Welcome to our podcast. My name is Kealy Severson and I'm here with my co hosts, Erik Johnson, Alicia Swamy and we are Exposing Mold. Today we're here with Nicole Bijlsma from Australia.
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Kealy Severson:Welcome Nicole, thank you for joining us.
Nicole Bijlsma:Thank you for inviting me.
Kealy Severson:So I understand that you have been injured primarily by EMF exposure and that was the path that brought you in to mold illness. Can you share your your history and information with us?
Nicole Bijlsma:Sure, I was working as a naturopath and acupuncturist for 15 years. And during that time, I started to notice a very strong correlation between many of my patients illnesses with asthma, allergies, fatiguing syndromes, autoimmune and infertility, with issues in the house. And by consultation, many of my patients were saying what do you think about the mold in the house, you know, and when I looked at the symptoms I realized that it started when they moved into these environments. Now, I didn't learn anything about this. I spent eight years at university doing naturopathy and acupuncture qualifications and further training in China. We didn't cover environmental sensitivities. What happened next was I moved into our first home. I then developed sleep disturbances as did my husband and I went on and had 10 miscarriages in this house. We saw many therapists and doctors and IVFs. We didn't qualify for IVF and we went to the recurrent miscarriage clinic here in Melbourne. And they excluded all pathology and said we cannot help you. So the medical professional were unable to help us. At that time, about five years into it. My neighbor said no one successfully had children in your home that was 65 years old. And that piqued my interest that there's something wrong with the house because we developed sleep disturbances when we moved in. So we're on half an acre of this beautiful land on the river. And what I realized is we were sleeping on the other side of the wall of a meter panel. And of course at that time, there was just a handful of studies on miscarriage rates and AC magnetic fields. I also got a dowser in and he confirmed the geopathic stress directly beneath the bed. We were on a T intersection on the road and I started to measure the noxious gases coming from traffic related air pollutants and they would triple in the morning in our master bedroom, which was closest to the road and take three hours to dissipate. They include carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and the last thing is Parks, Victoria because we bought it the Yarra River, Parks Victoria used to regularly come and spray our property for pesticides. So even though you couldn't see what the issues were when you started to investigate, there were several red flags on the property that made me start to think about environmental exposures. So I looked at the US EPA website and realize there's a huge amount of data on indoor air quality, and wondering why I was never taught this. So for the next two decades, I started to research the impact of electromagnetic fields, mold, and chemicals on human health. And then in 1999, I started the Australian College of Environmental Studies, which examines health hazards in the home, mold, electromagnetic field, toxic and allergens. And for over two decades I've been teaching people I created the industry building biology here in Australia, and we train people to walk into homes to identify if there are hazards. Most of the work we do is referred through doctors, and about 60% of the work we do is assessing water damaged buildings. So what I've discovered here in Australia is there are systemic failures across multiple industries, that is leading to a huge array of people being exposed to environmental sensitivities, including mold. In the past three decades, several things happened that dramatically escalated the strain population to water damaged buildings. And the first of those was changes from the copper pipe called water pipes to flexible braided water hoses. Flexible braided water hoses are those things under the sink, they're easy to install, so that the plumbing costs are a lot less. But they are the number one cause of water damage claims in Australia accounting for about $320 million annually in insurance claims, so they burst very quickly. And they only have a service life of five years and most people don't know that. The second thing is waterproofing. What happened about three two decades ago is the government changed the technical schools, which meant that generally, young males we used to who used to get into the trades, then majority of our cohort in trades, would go to tech school and learn how to do a craft over many years, and then become a plumber, electrician, etc. That stopped about about three decades ago. So in order to become a waterproofing consultant, a lot of the trades are just getting what we call recognition of prior learning. So instead of going to a TAFE, or technical college, they're learning it from their builder, their employer, who may or may not have good practices in waterproofing. Those that are going to the TAFE, they're going to TAFE that are under resourced. So they're learning how to do a bathroom waterproofing course, but they don't know how to do external, below grade waterproofing, which is very, very different. So what's happening is we're getting a large generation of trades, who are waterproofing bathrooms very poorly, often not in the manufacturer's specs, and as a result of that, these bathrooms are only lasting around seven years. Most people don't realize if they paid at least $2,000 for a bathroom renovation in waterproofing, where they had a company specializing that the waterproofing would last up to 30 years using proper shape based membranes as opposed to liquid base membranes. So the problem is our bathrooms are failing in a very short period of time and in addition to that, a lot of the clients are using essential oils in order to clean bathrooms. And these essential oils are very strong like eucalyptus, for example. And they are degrading the waterproof membrane. So when they're using them in the bathroom, they're penetrating into the grout, it's then dissolving the waterproof membrane in the wall. And as a result of that, instead of seven years, lasting its own lasting two or three years. So these are big issues that occupants are not aware of that using essential oils, they're using orange citrus peel, eucalyptus, tea tree, that they should never be using them for cleaning purposes. So that's another one. The third one is they started to change the way in which buildings are built to make them tighter. So instead of being a bit drafty, and having ventilation, they now have to be built based on a six star energy rating. So essentially, we're building plastic bags, it means that it's the lot of these new buildings according to the research 40% of new builds in temperate climates here in Australia, are demonstrating condensation and mold by their first winter, often hidden in the roof and in the walls. And this is because they're so tight. They're just living in these buildings and you're breathing out three liters of water vapor a day, this water vapor is going through the gyprock and or drywall as you refer to. And then it's hitting a cold surface, an impermeable waterproof membrane, and it's now condensing, so you don't even see the mold. But people are starting to get asthma and allergies and other things like that. So there are also in building practices, they're building homes without an eve. Eves are very important because it protects against wind driven rain. The last thing are gutters, a lot of the gutters are failing because people aren't maintaining them and this is causing moisture to penetrate into the roof. So there are a lot of problems here that are resulting in a significant escalation in mold and condensation in the homes in Australia.
Alicia Swamy:Thank you for sharing that information. We're seeing it here in the United States and it's the wild wild west out here basically even though we have standards that IICRC and all that sort but it seems like mold inspectors and remediation is still trying to come up with a solution to this because not all remediation works, right? And so I'm just curious as to you transforming from who you were in health to now building biology. What's going on in that sector in Australia right now?
Nicole Bijlsma:Well what we're finding because testing for mold and remediation is not regulated. People who bother to do the IICRC, water Restoration and applied microbial remediation course, are doing the course over a week. They don't have time to consolidate the course and they go back to their old ways. So if they've been remediating for 20 years, they do a week course, do a online test, and then because they haven't had time to consolidate and get feedback, they're going back to fogging, they're going back to not testing and the IICRC course doesn't cover testing. So when you have remediators, who are not, who haven't learned how to establish a scope of works, that's a problem. So the big red flag when I'm telling clients about what to look for, the first thing is if the remediator is giving your quote over the phone, and they haven't assessed your building run in the opposite direction important for them because you need to put the money into testing to establish what's going on with the building. And the reality is, that's not cheap. It's got to be done properly. What we're finding is people are coming in, they're remediating they're fogging, fogging introduces more moisture, it exacerbates the problem. But because it temporarily sterilizes the air, they're doing air testing, they can wipe the surface, then do a bio tape and show that it's clean. But it's only temporarily sterilized. And they know by keeping their air purifiers on, when they're testing the air, that it's going to be hardly anything in the air. No, when I looked at a sample, they had the air purifier on because only a few spores per cubic meter of air. So that's not rightv and a healthy home has up to 500 spores per centimeter squared on the surface. People think mold is the problem, it is not the problem. Fungi are everywhere from the Arctic to Antarctica. The issue is that most of the spores in a healthy home relate to what the spores are in the soil, and the soil ecology immediately around the home and the area. So you have high levels, or you mainly have ascospores and basiospores, when you start getting water net if you have liquid water on it on a surface for 48 hours or more, or you have elevated humidity because you live in a humid environment for 48 hours and warm we're talking at least 70% humidity for more than and you only have 48 hours, the spores sitting in the surface of your home and then household dust in the carpets are going to be utilizing the moisture from the air and they'll start releasing enzymes, they'll start infiltrating onto the substrate, and eating that so to speak. They'll be releasing microbial VOCs because they're trying to kill each other off in their competitors in the process of decomposing your house. So the key and the problem here is moisture, liquid water is the same if it sits on surface for more than 48 hours, the fungi, and eventually bacteria will get involved if it's long standing water problems because their water activities point nine or higher will then infiltrate the substrate and they'll release mycotoxins and microbial VOCs. These are some of the deadliest chemicals known to humans, which is why many patients in long standing water damage homes end up with anxiety, depression, and of course, potentially psychosis or mold rage. So the thing with mold is understanding you have a very short period of time to address this before it can become an adverse health effect. These fungal particulate spores and hyphae start infiltrating if when there's growth because there's moisture, and then it causes what we cause condition to which is high levels of settled spores in the house. That alone can cause adverse health effects. Some of the worst homes I've ever seen, you could not see or smell mold. But the key is to take a proper environmental exposure history, which is what we train our consultants to do. And the first thing is asking the timing of symptoms is critical. When did your symptoms begin? Or when were they exacerbated, and more often than not, it's when they moved into this water damage home or after a renovation where the builder came, pulled out the bathroom, opened up the wall where there's lots of hidden mold and now it's they've contaminated the adjacent rooms and potentially the whole house. So you can see the timing of exposure. Asking clients you know, have you ever been in water damage home before? Is any of the furnishings in his home been in a previously water damaged home because then you can contaminate the next house. Many of these patients don't get better but because they bringing their water damaged contents from one house to the other, and they continue to be sick. And as you know, that unless they're taking binders, the hepatic injury, hepatic circulation, keeps recycling these toxins. So even when they're in a home that's dry, they can still be sick until they've seen the right clinician to help them remove these biotoxins. The other thing we're finding is once people become sick with mold related illness like CIRS, they then become electrically sensitive, they become chemically sensitive. So you have to look at their exposures to electromagnetic fields, their exposures to Wi Fi enabled devices, because the myelin sheath is being impacted. The mitochondria is impacted. They have low grade, systemic inflammation and particular inflammation in their brain, which is impacting key neuro peptides, melanocytes stimulating hormone, vasoactive intestinal polypeptide, they've multiple infections going on in the body as a result of it, their gut is becoming more permeable, they then get gluten intolerance and food intolerances, and it's a very vicious cycle. So what we train them to do is to look at testing water damaged buildings appropriately. By identifying moisture and moisture laden material, you have to remove moisture laden material, because it will be a continuous source of microbes. And mycotoxins and funghi and fungal particulate, you have to establish the boundary of particulate fat fungal particulate, if you're not testing the air and or surfaces to see how far that fungal particulate has moved from the source of growth, then you can never adequately remediate. And the problem is 90% of homes that have been remediated here in Australia, they haven't even tested the building. So it's impossible to remediate if you don't know how far that boundary is, if you don't test every room, if you don't test the roof, if you don't test the subfloor, you don't know potentially where the microbial growth is, you need thermal imaging cameras, you need moisture meters, and you need to do proper testing, to see how far it's spread to establish the boundary before you can develop a scope of works and properly remediate. Then remediation, of course, involves the porosity of the material, and the condition. Those two bits of information tell you exactly what you need to do to content and the built structure.
Erik Johnson:sure everybody heard this is that a lot of people are getting these credentials under false pretenses, because they just do it to put letters next to their name, when they go right back to whatever they were doing before.
Nicole Bijlsma:Absolutely, we see this all the time. And the problem is part of the problem is the training, what's being taught is great. But if you teach it in a short period of time, like I run a registered training organisation that's government accredited, we would not be able to teach courses in the short space, we have to displace it over three months, in order to ensure students have the time to really integrate what's taught and to test the application of that knowledge is important. Just doing an online test at the end of a three day full on course of five days isn't going to have time to really consolidate that. So when you have remediators you've got 20 years experience during a week course becoming IICRC certified, then going back to their old practices, because they really haven't had time to consolidate that knowledge. That is problematic. But that's the best we have for mold remediation currently in Australia and in the US, etc. The course is good, it just needs to be weaned out, you need multiple forms of assessment to actually test the application of that knowledge. The mold testing course we offer here at my college is 150 hours in duration. We're not teaching remediation, we're just teaching testing water damage buildings and how to do an environmental exposure history. You know, how to actually use thermal imaging and moisture mapping, how to do lab testing, how to set up a lab plan, and then test, and then analyze those results in the context of the exposure history. You have to assess risk. The problem is we're never going to have dose response relationships when it comes to mold. How much Aspergillus do you need to have asthma? How much chaetomium do you need to have, you know, skin rashes, for example, we're never going to have that because you have to assess the risk. If you've got someone with CIRS, slightly elevated above the outdoor is a problem. In addition to that, I often find with patients that not only have they been exposed previously to other water damage, they could have tick bites they could have been exposed to blue green algae in rivers, but many of them have been exposed to high levels of chemicals or ongoing chemicals, which accelerated the risk for mold illness, some of them had been exposed to ongoing electromagnetic fields. The problem with electromagnetic fields in mold is that EMFs can potentiate the impact of biotoxins and chemicals in the body because it enhances the permeability of the blood brain barrier. It also causes significant oxidative stress, because it acts on voltage gated calcium channels in the brain, the heart, and the testes. This is electromagnetic fields, from all your Wi Fi enabled devices, accelerates oxidative stress and causes low grade systemic inflammation. So you have this synergistic effect between mold illness, electromagnetic field exposures, and potentially chemicals in the body. Once they are sensitive to one where you have to look at all three of them, you have to change their behavior about electromagnetic fields, how they use their cell phones, you know, if they're sleeping near me to panels, if they're sleeping, their mobile phone base stations, all of these other things have to be addressed otherwise, these patients genuinely never get better.
Erik Johnson:Are you in contact with Professor or Dr. Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik at Griffith University that is looking into ion channelopathy?
Nicole Bijlsma:No, I'm not.
Erik Johnson:I would definitely look her up.
Nicole Bijlsma:Absolutely. I'll get those details after this.
Erik Johnson:Fantastic.
Alicia Swamy:Erik do you want to describe a little bit about what her work is and and what they're what they're doing. So it's pretty cool.
Erik Johnson:Griffith University has been trying to solve the mystery of myalgic encephalomyelitis, chronic fatigue syndrome for quite a few years. And they've come across a specific test, patch clamp testing that identifies certain types of ion channelopathies, a TRPM 3, three transient receptor potential milistatin three ion channel that has severely impaired in what they call ME/CFS. They're not looking to mold at this time, but they see this pathophysiology in their ME/CFS patients. And they're trying to work this into a possible test a diagnostic tool to identify ME/CFS.
Nicole Bijlsma:Interesting in my book, Dominic Bellpine, is one of the leading researchers in the world. He's based in France, on electromagnetic sensitivities and CFS. And he's got some amazing papers on electromagnetic sensitivity. The interesting thing like in my book, what I look at is comparing multiple chemical sensitivity, electromagnetic sensitivity with mold illness and there's 75%, the same presentation, because it's low grade systemic inflammation. So with electromagnetic fields, they have almost identical symptoms to mold illness, the difference is they often will have more severe headaches and tinnitus, ringing in the ears, and heart related pathology. So you know, palpitations and things like that. Ménière's disease, which is an imbalance disorder with dizziness tends to be more electromagnetic sensitivities. So what differentiating between three pathologies, we realize that they're incredibly similar. And ultimately, what's happening is is oxidative stress, low grade systemic inflammation across many of these illnesses, especially environmental sensitivities. So in the end, to get these patients better, you have to educate them, how to reduce their exposure to toxicants. And chemicals, especially pesticides are one of the worst and get a you know, the Great Plains GPL Toxtests to assess chemical low petrochemicals all those things because a lot of these patients won't get better, if that is not addressed. Looking at the gene profiles, not just for the HLA for the mold, but also the detoxification pathways, because this can impact whether they get better or not. And of course, looking at their exposures to mold electromagnetic fields and chemicals and reducing that as much as possible by altering their behavior.
Erik Johnson:I see you will make a reference to CIRS, chronic inflammatory response syndrome, Dr. Shoemaker's term for the overall umbrella, toxic soup type illness, but if you look into it and identify somebody as specifically being made sick by blue green algae, or Stachybotrys, or a brown recluse spider bite, do you then give them an additional name, so you know exactly what they're dealing with?
Nicole Bijlsma:Well, I think in the end, the environmental exposure history is really useful because you're able to establish root cause by going through the timeline, finding out what symptoms happened when what exposures happen, when, in the end, I feel the diagnosis is not that important. I think we've spent so much time in medicine and even in natural therapies, putting people in boxes, which hasn't necessarily helped their illness. What we should be doing is taking a proper environmental exposure history, and identifying the timing of exposure and development of symptoms to get to the root cause to ensure they're not continually exposed. From my experience, every one of the patients with CIRS or environmental sensitivities has been exposed to multiple factors before the development of chronic inflammatory response. It's not it seems like the mold is the last straw, but they may have been exposed to high levels of pesticides in farming communities or, you know, in all electromagnetic fields as part of their career, or as part of their use or their career in terms of using cell phones next to their head for six hours a day for 20 years. So I think we need to start moving away from the boxes because they're not helping these patients. And in the end, ultimately, what you want to do is get to the root cause, and then address that and reduce the inflammation and the biotoxins in the body by treating them as best you can. Obviously, our markers are becoming more and more aware of what markers are involved with these, I mentioned a couple of those and being able to identify Yes, is potentially more mold illness, but a really good environmental exposure history should be able to identify that.
Erik Johnson:I'm here in Nevada, and we've got a huge arsenic problem and it's vital to know that because you can make all the difference in the world by moving from one well system, one water system to another that has less arsenic. So if you get a diagnosis, it's kind of important to parse out exactly what your exposure is. And I was thinking with CIRS, if you were made sick, for example, by blue green algae, and you were in an area that had an ongoing problem. You'd want to be told that so that you could think about moving somewhere else.
Nicole Bijlsma:Absolutely. Definitely. And you're right ball water and well water is very at risk if you're drinking from that because of flame retardants, industrial pollution, pesticides, arsenic, which could be naturally from the geology of the rock in the area, for example, arsenic is very high in countries like Bangladesh and things like that. And as a result of that it's very high in rice, a lot of rice is high and arsenic, wood treated timber CCA treated timber is high in arsenic. Arsenic is a group one carcinogen, so it will dramatically impact your immune response. So I think part of CIRS is to actually assess toxic load across all chemicals using the GPL Toxtest by the Great Plains laboratory, because a lot of these patients could have significant environmental exposures that are impacting their ability to detox the mold. You know, there's some interesting research coming from pharmaceutical and where they found that some people cannot detox paracetamol very well for pain relief, and they end up with liver toxicity. And what they found is in this small subset of patients is that they have bacteria in their gut Clostridium difficile, which is very common in autism, for example. And it's creating metabolites P crease or sulfate, which is blocking the detoxification pathways, which paracetamol needs to go down. And as a result, paracetamol is forced to go through a different detoxification pathway, glucuronidation using all the glutathione and now they're getting really sick. So what I'm saying is that in patients with environmental sensitivities, if they have any parasites or infections in their gut, that could be dramatically escalating the impact and exposures to mold chemicals and potentially electromagnetic fields, because they're gut pathogens in the gut, that are impacting how they detox, you know, yeast metabolites and other things like that, which is very common in mold related illness. So as a result of that, the catecholamines, serotonin, neuroadrenaline etc, or epinephrine, as you refer to it in the states, can't get through these detoxification pathways. So in mold illness, it's very common, they end up with mental health problems and the mental health problems are due to a detoxification problem. So these patients, you have to look at the chemical profile in the body because as you mentioned, you've got arsenic, a lot of people could be petrochemicals because they're filling up their car with at the bowser. And that could be increasing their toxic load because they don't have gene pathways or enzymes, but to be able to detox that so that's escalating their chemical exposure, which means they're going to be more susceptible to even mold because of course with mold, you get a lot of metabolites, you get yeast overgrowth, that blocks the pathways in the liver, which means your normal endogenous environment, chemicals, like your catecholamines, etc, can't get through. So it has this long term effects. It affects multiple organs in the body. So to me, I tell my patients, it's important that you do an overall chemical test because you could be exposed like you are Erik to ask Nick, can your ball water. That's why to me these patients need reverse osmosis water filtration systems to make sure they're not getting the fluoride, they're not getting the aluminium, they're not getting, you know, flame retardants in their drinking water. I mean, you've got amazing amount of research in the US Love Canal, etc, of toxicity in your ball water that is dramatically escalating your cancer risks and other health pathologies. So you want drinking you must have a reverse water reverse osmosis filter, you need air purifiers in home if people can't move out of water damaged homes at the very least, they need dehumidifiers to reduce the humidity, they need air purifiers, which work pretty well at reducing the fungal particulate in the air of those rooms. But they need to do a detoxification panel to look at the chemicals in their body, they need to look at their electromagnetic fields to reduce that exposure. Once they've done that, I find that's when they tend to get better, and get more aware of those exposures in order to manage the risks that they can live relatively normally, in a western society.
Erik Johnson:I don't know if you're familiar with the geography of California, we've got the San Joaquin agricultural region, which is heavily bombarded with pesticides. And we've actually got some children who I guess the parents were exposed to a lot of pesticides, but the children are growing up with an inability to detoxify these pesticides. So the doctors were able to identify that they were susceptible to pesticides. And yet, they said this was a genetic problem. And they did not advise them to move out of the region. So I was wondering if CIRS, when you diagnose somebody with having all these, you know, detoxification problems and different exposures, what the next step is, in terms of identifying specifically what they can do to alter their environment to best take control of their illness?
Nicole Bijlsma:Yeah, that's a great question. Pesticides are the worst. I mean, if you look at the impact of pesticides, especially Organic chlorine pesticides, which were used in the 60s and 70s, you noticed a dramatic escalation in chronic disease development, when they changed farming practices after World War Two and introduced the organic chlorines. That's when a lot of the neurodevelopmental disorders like autism and ADHD dramatically escalated. I mean, autism in 1970, in Australia, affected one in 10,000 children. Now it's up to one in three in some communities in Australia, often farming communities and honor overall, I think it's about one in 40. In the general population, that is a dramatic increase compared to the past. And yes, better diagnosis has certainly improved. But that alone cannot account for the dramatic increase in autism and ADHD. ADHD affects 11% of children around the world. So pesticides, the interesting thing about pesticides, as most of them are antibacterial, this is why we use pesticides in women's care, you know, moisturizers, and in general products, we use preservatives, and they often are pesticides. Pesticides affect the microbiome, they affect the gut microbiome. So we now know your gut microbiome is the most important health marker that we have, the more diverse the bacteria is in the gut, the healthier you tend to be, when you're ingesting water containing pesticides, you are potentially impacting your gut microbiome, when you're ingesting water with chlorine in it, which is a very strong antibacterial, you are impacting your gut microbiome. So when they changed farming practices and introduce these pesticides, neurodevelopmental disorders went up, neurodegenerative disorders, Parkinson's, dementia just skyrocketed. And I don't think it's a coincidence, because it's indirect impact on the neurological system. But especially because they're antibacterial, and they're impacting the microbiome within our body. So pesticides are definitely my number one problematic chemical, if you, in your gene profile have don't homozygous for the Panjim, which helps deal with pesticides, especially the organophosphates, you're in big trouble, because the chemicals are just going to be sitting there in your body accumulating over time, which means you're going to be impacting your detoxification pathways. So if you go into a water damage building, you're already compromised, you're already susceptible. So to do this work properly, we have to look at the scope of chemical exposure, mold exposure, EMF exposure, because they're all interacting to ultimately affect an increased risk of chronic disease in the general population. And it's not just CIRS, you know, mold environments, cause recurrent colds and flus, pneumonia, respiratory tract infections in healthy people, if they're in those environments long enough. EMFs and chemicals are just going to create the perfect storm and that's what I believe is actually going on. It's the perfect storm. It's a dramatic increase in environmental exposures to moldy environments. Electromagnetic fields are off the chart now we have Wi Fi enabled devices, extenders, boosters, routers in our home, which are affecting our cells at a cellular level reducing melatonin so we don't sleep very well. Accelerating oxidative stress and it's a perfect storm. It's the worst case scenario.
Erik Johnson:I know that in Australia, the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Community is particularly put upon by Professor Andrew Lloyd and the psychosomatic crowd that are trying to tell people that this is mostly or all in your head. So whatdo with people who have a chronic fatigue syndrome diagnosis, and they come to you for help?
Nicole Bijlsma:Well, I go through a proper environmental exposure history, I then look at the timing of exposure, were they in water damaged buildings, were they are exposed to high levels, electromagnetic fields, what is their chemical load, to make sure they get to a naturopath or an integrative doctor that can assess the chemical load, and assess for biomarkers for mold, which is more indicative and shows strong correlation. If they're still in the environment that's causing the problem, the building biologist will go in and test the building. So you know, if there's been a history of water events, roof issues, drainage problems, living in high humidity, we'll go in and test the fungal particulate load and then we'll have evidence where we can start looking at timing of exposure, what they're actually exposed to now, and then educate them how to reduce the risk, how to deal with the fungal particulate if it's still in the home, how to reduce the electromagnetic field exposures, how to reduce the chemical exposures. So yeah, there are people like that, who say that, but often it's because they're ignorant, and they've not even looked at the data, so I ignore them. And just listen to the patient. That's been the biggest thing I've learned from being in this industry for 30 years is that the patient, you know, they've been diagnosed with a psychological profile, because the people who were diagnosing them had no understanding of importance of nutrition of the importance of environmental exposures. So they've gone through multiple practitioners, they've been labeled with a mental illness, that is actually not a true mental illness. It's an environmentally induced illness. And what we do is we go backwards, we look at their symptoms, we look at what their exposures are, and then we're able to guide them through testing of their both their body through a good integrative clinician, as well as the home if it's still there, and then start piecing things together to get them on to the way of recovery.
Erik Johnson:Have you been successful and lifting people out of this trivializing diagnosis and get them into a credible diagnostic entity that is taken seriously?
Nicole Bijlsma:Yes, absolutely. So we often ignore the medical profession in that process of we get on to integrative clinicians and naturopath who knows what's going on. I mean, at the ground level, I'm seeing a quite a lot of women diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, it's not multiple sclerosis, its mold because the timing of exposure was really clear. They were very healthy, then they developed the symptoms. And gradually over a period of months or years, developed these Fibromyalgia type symptoms, brain fog, poor concentration, poor memory, missing words mid sentence, sleep disturbances, here are classic mold symptoms. And you've realized when you take the exposure history, it happened after a water event in the house or after they moved into a water damage home. It's not rocket science. So then by testing the building and quantifying the fungal particulate, doing air and surface sampling, doing moisture mapping, etc, we're then able to show the integrated clinician, this is definitely an issue, get them to the right clinician to provide the binders, provide the treatment, detoxify them over a period of time, get them out of the water damage building and suddenly, the doctor must have got the diagnosis wrong. It's not MS it's actually the client is better again, when in fact, the medical physician didn't realize it was mold that causes the symptoms.
Erik Johnson:So once somebody has been steered to the right clinician, who can validate their illness with all these tests, and substantiate that there really is immunological damage. What name are they given at that point?
Nicole Bijlsma:Well with the integrated clinician or naturopath would refer to them as CIRS as generall. Yeah, chronic inflammatory response. I think it's a good term because it is a chronic inflammatory response. Whether it's electromagnetic fields, chemicals, multiple chemical sensitivity, or you know, mold, yes, though, often will be diagnosed with CIRS with an integrative clinician. So there are doctors here who specialize in nutrition, who have an understanding of CIRS. There aren't many of them, but they are here. And there are a lot of an growing number of naturopaths are really good in this space as well. So they are diagnosed, they have to ignore the medical fraternity and go down this path with other practitioners to help them get better.
Erik Johnson:So Macquarie University got over a million dollar grant to study biotoxin illness. And of course, part of that will be assessing whether or not CIRS as any relation to to other health effects, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, MS. So have they approached you to ask just how mold plays into this?
Nicole Bijlsma:It's remarkable. I run the only Mold Testing course in Australia and I haven't been approached by them. They do swiffer cloths here that I know in terms of testing the home, they're doing Swiffer cloths, I have issues with that it's the ERMI test for Swiffer cloths, because I found many of my clients have a false negative because they don't know where to wipe in the home. So unless they're doing moisture mapping, a good visual inspection, which they need to be trained to do, doing a Swiffer cloth, actually I don't think is useful because I've seen too many false negatives. If I go into a Swiffer cloth, while I'm tired or Swiffer cloth, I've spent two hours in the property, moisture mapping, thermal imaging, visual inspection, asking questions, then I know where to do the wiping for the Swiffer cloth to pick up fungal particulate. So you know, these are the issues I have. And this is a problem with these research, they should have actually done extensive research to see who's in this space, especially if they're going to start looking at water damage homes, as I said, I run the only government accredited Mold Testing course, it's 150 hours no I wasn't approached to, you know, even though they're looking at testing the home to verify if they're water damage, I can tell you, if they're using a Swiffer cloth, they're gonna get a lot of false negatives. Yep.
Erik Johnson:That's stunning. I mean, I don't see how they can even pretend to do a credible study if they don't approach the established experts in the field.
Nicole Bijlsma:I don't know.
Erik Johnson:Wow. So I think I'm going to ask that why aren't you talking with people who've been in this field for decades?
Nicole Bijlsma:Yes, I did approach them and it went nowhere. So they'd already established and put their research through ethics. So it had already been passed, they couldn't do anything about it. It's a shame because I do see a lot of false negatives with this swiffer cloth I have to say. And many of these clients with the ERMI have gone, the lab has said from the ERMI result, your house is healthy. We've gone in there as part of training, because they've got asthma, allergies, and chronic fatigue symptoms. They've got CIRS related symptoms, and I'm going, when did it begin? It began in this house. I said the ERMI results can't be right because if your syndromes began in the house, and you've got the symptoms, there has to be something else and my job is to find it. When we did the results in the air and surface samples, it was so contaminated. We found Stachybotrys in the 1000s. It was extraordinary in the bedroom. It was so bad. They walked out of that house with the clothes on and everything else was contaminated. And that house had been cleared with ERMI with a swiffer cloth that she had done but didn't know how to do it properly. I had issues with labs, sending out results to clients and doing a plate sample, doing a little air sample. You know, a lady rang me last week and set off on the health practitioner. I did a samples in my house and I want advice. Oh my god. Was it a building biologist? No. So she said, I said what was the spore count in your water damage room, she said it was two spores per cubic meter. And I went that's not possible, a healthy home has more spores than that. She goes well, I did it and I just got it from the lab. And I don't understand the air results are showing I don't have a problem. I said, there's a possibility you don't have a problem. But to have two spore counts, the only time I find that is if you had the air purifier on. She said, Ah, I had the air purifier on when I did the testing. I said well the results are no null and void. These are the things you should know if you're going to do testing yourself, you need to know the background under what conditions you test, you should be doing moisture mapping. So a lot of labs are making money sending these results tests out. But the clients don't know what they're doing. And they often getting results that don't mean anything or have been impacted by other factors that they don't know about. So I'm developing a short course on mold exposure for the public so they don't get hoodwinked into these ridiculous fogging and ozone and all this BS what to look for in a proper remediator. You know, if you're doing testing what the practitioners should be actually doing, what questions they should ask environmental exposure histories, because I'm seeing too many members of the public going through these people who were taking them for ride in. And a lot of these especially remediators, actually don't know what they're doing.
Erik Johnson:Yea, and what we say and I believe Alicia can attest to this. The testing failures for Stachybotrys in particular, are so rampent that it's reliably unreliable.
Nicole Bijlsma:Yes, Stachy is a big one because it's Stachybotrys is a tertiary colonizer, so you need long term water damage for it to even be there. But the other thing is it stays on the surface. Most of the time it's rare to find it airborne unless it's been disturbed. More often than not we're going to find Stachy in carpets that are wet. So a question I have in my exposure history is have any of the carpets or underlay been wet or been exposed to liquid water? And if they say yes and they haven't removed the carpet, that's a massive red flag. If that carpet wasn't removed in 48 hours, there's going to be Aspergillus Penicillium Stachybotrys. So, wet carpets that will never remove massive red flag there's going to be high levels of fungal particulate in the air sample. If you take up the carpet, you must wear full face respirator, gloves. You will often find tertiary colonizes like Chaetomium and Stachybotrys there, which is very, very deadly. It's a very big health problem.
Erik Johnson:Have you seen people walk out of Stachybotrys literally abandoned their clothes abandoned everything and it seems like they just can't break free this stuff?
Nicole Bijlsma:Yes. You mean the out of the water damage environment and is still sick?
Erik Johnson:Yeah.
Nicole Bijlsma:Yeah, absolutely. So you need not just the building biologist to test it and to provide recommendations on how to remediate and then a proper remediator come in. You also need a good clinician to be able to provide the binders and the treatment. The problem is, once people are diagnosed with CIRS, there's so chemically sensitive, they can't take supplements, like they take vitamins and they're sick, they're nauseous and vomiting. Why, because their chemical overload. So you have to start with the basics, clean air, clean water, you've got to start with a water filter, you've got to start with no chemical personal care products on their body. You've got to look at their washing powders, because the chemicals are already overloaded, you have to go back to the basics, you cannot give them a bag full of herbs and supplements because their detoxification pathways are so clogged, there's so many traffic jams, they can't cope with a vitamin. So that's why you have to go back to basic health, clean air, clean water, no chemicals, no moisturizers, no makeup, none of this to reduce the chemical load, and then feeding the binders in minut amounts, not normal amounts, but tiny amounts. And little bit charcoal little bit of the bind is very small amounts over a long period of time to gently get them back and get the detoxification pathways working at the same time, making sure they're not using the cell phone right next to their ear, they're not sleeping near the router, they don't have Wi Fi enabled devices in their room, otherwise, they're not going to get sleep. EMFs affect sleep quicker than anything else. So they can't have smart meters, meter panels near their bedrooms, they can't have Wi Fi enabled devices in their bedrooms, or they will never going to get better. So these are the things and that's why in the book, I look at how to reduce exposure to all of those things step by step. But with CIRS, it's about a chemical detoxification process, making sure they're out of the environments number one, and then looking at their chemical overload and reducing those chemicals in every possible way. They're washing powders, their makeup, their personal care, they're drinking water especially, and their air, they're not spraying pesticides in the house. They're not bringing, you know chemicals, anti stain chemicals on their furnishings to prevent you know it being marked. All the chemicals need to be reduced, especially the pesticides.
Erik Johnson:We just had a briefing by the American National Institutes of Health, Dr. Walter Courgettes, and he disavowed any knowledge of any of this. They're claiming that they haven't got a clue to start with, how do we get this information into the hands of our federal authorities?
Nicole Bijlsma:Look, research is the way to go. There's no doubt about it. But thing is, you can't get funding. And when you do get funding, the funding goes to researchers who are already established in the industry who actually don't know this very well at all that often don't know what questions to ask. So it's broken across the whole cycle because you're getting professors, many of whom don't even know what's going on. And they're not liaising with patients with CIRS. Whereas us, we're at the ground level, we're seeing this every day. I am seeing multiple sclerosis in a lot of these clients do not have MS, it started with mold. But because the doctors aren't taking environmental exposure histories, the researchers are not familiar with this space. So they're coming up with plans on how to do research, but they don't even know what questions to ask because they've never dealt with patients with CIRS. It's systemic failures across multiple industries. With electromagnetic fields, it's near impossible to get funding, because you're stepping on multi trillion dollar telecommunication industry you're dealing with and this is what I write about in my book. Exposure stands for chemicals, electromagnetic fields are not helped by standards. They compromise with the industry to determine what's practicable in a workplace. That's the problem.
Erik Johnson:Absolutely. That's the problem.
Alicia Swamy:Fantastic, Nicole, you're a firecracker. Wow, thank you so much. This is such great information. And, you know, I know that you're a PhD candidate and you know, you're gonna start that or you are already but I'm just curious as to what you're researching what are you basing your studies on?
Nicole Bijlsma:Well, I've submitted my dissertation, so I'm waiting for it to be marked, I am at the tail end, thank God. I'm looking at environmental exposures on human health and ramifications for general medical practice. So the first research paper I published was the impact of environmental chemicals and human health and the complexities that doctors face trying to look at chemical exposures, gene profiles, synergistic effects, I looked at how exposure stands for chemicals are completely inadequate in the way we assess chemicals. We look at one chemical on a group of rats give increasing doses until 50% die to establish the LD 50, lethal dose 50. It's completely inadequate, completely inadequate. The as you know, large population by monitoring studies such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in the US is testing 3000 members of its population every five years or so and we find it every generation more and more polluted. More and more of us are polluted. We have hundreds of chemicals, there are over 195 million chemicals register for use in the world's largest database, the Chemical Abstracts service, every 60 seconds, another 20 chemicals are registered, that's 200,000 chemicals every week. It's extraordinary. This is out of control. 90% have never been tested for the impact on human health. So what I realized when I started the college is the revolutions never going to happen from the top down, because there's too much money to be made. It has to be happened from the ground up, establish an institution, trained people in building biology to get out to everyone's home and educate them. You can't make informed choices, because exposure stands and not to public health based. So you have to educate people what's going on, so they can make informed choices. Yeah.
Alicia Swamy:Sounds like we need to call Elon Musk and take a flight out of here and go to Mars and start all over again. It's overwhelming you know. You know, yeah, well, look, it's a capitalist society. I'm not Yeah. Thank you for that. Go ahead, Erik. anti capitalist. But the reality is, in the end, its dividends for shareholders. And that often comes at the cost of human health, we've seen that time and time again, environmental tobacco smoke. The problem with the scientific methodology, and having gone through the university system, it's becoming really clear to me is that, you know, it shows cook to establish evidence based medicine and causation is almost impossible. It's weighted to industry to keep their products on the market for 50 years, like environmental tobacco smoke, asbestos, lead, because to show causation, you need so much research to show that, that takes decades. And that's done it, you know, that the burden of proof isn't on industry to prove
Erik Johnson:I was just gonna ask if you had an experience it's not harmful. Instead, it's on researchers to prove it's dangerous. It's ridiculous, the system is stuffed, if they really, if people were going to launch things into the marketplace, they should prove it safe before it goes to the public. This is what the public thinks is going on. That's not what's going on. It's we can produce whatever we want. Yes, you have the restrictive, you have the Toxic Substance Control with Dr. Sprott and his babe safe system where they were Act in the US. But it's still not adequate. You have a grandfather clause, and I'll talk about that in my first paper. The second paper I published was interviewing the top environmental doctors in New Zealand, Australia, to see how wrapping old mattresses with an impermeable membrane to prevent they deal with patients with environmental sensitivities and chronic fatigue syndrome. They stopped us as saying, We will not trained in our undergraduate or postgraduate medical course to deal with this patients, you have to the most important clinical tool you have. And this was my research question, how do you help these patients with chronic fatigue? And what tests do you do to help them? And in the end after, you know, interviewing all these doctors, they said the most important clinical tool a doctor has is the environmental exposure history but none of us were trained how to do it. By listening to our patients over two, three, or four decades of general medical practice, we've come up with our own exposure history, because we found that's the most useful tool to help with these patients to find the timing of exposure, and what they were exposed to. So two journals, medical journals rejected that paper, which is about all of the outcomes of what the doctors were saying, the problems with what they were trained, how they're dealing with these patients with environmental sensitivities. Two medical journals that rejected the paper, because it wasn't relevant to medicine, like what the hell, that's without using the F word I want to, that's ridiculous. It just shows me hear a doctor saying the system is failing them as doctors who are trying to help these patients. And the medical journals are saying, this is not relevant to medicine. So to me and my professor, they we're going, this is stuffed, this is about money at a much higher level. It's not about general medical health, it's not about public health. So the third paper I'm about to publish is a randomized control trial on the impact of a baby monitor on healthy adults sleep, and it's statistically significant. So I'll be able to show that when a baby monitor is in the bedroom of healthy adults, that it impacted their non REM sleep to the point it affected their their sleep patterns. Now, it's very difficult to try and publish this, because it's stepping on too many toes because the baby monitor is a proxy for every Wi Fi enabled device. Wi Fi enabled devices shouldn't be in bedrooms, they affect non REM sleep. sudden infant death syndrome from toxic emissions from the mattresses.
Nicole Bijlsma:Yeah, mattresses have an interesting history, especially in Italy. They used arsenic and that caused a huge amount of problems with the baby exposures and babies did die. I think it was around the 1920s or so because they're using flame retardants a lot of the matrices recently, we had a recall here in Australia, where the the cribs, the COTS were actually contaminated with mold, because they're on boats and they already getting exposed to moisture, either at the timber mill or on the boat. And when they came in, there was all this mold and all these kids were getting sick. This was only like a month ago in Australia. So a lot of this furnishing that's important is already pre contaminated with fungi. That's a problem. But yes, flame retardants and cots are a big issue. Electromagnetic fields, baby monitors, emit some of the highest radio frequencies than any other Wi Fi enabled device. So they should not be in children's room, if you're going to have to monitor your baby because they're at risk of sudden infant death syndrome using a hardwired CCTV or hardwired baby monitor instead.
Erik Johnson:Thank you.
Alicia Swamy:Sorry, I didn't mean to disappear there. Yeah, I mean, this is just such great information. And I really can feel the passion from you in this subject matter. I mean, this is important. I think we all understand how important this is. And I know that Australia has just been taking such a massive beating with flooding and infrastructure damage. What is the government doing? Are they providing subsidies to people who are losing our homes? Is there money that's going to be injected into improving the infrastructure there? What's going on over there?
Nicole Bijlsma:No, it's a disaster here, really. So it basically what's going on is people coming in the insurance companies are coming in there then getting the average Joe Blow to assess the property who has no formal training in mold testing to determine what how much can be claimed on insurance. These homes, many of these homes are remaining water damage for over a year, like not 48 hours, that's all you've got. Over a year. They're not habitable. So it's just a disaster here, because they're not getting people who have trained to do mold testing to test the homes. They're getting remediators in who may or may not be IICRC accredited, who may or may not be following IICRC protocol and remember most of the IICRC, mold remediators haven't done any formal training and testing. So this is where the system is constantly broken. So yes, these homes in Lismore and the Central Coast, they are just it's a disaster, whole communities have been decimated by the flooding and the lack of capacity to help these clients, test these buildings, and be able to remediate. A lot of the remediation that's been done isn't adequate. And, you know, I would think, in a lot of these homes, they just need to be bulldozed, and they need to be rebuilt. However, my real question is why these homes built in floodplains? I mean, that's insanity. You know, recently I did an assessment in Sydney in a different state because I'm based in Melbourne and here's a house we're going through, it's quite water damaged. And the kids have had recurrent tonsillitis, some others chronic fatigue symptoms, CIRS. And I said, when did it begin? We've had two flood events in this street. The storm water system has overflowed this houses and the whole streets built on a floodplain. So the water comes up to a meter. So when I took this history in the first 10 minutes with my 14 students, I said guys game over, because it's all very well for cat to come here to test and remediate. Most buildings can be remediated, but the reality is, can we prevent this happening again? No, we can't. So I would say to her right then and there, move. As a building biologist, prevention is key. How do we stop this happening? What caused the mold in the first place? Do you need to fix the roof? Do you have to improve the drainage? Do you have to change your behavior around the exhaust fans and turning them on when you're showering? This case is the street floods. It's a floodplain. Who will Council allows one someone to build a floodplain? We spent a lot of it's a floodplain, parts of Sydney is a floodplain, parts of Melbourne are going to people's homes and there's a river under their subfloor, I'm sorry, move. This cannot be fixed unless you're gonna spend $60,000 in drainage, if you even can do that, divert the water away. So this is the problem, systemic failings across multiple industries, building construction, medicine, natural therapies, in so far is not diagnosing patients properly, or trades, plumbers who have no idea what they're doing a remediators who don't know what they're doing governments who have no idea what's happening at the ground level. It's, it's failures across multiple industries. It's just crazy.
Alicia Swamy:We're in a ton of groups of support groups to help people and I saw one in a remediation group where, the inspector did good. They had a wonderful remediation plan, you know, step by step thorough, but the remediator didn't follow anything on the plan. It was like are you kidding me? Like, this is insane and it's just the I don't know the ignorance the the easiness to take advantage of others while they're in a in a in a bad situation, it really breaks my heart. And I'm sure it's happening there too. And we just had a chat with Dr. Amie Skilton, such a great person. She actually was impacted by mold in Australia and she was telling us that she's been made hypersensitive that she can't go to restaurants, she can't go to movie theaters, there's only certain hotels that she can actually visit within the region. I'm curious as to what is your experience because it sounds like you were severely compromised in your home? Would you say that you are also a person that may have been made hypersensitive? Can you walk into a building and feel the mold or the badness in a building?
Nicole Bijlsma:No, I look electromagnetic fields differently, I find I tend to get brain fog, poor concentration and memory from exposed to EMFs. I have a history of being exposed to high EMFs. I used to walk along high voltage transmission lines when I was living at my parents place. So you know, we're walking up to 5, 10 kilometers a day and the pathway was beautiful. But then there was a part where there's high levels of high voltage transmission lines. My office at some point had high levels of magnetic fields because the concrete slab was holding current. Every time the Chinese restaurant next to me came to work and put the ovens on it would create high levels of current on the concrete slab. And it was only when I was getting headaches and fatigue and put my gas meter on I'm going oh my god, it's absolutely high. Here, I'm running a college environmental sensitivities. So yes, I find that not so much the mold, etcetera. But it is something that, you know, I'll quantify that with the instruments I have asking environmental exposure questions. Obviously, I've tested my house to make sure that it's dry, that it's clean, that it's lowered EMFs, low in chemicals, the mold is normal fungal ecology. So yes, absolutely. What the problem is that in a western society, in a built up area, it's becoming impossible to be in a clean environment. In a built up area, you're exposed to high levels of radio frequencies from Wi Fi enabled devices from your neighbors, above you, below you beside you. So when people do my course, which is a two year full time, four year part time course, by the end of it, most of them move out have built up areas in the country where there are still issues, by the way, but they're able to manage it because if you can't manage your immediate environment, then you never really get better.
Alicia Swamy:Absolutely. I agree. There is one aspect to Stachybotrys that we find really unique in that it is radiomimic. So in a way it's its own little radiation transmitter and it's crazy because with people who are hypersensitive like me, Erik, Kealy. If there is a Stachybotrys colony or a trichothence producing mold colony within that building. We can point it out right away and say this is bothering me. And so it's like, I wonder how much is the EMF amplifying Stachybotrys' radiometric properties like, there's so many unknowns, we don't know. And it would be so interesting man, it would be really cool to do a research study. If you can pull this off. This would be amazing. A research study on EMFs and how it actually affects a mold colony. I know Klinghardt has his own theory that he you know, did a Faraday cage study and his own little study that wasn't published, and came to the conclusion that when an EMF emitter is near a colony, it's you know, that colony is producing 600 times more mycotoxins because of this relationship. So I'm wondering if you know, if there's any, if you know of any studies that may be happening, or if that's something that you're interested in looking into in the future?
Nicole Bijlsma:Yeah, absolutely. These are important questions that need to be answered. No doubt about it. I mean, we know electromagnetic fields potentiate, the impact of chemicals on the body, there was an interesting study on black carbon, causing adverse health effects in rodents. But when you expose the rodents to black carbon and electromagnetic fields, you quadruple its adverse health effects. So definitely, this is the issue now we have with exposures is the synergistic effects and additive effects of multiple parameters. So multiple chemicals, electromagnetic fields, biotoxins, because the reality is, us as humans were exposed to this were exposed to the biotoxins and the chemicals and the EMFs. But in research, you're only looking at one cause one effect, which is completely limiting. We need large population data sets in order to be able to look at the synergistic effects. And I think the only way to go forward with this and research is metabolomics, where we're looking at the metabolites because it's the downstream effects of both the gene interplay and the chemical interplay, that through the metabolites that were actually altered seeing the impact of the environment on that human being. Metabolomics is the only way to go that I can see future in understanding environmental sensitivities.
Alicia Swamy:Thank you for that. The US right now is really gung ho on trying to solve Long COVID. Long COVID is a big problem in our country and they're trying to lump chronic fatigue syndrome into this long COVID. Now, according to Erik's experience, he's actually a prototype for CFS, the syndrome for the coining of the syndrome. And what was found, when that syndrome was created was actually toxic black mold. So I'm curious as to what Australia is doing? Are they interested in long COVID? Are they looking into it? Are they kind of lumping CFS into long COVID, any progression on that?
Nicole Bijlsma:They are basically keeping long COVID separate from environmental sensitivities, I guess, because there's not a lot of data between it, but the symptoms are almost identical to CIRS aren't they, almost identical. And of course, these patients may already have been very sensitive to environment and then the vaccine or the vaccine and or the infection has just brought them into a CIRS pattern. But of course, they're ignoring all the environmental sensitivities that resulted in in them being susceptible in the first place. So now the government's not doing anything about it. They're just saying, Oh, we've got long COVID and that's the poor people who have that end of story, nothing else is discussed.
Alicia Swamy:That's really a shame because I mean, I can't tell you how many guests that we've had on the show that are from all different walks of life, doctors, researchers, and they all say the same thing that you do, like long COVID is very strangely linked to environmental illness. And that's getting left out into the narrative. And so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out here in the US because again, they're just kind of lumping the two together CFS and long COVID. And, you know, focusing on biomarkers and all that and ignoring the larger picture of it all and that's what's happening in the environment, what's going on with this infection versus you know, the shot.
Nicole Bijlsma:If they do that, they have to acknowledge that there's systemic failures in the building construction industry, they have to acknowledge that the telecommunications rolling out frequencies that may actually not be good for human health, talking about multi trillion dollar industries, so they're not going to do that. I'm going to tell you guys a funny story. So where my husband and I are nomadic, and we travel around, you know, we camp, we go to RV parks, and we meet a great ton of people and we met this couple from Boston and the husband actually worked for the carpenters union. Now he was, you know, like a little guy, but still played an impactful role within the union. And he saw a lot of crazy things like the carpenters union, their main headquarters is near. I think it's right next door to the White House. There was a lot of mob like situations happening within the union, back in the day. And so it's like, hmm, then you start to like, look at this deeper, and I'm thinking like, Wow, I wonder if this is all mixed together, like organized crime along with the carpenters union, along with the building, you know, construction and whatever goes along with that. It's all just this one big capitalistic game, that we're all being played here. And I mean, at the end of the day, we're suffering, right? A lot of people are getting ill, or being made sick and everyone who's just sort of turning a blind eye from this. Yes. To all of the above. Unfortunately.
Alicia Swamy:I didn't tell you that story, or because I wanted to share that. Yeah, Nicole. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Erik did you have any last questions.
Erik Johnson:No, I think that's about wraps it up.
Alicia Swamy:Yeah, it was a great, great conversation. We appreciate you coming on the show. We do have a large listenership from Australia. So if anyone wanted to consult with you or find your information or buy your book, where can they do that? Yes, so you can get the book on book depository of booktopia. It's Healthy Home Healthy Family and my personal websites buildingbiology.com.au And the college is the Australian College of Environmental Studies. The Association of building biologists is a Australasian Society of building biologists aspb.org.au So you can get a building biologist in your area through that website. Thank you so much for the wonderful information and we appreciate your hard work in this industry and we look forward to seeing what you do in the future. Thank you everyone for listening today.