Mold testing - why the details matter

As a health coach with a focus on chronic conditions, I spend a lot of time educating people on biotoxin illness and mold remediation, as it relates to the root cause of many health challenges. Mycotoxins, which are produced by certain mold species, are neurotoxic and are the main reason we must eliminate mold from water damaged buildings. This distinction between mold spores and their mycotoxins is important to point out, because while the mold is the reason the mycotoxins exist in the first place, mycotoxins are the reason for biotoxin illness. Seems like I am splitting hairs, doesn’t it? I mean, where there are mold spores, there are mycotoxins, right? True. But when it comes to testing, it is imperative that you understand some nuances between the two components (spores vs. mycotoxins). This is a long blog, so I thought I would let you know that I do list solutions at the very end, but I recommend reading the different types of testing, at minimum, before jumping to the solutions.

Why does this distinction matter?

When you think of testing for “mold,” what do you think of? Most likely you would think about hiring a licensed mold or environmental specialist who will use an air capture cassette to grab samples of the air in your home, as well as outside, to use as a control, right? I mean, after all, this is considered standard mold testing in the industry, to hire a certified specialist from the yellow pages who will test your air quality. You may already know this and it may seem obvious, but this test is capturing mold spores in the air, and that might make sense to you on the surface, however, when I explain why this just isn’t enough (and why this may actually misinform you entirely), you will be prepared to properly test any space you want evaluated to see if it’s somehow related to chronic illness in your family.

Let’s get back to the mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are a gaseous endotoxin produced by mold spores under certain conditions.

“Mycotoxins are thought to possibly play a role in helping to prepare the substrate on which the molds exist for digestion. They have also been found to act as defense mechanisms.”

Photo Credit: Mosaic Diagnostics Myco-TOX report

When a leak or excessive humidity causes mold spores to propagate, a competition ensues. I bet you didn’t realize that mold species are territorial?! They fight for dominance of the water damaged materials and their technique is to release their mycotoxins into the air, in an attempt to kill the competing strains, so they can dominate the territory. So if you think of the water damaged building materials as a life source for these little organisms, the wet area is teaming with trillions of microscopic spores, all fighting for survival. And the more strains you have in that matrix, the more mycotoxins you can imagine are being released. Another reason mycotoxins are released from mold spores (this is the primary reason we advise people to never use products like bleach to kill mold) is when the mold is stressed in any way. When you apply a product like bleach on a moldy substrate that is porous, you are threatening the mold, which is deeply rooted in the pores of the material. And what does mold do when it’s threatened? Hint, I just told you above. It releases mycotoxins, correct. So while you MAY kill the surface layer of mold with the bleach, the mold is also going to try to kill you, in return, by rapidly releasing mycotoxins. It’s a battle you can’t see, because again, we are talking about microscopic molecules here. And to compound matters, bleach turns to water over time and the deeper layers of the building material, which is where the roots to the mold are living, will actually hold onto the water longer than the surface area, and this water will literally FEED the roots of the mold, encouraging regrowth. So at first, you might think you won the battle, when the mold clearly tricked you, because it poisoned your air AND it didn’t die, which means it will continue to grow and produce mycotoxins in your home.

Score - mold 1, you 0.

Mycotoxins are fatty molecules that adhere to everything in their surrounding environment. They are also much smaller than mold spores, allowing them to access more of the building air space than the spores. A spore averages in size between 1-20 microns, while a mycotoxin molecule is as small as 0.1 microns! It is freely airborne, and can be inhaled into the respiratory tract quite easily.

Now, you can see why mycotoxins are able to penetrate the space between building materials more effectively than mold spores. So let’s discuss the implications this has for testing air quality.

the different Forms of testing

As mentioned above, the standard of air quality testing involves using an air capture cassette which has a dial on it to allow for manual control of how much air is pulled into the cassette over a given period of time. As a side note, since air capture testing can be manually manipulated, it would be a conflict of interest to hire the same company to test your environment as the company you plan to use for remediation. They can dial the air intake up to make the environment look worse than it is, aaaaand down after remediation, to make the remediation look more successful than it is. So IF you plan to use this form of testing as part of your full investigation, be sure to hire two separate companies. So the question you need to ask yourself at this juncture is if you are testing for litigation and proof to a third party or if you are testing for your own knowledge and health guidance. If it’s for your health, I wouldn’t even waste time and money on the air capture testing, unless you need to test the air inside of a wall cavity that you believe is water damaged.

There are many pitfalls to air capture testing. For one, when mold spores adhere themselves to dust (because dust is mold food), the particles can become too large to even enter the air capture cassettes. It’s hard to test for something that doesn’t fit into the testing apparatus, don’t you think? Some spores are much smaller and will fit into the cassette, which is why there is mention of the more “common” indoor molds…common means they are seen more often and they are seen more often, because they are small enough when they aren’t attached to dust, to enter the testing cassette. Since the air capture cassette is placed on a tripod, in the center of the room being tested, it is sucking in only particles that are airborne. Some molds are small enough and airborne enough to enter to cassette, but some are not. The heavier, sticky molds like stachybotrys and chaetomium (two of the most toxic molds in water damaged buildings) will hit the ground within 90 seconds of becoming airborne. You are less likely to find these molds floating around in the air, unless you disrupt the air immediately before testing, with a fan. If you just place an air capture cassette in the center of the room without disrupting the dust in the room, you are much less likely to be able to capture even fragments of these spores, and certainly not at high enough concentrations to represent the true level of invasion involved. I don’t recommend using a fan in a potentially moldy room, because this will make the spores airborne for you to inhale, I would consider this a health hazard. I don’t know about you, but I would want to know if stachybotrys and/or chaetomium are in my house, and this testing scenario is already setting us up for failure in obtaining this important information about the environment. Even if you decide you are willing to temporarily risk your health by blowing a fan around the room, many of the spores may be too large to even enter the testing apparatus to be detected. Inhaled mold can become colonized in the sinuses and the gut, which means even one temporary exposure to higher levels of mold and mycotoxins can have potentially lasting effects on your immune system. Mold growing IN your body anywhere means that mycotoxins will continuously be released in your body. This is why we generally don’t want to disrupt mold in any environment without proper gear, containment and air scrubbers vented to the exterior of the building.

I grabbed this data directly from the AEMTEK, Inc. “Recommendations for fungi sampling with air capture cassettes.”

Drawbacks of direct microscopy:
• Genus or species identification of spores is not always possible with direct microscopy. (For example, Aspergillus and Penicillium spores are indistinguishable using direct microscopy, and are reported as “AspergillusPenicillium-like” spores.)
• Samples may become overloaded with non-fungal particulate if sample volume is too large or there is a high amount of airborne debris at time of sampling. Overloaded slides result in under-reporting of fungal spores in a sample.
• In cases where spore viability is a concern, note direct examination cannot distinguish between viable and nonviable spores.
• Bacteria cannot be detected using direct microscopy.

Dust testing uses samples of dust to identify mold spores that are in the environment, which makes more sense, because dust is mold food, so it’s attracted to dust AND dust is settled onto surfaces where you are more likely to find the spores, especially these heavier spores and larger, accumulated particles. Since dust can be contaminated with outdoor particles on the floor, it’s recommended that you avoid grabbing samples of dust from the floor or even window and door jams that are on exterior walls. It’s best to capture your samples of dust from interior and slightly elevated surfaces like interior door jams, ceiling fans, shelves, the top of your refrigerator, and especially from your HVAC vents, which is likely to be contaminated if there is mold in your home near a return air duct. It may even be your source, if there are issues with condensation in your HVAC unit, so you don’t want to skip taking samples from your air duct vents. Some people cut open a contractor bag and hang it in the space they want to test because it attracts dust and will accumulate more of what is being stirred up in the room. Then you can swipe the contractor bag when you are taking your samples.

Under the umbrella of dust testing, there are a variety of options. These are all home-tests. You order the kit and follow the instructions for dust collection, then return the samples to the lab for evaluation. The ERMI is one of the most well-known dust tests and while it uses advanced PCR technology to identify mold spores and fragments, it is limited in it’s scope of comparison to other homes in the nation so I don’t put a lot of weight into it’s scoring methods, but when it finds a mold species in your dust, you can be sure that this species is in your home. So I tend to pay more attention to the strains of mold that have been found in the home, than I do the mold index score they provide. Even if you have ONE stachybotrys or chaetomium spore showing up in your dust, that is a big concern for the environment, because it means there are mycotoxins associated with these strains in the environment and you may have an active leak somewhere. You could have a bigger problem brewing somewhere behind building finishings. For a more accurate scoring interpretation of your ERMI, I recommend paying $27 to run your report through the ERMI Code software. We Inspect is a mold inspection company that created the ERMI Code, which uses extensive data they collected on homes throughout the nation, to inform you of your risk of exposure to spores and mycotoxins. It’s not quite the same as testing for mycotoxins in the environment, but it is informative based on an evaluation of the mold spores present in your dust, assuming you were able to collect a sample of all of the spores in your home. More on this later. We Inspect’s report can help you determine if your home is worth remediating and staying, or if the problem exceeds remediation, in which case they may actually recommend moving for your safety. They can even provide advice on how to remediate and/or clean properly, with safety for the inhabitants as the top priority, as it should be. They also work with a company called HomeCleanse, which is a National remediation company that truly understands the ramifications of improper remediation, so while they might be a little more expensive to hire than a local company, you KNOW you will be getting the right kind of help if you choose to work with them.

Another available dust test is actually cleverly called, The DUST Test. This test is just like the ERMI mentioned above, it even tests for the same quantity of mold spores, but it’s a bit more advanced in it’s interpretation results. If you clicked on the link above, you will notice that they offer three tiers of testing on their website. This is a great segue into my main reason for this blog.

The second tier of testing with The DUST Test is the Toxic Mold Test which includes mycotoxins testing of the environment, in addition to the original 36 mold spore/fragment findings. You can get a similar test done by Real Time Labs using the EMMA test, which includes 12 mold spore/fragment findings and 5 mycotoxins for a slightly lower cost. Just remember, if you don’t test for a mold and it’s mycotoxins, you won’t know if it’s present. The old adage, you can’t win if you don’t play, applies here. You can’t find what you are not looking for. If we are to know the extent of your exposures, it’s really important to invest as much money as you can afford into the investigation process. It is money well-spent.

And lastly, the third tier of testing with The DUST Test is the Toxic Mold & Bacteria Test which adds bacterial endotoxins to the mold and mycotoxins testing for an additional fee. This is something many people forget to consider into the toxic burden of environmental sickness. While mold begins growing within 24 hours of water damage, bacteria begins growing within one HOUR! I believe this is also why we see a lot of PANDAS and PANS in connection with biotoxin illness. Bacteria love the same conditions mold grows in. Bacteria eat, poop (which is a toxic endotoxin that is neurotoxic to the body) and produce protective layers of biofilm.

We aren’t done talking about different testing options, but for the sake of continuity, I am going to return to this discussion a bit later.

Spores, fragments, bacteria and mycotoxins in testing

Air capture testing only reports back on mold spore counts. It doesn’t account for fragments, bacteria or mycotoxins, all of which are part of the total air quality condition contributing to the health of the air quality, and it’s inhabitants. For example, strep is often part of the mold matrix, and considering PANDAS is triggered by mold exposure, we don’t want to completely ignore this connection.

Spores only account for 0.2% of the total impact from mold and bacteria. The fragments that break away from these colonies can be 500x more than the number of spores they produce.
Respiratory deposition models suggest that such fragments of Stachybotrys chartarum may be deposited in 230–250 fold higher numbers than spores.
Simple everyday activities (like walking around) will pop house dust up from surfaces and into our breathing zone. This creates a consistent and ongoing exposure called the “personal cloud effect”

So here is where things get interesting and why I recommend conducting as many different mold tests as you can reasonably afford, so you can get as much information about the whole story as possible. If you aren’t testing for spores directly around or at the site of the damage (leak, humidity source, flooding, etc) you are likely to report back inaccurate or incomplete results, purely because the spore count is going to be lower if you aren’t near the source. If a leak is going on in a wall cavity or above a ceiling, the spores are going to be more concentrated near the event, behind that wall or ceiling. Makes sense, right? And why is this important? Well, because the source of the mycotoxins (and remember, it’s the mycotoxins that are the poison/neurotoxin) may be much greater than the results your testing is indicating. Meaning…you could have higher concentrations or even a greater variety of mycotoxins present in the home, than the spore count is eluding to. Some mycotoxins have a half-life of over 90 years, so this means they won’t even decompose until after your lifetime. That also means that if there is a history of leaks or water damage even from years ago, which have been repaired, the mycotoxins from that event could still be in the home, even if the spores aren’t. So spore and petri dish testing aren’t going to capture these mycotoxins, only mycotoxin testing will and this is why sometimes mycotoxins represented in a test are higher in variety than the spore species. Mycotoxins = biotixin sickness.

To go back to the discussion on particle size. The mycotoxin is a miniscule particle compared to the spores. A gas is going to escape the wall cavity or ceiling much easier than the spore so if we are ONLY testing for spores, we may miss the actual gravity of the situation, entirely!! If your home was built during the last few decades when sealing up every crevice of a home became the norm in building practices, your home isn’t breathing. When a home doesn’t breath, it tightly holds the indoor air inside. Ironically, older homes without insulation and built with plaster, breath better than the new era homes where covering them in plastic and sealing every crack is part of an attempt at reducing energy loss. But what happens when we trap air inside? All of the toxins also remain inside. As long as you can keep the moisture outside of this building envelope, this might seem sustainable and smart, but that isn’t predictable or realistic. Leaks can occur inside, and when they do, especially in a tightly built, newer home, the air is trapped indoors and the build up of toxins can get very high, dangerously high.

Another problem, on a completely different tangent is how homes are being constructed with much lower standards than ever before. I am regularly shown photos new construction framing that looks like this. These were new homes being toured in an attempt to house hunt. How disturing!

How is this happening? Poor quality control, poor handling of materials, poor expectations, and poor management. This wood is dumped onto the ground with no protection. It isn’t stacked properly with air flow and sun exposure, and the bottom pieces are sitting in the soil where mold spores can begin growing on the wood. Some builders are also closing homes up before moisture has dried out effectively, either from curing concrete foundations or from weather exposure. When the homeowner tries to hold the builders to ethics that would prevent them from producing homes of this quality, they won’t budge, because there is a long line of potential buyers who would gladly take this home off their hands for a pretty penny. The housing market has gone crazy and builders are not being held accountable to higher quality standards. So if you think a new home will solve your mold problems, it’s a crap shoot. It’s possible to purchase disastrous new homes and it’s also possible to purchase well-kept, older homes that breath better. It’s all about the maintenance and care taken not only during the life of the home, but the construction process. This includes remodeling projects as well. And if a home is a flip project, be very cautious about what might be underneath those beautiful new finishings. The framing may tell a completely different story. Legislation is necessary to change the course of poor workmanship like this. If you have an opportunity to look into local legislation on this subject, I would recommend getting involved. We all should. If we want things to change, we need to change our behavior accordingly.

A real world example

I’d like to share some testing from a situation I was personally involved with, but first let me give you some background on this story. This building was inhabited by tenants who didn’t own the building. This always presents a potential problem regarding maintenance and remediation, because the party conducting the repairs may save money by cutting corners on their repairs, contributing to dangerous air quality in the process, sometimes completely unintentionally.

When a leak from the roof was uncovered by visible evidence of water intrusion on a ceiling, with peeling paint and darkness, accompanied by a musty smell, the tenants brought this to the attention of their landlord. The tenant responsible for the lease, quickly made contact with all parties involved to make sure they knew there were numerous mold sensitive people in the building and hoping to quickly get involved at ground zero, to prevent inappropriate repair and remediation. When a leak like this comes through interior finishings, it is hard to know how long it had been going on, and opening up the ceiling could disrupt long-standing mold. Even if this was a newer leak, mold begins to grow within 24 hours. Bacteria begins to grow in 1 hour! So if not acted upon immediately, the situation can quickly become increasingly dangerous to the inhabitants. Without getting into too many long and drawn out details, delayed response to dealing with this leak led to weeks of inaction and the landlord never used containment or spread-preventative measures.

The inhabitants began to notice symptoms when they were in the building, which improved when they weren’t in the building, suggesting that the air quality was becoming more unhealthy as the clock ticked. The landlord chose to do an air quality test and reported back excitedly that there was nothing to worry about, there was absolutely no mold in their preliminary testing. This completely contradicted the experiences of the inhabitants. The landlord scheduled a roofer to fix the leak, but they weren’t available for at least a month because as you know, lately contractors are horrendously booked up and are rarely available for an emergency situation of this size.

The tenants chose to prioritize their health and leave the building, but not without conducting a few of their own tests, first. Below, I will share images of their testing which confirms my point above, which is that you can have a greater variety of mycotoxins in the results, than spores, depending on the situation. In this case, the water damage was above the ceiling and although it was working it’s way through the ceiling, it was primarily above the ceiling in the space between the ceiling and a flat roof. The landlord identified the ceiling material as plaster, and said it wouldn’t grow mold, but the ceiling wasn’t the only material to be concerned with. My concern was also with the building materials ABOVE that ceiling, the framing and insulation between the ceiling and the roof itself. The problem is always deeper than the visible evidence (IF there is even visible evidence in your situation), it’s like the tip of the iceberg. Water travels to the point of least resistance, it creates a trail and it settles somewhere, usually involving a large area, if left unaddressed. Ok, sorry to babble on, here are the results from the tenants’ testing, which clearly shows an environment that is not free of mold, as the landlord suggested.

What you will notice from this testing is that while ochratoxin, which is the mycotoxin associated with the spores found is the highest mycotoxin in the environment, it is not the ONLY mycotoxin in the environment above the safe limits. This leads us to the conclusion that there were other molds trying to compete for this territory and whether or not they won or lost that battle, they contributed to the toxins in this environment. They did not do a bacterial test, due to limited finances, but I would bet that would be eye opening, as well. I’d also like to add that I have NEVER seen a spore count this high, ever. A high spore count is in the single digit thousands and this one is in the hundreds of thousands! That is outrageous.

And lastly, this petri dish was from the building, as well. It was the first self-test done to see if they needed to pursue more expensive and specific testing. This was when I advised doing both the spore count and mycotoxins testing, at minimum, because it matters when you are considering what belongings you will save from this environment. Contaminated belongings can contribute to continued sickness by contaminating your new environment and your vehicles. In fact, one person took belongings to another environment and unknowingly contaminated that space. She has before and after testing to prove it.

The symptoms the inhabitants were experiencing absolutely coordinated with the symptoms listed above on the test results. They weren’t even tying all of their symptoms to the building prior to this testing. It was after they received their results that they were able to connect the dots, which is often the case with mold toxicity, unfortunately.

I mentioned that I wanted to also discuss a few other forms of testing that can be used to fill in gaps or paint a more elaborate picture of what is really going on.

Petri dish testing is an option that could be used in conjunction with dust testing, but I don’t recommend it as the sole form of testing, because it will only detect living molds. There is no way for a petri dish test to tell us if there are mold fragments or dead mold in the environment and these are both irritants to the immune system so you wouldn’t want to ignore them as part of the air quality, when present.

I’ve had countless people tell me that they don’t have a mold problem, because the leak “dried out.” So the water dried up, but if mold grew before the water dried up, where do you think that mold went? Nowhere, it’s still there. And dry mold is like the puff of a dandelion seed flower, it’s friable and freely airborne with ANY air movement, meaning it’s more likely that these dormant and even some dead mold spores are more readily airborne, and being breathed into the body. A dormant mold spore can easily be woken up with moisture, and guess what? Your body is made primarily of water. When the humidity in your nostrils wakes up that mold, the mycotoxin producing machine is back in action, right next to your brain! Mold can also colonize your gut, wreaking havoc on your digestion and increasing your exposure to mycotoxins internally. So with that said, I’d still like to share my favorite and very reasonably priced petri dish testing company, Immunolytics. They also offer swab testing, in the event that you can actually see your mold. One great technique they promote is the tap test, where you open the petri dish and tap it on upholstery, fabric, bedding, carpets and even your pet’s fur, to disrupt the spores into the culture medium in the petri dish. Immunolytics can identify over 37,000 species of mold, but remember, it’s only going to identify LIVING mold. The dust tests above will report back on mold fragments and dead mold, all of which is incredibly important if you are chasing symptoms. In combination, these tests can be really helpful. I can’t promise that every moldy home will come back positive, so increasing your odds of finding something by doing a variety of tests is ideal.

And the last form of testing, which is also very inexpensive and incredibly helpful is called tape testing. In order for this form of testing to be complimentary to the above options, you will need to have access to the mold you want tested. You can also use the swab method similarly, with Immunolytics, but remember that this lab will only tell you about living molds, not fragments and dead molds. If you can find a testing company that will do tape testing, they use a microscope to identify what is on the tape. I wouldn’t use tape testing as the only form of testing though, because it is very limited in it’s scope and collection.

A few alarming statistics contributing to the importance of air quality control

Nearly 50% of buildings surveyed in the United States were experiencing ongoing water leaks causing damage.

The average American spends more than 90% of their time indoors, don’t you think air quality is an important variable in your health?

The average adult takes 20,000 breaths a day. Think about that when you consider this article and your air quality. What are you inhaling?

And yes, I understand that mold is “everywhere,” but let’s remember that we can’t compare indoor air to outdoor air. Nature keeps mold in check with air movement, UV light from the sun, animals and plants who drink the water and the mycelium network which brings balance to the flora outside. There are however times of the year when mold spores are higher even outside, such as in the fall, when leaves are on the ground, the rainfall is higher and sun exposure is dwindling. The leaves provide organic food matter and protection for mold spores, and the moisture contributes to it’s survival. During this time of the year, we’ve noticed that we will occasionally react to the outdoor air, exactly the same way we would react to a moldy house or building.

And here is another example of what mold “looks” like. It’s rarely visible and obvious. This home looks clean and updated, right? When you take a closer look underneath the facade, you see what is really going on.

Solutions

Ok, now that I have officially contributed to your anxiety about mold, let’s talk about some solutions. We have nothing if we don’t have health, so prioritizing the air quality in your home should be high on your financial obligations list, as well as addressing the potential mold toxicity that could be effecting everyone in your household differently. I understand that every family is in a different financial situation, so you will have to pick your battles accordingly, just know that ignoring this situation will not improve your family’s health and if someone is struggling with chronic illness, I suggest prioritizing this sooner than later.

Testing the body
When the environment is in question, we will want to know how each family member is handling the toxic load. This can be done in a number of ways. There are some clues that can be extracted from conventional lab testing that may be covered by insurance, but these labs will not be definitive, they will only provide some soft signs pointing at potential mold toxicity upstream of the results. This could be a starting point, if you want to try to use insurance for part of your investigation.

You should also consider alternative labs with cutting edge equipment. These labs aren’t covered by insurance, but if you have an FSA, you might be able to pay for your testing with those funds, or at least get reimbursed. I highly recommend the Organic Acid Test and the Mycotoxins test from Mosaic Diagnostics, which you take in the comfort of your own home by providing a urine sample. I can order any tests from Mosaic Diagnostics for you. My cost includes an in-depth, written interpretation that can span more than a dozen pages in length.
If you would like to see if your body is producing antibodies to any mold strains, this test is a blood draw that you you will need to have a doctor sign off on, for you.
Maintaining air quality
Whether you plan to stay or go, remediate now our later, it’s a good idea to try to improve your air quality as much as possible, as soon as possible. You can do this by introducing beneficial bacteria and enzymes which will eat the spores, dust, bacteria and mycotoxins simply by using these products to clean with and to fog around the building. Environmental probiotics usually work on the surfaces they are used on for three continuous days, and they will address any biofilm that is protecting the invaders. This is NOT a substitution for mold remediation, but it can buy you some time, and it can help with the process of keeping some belongings, safely. I would also recommend it as an ongoing means of improving air quality. Our indoor air is much like our body, we need more beneficial bacteria to improve the environment. We breath these beneficial bacteria and enzymes when we are outside, let’s bring them indoors too!

I have a number of products listed on my website for you to consider. There are products like environmental probiotics, enzymes, foggers, and dehumidifiers, but there are also a lot of prevention products, as well as a moisture meter, and an air mover which will be essential if you ever have an accidental water event requiring fast drying to prevent mold growth.
I also highly recommend checking out my recommendation of air purifiers. Cleaning up the air with an effective air purifier on each level of your building can be a game changer, but again, NOT a substitution for remediation or moving, if needed. I love air purifiers for addressing cross contamination from mold brought in by others.
How to address household items that may be contaminated
Once you have decided whether you plan to move or remediate, you will want to address the contamination of all of the belongings in your home. I know this sounds really daunting, and it is, but it’s essential to reducing contamination in your home. This website can help make it easier for you to handle your belongings step by step, it has a great list of what is safe to keep and how to clean it.
Ongoing knowledge
Following The Mold Mentor on Facebook is a wonderful way to get random mold facts and tips right on your newsfeed.

If you want to build a safer new home, following architect Cheryl Cieko on Facebook can be incredibly helpful in a number of ways. She provides a lot of great tips in general and offers classes that go deeper into mold knowledge, she can also be hired as a consultant.

Change the Air Foundation offers free Summits, and also shares a bunch of tidbits on their Facebook page.

You can also consider joining my private coached community group for individualized help. For less than what you would pay a practitioner during a one-on-one consultation, you can belong to my group, with access to my help, for over a year! There are no obligations or time commitments to my membership. Hope to see you there! Feel free to send me a message, using the link below, if you have any questions.

Resources

https://moldhelpforyou.com/mycotoxins/

https://www.homecleanse.com/size-of-mold-spores/

https://www.thedusttest.com/?#the-dust-test

https://changetheairfoundation.org/