Episode 252 — Mold Inspections MUST Be Reliable & Strategic
Guest: Brian Karr • Date: April 22, 2025
Episode Overview
Brian Karr, mold expert and co-founder of We Inspect, exposes why most mold inspections fail. He shares what parents must know to find hidden mold and protect their child’s health.
About Brian Karr
Brian Karr, a second-generation indoor environmental consultant, specializes in assisting hypersensitive individuals with complex medical conditions by identifying and addressing mold, mycotoxins, and other indoor pathogens in their homes, leading to significant improvements in their health.
As the co-founder of We Inspect and The Dust Test, Brian has become a recognized authority on mold and biotoxin issues for medical professionals nationwide, having assisted over 5,000 hypersensitive individuals in creating healthier living environments.
Beyond his consulting role, Brian is dedicated to education within the environmental and health industries and among consumers. He accomplishes this through speaking engagements at international health conferences and industry training symposiums. Additionally, Brian democratizes knowledge through his popular podcast, #moldfinders: RADIO, and comprehensive training programs that empower both consumers and health practitioners to properly navigate mold and biotoxin issues.
You’ll Discover
Common Myths About Mold (4:40)
The Right Way To Test For Mold (9:04)
The Two Goals Of A Quality Home Inspection (17:52)
How To Prioritize Remediation (26:50)
Problem Locations Within The Home To Focus On (38:16)
The Dust TestExplained (44:51)
Referenced in This Episode
To schedule a free call with We Inspect, clickhere.
Autism Parenting Secrets, Episode 95, Mold Is A Bigger Threat Than You Think, Dr. Pejman Katiraei
Dr Pejman Katiraei Substack, 50% of AUTISM May Be Due to Dampness and Mold
Full Transcript
Len Arcuri (00:02.477)
Hello and welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. This week we're diving into a hidden threat that impacts far too many families. Mold. Not just the visible mold, but the kind that's lurking, undetected, and driving chronic health issues. My guest is Brian Carr, a certified microbial investigator and co-founder of We Inspect. He's back to share what every parent must know about mold inspections, because a generic test simply won't cut it.
The secret this week is mold inspections must be reliable and strategic. Welcome back, Brian.
Brian Karr (00:40.782)
Thanks for having me back. Appreciate it. It means the first time wasn't terrible.
Len Arcuri (00:45.049)
The first time was great. Lots of positive feedback. And I think parents who see this as an issue and that number is growing. You know, there's a lot to absorb and it's hard to have a good game plan. So I know Dr. Peshman Katturai has been on the episode on this podcast a few times. We have a few episodes with him and he talks about it from a medical perspective with potential mold toxicity. But where you come in is equally important.
How do you ensure the environment is one that isn't wreaking havoc? Or if there was a prior mold exposure, or if there's a current one, how do you actually do something about it? So I'd love for you just to go maybe deeper on some of the concepts that we talked about in the last episode. And I've used these two terms, reliable and strategic. And those are two very different concepts. I'll hand it off to you in terms of.
how what you do, especially what you've learned, why reliability in a strategic nature of what you're doing are so important.
Brian Karr (01:51.17)
Yeah, Dr. K is great. He was just on my pod too. We went through his entire protocol and actually in his sub stack in his protocol, it specifically calls out mold testing for the house because it's so important. So yeah, let's talk about reliability because I think that's the first piece of this equation that we can kind of get into like strategy and how it all works. So there's a big issue in our industry and I don't really know why or
started, but there's a lot of these myths that have sort of been created and perpetuated over the years. And then as new inspectors come in, there's not rigid standards for someone to become an inspector. There's not a lot for someone to become a consultant. Like you literally just have to, you know, fill out a, fill out a form and a couple of very easy qualifications and you can have a certification. So I could be, with the same certification as someone else and it doesn't really mean anything. Right. So it's about like the other
understanding knowledge that you do beyond the standardized tests that they give you, which frankly, when I studied for the test, when I did it, I had to relearn wrong things in order to pass the test. And there was just like, that was like, like mind blowing to me, because I had been taught like from my father in law, my my quick stories and my father in law taught me all of these things. And he's really one of the trailblazers in this industry. And I learned from him. And then I go take this test. And I'm like, studying for it. I'm like, well, that's not true. That's not right. And this isn't right. But
Okay, let me pass this test, right? And so that's kind of what happened. So I'd love to just talk about like a couple of sort of these myths around mold that then drive poor reliability in terms of the information that comes from it. Okay, so the first one is that there has to be water for there to be mold. Now,
Len Arcuri (03:21.849)
.
Brian Karr (03:41.824)
It's actually not true. You do need water for mold to grow. And guys, when I say water, I don't mean like a big flood or anything. It could even be elevated humidity. It could be a drip from a garbage disposal that happened to drip into the sink cabinet underneath and cause a mold problem, right? It doesn't have to be big things for this to happen, but it doesn't need to be wet forever. It just needs to be wet long enough for mold to grow. And then if that moisture stops and it goes away and it dries, the mold stays there.
And this is one of the biggest, biggest issues in our industry because what a lot of your local inspectors are gonna do is they're gonna talk to you, you're gonna get on the phone and talk to them, right? They're like, oh, we use moisture meters and infrared cameras we can see behind the walls and we can see if there's water and this, that, or the other. And technically those tools do that. But here's the problem is that when we go into homes, 80 to 90 % of the hidden mold problems we find,
are not currently wet, so your moisture meter is not going to pick anything up. It would show that it's dry. And an infrared camera, where some people might tell you we could see behind walls and imply that you could see mold behind walls, that's not what an infrared camera does. It just shows you a temperature difference. So you point an infrared at a wall. Is it hot? Is it cold? Let me show you where it's hot or cold. That's all that it does. And so if an inspector is coming in and all that they're doing is using these tools, which is what a majority of them do,
and then they come and they tell you, everything is dry. So you don't have a mole problem. That is why people continue to get sick. And it's really, really upsetting. But when you put your trust in somebody who has some sort of certification and has, you know, five stars on Yelp or whatever it is that you do to like find these people and you trust them, like, why wouldn't you? Right. And, and they are actually perpetuating chronic illness so much.
And it's actually a real shame that it goes on like this. imagine this to kind of crystallize this. You have a seed, you put the seed in the ground, you start watering the seed. Plant grows. Cool. I water the seed, a plant grows. I stop watering the plant. So what happens to the plant? The plant doesn't like uproot itself and go searching for another water source. It doesn't leave. It doesn't move. Right? It stays there, starts to dry out. It starts to wilt over.
Brian Karr (06:00.642)
the leaves start to fall off, it starts to get dry, it starts to desecrate and break apart super easily. That is what happens to mole colonies when they grow. So if you had a moisture issue, let's say you had a sink leak or something, right? This happens to a lot of people, maybe a faucet drip, a garbage disposal drip, know, the P trap of the pipe under their drip, whatever it is, you're like, we got somebody and we fixed it. We, you know, we stopped the leak and everything's dry now.
Well, that's cool. That's good. Everything's dry. You always want to stop an active issue, right? You want that to be done. But if mold grew under the bottom of that sink cabinet and it's hidden on the bottom side, because that's where the moisture soaked into the board, you'll never know unless you test it and understand it directly at the source. And other inspectors and people will come and be like, well, it's sink strip. That's fine. You fixed it. It's dry. You have no mold. That type of view on how you go through a space and how a
places, quote, inspected is where the reliability just tanks. Right. So you need part of reliability is understanding even how to identify potential problems. Let's not even get into testing yet. It's just where would I even test? Where would I even suspect that there's a problem? And that's where the visual inspection is a huge piece. So, you know, we talk a lot about, you know, the five signs of hidden mold growth and really what that means is just what does water damage look like? And there's kind of five main categories. And if you know,
what water damage can look like, then that becomes the red flag that, there might be a hidden mold problem here, under here, behind here, wherever it is. And now you can drive testing directly to somewhere, which becomes the next step on how you get a reliable inspection, right? It's first, I got to even know where I'm looking and what I'm looking for. And then once I know what I'm looking for, then I need to test the correct way, right? And so shifting into testing, this is the second big issue.
in our industry is that most inspectors will come in and they'll do an air sample in your room. This is what they do. Some of them call them air quality testing. Some of them call them air samples, whatever they call them. And their theory and the way they communicate it. And again, I don't think they're doing this maliciously. I just think they don't know. And so you come in and you take an air sample in a room and the thought, which makes sense logically, the thought is, I'm testing the air. We breathe the air.
Brian Karr (08:21.464)
So let me just see if there's anything in the air that I'm breathing. Technically, I get how it lines up. I get how it makes sense when somebody hears that. Here's the challenge is when you take an air sample in the middle of a room, there are a lot of variables at play. What's floating in the air at that time versus not is the air conditioner pushing things away from your pump or pushing things towards your pump. Was your five-year-old in the room five minutes before going crazy and they aerosolized a bunch of particle?
Or are you in a room where nothing has been touched for a day, and it's super low, right? Also, when you pull an air sample, it's only kind of pulling from a small area around it. So imagine a big circular bubble that goes around your air pump, and it's just pulling in whatever you can pull. So you have a really small kind of like target zone, and then there's all this variability in play of what even gets into that target zone. The samples are very unreliable when they're used that way. However,
our industry puts 90 % of their quote expertise into that test. That's what they do. So it's the equivalent of you going to the doctor and saying, you know, I need to understand, I don't know, my, my red blood cell count. So we know that you should probably do a blood test to do that. Right. But your doctor, instead of taking a blood test says, okay, spit in this cup, and I'm going to test your saliva for your red blood cells. That's the equivalent of this. It is the wrong test to get the information you're trying to get.
Len Arcuri (09:33.997)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Karr (09:46.446)
So if you got that saliva analysis back, the guy would be like, I don't see any blood cells in here. This seemed like a problem. Seems good, right? And that's like the equivalent of what these inspectors are doing. They're literally taking a test that doesn't make sense for the purpose of what it is and then reporting it back to you as if it is. And because the results don't show problems, they then tell you everything is fine. Your air quality is great. And it leads to this false sense of security. So I did a...
myself for a period of time when I would go into a house and I thought, let's say there was mold in a wall. So I saw maybe some staining or some bubbling paint or a little warping or something like that. And I'd say, I think that there's a hidden mold problem behind the wall right here. So the right way to test that is to literally test behind the wall, like go to where you think the problem is. So I would do that, but then I would also take like two, three steps away and I would do this type of air tests that I just described, this air quality ambient air testing. 78 % of the time,
that air sample in the middle of the room said there was no problem when there was literally a hidden mole problem more than two, three feet away. And that is the problem with air tests when they're used incorrectly. The further you get from the source of the problem, the less and less and less accurate they become because you're essentially diluting the air before it gets to the thing, right? And so that becomes the problem. Now, the reason people do air testing here is because they're trying to understand what you're breathing.
But there's a bunch of building science papers and research that says air testing is actually not what you test to understand what you're breathing in a house. You test settled dust. That's what you test. And there's a couple reasons for this. One, dust is going to collect all of the floating particle. Remember, I talked about variability, what's in the air, what's not in the air, the five minutes you happen to be running this test. All that goes away.
The dust is now a long-term collection of whatever has been floating around. So you remove the time variable out of it, and you're getting a more robust collection sample to pull from. That's the first reason. Now, the second piece is there's this concept called the human cloud effect. And what this means is as you walk around, any person walks around anywhere, they are disrupting their environment. Every time your foot hits the ground, every time you sit your butt down in your chair,
Brian Karr (12:10.446)
Every time you bump a table, you're popping and resuspending particle that's sitting on those surfaces back up into the air. This creates an invisible cloud that follows every person as they move through any space. you know, for those of you, know, some of you are old enough and you saw, you know, you remember Charlie Brown and there was the really dirty kid, Pig Pen, that had like that cloud around him all the time. That is exactly what is happening to us, except it's not gross smelly stuff.
It's invisible particle that's surrounding us. That is your pathway to exposure. That's right in your face. So if the goal of the test is to understand what you're being exposed to, then you need to use the test that best tells you what you're being exposed to and reduces the variables that would cause an unreliable result. So for these inspectors coming in,
really, if they're really coming in and they're not even trying to figure out where the sources are and they're just doing air testing, really what they should just be doing is dust testing and then say, you have mold in here, right? And then that's what you would do. Now the issue with that, and that's a very valuable test to have, right? Like the dust test is a very valuable test to have for specific reasons, right? The way that we think through how you test is really around the philosophy of how you remediate.
Right? So similar again to like the clinical side of the world, you know, doctors, they collect tests for a reason to then drive a decision making process that will ultimately create their view on what their treatment plan is going to be for you. Right? So I need to collect this particular blood test to look for this particular thing, because this is going to shape my decision on how we treat you in the future. Right? And so
Len Arcuri (13:51.129)
this particular contest or this particular thing. This is going to be my decision to contribute to the group. And so I think that's collective in our hearts. It's just the same exact thing. So you can have your own thoughts about it, I'm not going to have to them. I'm my head. And I would describe them as a place of...
Brian Karr (14:00.622)
Any test that's collected in-house needs to do the same exact thing, right? So can you imagine if you went to your doctor and they're just like, hey, we're going to run like four or five tests. They don't even really mean anything in terms of what we're going to, what we're going to, you know, either subscribe or, or the protocols that we're doing on the backend. Uh, we're just going to do that because, uh, you're supposed to. Right? Like that doesn't make any sense yet. That's what our industry does when they walk into houses, because even if that air sample, told you 78 % of the time, false negative, that means 22 % of the time.
It did show that there was a problem. So let's say that you fell in the 22 % bucket, and that air sample said that there was an elevated mole count. What decision does that help you make in the future on how to fix that elevated mole count? Where is it coming from? I don't know. It's just floating in the air. Well, if you don't know where it's coming from, then how are you able to fix it? Now, the environment has its equivalent of take this pill and fix your problem. This is what we know about the health industry is
the broad scope, your, your traditional, you know, medical doctors and, not necessarily the functional doctors, but just kind of, you know, Western medicine is, you have this symptom, take this pill, do this quick thing that's going to fix it. Well, in our industry, the equivalent of take this pill, here's your prescription is I'm going to fog your house and it's going to magically kill all the mold. Just put in this air purifier and it'll fix everything. Right. These are the equivalents of like the prescriptions that you prescribe for symptoms.
as opposed to getting to the root cause of what's causing the symptom, right? There are so many correlations between the health side and how you actually should be evaluating the house. It's literally the same process. It's just you insert different testing and different things in between relative to the situation. So like when we built out our process, we always reference like, how would you handle this in the body? Like what, how do they do it? Because this is how you get people healthy and a house is a living system, just like a person is a living system. So.
Knowing the goal of the test is very important, right? So we've talked about the unreliability of the inspection itself by only relying on tools and not actually looking for signs of moisture, even past moisture that would then indicate that there could be a hidden mold problem there. So we got the inspection reliability piece talked about, and then we talked about kind of the reliability of the primary tests that all these inspectors use and how it's not very reliable. So now we start getting into, so how do you
Brian Karr (16:27.48)
How do you structure this and what's the strategy and the philosophy of how you go through this process to make it a good process for someone? And so let's go back to the inspection piece. So the inspection piece, I'm going to take a step back. We have to know what the goals are for an inspection before you walk in. If you don't know what the goals are and what the overall plan and the information you need, then going in and testing doesn't do anything because you're not tying it to what will create a decision on how you address them.
So the goals in a house are two things. One, where is the hidden mold? Where is it coming from? If you don't know where it's coming from, you can't fix it. That is like primary goal number one. If I walk out of a house and I don't know if it's in this wall, this ceiling, this cabinet, if it's in the crawl space, if it's in the air conditioning system, if I don't know exactly where it is, then I can't help someone figure out how to fix their problem.
So that is number number one. So like most of your local inspectors are gonna be in and out of your house in like a half hour, because they're gonna take a few hours test and they're gonna leave. We spend average six hours, four to six hours in a house. And it could be more if the house is bigger, could be, you whatever it is, but like, we are going through every nook and cranny that we can access all rooms, all bathrooms, crawl space, attic, basement, opening up the HVAC systems.
We need to get into all these areas to assess them to even know if there's a potential for a source that could be there. So goal number one, where is the problem coming from? Now, goal number two is how are those mold sources, how are those problems working into your occupied living space where you live and ultimately your exposure path? So if there's a problem behind a wall, a hidden mold problem, you don't stick your face behind the wall. That's not how it's impacting you.
But what's happening is that that particle, the spores, the toxins, the fragments, they move out of the wall and they settle on surfaces everywhere. And then like we talked about, that's what pops up into your breathing zone. So you have to know what's getting into your occupied space, which is two different components. Your heating, air conditioning and ventilation system is one piece of that. And then what's settling down on the surfaces is the second piece of that. Okay. So you have to know that piece because you literally could remediate every wall in the house.
Brian Karr (18:47.352)
But if you have a mold issue in your HVAC system, or you have settled particle and toxins and stuff on the surfaces in your house, and you didn't actually clean the house in order to remove that, you're gonna move back in and you're gonna feel exactly the same way because you breathe that directly. So maybe the source isn't adding more, but all the cross-contamination that happened up until that point in time is still there. You're still gonna have the symptoms that you have. And then what this does is it sends people down this really dark path of
I remediated mold is everywhere. You can't get rid of it. There's no hope. I need to burn my house down. I need to go live in the woods. I need to do, you know, all of these extreme things when that's actually not the case. The reason that it didn't work is because you just didn't fully remediate properly, right? That'd be the equivalent of, again, this, this, medical analogy of going to your doctor and your doctor runs these tests and say, Hey, you need to do these three things. If you do these three things, you're going to recover. Right. And it's eat this, take these.
you know, take these supplements and I don't know, do an infrared sauna every day and say, those are the three things. And then instead of doing the three things, you do one of them. And then you go back to the doctor. You're like, I'm still sick. You're a terrible doctor. Doctors like you didn't do the other two things I told you, you need to do. Of course you're still sick. Right. And that's what happens on our side of the fence. It's just a lot of times the inspectors and the consultants don't even know what the other things are to guide you on it. Right. And so they're only focusing on like, take these pills.
Len Arcuri (20:03.235)
Right.
Brian Karr (20:15.778)
Here, just take these pills and you'll be better. When the reality is there's two other things here and if you just did those, you'd be way better, right? And so from the inspection side, that's like the philosophy behind how we go through a space, how we map things out and sort of how we structure testing plans, right? Now talking about testing, so now we need to understand the goals of specific tests, right? So in the same thing I just said, goal number one, where's it coming from? So these tests,
our surface testing like swab testing from areas where we think it looks like there might be suspect visible mold on there. And a lot of you listening will be like, well, there is no surface mold anywhere in my house. I promise you there is, and you just don't think that it is, right? I promise you, if you go look at your windowsills right now and your windows, you'll think it's just dust collecting on there and it's mold, right? And this is the difference. It's understanding and being able to test to the place and understand, is this actually a mold issue or is it not?
Right. And I use Windows because it's a really common thing and everybody kind of has a similar issue around Windows. It's just a matter of how do you address it and how do you handle it. But so swab samples is one piece directly on a surface where you think there might be a mold issue. Now the other one is air testing. So I know just bashed air sampling for like five minutes, but it's how you use the test. That's what's important. Right. Air samples, air testing can be it's actually one of the things we do the most stuff.
because most mold is hidden. So I can't surface test the front of a wall if there's no mold growing on the front of the wall. The swab won't tell me anything. But if on the wall, I'm seeing a little bubbling paint or maybe the baseboard is just pulling off the wall like just a little bit, or there's a little stain at the bottom of the baseboard or these little things. Maybe there's a window on the wall and I'm seeing a little cracker separating around the window, which might mean water could be getting down into the wall from the window. There's a lot of these little things.
I'm going to test in the wall, right? So my suspicion is there's mold hiding behind the wall because I think that there's been some sort of moisture that's impacted the area. It's not growing on the surface, so swabbing the surface means nothing. I'm not doing an air test outside of the wall because I'm further away from the wall and I have a barrier in between. So what I'm doing is I'm testing behind the wall. So where air testing becomes hugely, hugely beneficial,
Len Arcuri (22:32.845)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Karr (22:39.958)
is what we call targeted source identification error testing. Meaning, if I think there's an issue in the wall, I'm going to test behind the wall. If I think it's in a cabinet, I'm going to do an error test in the cabinet and shut the cabinet doors and isolate the cabinet in a small isolated space. If I think it's in the ceiling, I'll test directly in the ceiling. And these two test types is how we're able to map out where there are hidden mold problems throughout a house.
And this is the big piece that gets missed when you do an air test in the middle of the room or you only do a visual where you're using moisture meters and stuff. You either even wouldn't flag those problems or you would test them the wrong way and get a false sense of security. So that's kind of the first piece of it. Now on the other side, how is that stuff, this is goal number two of the inspection, how is that stuff moved into the living space, which we said was your heating, air conditioning system and the settled areas of your house? That's where dust testing comes into play. So I described earlier why dust testing is effective and what it does.
Len Arcuri (23:34.584)
Yep.
Brian Karr (23:35.01)
What we're doing is we're testing the dust in the several living areas. We could even test within the air conditioning system. We can test the dust reservoirs within like your blower fan compartment in those areas. Now with air conditioning systems specifically, know, people will be like, I have my system service. I have a clean one. They don't see anything in there. Well, here's the thing with HVAC systems. Most HVAC systems don't have mold growing in them visibly, right? If you think of what an HVAC is doing, it's sucking air in from your house.
and then it's circulating through the system before it distributes out. So what's actually happening the majority of the time is your system becomes cross contaminated from sources you have in your house, behind the walls and the cabinets and things we talked about, which means if you open up that air conditioning system, all you're going to see is some dust and dirt in there. And that's all you're going to see. And your normal HVAC person would say, this looks totally fine. What we want to know is what is the composition of
dirt and the dust? Is there mycotoxins in it? Is there mold in it? Is there bacteria and bacterial toxins in it? Because when that system turns on, it's not pushing it out into the house. So if that has become contaminated to a point where it's effectively become a source in its own right every time you turn it on, then we need to know that. And we need to know, can we clean it? How would you clean it? What's the plan? How do you address it to make sure that gets handled?
And then what type of preventative measures can you insert onto an HVAC system in the future to help protect it from that, right? And so that's what we need to know there, right? And at the end of the day, what we do is we end up kind of like creating a puzzle. And each test is one piece of the puzzle. And some of them are built around source. Some of them are built around air conditioning system ventilation. Some is built around settlement. And with all of that together, we now know and have a groundwork and a view.
of everything we could possibly find in the house and where we are. I say this a lot to people. Most of our clients don't remediate everything that we find. We're really, really good at finding stuff. So the idea here is it's not necessarily that every single thing that we find has to be remediated completely. That's not how we work with our clients.
Len Arcuri (25:27.449)
So you have to have a good network. Yes. That's what you have to do. That's what you to do.
Brian Karr (25:52.95)
Now, if you go to the industry standards and all this stuff, they're going to tell you every single thing needs to be remediated and brought down, right? It's very black and white. But the reality is, you know, everybody's not independently wealthy and there's other factors involved, know, logistics, timing, you know, just desire to dig into things. Am I going to stay here? Am I going to move? Like there's all these things that are working into play, right? So what we do is when we get all the information, we do two things. The first thing is we create a really detailed technical report.
Now that report is step by step, every single thing you need to do to remediate every area that we tested the exact way that it needs to be done. And that becomes effectively what your remediator would reference to ensure that nothing's getting overlooked and the cleaning plan is happening in its entirety. Now that's great. That's the foundation. have to know that. But then comes the next layer. Now here comes humanity into play. Here comes real life situations. Here comes all these other things.
So the first piece is just the black and white. Here's how you fix every single thing. If you want to do it all, here it is. Do all of it, right? But now you talk to people, right? You understand situations, just whatever's going on. So the other thing that we do, which I actually think is the most valuable thing that we do, although you need the foundation to do it, but I think at the end of the day, this is the most valuable piece, is that you have to have a framework to prioritize what you target for remediation, right?
So what we do is even, let's say you tested 10 things, let's just say, and so we had 10 problems in the house, right? Now, does it mean you need to fix all 10 problems? Not necessarily. What we need to understand is a couple things in this conversation. One, who is the most sensitive person in the house? And kind of what is their level of exposure that they can handle? So for everyone listening, imagine your health is being ranked on a scale of one to 10.
And this is what you can be exposed to before you trigger. So 10 means you can't be exposed to anything, like you're super hypersensitive. One means mold doesn't matter to you. And if that's the case, then you'll probably stop listening to this 20 minutes ago. So let's say that you're somewhere where you can handle, I don't know, you can handle in the middle at five. That's what you can handle. So now there's another scale right next to that. And that's how much mold is in your house.
Len Arcuri (28:00.675)
Thank
Brian Karr (28:15.566)
And let's say top 10 is a whole bunch of mold, and at the bottom one is nine. So let's say we kind of look at everything, and the mold in your house is at an eight. And the amount that you can handle is a five. So the goal here is not to bring eight to one or zero. That's not the goal. The goal is to bring eight to four. If we could bring it down a little bit, what it does is it gives your nervous system a chance to just breathe for a second. And.
sort of resets. You're not constantly in this fight or flight thing and you're not constantly just your body is in shock basically at all times. So if you could reduce your exposure a little bit below what you can handle, that gives your body a chance to just kind of like settle for a minute. Then you work with your doctors and you start doing things that increase the amount of mold that you can handle. So you start building your resiliency in your own body.
So this could be increasing your methylation pathways. It could be reducing your toxic burden. There's a lot that goes into this. And so the idea is let's bring the mold down just to where it needs to be so you can really get some treatments to start working. And then you start building up your body's resilience. So in the future, you could walk into a house or a grocery store or a CVS that has a mold problem in it, and you don't automatically react like that because your body has now sort of kind of
kind of stabilized a little bit and built up a little resilience. And that's the idea. So what we do with that philosophy in mind is the second thing that we provide, we provide a priority document, right? And what it does is it looks at every area that we have information on and we rank it into priority tiers. So we have five different tiers that we rank things into. And the idea is what are the areas that we think that you should be addressing right away? What are the areas that like, yes, there's a problem here?
but maybe they fall a little lower on the list. Maybe you do it at a future point in time, or maybe you choose not to do it and kind of see how it is after you do the higher tier stuff. And then lower stuff, where it's like, maybe you don't need to run at this. And the idea here is the 80-20 concept. It's like, where can I get the most reduction with the least amount of cost? That's the idea.
Len Arcuri (30:26.009)
And that's exactly where I was going where as you're talking, there's got to be a Pareto here where there's got to be a few moves that are absolutely the ones to focus on. And then again, if you have an appetite to do more, it's there for you. But I think that's what gets parents so confused, even working with a functional medicine doctor, they're going to recommend a whole bunch of things, but like, they may not have the means or the energy to implement at all, but what are the key moves to make? So I love that.
Brian Karr (30:33.368)
Yep.
Len Arcuri (30:55.843)
So you have five ways of categorizing to really help with that prioritization of what to implement.
Brian Karr (31:03.052)
Yeah. And you know, years ago, you you learn as you, as you do things for awhile. Right. So years ago, when I was first starting and I was really learning how to find things, getting really good at finding stuff and all of that, I didn't know as much about the health side yet. Right. And I hadn't worked with enough clients to kind of see progression in people. So I just always thought it was like, you either fix all of it or, or you don't, or you move. Right. Because if you're exposed to it and I didn't really understand the nuance of the body very well.
And then over the years I chat, you know, with more doctors and all these different things. learn a lot as you go and you start, and then even our own clients, you start seeing that they're not remediating everything and they're progressing toward their health goals. And the light bulb goes off and it's like, Oh, I don't need to tell this person that their life is over if they don't remediate this house. Right. Not that I would say it that way, but it was, it was like, if if exposure is causing your problems and stop being exposed, but if you're continuing to be exposed, I, know, and.
That's kind of where my head really was and there's still some truth to that but there's now like gray area in between It's not black and white like I used to think right and this is over the years I've just started seeing this over and over and over again. I actually view what we do now as Telling people what they don't have to remediate
I like, shift in my mind what my goals are when I work with someone. Obviously I gotta find, you we have to find as much as we can find. We have to see it all laid out in front of us so we have the data and we have to be able to prioritize it, right? And at the end of the day, of course, there's gonna be things you need to remediate, right? Like, so we know that.
But in my mind, what the priority doc does is it tells you what you don't have to do. And if I tested 10 things and they all came back with something and three of them are really falling in the top tier, and let's say four of them are in the very, very bottom, then I can say, listen, I don't think you need to touch these four.
Brian Karr (32:53.676)
Definitely we need to do the top three. And listen, the middle ones, let's talk about it. Let's talk about where your head's at. Let's talk about your budget. Let's talk about your plans. Let's really help you put together your finalized roadmap on where you're going to go. And those conversations, a lot of the times, is not just based on the amount of mold that's present. Like our initial priorities are all just based on how much mold is here, just like a quantitative thing. But there's other things that go into play. So there's kind of like two other things that we'd talk about.
One is how does the most sensitive person live in the house? Meaning where do they spend the most time? Where do they hang out the most? And are there, let's see if we could sort of surround them in the plan as opposed to just doing what the worst things are. For example, if one of the worst things is in an office on the other side of the house that the person never goes into, because they don't do anything over there.
then is that really the top priority to do? By the numbers, technically it would be. But by the way that the person lives in the house, maybe it's not, right? So then we start having a conversation how someone lives in the house. And you basically say, okay, now I'm gonna say, you know, the person who's impacted spends the most time in, you know, these five areas or whatever, right?
And then the next thing that you then overlay on top of that is like, okay, we know numerically where the worst problems are. We've overlaid where, you the most impacted person spends time. And maybe we've from five, we've narrowed it down to four, let's say, or three, but maybe we've also understood that one of the tiers that are right below the top tier is actually a primary area for them.
So maybe a tier B or a tier C actually becomes a tier A because of the person and where they live and how they live in the house. So you kind of like feel that out. And then the last piece of it is what is the cost to remediate that particular area? And in a perfect world,
Brian Karr (34:52.268)
You align a tier A problem with a place that the person spends a lot of time. So let's say it's their bedroom. Let's say there's a wall in their bedroom. That's a massive problem. They sleep in there. Okay. Check big amount of time. And in the grand scheme of things, a wall remediation is much cheaper than other types of things to remediate. So then the cost of that is on the lower side. If you can align it that way, that's like your home run. This is what we run at first. Right. And those become your three criteria. And so what we do like on our followup
Len Arcuri (35:09.561)
and
Brian Karr (35:22.192)
consulting calls, we talk through that. Like, okay, let's figure this out. Let's do this. Let's help you map this plan out so you know where to run. And that's how our clients don't remediate everything that we find is by design. tell them, I mean, obviously they want to, they can't, right? But we want to make sure there's focus as they can because the remediation piece, that's more expensive, right? So if there's a way for us to figure out how to reduce that cost, but still maximize the amount of maximize the reduction, get the most
reduction of exposure that you're getting in the house, then that is the formula. And so that's the thought process behind all of this.
Len Arcuri (36:00.057)
That's great. mean, you've covered so much ground. I just want to let you keep going. And what you just ended with was getting more to that strategic piece, right? So the prioritization focusing only on what really matters most in terms of where the person is and where that exposure might be. Yeah, it's really amazing how similar it is to functional medicine because it is about a root cause focus, very targeted, personalized guidance on what to do.
And I know as you were talking, I kept wanting to ask the question, yeah, so maybe a child's bedroom, maybe there is a problematic wall. But I how often are you seeing that problematic wall on the other side is a bathroom, right? Is something of that nature? Like, there anything in terms of parents if they're trying to figure out what those likely suspected places might be, is that a big one for you or is it really kind of going to be any room?
And it really varies from house to house.
Brian Karr (37:01.954)
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely variability and you know, things can happen. But if we're talking big picture, we know that moisture is the driver for mold to grow places. So we do find a number of issues in bathrooms and kitchens and you know, by washing machines, by water heaters, by HVAC systems, which actually create moisture in the system as part of the process. anywhere where moisture is kind of internally created or present at a high volume, you're going to have a higher
probability of issues being there. So it's it's not uncommon to see shower problems, the walls by the showers. So like, especially with kids, you know, the kids splash when they get in and out of the water or in and out of the shower, right? And maybe it hits the wall. One thing to keep in mind, everyone is that water doesn't have to be a leak. Okay.
Water can be, my kid splashes out of the shower. Just because you know where it came from doesn't mean that it's not water or moisture, right? And your walls and your baseboards and your floors do not have brains. So they don't care where it came from. It's like, this is water, water, right? So whether it's me coming in and pouring water on the wall or a leak from the pan under your shower that's coming out and impacting the wall, either way,
The wall's like, there's water here, right? And so that becomes that. So I see a lot of people sort of downplay the potential for a mold issue because they're like, well, I know where the water's coming from, which sort of implies that because mold is this thing that seems like an enigma and you don't really know it and it's hidden and you don't know why it's there or wherever, that if I do know where it came from, then it can't be a mold problem, right? Because I know where the water came
And again, I think it's like human nature to kind of think like that. But at the end of the day, just be aware that if you know that your windows have condensation on them and you're like, well, they're not leaking. There's just condensation on my windows when the weather changes.
Brian Karr (39:06.998)
Your windows don't care. It doesn't care. it's water is water. All right. So just try to keep that in mind too. And remember that, like I said, the top, does not have to stay wet for an extended period of time. Mold can grow within 24 to 48 hours. It's all it takes. So if you have a moisture issue that impacts something. So when you talk like window condensation, that's a continuous thing that happens day after day, after day over a period of time, and it's going to continue adding moisture. So you're going to have.
days and days and weeks of moisture essentially impacting an area, right? So you could obviously have problems that come there. At the same time, you can say, I had this leak from my sink, water fell into my sink. We stopped the water really quick, right? You know, I stopped it within 15 minutes. So like we stopped the leak and then, you know, we let it dry out. So that's not within the 24 hours. But is it? How long did it take for the actual building material to dry?
Right? So if you know, a lot of times like water restoration companies will come in if there's a larger water event and they come in with their dryers and all their things to dry something and they're there two, three, four days drying stuff. Right? That means that you had water for more than 24 hours. That means there's a probability for a mold problem. Right? So just kind of just like some of the key math things and timing things to keep in mind.
Len Arcuri (40:29.719)
Yep, you know, there is a lot to consider, which is why we're having this conversation. And when we talk about reliable, you know, that concept is going back for a second. You know, that's where again, this concept of independence, of a lack of conflict of interest is also super important because there are companies that
do the inspection and do the remediation. And that inherent conflict of interest is just really important to avoid, right? Which is why there's a place for different people to come in to help you with this problem. But it all starts with having an inspection that actually is reliable, is independent, and actually helps you hone your efforts. Because I think a lot of parents, a lot of people, if they do bring in mold inspectors, you know,
can they will get people in who just basically do the testing that you described and say, there you have no issue. Or they'll get the opposite where they'll find huge issues with bold and, and, and show you photographs, you know, in the crawl space or in other places and, basically convince you to do significant, remediation that may not necessarily be the right one. So to, have somebody whose only job it is to give you that information, is something that's worth demanding.
Brian Karr (41:41.548)
Yeah, I completely agree. mean, it's, again, it's so similar to like the medical side, like you have a doctor who does diagnosis, and then you have your surgeons. They're both technically doctors, but they do completely different things.
So like if you ran a blood test and had a low white blood cell count and somebody's like, you know, we're suspicious of cancer because of this. You would not just go straight to the surgeon and say, cut me open and start looking for tumors. Like nobody would do that. Right. You then start going to a specialist who then starts doing a very specific type of testing all with a reason, all to help drive a decision on what treatment looks like. Right. And then at the end, they say, okay, you either do or you don't. If you do, this is the type.
of it, you know, cancer that you might have. And maybe it doesn't even require surgery. Maybe it requires just an anti inflammatory diet, and they think that'll work. Or maybe it needs chemo. Or sure, maybe you do have tumors, you have to do things, but they're not all over your body. They're just right here. Right. And then you can be really strategic about remediating your body. And this example, right, instead of saying, I have a mole problem, I guess I need to burn the house down. You know, I guess I just need to cut myself open and start digging for tumors.
Right? Like it's it's the same concept, but when you talk about it in health, everyone's like, that's stupid. Nobody would ever do that. You talk about it in a home and people are like, yeah, guess that kind of makes sense. And it's just because there's just not a lot of education around it. So that's why I like to connect the dots between the two so much because they're so related. They're so interrelated.
Len Arcuri (43:15.437)
Yeah, no, never really made that connection before, so I appreciate that. It is incredibly the same thought process. And ultimately, it all comes down to just making good decisions. And there are certain ingredients to make good decisions, and you've covered many of them. And I know you mentioned the dust test, which I know just generally looking at the dust is important, but you have a specific test called the dust test. Can you just share with people how if they want to start going down this road,
and maybe benefit from doing that test, where should they go and what does that look like for them?
Brian Karr (43:50.454)
Yeah, there's two paths as you start exploring this. The first path is the dust test. So what the dust test is, is kind of what I talked about earlier, literally collecting dust from the house to understand the mold burden in the house. How much mold is in the house, right? Now, the dust test is one of my tests. I helped found that test. And what we do is we take mold species, there's 36 mold species that the EPA identified as the most prevalent in homes when they did a study back in the kind of
2008 to 10 range and they came up with a they actually came up with PCR testing protocols for these particular molds that never used to exist. So they actually created these PCR analysis templates that can be used for these molds.
So off of those templates, they also then created an interpretation guide that they called ERMI. And so what that stands for is Environmental Relative Moldiness Index. And this is kind of the core of the study that they made. So the issue now that we're 15 years after that, however long it's been, is that the ERMI, the score interpretation, is incredibly flawed. And everyone in our industry knows it. Everyone knows it. The score means absolutely nothing.
to give you a very quick context of why the mold groups are split into two groups. So those 36 molds I talked about are split into two groups. What the ERMI does, what that scoring system does, is it takes the total of the mold found in the second group and it subtracts it from the total of the mold found in the first group. And then it tells you this is your mold issue. What they're doing is they're subtracting mold from mold to tell you how much mold you have in your house.
It's honestly the dumbest thing I've ever seen and I don't really know why they did it. But it's ridiculous, right? Like, would you, I, you know, if I'm talking to my daughter at the kitchen table and there's an apple on the left side of the table and two apples on the right side of the table, and I'm like, hey, how many apples are on this table? She's not gonna subtract the one apple that's sitting on its own from two and tell me there's only one apple on the table. She's gonna say there's three apples on the table, right? This is like literally a five-year-old can do this. Yet we have the scoring system that some
Brian Karr (46:03.268)
how it goes backwards and it's dumber than a five-year-old. And so what we did with the dust test is we still use the same 36-mol panel because that piece of what they created is really, really incredible, right? To be able to dig down to the DNA signatures of mole types that are there, it's just that scoring interpretation they've laid on top of it just doesn't make any sense. So what we did with the dust test, we kept the same 36-mol panel, but instead of overlaying their ridiculous scoring system, we dug into our inspection data that we inspected
inspection data, and we put context to what that actually means for a space. And so what we do is we essentially kind of put you into one of five categories, essentially, based on the total load of mold that is in the house. And so it gives you an understanding of how much mold is here, right? Like just kind of what are we dealing with on a scale of one to five, basically. And so that's what the dust test does. And so the purpose of the test is a screening test. That's all that it does. It doesn't tell you where it's coming from. It doesn't tell you how to fix it. It doesn't tell you any of that.
It just says, like, do I have a problem and how significant is it? Right. And that can then help drive future decisions if you're not sure if mold is an issue for you. Right. Now I would only do the dust test if you're not working with a doctor who's already connected the dots that mold is impacting you. If they've already connected the dots, then doing a dust test doesn't matter because all the dust test is going to tell you is that they're right. Right. So you're going to spend money on the dust test and it doesn't make any sense. So at that point, what you do is you actually should be moving straight into
into having the home assessed and figure out kind of everything I talked about. Like where are the problems? Where are the most significant ones? How do you prioritize them? How do you attack this in a smart way? So the dust test is really good for certain people in their situation. It's kind of a waste for other people who already know that they have mold impacting them. Doing it doesn't really help you at that point because you know the home is a part of that. And so for those people, would kind of just go, you kind of skip that step and you would just work straight into the having the home.
Len Arcuri (48:00.697)
But I think for many of our listeners, I think it would be useful to indicate, hey, is there a problem? So how do you address the limitation of the dust test? Like I'm guessing there's something about the way it's conducted that gets around the location specific issue, right? Like, so if you just collect dust in one location, that can only tell you about that one immediate area where the dust is settled. So how does it work where if a parent's collecting the dust,
Brian Karr (48:07.276)
Yeah.
Len Arcuri (48:29.591)
Where do they go? How does that work in terms of getting more of a sense of the entire house?
Brian Karr (48:35.222)
Yeah, we break down the instructions and everything when someone gets it. It's just like a test kit that would come to your house, like these body test kits you get where you know, it's like, here's your box, know, spit in this thing and do this, and we're gonna tell you all this stuff. So it's the same concepts, there's a lot of direction in there, but it's really simple. Think of it like you're cleaning your house with a Swiffer pad. That's all you're doing. Here's the concept behind it. While we have blueprints and structure of our home, right, I'm in my office, my door is shut, right?
My house doesn't know I'm in my office. The air moving through my house doesn't stop at my office door before it goes into the hallway, right? All the airflow in the house moves everywhere. So the idea here is that you do a representative collection from multiple areas of your house. The purpose of the test is not to say this room is worse than this room or better than this room. That's not the purpose of it. The purpose is to get a representative understanding of just kind of what's settling throughout your house. So we'll, you know, talk through on, on, you know, how and where to collect in specific areas.
like that, but it's really clear, really straightforward, and the idea is just you combine multiple areas into a single test just to understand kind of overall circulation and load of mold in the house.
Len Arcuri (49:42.841)
And that's the exact word, right? It's a proxy for total load of the house. Imperfect, but more precise than just looking at one specific location and testing the error of a specific location as you alluded to at the outset. So, no, that's helpful. I think if someone's trying to take a good next step, the dust test could be a great place to start.
And again, in terms of why and more of a background on this somewhat complicated issue, it's not very simple to determine if you have a problem and what to do about it. I really appreciate you walking us through more of the nuances here because they do matter.
Brian Karr (50:20.898)
Yeah, absolutely. know, the stuff is most problems in homes are hidden and a lot of people feel.
almost like this shame in a way of like, if I have a mold problem in my house, that means I don't clean my house well, or I'm a dirty person, or I'm whatever, whatever. That is not true. Like anyone listening to this, first off, know that every single house has mold in it. You can drop me in any house anywhere in the country and I will find stuff, right? So it's a matter of how much there is and the person who lives in the house, how sensitive they are, right? So that has nothing to do with you.
causing the house to have problems, right? It's the reality of the world and the homes that we have. And if you happen to be a person that's in a space that has, you know, had maybe a few more historical water issues that you do or don't know about, or you're more sensitive, then just because quote mold is everywhere doesn't mean that it's okay for you, right? So you could have your partner, your husband, your wife, you have your neighbors, whoever it is, or they could be in a space and feel totally fine.
you go in the space and it's impacting you or your kids, right? And what we need to really like understand is that we kind of need to personalize our homes and our living situation to us as opposed to saying every home is kind of the same and therefore everyone should react the same in their home and if it's a problem it's the person's fault. Like that's ridiculous, you know?
you need to customize things to yourself so they suit your needs the best that they do. And for some people that means you need to take a little extra care and kind of what's happening in your environment.
Brian Karr (52:01.93)
Some people there, you know, there's people have to go on specific diets. Does that mean that they're bad people that they're dirty that they're gross? It's like, no, it's just some kind of intolerant to dairy. So I can't eat dairy. That's the same thing. I'm kind of intolerant to a house that has mold in it. So I need less mold in my house. Right. It doesn't mean you're gross and you're dirty or any of that stuff. Right. It just means that's you and you need to do the best thing that you need to do for you. Right. And so, yeah, you know, just kind of like think through that. I feel I know a lot of people sort of feel this like I did something wrong. Like when it comes with this.
and nobody did anything wrong, right? It's just a matter of where you are and kind of what you need to do to move forward. So yeah, the two paths, the dust test would be great as initial screening test. That's the dusttest.com. You can go there. Really, really easy, low price point to get in. And then on the inspection side, if you're interested, yes, weinspect.com. That's where you could find my company. We inspect, we service the whole country. All of our inspectors work directly and trained by me and my team. So if that's something that sounds good after all of this, and you can check in.
Len Arcuri (52:33.848)
Okay.
Brian Karr (53:01.764)
there, set a call with us, we'll talk about how it all works.
Len Arcuri (53:04.877)
Fantastic. Yeah, we'll include all in the show notes. And again, as you touched on, it's very, very possible if you're listening to this, then you very well may have in your child a person who this is much more of an issue for them perhaps than another kid or somebody else in your family. So that's why we're having this conversation. And it's easy to kind of dismiss this as a problem to hope you don't have a problem.
I know a lot of people think, I have new construction. It's not an issue. Like you think it's just the older houses. But as I know, you've said it in the prior discussion, Age of the house, none of that really matters or it's not a determinative. Every house is unique. There's a lot of root causes of why a house may have issues. And the age does not mean that you don't, if it's a new construction, does not mean that you don't have an issue.
Brian Karr (53:55.244)
Yeah, that's absolutely right. Right. And again, just connect everything back to like people, right? Just because I'm 10 years old doesn't mean I can't have a problem. I can't have an autoimmune problem. It doesn't only happen when I turn 15 or 20 or 25, right? Like there are variables and things that happen to people in their early ages that can create significant health issues that did not happen in someone else. So they don't have the same health issue. The same thing happens in buildings. This house that was built newer might've had a toilet
that leaked or an HVAC system that failed or something.
Who cares how old the house is? The thing happened, right? And so it's really important to make that connection like you're saying, because I think a lot of times you're right. Like, oh, my house isn't quote new, right? And a lot of times when people say new, the house is 10, 15, 20 years old. But they're from the East Coast where everything is 100 years old. So they're like, oh, this is a new house. Like, 20 years? Do you know how many things can happen in one year? So even five years, six years, seven years, it's newer compared to
Len Arcuri (54:43.128)
Right.
Brian Karr (54:58.32)
But it doesn't mean that you know the toilet didn't overflow or the kids are splashing out of the tub or the HVAC system had a leak out of the drip because it wasn't piped properly and it over you know there's all these things that can happen.
Len Arcuri (55:09.401)
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So yeah, it's just helpful looking at this and your unique situation. Get some information. Understand that this is actually a real concern. And again, I think you've demystified how you can go about ensuring that your house...
doesn't have a major toxic issue with respect to mold. again, I really appreciate you sharing your insights since this is what you're dedicated to helping families with. And I really appreciate again you taking the time today Brian. We'll look forward to the next conversation.
Brian Karr (55:41.718)
Yeah, thank you for having me. appreciate it too. Hopefully everyone, hopefully something landed for somebody. So that's always my hope. So thank you.
Len Arcuri (55:50.851)
Thanks again.
