re talking about a biotoxic illness. This is one of the things that I saw are the Big Guys, the Three Amigos that make people really sick. Mold, metals, and hidden infections, Kevin, we look for these things in people’s lives because they’re so toxic that they shut down the detox pathways in the body that naturally gets rid of all the toxins we’re exposed to every day, day in, day out. Once these big toxins like mold, or the biotoxin from mold, starts affecting us, now it shuts down our detox pathways. Now we see the unexplainable illnesses. Now we see the sleep problems. Now we see the anxiety.
Most people, Kevin, they’re either chasing it with medications, one medication after another medication. If they go in the alternative world, they start thinking, “Well, it’s my adrenals.” Yes, you’re darn right your adrenals are exhausted. Your thyroid gets wiped out, and you start losing your hair with mold oftentimes. It triggers autoimmune conditions. Again, they’re too far downstream, either taking medication or supplements for their thyroid or their adrenals, or God forbid, they get put on autoimmune anti drugs.
The point is this: Mold, just like heavy metals, is often the upstream cause of why we have all these symptoms, why the thyroid’s not working, why the adrenals aren’t working, why you’re fatigued, why you can’t lose weight, why you still have headaches, and joint pain, and morning stiffness. You’ve got to go upstream and get rid of the source that’s causing it.
Kevin:
Sure.
Dr. Pompa:
If it’s your house, you’ve got to fix it correctly. That’s the point we’re making here today. If it’s any type of exposure, you’ve got to get rid of the exposure. Then, Kevin, we have to get rid of it in the body correctly, which is a whole other topic, right, Meredith? We talk about true cellular detox. Most of the detox—hey, Kevin. As you’re talking about how people screw up the detox of the house, if you will, fixing the house, it’s worse on our end.
When it goes to detoxing the body, people doing this 10-day cleanse, this cleanse, that cleanse, it’s just like what you’re talking about. It’s making things worse, not making things better. The home has to be remediated; the body has to be remediated. Meredith, do you have any questions because you always have good ones.
Meredith:
Yeah. Hi, Kevin. I’m wondering, too, sometimes if we talk so much about mold, but I’m wondering about types of mold and what we need to watch out for. I know that black mold is obviously a big problem, but can you speak to other types of mold? We eat mold on our foods, and that seems to be okay, so can you kind of explain that a little bit more?
Kevin:
What it comes down to is the types of mold that they label there, the genuses. Inside that genus, there’s about 70,000 different types of genuses. Inside the genus, there’s the species. A lot of times, we’ll say the names, the Stachybotrys, the Penicillin, the Aspergillus, the Cladiosporium. They’re thinking that’s the species, but that’s the genus, which is the larger class. Inside the genus is the species.
Then for each one—so there’s 70,000 different genuses throughout the world.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Kevin:
You can’t name them all, of course. They have the species that some might have different toxins. Some might just have allergens. The one that’s really bad down here in my area of South Florida is the Stachybotrys. That’s the one the media labels as black mold, but there is actually many types of black mold.
Dr. Pompa:
Right.
Kevin:
Regardless, any type in concentration is not good. If your normal environment out there, you have 100 parts per cubic meter, which is pretty high for any type, and then inside, I see it at 30,000 types. They didn’t even know until you pull the test. They might not have the odor, but their body’s absorbing this in concentration.
It doesn’t really matter whether that one has a lot of toxicities or a lot of allergens, it’s just the impact of the quantity. It’s both the impact of the quantity plus the toxins together. It’s just not good to have an abnormal situation, especially if you’re in that house there, eight hours a day, sleeping in it, cooking in it, watching TV in it. Your body’s just assuming way too much of it. As we all know, too much of anything is not a good thing.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. We often hear that, right Meredith? “Oh, there’s mold everywhere.” You’re right. There is mold everywhere, but certain mold—not every mold is created equal. A mold like Clostridium, Stachybotrys, Aspergillus, these molds frequently make people sick. You’re right. We call it amplified mold. Once it starts building up in a contained area like a home, this is where the trouble starts.
Kevin, I’m often asked this: “Look, I’m in the same home as my wife, or this person, or my husband. Why am I not sick?” First of all, I always say, “Give it time.” Everyone has genetically different detox pathways of getting rid of it. Some people are more genetically susceptible to these biotoxins -inaudible- than others.
Kevin:
Sure.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. There’s all these factors. Here’s the biggest one, really: It’s how many other toxic exposures do you actually have in your life, meaning that the person sitting there with amalgam fillings giving off mercury into their brain, their bucket’s already filled up to here. When they get exposed to mold, boom. They’re sick very quickly, as opposed to the other person who has gotten rid of a lot of their toxins, didn’t bioaccumulate them. Their bucket’s not as full. Maybe they genetically have a bigger bucket, or maybe their bucket wasn’t as full.
Either way, they won’t—it’ll take longer for them to react. Different genetic-sized buckets, how full is your bucket? Both of those will determine how fast you get sick from mold. Mold is bad for everybody, toxic mold. Heavy metals, mercury, it’s bad for everybody. Again, the size of the bucket, genetically, and how filled is basically how reactive you become.
Once that bucket starts overflowing, now we see all the unexplainable symptoms. Typically, people end up on medication for those symptoms, and typically, once they realize it’s a toxic issue, then they detox incorrectly. These are the issues, Kevin, I deal with every day.
Kevin:
You got a lot on your plate.
Dr. Pompa:
They come to me after they’ve been to every doctor, and typically, they’re detoxed wrong, or they’ve been treated downstream with supplements as well as medications. You have to get upstream, and you have to do it correctly. That’s -inaudible-.
Kevin:
Absolutely.
Dr. Pompa:
I appreciate you coming on. It’s an important show.
Kevin:
It’s a pleasure.
Dr. Pompa:
I hope we get—really got people to understand how important it is to remediate correctly. Stop the leaks, stop the sources, and get rid of the mold correctly, as well—so some major pitfalls.
Kevin:
Yeah, it is. If you don’t do a proper remediation, it’s not even worth doing it at all. You’re not moving any steps forward. Make sure you have somebody who gets it done right. My name’s Kevin Sutherland. I’m the owner of Accelerated Remediation. We work in Palm Beach and Broward County in Florida. You could see our website at www.MoldAR.com. Read our reviews on the Better Business Bureau and Angie’s List. You could always call if you have any questions or concerns. I’d be happy to hear them and try to help out.
Dr. Pompa:
I appreciate that. I do. I appreciate our viewers. I’m telling you, this was a very requested show because people, they really want to know more about this remediation. We get emails all the time. Thanks for the wisdom. Thanks for giving your website. Thanks for being on. I appreciate that.
Kevin:
-inaudible-.
Dr. Pompa:
Thank you. Thanks, Meredith.
Meredith:
Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, Dr. Pompa.
Kevin:
Goodbye, everybody.
Meredith:
See you guys next week. Have a great weekend.
