Podcast Transcript
Doctor Nurse Podcast
Tue, Feb 21, 2023 12:10PM • 38:54
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
mold, people, mycotoxins, inspection, podcast, test, building, mold growth, musty smell, contractor, nurse, tests, microbes, cassettes, moisture, professional, listening, air, pump, asthma
SPEAKERS
Jason Earle
00:02
Dark Corners podcast fam. Welcome to another episode of The Dark Corners podcast unscripted. Today, we’re going to be chatting with Jason Earle. He is a man on a mission. He’s the father of two boys, and incurable entrepreneur and an indoor air quality Crusader. He is the founder and CEO of a Mold Inspection Company and the creator of the GOP Mold Test get as a kid he had extreme allergies and asthma, and he was relieved to right after moving from his childhood home, he found out the course of his ailments were coming from the house they were living in, and that house had mold.
So he left his successful career on Wall Street to pursue a new passion, doing sick building investigations and looking for mold. He shares today on the podcast, why indoor air quality for nurses matters, in their workplace and in their homes. You’re gonna love this episode, the doctrine is podcasts unscripted is my space to introduce into and to talk about with nurses, health and wellness career opportunities, such as a side hustle options, and then a space to talk about motherhood, and the struggles of being a working mom and having to balance the things at home. I’m really passionate about these different topics. And you’re gonna get so much out of this conversation with Jason, he literally just kept blowing my mind realizing how much we don’t spend time thinking about something that we do every second of every day.
So guys, I hope you enjoyed the conversation, please let me know if there’s something else that you want me to dive into something else you want me to discover. And then also there’s the link in the show notes today, so that you were interested in getting a got mold test kit that you can easily get one and you’d actually get a little bit of money off with my code. So check it out, guys. Thanks for tuning into the dark Turner’s Podcast. I’m always thankful for all the lessons that you guys just throw on me. Thanks for the support. Have a good day guys. Welcome Jason to the doctor nurse podcast unscripted episode, I’m so happy to talk to you about health and wellness. And one of the things I’m into is biohacking understanding the world around us. Welcome to the podcast,
Jason Earle 02:13
Sandra. Thanks for having me. Yeah.
02:14
So I gave a brief introduction to who you are prior to the podcast and my guests know you. But again, explain to my guests that are just tuning in. All right, what is it that you do? I mean, you do everything what is it that you’re not doing might be a shorter list to start with, but tell us what you’re doing so that they can kind of get an understanding of where you’re coming from.
Jason Earle 02:32
Thank you again, for having me on the show. Sandra, I I’m kind of an accidental expert. And when it comes to mold and indoor air quality, I’ve been doing it for 20 years. So by now I should have an experienced enough experience to to to own that role. Or on that own that description. As with almost every business I’ve been in, I had no business being in it until I was in it. And so you know, I don’t know if it’s a combination of ignorance or arrogance.
But that’s what I tend to do jump in and sink or swim. So when it comes to mold and indoor air quality, I am the founder and CEO of got mold and so been in the industry for 20 years. I originally started on the inspection side of things, and I can go into the story of how that all came about, which may be for a longer podcast, but but I got into the inspection side of things after a career on Wall Street, I had an awareness that came about after I decided to go do something meaningful with my life. And I was reading a story about a guy who got sick from the hotel where he was an employee, he blamed the mold in the building. And he had developed a number of symptoms that that echoed for me. He had developed adult onset asthma at 40 years old, as well as all these allergies and sensitivities to foods that he had never had a problem with.
And as I was reading the story, I had a like a deja vu moment I was brought back to my childhood. When I was around four years old, I suddenly lost a lot of weight in a three week period. And her parents took me to the pediatrician who told them to take me to the Children’s Hospital because they thought it was very serious. And based upon my symptoms and my family history, the initial diagnosis was cystic fibrosis. And so my parents spent six weeks crying while they waited for the second opinion which thankfully was not did not confirm a diagnosis actually what they found that I had was asthma compounded by pneumonia which led to my first big dose of antibiotics which is another rabbit hole we can go down but and and I was allergic to every single thing they tested me for so it was grass we corn, eggs, dogs, cats, even cotton. And I grew up on a little nonworking hobby farm surrounded by grass we had corn eggs, dogs, cats, cotton and all that stuff.
And so I basically lived in a wash and allergens itchy my whole childhood and, and quite frankly, a lot of that’s blurry because I think I kind of blocked it out. It was you know, a lot of inhalers and all that kind of stuff, but and I intuitively spend a lot of time outside and you know, looking back in retrospect, you know, kids, I think are better at intuition. They haven’t gotten all the layers of judgment and fear on top. So I intuitively knew that outside was better than inside. And so I spent most of my in nature despite the environmental allergens, it seemed to be better than inside. And then when I was about 12 My focus was which was good for everybody involved, and we moved out of that. That House and and all my symptoms went away. And I never thought about it again because it was all chalked up to what they call a spontaneous adolescent remission.
And my grandfather had grown out of his asthma. And so they just thought it was the same with me. And so my mom died about a year later, suddenly, and then I got Lyme disease a year after that. And so another big dose of antibiotics. And then through a series of sort of crazy, happy accidents, I met a guy at the gas station where I was pumping gas after dropping out of high school who recruited me to come work for him on Wall Street. And so that’s how that happened. It was a total fairy tale. You know, definitely I was I failed Algebra One. So I certainly didn’t. I was not innately talented when it came to these things, mostly because I slept through it.
05:39
But you’re a Guinness World Record. awardee. Correct?
Jason Earle 05:42
Yeah. No, it was again, it was totally an accidental thing. I was 16 years old pumping gas and a guy came in at Texas car, fix his tire, and he and he, and I start started a conversation. And he gave me a huge and I. And anyway, it went on to a couple of conversations. And he basically recruited me to come work for him and I unknowingly a year later got my stockbrokers license under his under his tutelage. And I unknowingly at the time, became the youngest licensed stock broker in US history. So it was crazy. And I didn’t even know it really, at the time, I didn’t know until years later, everyone around me was like, Oh, my God, this is so cool. You’re, you know, you have no idea how much of a headstart you have. And my all my friends are still in, you know, sitting there working on Well, algebra two, or more like trigonometry at that point.
But so anyway, but that I did for nine years, and throughout the entire nine years, I always had a problem with the fact that my mother had impressed upon me the need to, to focus on on improving the quality of other other people’s lives. My mom was a nurse she gave, she gave all of herself to a fault, but she really indoctrinated me into into the philosophy of service. And so while she wasn’t, wasn’t that for me, right, and it was nine years of me, basically, you know, making as much as I could, and, you know, the only people that benefited from my success were, you know, the people who I hung out with, and the people who were in stores where I shopped, you know, and so, so when I when I decided to go backpacking, and that’s where I read that story about the gentleman with the, with the adult onset asthma, it just it the light bulb went on, and it was immediate to me, I became immediately fascinated with the fact Well, first of all, I called my father from a payphone as soon as I heard this, as soon as I read this article, and I said, Hey, Dad, do you think minimal problem at all, Trenton Road, was the house with the address where he grew up?
And and he just laughed at me? He’s like, of course, we had mold. We had mushrooms in the basement. Why do you ask, you know, and I just sat there kind of, kind of amazed at how flippant he was about it. Because for some reason, intuitively, I knew also that like, mold and asthma don’t mix. But I said, Do you think that was part of why I got sick? And he said, Well, certainly couldn’t help. And meanwhile, you know, they smoked indoors right there with an asthmatic kid, that was the 70s and 80s. That was it not for lack of love, it was just that lack of awareness, you know, I took it, I actually became fascinated. And I took a job working for mold remediation contractor doing it sales, so that I could learn what was going on and quickly saw there a bunch of thugs and using chemicals instead of cleaning properly. And this was before there were any standards or guidelines or regulations or anything. So it was really the wild wild west. And I decided that the best place for me to really learn and serve was actually to to, to develop an inspection company that was based on no conflict of interest, that was completely service oriented to help the consumer navigate these waters and to protect them from the contractors, because the contractors were the most dangerous element in the equation. And so
08:24
those were people that were hired to clean your house with mold, but there was no way to regulate if they were actually doing it or not.
Jason Earle 08:31
That’s right. And so my job was to, to do an inspection, identify the areas to reduce the size of the remediation to the smallest possible scope, because remediation contractors want to do what the opposite, they want the biggest possible, right. And so they have a conflict of interest. So even walking in the door, a contractor giving doing an inspection for you, that’s not a free inspection, that’s likely going to be very expensive. And so you know, what we what we decided to do, what I decided to do was, was figure out how to create a buffer between concern that concern consumer and the contractor who may or may not ethical boundaries. And so and so I began doing inspections at night for people who were concerned because I didn’t have a business model.
So I just started saying, hey, I’ll help you if you need anything. And I’ll come in and I was learning how to collect air samples and all this stuff. And eventually people started saying, Wow, this is really useful. You know, I should pay you for this. Well, how much would you know? So I had, it was really customer driven. And then people started paying me and then business developed out of that. And it was right around that time that I developed a curiosity in different technologies to find hidden mold. And I stumbled across mold sniffing dogs, which was just crazy enough to be brilliant and ended up being right. It’s a real thing. Right? So I ended up getting one of the first in the world and one of the first certainly in the United States. Her name is Oreo, and she and I started in 2003. We ended up with a bunch of news organizations descending upon us in the first couple of weeks, and they were trying to debunk us and instead they hit mold in the house.
One particular episode was a channel six Action News and instead of You bunking us that we found them all in like three minutes. And so they endorsed us. And we hadn’t even like I hadn’t even set up an LLC or anything. So my phone, my cell phone was ringing like crazy doctors are sending patients to me. And I’m like, I guess I’m in business. And so I never had to advertise again. And that a couple of stories of healing were so dramatic that we landed on Good Morning America, and we got invited to do Extreme Makeover Home Edition a couple of times. And then I’ve got like, boxes and boxes of like big Rubbermaid like those giant totes that you store ski stuff in, filled with ziens, and newspaper articles and books on working dogs and college biology textbook we’re in like, all this stuff. And it all just came from a mold sniffing dog, and you know, recovering Wall
10:42
Street guy, company called at that time, well, we call it
Jason Earle 10:45
now I call it lab results, because we’re using a Labrador Retriever and laboratory. So it’s called lab results. And then And then, and then we went to go expand the business to increase our reach. Because it was just it was it was so much fun. I couldn’t do everything. And I certainly couldn’t. And our phone was ringing off the hook. And I couldn’t serve, I was getting three or four calls a day, and again, with no advertising and running myself ragged. And so ended up getting control of the phone number one 800 Got mold.
That’s a long story for another podcast, I got it from the Catholic Church, believe it or not, and seriously, and when they say it’s a $64,000 question I actually paid $64,000 For it was the phone numbers of questions. So I actually have the 64,000. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that funny? So anyway, so that, that that that was that was a great business for a long time. And and would still be if it weren’t for the fact that it just the ability for us to our impact was limited by how fast we could expand with vans and dogs. And that, by the way, doesn’t scale that well. So so it always frustrated me that our inspections were kind of out of reach of the average consumer.
And so I began developing a few years ago, a do it yourself test kit that would allow concerned consumers the ability to test their air without the conflict of interest, the concerns about finding and hiring someone they can trust. And then also, you know, just in an affordable way. And so so that’s what that’s that’s what the got Mold Test Kit is really all about is being able to give people the tools and knowledge they need to make better decisions about their they breathe on an affordable basis.
12:07
Yeah. So what one of the things that I wanted to know was, I guess we will dive into the actual way that your mold kit works, because I’ve used it in my house, and I’ve gotten results. And it’s it was so easy. And it was so reassuring to know, okay, I don’t have mold. We’re good. Like, it was just a good feeling. But we’ll get into that a little bit later. But I wanted to know, why does it matter to check for mold? Like, why is this a big deal? Why is it something that somebody shouldn’t just like scroll through this podcast and just ignore everything? And say like, well, I don’t think I have a problem with that. I don’t have any symptoms, like, why is it something that you should check? Even if you don’t have symptoms? Like?
Jason Earle 12:40
Yeah, that’s a good question. And by the way, I would hope anybody listening to this would already be kind of pre filtered to care about mold, right? Because most people would probably not even like click on it, if they sure, right. Yeah, so so I’m hoping that anyone listening to this already recognizes that mold growth in doors is a potential health hazard. And like, that’s like the baseline understanding that I hope I have with most people that I talked to, because it wasn’t always like this 20 years ago, when I started doing this, people would say, mold is a business like what would you what is that? What do you mean?
And and wives would would would spend 45 minutes on the phone with us to schedule an appointment, and the husbands would call to cancel? About 10 years ago, the husband started calling and no one cancels. So there was a big shift in Syria as a title. Yeah, I think it was largely driven by Katrina and things like that. But I bring all that up for a reason. Because, you know, mold for ever was just synesthetic nuisance, it’s, you know, it’s just smells bad, whatever, you know, maybe it makes you maybe maybe sneeze you know, people didn’t take it seriously. And recent medical research. And when I say recent in the last 10 to 20 years, and it’s not it’s accelerated quite a bit, has linked mold to some of the most prevalent long term illnesses in America both on in terms of either evading conditions or causing actual illness. And so like, for example, some of the big numbers that are interesting, according to the Mayo Clinic and the 1999 study, they they they concluded that of the 37 million Americans with chronic sinusitis, approximately 97% of those cases are mold related, which is a massive, that’s 11% of our population, the police is not aware of that, right. And so my job is to bridge the gap and to connect the dots.
The other big number is 24 point 6 million asthmatics in the United States, of which about 10 million are kids and EPA and Berkeley Labs did a study and they concluded that about 25% of those cases are mold and dampness related. And so it’s a big, big number. They went so far as to identify in a sort of like the public health costs associated with that, too. So those are like upper respiratory things but more interesting in a sort of more nebulous, wet fashion, you start looking at some studies that have come out recently from for example, Brown University, they were trying to debunk another study from Oxford University that had found a correlation between mold and depression. And they thought, well, let’s take a closer look. And they they had 6,000% participants in the study which is huge, and they had these people fill out a quality of life, sir survey as well as self report whether or not they knew of a mold or moisture problem they’re building.
And they found a very strong correlation between mold in mold and dampness and depression. This is fascinating on a lot of levels, because I would argue that most people who are living in a moldy house are depressed because for various reasons, because they’re disempowered, but also as it turns out the chemistry and by the way, Brian university didn’t say whether mold caused it or not, they just found a relationship was a statistically significant, very, very, very, but so a recent model, one of my friends, Dr. Joan Bennett, at Rutgers University, has had her own experience. She’s a mycotoxin expert, and she’s a mold expert. And she she actually went down into her home that was flooded in hurricane during Hurricane Katrina.
She got a faceful the musty smell while wearing a respirator. So in other words, she wasn’t breathing spores. She wasn’t breathing the mycotoxin she was she was just the musty odor had gone through. And she she fell ill and she became fascinated and started studying the musty odor when she started doing experiments with fruit flies, specially engineered fruit flies that fluoresce when they produce dopamine, check that out. So it’s a she exposes these fruit flies to the musty smell. And the first thing she notices they stop producing dopamine, they also stop reproducing, they also fly down and set it to the light, which is their natural inclination. And they also develop a locomotor disorder, their arms and legs start acting differently. And then then they should also notice that they developed what she characterized as Parkinsonian like symptoms.
So neurotoxicity, essentially, and in subsequent studies that have done been done by her team and other other reputable labs have found mitochondrial damage caused by the musty odor. And by the way, this is just one compound within the many compounds that make the musty odor. So it was an isolate. But still, the point is that she found in animal studies, that exposure to the musty smell makes you depressed. I mean, that’s producing dopamine.
16:47
Yeah, it’s affecting the gut microbiome, I’m sure and like, you end up in inhaling, and it goes into your bloodstream, it goes into your GI tract, and they’re finding that there’s more serotonin in your gut than in your brain, right? And so I’m wondering how this is all just playing, and then you lost all that weight when you were exposed to mold and so like, how is it affecting like, all these different aspects of our body? That’s incredible.
Jason Earle 17:09
Yeah, no doubt. And the microbiome thing is a big deal. So mycotoxins are the are the poison that molds produce to kill other molds, we happen to be more genetically related to to molds Believe it or not, and fungi than we are to bacteria. So mycotoxins are used their its chemical weapons on a microscopic level and, and so mostly there, it’s used to kill the competitive organisms. In fact, everyone knows penicillin. Penicillium is what makes penicillin and in the petri dish that Dr. Alexander Fleming noticed the ring around the colony, the famous discovery of the of antibiotics, what he really discovered was mycotoxins. And because that’s the same thing to say what mycotoxins kill things, we don’t want antibiotics kill things we do want same chemical.
It’s a semantic thing. And, and so he actually called it mold, very scientific, how to juice. That’s pretty cool. That’s what he called penicillin, when he first noticed that there was a moat around the colony that the streptococcus or strep that causes strep throat. And everyone here who’s listening doctor nurse, I should know my audience here. But it was killing the strep and so, so fascinating, but what’s happening now is people think that because a lot of people get mycotoxin test for their bloodstream, for their for their, for urine or blood, there’s two different kinds of tests you can take. And if they find mycotoxins, they immediately think I must have it in my house. And sometimes they do. Sometimes you don’t believe it or not most of them. mycotoxin exposure that you get is from food from moldy grains from things like applesauce, tomato sauce, wine, nuts, dried fruit, spices, especially imported stuff, because it’s not handled in law on the long distance.
And so that kind of mycotoxin exposure is particularly harmful for your microbe, because now you’re talking about mycotoxins to kill bacteria to dish, right, mycotoxins getting into your gut. And we are microbial. We are 37 trillion microbes, on average, and about and about 38 trillion human cells. So we’re about 5050. There used to be, there was like a 1010, to one or not a 99, to one of her, but it’s actually more like 5050 in terms of number of cells. And so we need that coop, we need a very robust, diverse microbiome in us, on us and in our buildings. And so, you know, the respect for these, these microbes and how they interact with us is of the utmost importance. So
19:31
interesting, like listening to your talk. I’m just like, Tell me more, tell me more. It’s so good. Because, again, you don’t realize nurses in particular, don’t realize that we’re in balance with our environment, we’re in balance, or are out of balance with our food and the areas and things around us. And so one of the things I want to kind of portray is hey, listen, you’re not just a worker bee that do you don’t have to pay attention to these other aspects of your life and your creative just your career, but you have to ask to look and see how you’re functioning in your space, and so that’s why I love having these conversations and just absolutely blowing my mind with understanding kind of how this can affect you. So what can you do to prevent a? So for example, how do you test for mold? So some say someone’s like, Okay, I want to know what’s going on, I think maybe I have some of these things going on, what do they do to test for mold? How do they do it,
Jason Earle 20:23
there’s a lot of different types of tests you can take. And first of all, the sort of the spectrum is the you got like a low end, you can buy these $10 petri dishes at the checkout at the hardware store, they are essentially consumer fraud, in my opinion, because they always grow mold, and they don’t really help you, they actually cause a lot of fear, you don’t recommend those, in fact, you know, there’s a push to actually have those taken off the market. The the on the other side of the spectrum, you’ve got professional assessments through companies like my Mold Inspection Company, right. And, and they can be 1000 to $5,000, you know, depending on pod square footage, and the number of tests you take. And that’s not covered by insurance.
And you know, that’s a cash pay. So it’s cost prohibitive for most people in the middle, there really isn’t much. And that’s why we endeavor to create the Gottman test kit. Because we were asked by so many people over the years, if there was something we could recommend, and we looked and we couldn’t find anything that we could get behind. So we decided to create one that would fit fill fill the gaps. But in essence, you’ve got three kinds of tests. to oversimplify it, you got air samples, you got surface samples. And then you’ve also got dust samples, which you could argue are also surface samples, air samples, look for various different things you can look for us, which is what the GOP mold test kit looks for, you can look for gases, which is the musty smell.
There’s another product out there, made by a company called home air check, and that looks for the musty smell. Those are those those are the most reputable methods for collecting air samples. surface samples are where people get into trouble. Tape lifts, swabs. And then of course, if you want a bunch of dust samples, they get, they get to be complicated, because people think that if you find mold on the surface, that means you’re being exposed to it. The stuff is not radioactive, just because it’s on a surface doesn’t mean you’re breathing it. And if you find mold and dust, that’s normal, by the way, because mold spores are a normal part of your environment. And that’s a really important point, the mold is a normal part of a healthy environment.
In fact, there’s a direct correlation between high biodiversity in the indoor environment with lots of different kinds of microbes, and low incidence of asthma, allergies and autoimmune disease. Just opposite is also true. The low biodiversity bleeds directly correlated with high incidence of asthma, allergies, and autoimmune disease. So that what does that mean? Now in our modern day post COVID, where everybody’s used a lavish amount of antimicrobials, Clorox stock was has never done so well. And it’s and this is because everybody, and by the way that nurses and doctors who are listening to this, stop using wide spectrum antimicrobials all the time, you need to have a diverse microbiome microbiome, on you, in you and in your buildings.
And the reason that we have these problems, these resistant organisms, whether it be Mersa, or C, diff, all that stuff, is because we use a flame thrower, and we kill everything. And by the way, there are 10s of millions of different bacteria, only about 100 are known to cause really serious human disease. But yet when we talk about bacteria, it’s a bad word. And this is not this is factually incorrect. Bacteria and fungi are our friends, most of them, there are a few standouts that happened to get really serious headlines. But the reality is, that’s usually caused by an imbalance in our environment, not caused by prints of the microbe. That makes sense.
23:29
Yes. So you want a diverse, you want a diverse ecosystem of bacteria around you so that it keeps everything at check in in balance. It’s whenever that balance gets skewed that then you can start to develop disease.
Jason Earle 23:41
That’s right. Yeah, so and that balance and when it comes to our buildings is moisture, I’m primarily its moisture, when it comes to our body, it has to do with once you break that commensal layer, which is this, this this amazing mesh that we have all around us, of bacteria that are literally like locking arms to protect it, there’s a sheath all around us in our gut and are all around us this protective, the moment we crack that sheath, we allow the other, the other bad guys to get in there. And that’s why you have leaky gut and all that kind of stuff, right? But when it comes to the when it comes to your building, it’s not dissimilar, you have to look at the building as an extension of the immune system. Our buildings are a lot like EXO skin, an exoskeleton we wouldn’t do well without them a lot like a hermit crab, right? Like he doesn’t do well without a shell.
Yeah, we’re the same way. And you could even argue the building as an organism, you know, it’s got you know, respiratory system and a circulatory system and the nervous system and, and, and it doesn’t really have an immune system unless you look more closely and realize that we’re the immune system for the building. And when the building gets sick, we get sick. And then when the building heals, we heal. And so there’s a real symbiotic relationship if you’re willing to follow that Phillip philosophical meandering all the way down, but it does. It does. It goes all the way down. And so you know, testing for mold is really about finding clues.
Testing is not about proving that you got this mold or that mold finding out if you get the good mold of the bad mold because by the way, there’s no such thing as good mold growth in your house, you want a lot of microbes, you just don’t want any of them growing. See, you want to have lots and lots of microbes. In fact, if you take a deep breath, right now, in a healthy home, you’ll breed in 1000s, potentially, potentially 1000s of species more likely, in the high hundreds, but in an unhealthy house, you may breathe in under and so so and by the way, some of the most very, very violent ones, because the only ones that are there that are survived all the antimicrobials are the nasties.
Right? So you want that and that’s why I always tell people run your air purifiers all day long. But when the weather’s nice, open your windows, you know, we don’t want a sterile environment is counterproductive. We are We are We are part of nature, yet we’ve disconnected from it so significantly in the last few generations.
25:43
Yeah. So your test kit, how does it specifically test for mold? And I mean, I’ve I’ve done the test kits, so I know how it does it. But for those that don’t know, what is your got Mold Test Kit, do kind of walk us through that. And then yeah, where they can purchase it and buy it. So kind of walk us through how it works. And then walk us through how to how to how to get it if you’re interested.
Jason Earle 26:05
Yeah. So if you were to hire a professional and they were to come to your house, they would come in armed with a whole bunch of different tools and equipment. And one of the things that you’d find in almost every one of their toolkits is an air sampling pump. And that air sampling pump is generally a a braided device that’s delicate and expensive. And it’s mounted on a tripod, and interfaces with a cassette like this called an aerosol cassette. And these aerosol cassettes are the go to for professionals worldwide. This captures all airborne particles within a certain size range. So it captures mold spores and pollen and, and other things that you may not think are airborne like human skin cells. There’s a lots of stuff in dust that you’re breathing that you may not be aware of. But we find all that combustion particulate.
So people who have burned a lot of candles, we find that in these cassettes, people who have Backdraft thing appliances because they’re ventilated, because things aren’t doing you know, they’re they’re combustion appliances are inventing properly, that will show up. So there’s this is a Swiss Army knife of tools, but we use it specifically to find mold spores, right. But the problem is, is that you historically speaking needed to hire a professional to have them come over with the air sampling pump. And so there’s a lots of expense and then there’s strings attached, you’re gonna get a report and they might steer you in a direction. And so to take all that stuff out, what we decided to do was create an air sampling pump of Barone glad it was right here, it’s usually across the room. And so there’s our air sampling pump.
Yeah, it looks a little bit like a minion and and the the cassettes go right on like that. It’s very simple. And this poll is exactly the same airflow rate is a professional pump that will cost 1000 bucks. And again, it’s comes attached to a human, usually, that may or may not be in alignment with your needs and values. And so you run these cassette, you run the pump, it’s got a built in five minute timer, it’s very easy to use, as you can attest, for five minutes, you put the cassettes back into the same box that from which they came, put it, put it in the mail.
And within two business days at the lab, you get a professional report from the number one lab in the world and I started on
27:59
your phone that was incredible. I got a text message and like it just click the link I didn’t have to go down some rabbit hole to get it click the link the report just pops right up on your phone. I was like, This is really nice. It was and it breaks down like all the different microbes or I guess Yeah, the microbes of the different things that they tested for and that were You were either different negative, which I thought was just an ending test. And it was so easy to use for those that are listening and watching on YouTube. That like you said, it looks like I like the like the head of a minion when the little cassettes or just little round disc that go on top of the air, I guess what do you call it again? Do you have like the air of air cassettes,
Jason Earle 28:36
air cassettes, but the pyro Seleucus? Oh, the pump? Yeah, the air sampling pump air sampling
28:40
pump. And so you put that on there. And then It samples the air from the different areas and you have to label where you’re pulling the air from so that you can go back and understand, okay, this was from this area of the house. And that was from this area. And then he also has two tests first from the outside. So you kind of do like a control. And then you come inside and you test the areas on the inside. And then you send those cassettes back and I’m serious. The results came back. lickety split, it was pretty incredible. So I would I would love to have a shameless plug for your company so that people can reach out to you. And yeah, connect and get a mold kit. Talk about the cost. And
Jason Earle 29:18
absolutely. Well thank you very much for that glowing endorsement. I I didn’t realize before we got on the call that you actually were also a customer which is which is always nice. I love to have people use the kit before before we have a podcast so that they can really ask more well informed so it was refreshing that you said that. Yeah. So we have three different configurations. Here’s the shameless plug, we have one, two and three kits, as well as one, two and three refills. So this is one of the nice features is that this pump once you have it, it’s yours. You can either let it you can keep it and retest and the refills are $50 less per room per configuration.
So it’s 199 for one room that includes the pump 249 for two room and 299 for three rooms. And then once you’ve got the pump, you can buy refills to retest and it’s $50 less. So it’s 149 for one room 199 For two and 249 for three a lot of people will give this to a friend will lend it to their friend who’s a teacher who can’t seem to get the mote the inspector into their classroom, or to if they’re if they’re a renter, they’ll give it to their neighbor because they all the same crappy landlord that won’t respond to their water damage issues. And so you know, people are using this tool, it’s turning into a lever for change, which is kind of cool. And and so it’s, it’s it’s, yeah, it’s It’s commutative in appearance, but powerful in its in its potential.
Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So so we, we created a little welcome page for your listeners, which is apt got mold.com, doctor, podcast, all singular doctor, nurse podcast. And there, you will find a couple of things. Number one, we have a link to an e book that we produce, which answers a lot of people’s initial questions about mold. So it’s about 45 pages, it’s got inspection checklists, if you’ve used it and follow in, it’ll go through your house, you’ll learn more about your house, and you probably ever have before. But like our bodies, many people aren’t familiar with what’s going on until you stop and look. And a lot of people don’t know about the mole in the middle of their back, or, you know, this thing that’s here that they’ve never felt before.
Until, you know, it’s a little bit bigger than they were hoping it would be, you know, it gets familiar with your body get familiar with your building, it’s the same kind of thing, you know. And so the inspection checklists are variable. And then of course, there’s there’s also a bunch of FAQs. And so for people who are just getting started on their mold awareness journey, that’s a really useful tool. And that’s at the that’s at gmail.com/nurse, doctor nurse podcast. There’s also a coupon code for anybody who wants to buy one of our test kits. And I’ll give it to you verbally here, it’s doctor, nurse 10, in case you just want to go to Commvault and go from there. But that gives you a 10% discount as a way to say thank you for listening to the show. And and to thank you for for having me.
31:57
Yes, no, thank you for coming on and sharing. And I wanted to know, because this is one of the things that popped up, I had two questions that popped up as I was talking to you, and they’ll be really quick. But the first being that if you do find out that you do have mold, what should somebody do as next steps? Because I was thinking like, okay, so you do the test. It’s almost like anything, you know, you check a PSA, or you check something in a patient.
And now you go, now we got to do something. Right. So once you check, do you have a way to kind of help? And I know that in your report, you give recommendations at the end? Right? So do they have the this what would somebody be able to then work out the steps to mitigate mold? If it is something they find in their in their home?
Jason Earle 32:35
Yeah, that’s a really good question. Because there’s unfortunately a most people think mold test shows, immediately call the remediation contractor. And that that would be a lot like getting a high cholesterol getting a test back from from an at home cholesterol test. And scheduling heart surgery. That means there’s an interim step, yeah, which is go to the doctor and have a physical done. So to follow the building is a body metaphor that we talked about before. You know, an inspection is a lot like a physical, getting a mold inspection done is a lot like getting a nickel, you do that periodically to make sure things are in order.
And then based upon that physical, then you may get additional testing done. And then you may have additional procedures done by specialists. And so that same logic should apply to how you manage issues with your building. So if you’ve got a concern, you can do an add on test for your body, you can do not have tests for your building. And then if you’ve got a concern, and you’re unable to identify the thing that you want to do, as soon as you think you have a mold problem, by the way, here are the three things you need. If you see something, smell something or feel something, do something, see it any signs of moisture only, it only takes 24 to 48 hours for mold to develop after watering it 24 to 48 hours, 72 hours after water damage.
The industry standard says you have to treat it like it’s mold, whether it’s visible or not. So people have to move quickly. When you have a moisture issue, you have to move quickly. And most people don’t move fast enough. So that’s why with mold is such a major issue. And then when you do find that you that you’ve got a mold problem for whatever reason, whether it be through an at home test or through your observations, the first step, the first step, and the most important step is find the source of the moisture and stop it because that’s the genesis is the Alpha and the Omega. mold growth doesn’t occur absent extra excess moisture.
And so you have to identify the source of the moisture. And this is where that second step which is getting an inspector getting a specialist, an unbiased inspector that doesn’t have relationships, financial relationships, that is with remediation contractors, someone who’s got specific specialist specialties, a specific specialized experience in this and by the way, we do provide links to those resources in our report. And by the way, also a little secret on the sample report on our website. So you don’t even have to use the kit if you don’t need to. If you don’t want to you can actually find inspectors through the sample report on gmail.com.
So you can also find remediation contractors through that through one of those links to but getting a professional inspection is super Corn if you don’t know where the source of the moisture is, and what the extent of the mold growth is, because the inspector will put it up, put it in a package and put a little bow on it for the remediation contractor to take out, you know, that’s the goal. And so there’s there’s tons of events here, and you don’t want to skip over any of that. So it all comes down to moisture mold problem is a moisture problem, mold is actually not the problem. Mold is actually the symptom.
If you want to go root cause people talk about root cause mold is a root cause root causes dampness in the building. Mold is a symptom, and then the mold causes others it’s a cascade or a waterfall. And so you need to go one layer deeper than most people do, which is where’s the moisture coming from? And then what’s the extent of the damage and contamination that’s been caused by that. And that usually, unfortunately, requires the assistance of a professional inspector.
35:49
What I love about this whole thing is that you’ve given people the power to test for themselves. And instead of feeling like you’re dependent on this contractor, that is going to be disingenuous, and possibly just trying to get more money out of you, you kind of give people the power to go, oh, this is a problem. And I know it is. And now I have the with that knowledge, I can then move forward and date and fix something that I can do on my own without needing to be dependent on someone else. So you’ve given people power.
And it’s that is incredible that you’ve created a business. And you’ve also are creating a service. And you do all this with something that you’re passionate about, which is that your quality and getting people their health and their wealth back. So thank you, thank you for creating such an amazing product. And again, coming on and sharing with my audience, your expertise. It’s, it’s wonderful. Thank you so much.
Jason Earle 36:41
Thank you for having me. Thank you for the kind words it’s it’s a pleasure to serve. And, you know, listen, I think that there are four basic human needs air, water, food and shelter, and air, water, food, shelter, shelter, everyone knows, you know, you can live without a building for a little while but not too long.
Food, you can live that for about three weeks before things get weird water, three days, air three minutes. And yet, the four things of the four things I just listed air is the thing you think about last. And so hopefully after people listen to this, I like to think that when people there’s a quote, I forget who said it, but once once someone’s mind expands based from a new idea never regains its original shape. And I like to think that awareness around environmental stuff is very similar to that.
So I hope the people who are listening to this with with curiosity, but maybe not knowledge or experience yet, maybe their mind has has, has changed shape. And now they’ll start to see air as as as as what it is, which is by the way we breathe 20,000 times a day. There’s nothing you do more there really isn’t except for your heartbeat. And yeah, it’s the thing that you think about the least. And so I hope after this, this podcast, people will think about it just a little bit more.
37:46
Yes, well said well said and yeah, guys breathe easy. So check out gold got mold and use my link if you’re if you’re interested. And thanks for listening to the podcast today guys enjoy the journey. So that’s a wrap. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you don’t miss an episode. And leave me a review. If you liked the show.
I would love to get five stars. The Dodgers podcast is on the worldwide web, YouTube Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Patreon and tick tock subscribe to my newsletter for updates on new podcasts episodes and other information. To help you on your own nursing journey. You can always message me at the doctor nurse podcast@gmail.com with any career professions that you’re interested in hearing about and just a friendly reminder the information on this podcast is for educational purposes only. And the information should not be used in substitute for professional care by a medical provider. The information in this podcast does not represent medical or professional advice or services came back
