In this episode, we tackle the most common questions about mold and its impact on your home and health. What is toxic mold? How can you tell if mold is hiding in your walls? What causes it to grow, and how can you prevent it? Join us as we break down the basics of mold, including its health risks, where it’s commonly found, and practical steps to protect your living space. Whether you’re a homeowner, renter, or just mold-curious, this episode will give you the essential knowledge to stay informed and mold-free.
TRANSCRIPT:
So first question, what is toxic mold?
If you look on the internet, you're likely to see the toxic mold refers to certain types of mold such as stoccy botrys that produce mycotoxins, which can be harmful when inhaled or touched.
Pretty much everything I just said that you would find on the internet is incorrect.
Toxic mold would imply there's only certain molds that are toxic, but in fact, every mold can produce toxins.
And that kind of presupposes almost like you don't have to worry about other molds.
It's not true.
In fact, even the stoccy botrys grow in a petri dish by itself, it doesn't produce any toxins.
This is actually how penicillin was discovered.
The scientist was trying to grow culture bacteria.
A mold spore in the ambient environment landed on the dish, contaminating it, taking over, and killing the bacteria.
That's how we discovered, quote, toxic mold, and that was penicillin.
More importantly, they can all be harmful when inhaled because it's not the toxins that cause the allergic response and the other harmful effects.
It's not even really possible to be sick from mycotoxins because you have mold in your house.
If you have mycotoxins in your blood, it's from the food you eat, not from mold in your house.
Question two, how can I tell if I have mold in my home?
Now, I like this question because the question wasn't, how can I tell if I have toxic mold?
It's how can I tell if I have mold?
That's the important thing to remember.
Mold is mold.
Also, we'll get to it later, but whenever you have water damage and mold, you got bacteria, you got critters that come, insects, cockroaches, filth.
Mold is just tip of the iceberg.
A lot of people sick because they test for mold, don't find it, and don't worry.
When in fact, how do you tell if you might have mold is a better question.
It can be real difficult.
Half the time it's hiding.
The other half, there's a discoloration on the wall, a leak, a musty odor.
The best thing to do is to get a moisture meter and get one at Home Depot's or Lowe's.
Order it online.
A moisture meter, they're so cheap now.
I have a proctometer.
It cost me five or seven hundred dollars.
Yes, it's nice to say that it's completely accurate, calibrated, but you don't need to do that to tell if something's wet, which is one way to tell if you have mold.
It's not a way to tell if you have mold.
It's a way to tell if you could have mold.
Because question three, what causes mold to grow?
You have to have water.
Water it and they will grow just like a plant.
Imagine it's like a plant, grow it in your house.
Doesn't belong there.
Doesn't matter if it's toxic or not.
How's it growing?
It's getting watered somehow.
Now it could be, this is the thing about mold, unlike some plants, except those that overwinter.
If your plant dies, it's dead if you quit watering it.
Mold on the other hand, just goes into hibernation, it's a simple way to put it, and waits for more water next time.
It never really dies.
If it did, we'd have no mold left on the planet and no way to have compost.
If you see a leak, unless you dry it out fast, you could have mold.
Most deodorers, actually testing.
You really need to do testing, we'll get to that later.
Possibly in another episode because it's complex.
There are courses on the website Healthy Living Spaces on how to do your own testing for mold the best way possible.
Question four, what health problems can mold exposure cause?
That presupposes you're only going to worry about the mold.
If you can Google what kind of mold it is, Stalkybotrys, and it causes health problems because it has microtoxins.
The health problems depend on the individual, a little bit on the mold, but more the individual.
And it's not because some people are more sensitive to mold.
Everybody has a different health problem.
How many people are sick these days?
Well, post-COVID, we're now worried about the flu and other viruses coming about.
If your immune system is down, you're going to be susceptible, just like you are to a cold or a virus, to the health effects from the mold, which are not just the toxins or the allergens, irritants, the chemicals on them.
It could be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Don't worry about the health effects.
I'm going to guess the other reason people ask that is, well, can I tell if I have mold in my house based on the health effects?
No.
If you smell mold, if you see water leaking from your roof or you left the window open all time and the wall under it now looks moldy, well, yeah, you can put two and two together, but you can't simply say, what's the health problem?
Could that be from mold?
This show, I'm not a doctor.
This is not medical advice I'm giving you in this podcast.
Ask your doctor.
Although some doctors, they don't know, and then they're going to recommend a mold test that they don't know really what test to recommend.
It leaves you in circles.
When I'm an expert witness in court, nobody can be an expert more than one thing.
I'm the mold expert.
I can tell you where to look for mold, how to test it, how to get rid of it.
Your doctor can treat your body, but not really tell you about mold in your house, shouldn't be telling you about mold in your house, except to call the mold inspector.
Are all molds toxic or just certain types?
Any mold can be toxic, and it's a myth that only some produce mycotoxins.
Mycotoxins is a whole other rabbit hole of misinformation, because every mold is capable of making a mycotoxin under the right condition, but it's also capable, it has a cookbook, of making one or two or three or twelve different ones, and it would depend on who are they competing with, the penicillin or the stachybotrys or another bacteria, because it takes energy for the organism to make mycotoxins.
It's not piece of pie like let's just make mycotoxins with our energy.
We'd rather eat and grow, you know, happy and reproduce than make mycotoxins if we had to.
Technically, the word toxic doesn't belong next to the word mold.
It's not logical.
Can mold grow in places I can't see?
Walls under the floors?
Absolutely.
More than half the time, 60, 70, 80 percent of the time, mold is hidden.
The way you check that is with the wall check.
There's course on healthylivingspaces.com on how to do your own wall check testing.
Most mold inspectors, I'd say half of them, don't do it, won't do it, have done it and they did it wrong, so they never want to do it again.
There's a lot of misinformation about wall checks because they're not doing it properly the way the instructions say and so forth.
I'm on the website of a video to walk you through that.
If you want to do your own wall check testing.
Some of my clients are actually amazed at how simple it is because they were about to pay a mold inspector.
Wow, this is not hard.
What does mold smell like?
Some people don't have good noses.
They can't smell no matter.
That's like a trick question.
What does it smell like?
You can't really smell.
You don't have a good nose.
Sometimes, you can get fooled by is it a natural gas leak?
Some of the mercaptans that they add to natural gas, so you can smell and you hate it.
Mercaptans are associated with biological decomposition.
Things are rotting.
And so if you have wet conditions and mold, you're going to have some of that rotting, things dead and decaying.
Or sewer gas.
If you have a really good nose, you can teach yourself how to differentiate that.
The best thing to do is if it smells odd in one room, and you know that room had water and the other one didn't, then you get to just go do the wall test and find the mold.
Don't get hung up on the what does mold smell like.
Also, because it's really strange.
I have seen tons of mold and not much smell to it.
And then I've seen very little mold and it stinks really bad.
And why is that?
The smell depends on what it's eating.
Just like you.
If you eat a can of beans and rice, you might have some gas.
It's the same thing with mold.
The smell actually to some extent is, will be a little different depending on is the eating carpet, drywall wood, and again, what kind of mold it is and et cetera, et cetera, because you're smelling the chemicals that are a byproduct of all the stew that's going on.
Last question, what are the most common places we find mold?
Well, you need water.
So it's bathrooms, it's under the kitchen sink, in the bathroom, it's behind the shower, hidden in the wall, of course.
It's why you want to keep your tile grout perfect.
Smallest crack in the tile grout, fix it immediately.
Flash guards on the side of the tubs, because you want to keep the water from dripping out onto the floor and getting into the wall or under the floor.
You need water.
Crawl spaces are a huge one, because they're usually damp, not ventilated.
It's not because they're dark.
Mold doesn't need light to grow or darkness.
That's not the factor.
The factor is dark spaces are places that you don't usually go and look for for leaks.
And of course, roof leaks.
Windows are a huge one if they're not flashed properly.
No contractor knows how to flash the windows these days.
I've only seen one.
I've looked for 10 years watched and I've only seen one contractor flash a window properly.
Contractors don't like to read directions.
They're right on the package of the flashing.
And they'll argue with you.
They do.
So windows are a big one unless you have siding or something that would keep the water out of the wall, even if the window leaked.
But if the window leaks and it's not flashed, water will get in and then under a windows are really common.
That's it for today.
And the most common questions.
Next time, we'll cover mold testing.
Do you need a professional?
What's the best way to test for mold in your house?
And are do-it-yourself test kits worth it?
Are they accurate?
Spoiler alert, no.
So I'll tell you what you really need to do and why.
Sounds too cheap.
It is.
But on the flip side, why hiring a professional mold inspector?
You don't need to go to that extreme either.
If you have a question about mold, go to healthylivingspaces.com.
It's in the show notes.
Ask it there.
Book a consultation with me there, healthylivingspaces.com.
Thanks for listening to The Mold Money Podcast.
Certified by ACAC • 20+ Years Experience • Author of Mold Money