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Exposing Mold
Exposing Mold
Episode 78 - A New Way of Locating Hidden Mold with John Banta
John Banta has 35 years of experience in Indoor Environmental Quality. He is a Certified Industrial Hygienist holding a BA in Environmental Health Sciences. He has trained workers in restoring water damaged buildings, contaminated water clean-ups, mold remediation, and worker health and safety programs throughout the US, Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand. He currently specializes in medically important investigations with 85% of his clients referred to him by their physicians.
John is the co-author of the recently released book titled Prescriptions for a Healthy House, 4th Edition: A Practical Guide for Architects, Builders and Homeowners and author of Extreme Weather Hits Home, Protecting Your Buildings from Climate Change. John's upcoming book Mold Controlled is about recovering buildings from mold and other water damage organisms, finding, avoiding and fixing problems.
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Welcome to our podcast. My name is Kealy Severson and I am here with my co-hosts, EriK Johnson and Alesia Swamy and together we are Exposing Mold. Today we are here with John Banta. John, welcome so much. Thank you so much. I mean, for joining our podcast. You know, you're one of these figures in the mold world where your reputation really, really precedes you and we've been wanting to have you on for a long time. So thank you so much for joining our podcast.
John Banta:Well, thank you for inviting me, I'm looking forward to this.
Kealy Severson:I appreciated that you sent me a copy of the fourth edition of this book,"Prescriptions for a Healthy Home" that you co-authored and I just wanted to ask you a question to start our conversation about hypersensitivity because you notice or I noticed that you wrote something about your family in here and this really piqued my curiosity as someone who's has been severely injured from mold, and I would consider myself a hypersensitive, like a mold reactor. I found it really interesting that you were like thanking your family, and even called out like their health had suffered in the early years of your career when you didn't know as much as you did before. And I thought that was such an interesting statement, because you're acknowledging how much the industry has changed, how much growth has happened, and also the type of sensitivities that can really be causing harm by people not understanding this issue in depth. And I was just wondering, I know this is a little bit of a personal question to start, but if you could just share with us a little bit about what that was like for you if they did suffer health symptoms, and if you know as your knowledge grew that helped them?
John Banta:So my wife and I got married in 1976, our first daughter was born in 1980, and I had always been a fan of of TV shows like Bob Villa's, "This Old House." And just you know, really liked the concept of fixing up old places, but really had no background or experience. And actually the first house that we purchased was out in the middle of a neighborhood that was surrounded by arm and door troops. And so there was a lot of crop dusting that was going on and all kinds of things there. But that particular house and again, I was a complete novice, we purchased it and discovered that the kitchen sink was leaking so we had mold back behind that cabinet. We had a built in swamp cooler, which is bad enough by itself if they're not kept clean and maintained. But in this case, this one was dripping into the wall cavities. And then when my wife was nine months pregnant and 19 at the place actually took on a half an inch of water. I was outside trying to sandbag and keep it from coming in, while my wife nine months pregnant was mopping it up and doing the best that she could. But you know, we did like a lot of new parents do we got the nursery ready for our little one, and new carpet new paint brought her home and almost immediately she began reacting to the indoor environment. Looking back I'm pretty sure that our carpet was loaded with 4PC, which is a very noxious, volatile compound that that has that new carpet sort of smell and hard on her, and hard on me too. You know, I mean, I was working at the University of California Davis at the time as a medical research technician amongst other things. And so during the time that I was there, I was exposed to enough formaldehyde to pickle an elephant. And basically, we went through a lot of health problems in that home. And we ended up selling it because of the chemical exposures, not even realizing that, you know, the the areas of mold growth was was a likely issue as well. Bought an old Victorian 1906 that had been built in, and I started preparing the outside it was in bad condition. And so I started prepping it to get it ready for, for painting. And two weeks into that process. I mean, I'm doing this myself nights and weekends, two weeks into the process, our oldest daughter really started failing to thrive. You go in the morning to wake her up, ask her a question, and she just, you know, very little response. And it turned out I had poisoned my family with lead, lead based paint. The action level back then in 1980, was 40 micrograms per deciliter of blood. The current action level actually, I'm not completely up to date on this. I haven't been following this closely as I probably should. But it was 10, for a long time, there was talk about reducing it down to five micrograms per deciliter of blood. I don't know if that's actually happened. But our oldest daughter's lead level was 57, micrograms, my, my level was 43. And my wife's was 40. So we all ended up having to undergo chelation, very grateful for the clinical ecologist, who was also our daughter's pediatrician, we got her in right away, and about five minutes into her workup. She looked right at me. And she said, is anybody in your neighborhood doing any work with lead based paint? And as soon as she said, it was like, how could I have been so stupid? Yeah, that's exactly what we were doing. So that house didn't have a mold problem, but ended up having to learn how to deal with the lead. We were a young married couple, we didn't have the money to hire a company to come in do lead abatement, but was fortunately able to take advantage of the university research library and understand what the concepts were behind, cleaning up lead based paint and not having it, you know, continue to cause exposures. And so we went into a program of monitoring to make sure that our levels came down and stayed down. And and I instituted lead safe work practices, or that's what we're calling them today. And you know, so that was my introduction. By 1987, I had started doing full time environmental investigations, and most of my work back then was lead, asbestos, and radon, and formaldehyde. But this whole mold thing kept popping up. And and I became more and more interested in it. I ended up going back to school, getting my degree in Environmental Health Sciences, from Prescott college, was actually able to do a mentored learning program for some of my courses and was honored to have Dr. Chin Yang as my mentor, in mycology, in microbiology, and, you know, just started paying more and more attention to this whole mold thing. By 1997, so 10 years into my career, I went to work for Jim Holland, at RestCon Environmental in Sacramento, California. And basically, Jim is the smartest person that I know with regards to water damage, and restoration work and how to approach those things from the standpoint of actually getting buildings dry in ways that can prevent biological organisms from from actively growing. So he was the water damage expert side of our company, and he brought me in as the mold expert side. Except that, you know, back then 25 years ago, as Erik can attest, we were all learning, learning a lot on a fast learning curve ever since. But basically, by the time that I joined RestCon environmental, it was quite clear that my wife was mold sensitive, and suffering from from mold exposure as well. So when we moved to California, we moved from Prescott, Arizona, when we moved to California, I was able to use the things that I had learned over the years to basically find a good home that did not have a mold problem. And my wife did very well in it. About 10 years later, we sold it because the nearby airport had changed their flight path and had turned our home into a flight path. And so it was just too noisy, was able to buy a second house that didn't have a mold problem. And a couple of things happen while we owned it but was always able to get them taken care of my wife went through a lot of healing during that first home and in the second home. She was a real Canary where she was able to, you know sense things. I came home from work one evening, she met me at the door and she said there's something wrong in the kitchen and I said okay, what's wrong? And she said, That's not my job. That's your her job. So that night I was, you know, I pulled the refrigerator out. And basically the water supply line for the refrigerator had started to leak. And I was fortunate she caught it quickly. And she didn't know what was wrong, but she knew something was wrong. And there was only about six square inches of visible mold. But there was only a couple square feet of actual water. And none of it had gotten behind any of the cabinets on either side. So that night, I had my air filtration device, HEPA vacuum cleaner, and containment materials out and was doing remediation in our own home. So we lived in that home until just a little bit after COVID started and lockdown started to occur. And at that point, we sold that home, moved back to Prescott, Arizona, which is the home that we're in now and actually purchased a home knowing that it had a mold problem in it. And you know, basically had spent 90 days looking for a place to buy, looked at 50 places, and had rejected all of them, not always because of mold, but had rejected all of them for one reason or another. And at the end of the 90 days, the real estate agent was getting a little perturbed, you know, going through 50 homes and not accepting any of them. She pulled me off to the side and she said, John, you've been telling me about what you do for a living. Isn't it about time you put your money where your mouth is? I asked her what that meant. And she said, Well, on your first or second day looking, you saw a place, you liked the location, you liked the layout. Basically, you liked everything about it, except you saw three separate areas of growth, mold growth, and you told me you weren't gonna buy a place that had a mold problem, because your wife, she said, but you've been telling me all about, you know, the people that you've worked with, and the things that you've done, seems to me that this place, they've already dropped the price by$40,000. It's been on the market for almost 90 days now. I think I can get them to drop the price further, if I can get a good price for you, where you believe that you can take care of the problems, will you buy it? So now it was time to go back to my wife and ask her because she's, she's the ultimate authority on these things, because she's the one that's getting sick. And so I asked her and, and she looked at me and she said, John, I trust you, don't mess up. And so she went off to live with our youngest daughter who was just getting ready to have a new grandchild for us. And so she spent six weeks there, I spent six weeks in the house, remediating it myself. And during that time, I developed a new form of testing that I've been using a whole lot more now for my clients, I'm calling it pathways testing, I think we may end up talking a little bit about that later on. But that was where I actually first pulled this methodology together and started getting excited about it, because it actually helped me find two additional areas of hidden mold without any destructive types of investigation. So I knew where the problems with mold were in the home before I got started.
Kealy Severson:Can you tell us now a little bit more about that testing and how it works to find the sources? That's interesting.
John Banta:Sure. Well, so you know, the whole concept of pathways. There's the pathway that we have to follow to get from a moldy place to a successful place for people to reoccupy when they have sensitivities. You know, I'm not hypersensitive to mold. If I were, I couldn't have been doing this for the last 35 years, like I have been. But you know, we always, of course, need to cater to the most sensitive person in the household. And so anyway, the concept behind it is that our homes are built out of inert materials like metal, glass, concrete, plastics, things of that nature, which don't support mold growth by themselves. If they get dirty, and they get damp, then sure, mold can grow on those surfaces, but it's not growing in the material, the materials not providing the nutrients, per se. And then our buildings are built out of carbohydrates, wood and paper and cardboard types of products. So the framing, of course, sheet rock with gypsum, wallboard, you know, paper on the outside of it, and older homes bulletin board, various types of building papers, cellulose installations, all of these given enough time and moisture can end up developing mold growth. And when mold starts to grow on it, it converts the carbohydrates in those materials into peptide bonds and proteins. Basically, all allergens are made up of proteins and peptide bonds. And so various enzymes and things like that, again, proteins and peptide bonds, but the idea is that this is what makes up their cellular structure. And so when you go from having maybe a normal have fewer than 25 organisms per square inch all the way up to between one to 10 million per square inch in an area that's got visible mold growth on it. Basically, that's a lot of protein that's being produced in a very small, visible area. And what we found is that, you know, if you've got, let's say 1 million in a small confined area, maybe we got a square foot,. If you take a look six inches out from where that growth is, you're going to find that there's still an elevated level, because those surfaces, they get damp, they don't stay wet, as long, so they don't grow as much. But you could have 100,000 colony forming units per square inch, or even 1000 or less per square inch, and have that be too much for people that have sensitivities. And so we're able to use these methods to help find the hotspots. Basically, there has to be a pathway for the organisms to get from the hidden location inside the wall, out into the living space. If you have an airtight wall assembly, that may not be real good from the standpoint of it drying out as quickly or quickly enough. But the thing is, if it is airtight, then problems that are hidden in there can't necessarily migrate out in into the direction into the interior. However, our homes are filled with nooks and crannies, you know, I mean, they are rarely built airtight. And even if they are airtight, things happen, that change that buildings will settle, I find that I oftentimes get more calls from the San Francisco Bay Area after an earthquake, because it shakes things up, and it opens up new cracks and pathways. And so what we're looking for with this testing method is where are these organisms working their way out of the living space, and the primary location, the number one spot that we find it is where the baseboard meets the top of the floor. So assuming that we have a hard surface floor, frequently, we'll have a space or opening where the baseboard meets the top of the floor a large enough to slip a business card into. And really a crack the size of a human hair is like a freeway for mold to migrate out of those hidden types of locations. So your typical human hairs about 100 microns and cross sectional diameter, where your typical mold spore is about 2 to 20 microns in size. And that doesn't even consider that as mold gets older, goes dormant, eventually dies off, it starts to break down into smaller and smaller particles. And those tiny particles become extremely well they're responsible, that's the term we use, we inhale them all the way down into the air sacs in our lungs, where they can cross through that barrier between the alveoli and the circulatory system, and we be absorbed into our circulatory system. So in effect, as mold becomes older, it's been hypothesized that it becomes more dangerous and one of the things that I've been thinking about is basically we become human air purifiers. As we inhale these things into our lungs, it's being filtered out, or it's being passed through into our circulatory system. And if we're in good health, hopefully, it's going to be filtered out and broken down by our various organs, like liver and kidneys, and things of that nature that help to detoxify us or remove problem particles from our system. So anyway, with pathways, we we do the testing the exact same way in every single location throughout the home, the primary place that we look at is that space right next to where the floor and the baseboard meet, we use a special swab for collecting the sample, which is made out of microfibers. Microfibers do an amazing job of picking up the tiny particles. And that's that's one of the big things that I really wish people would do, instead of using paper towels or terry cloth towels, I wish remediators would switch to using the disposable microfiber because they just do such a far superior job to picking things up. And so we use these swabs to collect the samples by collecting over the same size surface area for every sample, we can compare them all to one another, and we can get an idea where are hotspots are and where the normal levels are. And it helps to focus in on on those locations where we've got, you know, higher levels of peptide bonds and proteins. So we can use it before any remediation to help identify hidden types of areas. Typically, I like to see something like an ERMI first, or actually in our case, we're using a modified he we call it a an EPA 39 because we actually add three additional organisms to that sample. But in any case, when we find a hotspot, then we have to go into the mode of determining is that hotspot actually a mold or bacterial problem from water damage, or is it something else? So like for example, if I were to spill an egg on the floor, eggs are loaded with protein and I were to clean it up but not do a very good job and I collected a swab from that area, I'm going to come up with a real high level of proteins and peptide bonds. And so what we have to do is figure out, is this really a problem, or is it just something that needs more cleaning to get it taken care of. And so typically, what we'll do after we have our initial indications of where the hotspots are, is will have the place cleaned, the homeowner will hire a company to come in and, and do cleaning, or in a lot of cases, I find a lot of people are very good at cleaning places themselves, and oftentimes will do a better job because they're, you know, it's their health, but it's that's on the line. So I'm not necessarily suggesting that people that have the higher degree of sensitivities do it, but maybe a family member, or a friend or somebody that's willing to help them, or even a hired housekeeper that they can teach in the methods of effective cleaning. But the idea is to get it cleaned. And then I always encourage people to test it immediately after the cleaning has been done, to see whether the cleaning was effective or not because what we're going to do then is wait approximately one to two weeks for the building to start to reach a new equilibrium and go back into those areas that were hotspots the first time around and retest and see whether or not the levels are rising gradually or coming up exponentially. And if they're coming up exponentially, then that becomes a place where it's it's not going to be an egg that spilled on the floor of the egg was cleaned up, it was tested clean. But if something is coming up at a rapid rate or more rapid rate, then there's something in that wall cavity that is working its way out. And you know, things like rodent feces and pollens certainly can affect these results. But what we find is that it's the mold spores and fragments and the bacteria that are able to work their way out more readily. The the other things seem to come out at a much slower rate, if they're even there.
Kealy Severson:Thank you for explaining that. That's quite the mouthful with the pathways testing. But it's interesting that there's something that can help people determine if there's a local source issue that needs to be remedied because I know sometimes people are just poking into their walls. And it's like, you know, we did an interview with Brian Karr, well, if you're eight inches away from where that colony is growing, how many holes do you need in your walls to find out what's really in there?
John Banta:Yeah, yeah. And so we color code our results, green means that the levels of proteins and peptide bonds are low. Yellow means that they're higher than we would like them to be, but not terrible. Although there's a spectrum, you know, there's the low end of the yellows, and there's the high end. The high end of the yellows is approaching what we would list as orange. And we diagram all this out on on floor plans, and then we'll show the colored spots, and then we'll do them sequentially. So you can see that initially, it was an orange area, or a red area. And then with cleaning, it went down to green. And then two weeks later, it's back up into the high yellow, almost orange range. And so that allows us to then say, hey, when we look at the other areas, the control areas, you know, we have this gradual rise where it might go up a little bit, but it's not going up significantly. And so the hot spots are the ones that that we really need to pay attention to. Now, one of the real advantages of this testing, it doesn't tell us whether it's mold doesn't tell us whether it's bacteria or something else, but it's relatively cheap. It's based on 100 year old technology, that's called Biuret testing, which was able to identify proteins and peptide bonds and, and was used a whole lot for, you know, the food industry in the early years. I can remember in high school, in my physiology class, we did some chemistry tests for for starches and fats and simple sugars and more complex carbohydrates and proteins. And although I don't remember specifically that many years ago, I'm pretty sure that this is a derivative of that method. What we're doing now is actually 1000 times more sensitive than the original Biuret method. Did I say 1000, I met 100 times 100 times more sensitive. And and the other thing is, it's not sensitive to soaps or detergents, which the original Biuret method was very sensitive to them. Of course, people use soaps and detergents in their homes. So we want something that's not going to show us a false reading based on the soaps or detergents. But it's relatively inexpensive. We're able to offer it for like $10 per sample, but we need to have a lot of samples we usually figure about 100 samples per 1000 square feet of building so you know I mean, it's not cheap, but at the same time, it's a lot cheaper than then cutting those, you know, eight or so holes in various areas and not finding it that way. So it's a non destructive method. did it. But again, if there's no pathway, if things are sealed up tight, you won't find it that way. So sometimes we'll be finding high levels within the living space and, and the baseboards are all sealed up tight, and then we have to start looking well is it coming in around cracks and crevices around the window, is it coming through electrical outlets, when we have situations up in ceilings, the spores are coming down from the cathedral ceiling that's improperly ventilated, they tend to filter out and spread out. So we find a more even distribution across the entire floor. Whereas with things coming from the wall cavities, we see that greatest buildup of the highest level of of the the biomass, whatever it is in that inch to two inches away from the wall. So from the baseboard, a few inches out is is the highest. And so we're also finding a lot of good applications with regards to monitoring and cleaning, you know, you get a new housekeeper and you're not sure if they're doing a good job, when they're cleaning. You can do a bunch of these tests and see whether they're getting it down into the green. And then you can also monitor over time and see how long does it take to leave what we consider an acceptable level and get up into higher levels of peptide bonds and proteins, that can guide how often cleaning is necessary.
Kealy Severson:Can I ask a question? Have you ever had a hypersensitive person complain about still being symptomatic after it reached what you consider the acceptable level? The green?
John Banta:Yes, yeah. And that's one of the things that we have to recognize is, you know, like, for example, with with the HERTSMI-2 five organism system for evaluating for conditions that would tend to exacerbate chronic inflammatory response syndrome developed by Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker. You know, he's he's got his his scale where he says, if your hurts me, numbers are below 10, then it's likely to be very good. But he still says that in 1.3% of the cases, he's still going to have a sensitivity amongst them. And the same is true on the higher end of things. He says that above 16% people with CRS are going to have problems, but that in 1.3% of the cases, you know, you'll still have people that are non symptomatic, even at those very high levels that would cause problems for, you know, the vast majority of people. So, yes, sensitivities are one of those things, that can be a real challenge to deal with. And fortunately, I would say right now, probably 80% of my clientele is referred by their physicians. And working as a team is very helpful from the standpoint of, they have their biological testing that they can do with their patients, we can do the various types of investigations and tests with the building. And by working together, oftentimes, they're able to come back and say, Well, it seems like this symptomology is residual, you know, we're finding that there various tests, and whether it's C4A or visual continuity, whatever, we're finding that they're getting better that they're back into the normal range. But you know, maybe this is something that's, that's going to take some time for them to clear. In my wife's case, you know, it's been 25 years that she's been able to be in good living environments. And so, if she gets into a place that's got a problem, she will generally know it within a minute or two. And, and she'll make a decision. Is this something that I really need to stay here? Or is this something that I'm going to exit and let John make the explanations why we're not going to stay for the dinner party that we were invited to?
Kealy Severson:You know, I caught wind of that conversation or that that rhetoric between the two of you or watching a podcast you did and you mentioned that you guys were traveling to Ireland and you had made considerations to have the be in the Airbnb is checked out. But, you know, there was just one where you made me giggle when you said it like, well, and she doesn't even bother making excuses anymore. Like she just leaves and leaves me to deal with it. And we're like, yeah, as it should be like.
John Banta:Absolutely. You know, and there may be circumstances you know, like if a family members getting wet, married and the reception hall is got a problem. My wife might choose to stay and then suffer for four days after that. In my wife's case, she doesn't have brain fog. She's as sharp as can be trouble keeping up with or sometimes but she does have a problem with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia pain. And if she stays beyond that particular trigger point, we just know it's going to take her about four days to clear when she gets back into into a good place.
Kealy Severson:It sounds like she's aware of her body enough where despite her sensitivities, she can either use her senses as a radar to keep her safe or she just knows what to expect.
John Banta:Yeah, you know, the other thing is with so often it's not just one thing, it's not just mold or bacteria or actinomyces, or something that has to do with water damage. My wife also has Lyme disease and we think it's likely that she's got some co infections too. So in that case, she has to, you know, watch her diet and exercise moderately and she describes it as not poking the beast. You know, keep it keep it under wraps, don't don't do things that are going to cause it to have flare ups.
Kealy Severson:Yeah, I think that's interesting. I feel like there's this ongoing question of do all mold hypersensitive do we have an undiagnosed Lyme, Lyme infection because we just, we see it so much in mold hypersensitivity, where it's actually to the point where it can be the missing piece and a Lyme sufferers recovery, where they can do all of the Lyme treatment under the sun, but if they don't figure out that sensitivity to mold piece, they're just, they're just not recovering. Yeah, but we don't have to spend a ton of time talking about Lyme. I'd like to transition because you mentioned something really interesting about Stachybotrys Chlorohanata. I'm just wondering, what are your insights on this?
John Banta:Say that three times real fast. So, you know, I am a fan of ERMI. I'm not a fan of the ERMI score. I think that when EPA developed it, they really did a disservice and what ended up happening was they got criticized for it quite severely. And and then their reaction to it was an overreaction by basically making the statement that the testing method was only for research purposes. And of course, you know, that was, it was 20 years ago, that that EPA, developed ERMI and got the patent for it. And actually, it's been a little over 20 years ago, I believe it was may have? Well, I believe their patent expired in May of 2020. And so it's been 20 years. And, you know, I have some mixed feelings. I I think the EPA did a wonderful thing when they developed it. But then I think they didn't show the intestinal fortitude that they should have with regards to sticking up for the test method. And then the other thing I don't think they did was they didn't continue to develop it for the use by Environmental Consultants and people that that really need these higher levels of detection in order to figure out what's going on. It wasn't too long ago that I was reviewing a study that was talking about air sampling and what it was showing was that in order to use even the the PCR, which is ERMI technology, the DNA technology, you really needed to be collecting about a 48 hour air sample in order to have a significant period of time for there to be the collections during the periods of variability. So when EPA developed this methodology, what they did was they actually developed the primers and probes for approximately 100 different species of molds. And the only one that they did with regards to Stachybotrys, they're probably I believe about 50 different species of Stachybotrys. But the the primary one that they did was Stachybotrys Chartarum, that's what everybody's been talking about for decades now. But there there is no, there is no DNA testing for the Stachybotrys Chlorohanata and it sounding like that's going to be a really important one. The other thing is, you know, for example, Fusarium species of mold, you know, we're hearing about that being added in now as a mycotoxin type of testing that's being done. But when we don't have the the ability to test for those organisms, or when we only have the ability to test for them using culturable methods, that leaves a whole range of things that we may not be able to be aware of. So as an example, Stachybotrys Chartarum, has been studied and found to have a half life. I'm trying to remember if it was seven months or nine months it was published in the field guide for bioaerosols second edition, they got a little chart that talks about the half life for certain types of molds. Let's just say it was less than a year, the half life for Stachybotrys was less than a year. What that means is if you go through four cycles, you know, so from 100% to 50%, to 25% to 12% to, you know, less than 7%. That's what happens over the course of four years in terms of it dying off. And so, a condition or water damage condition that's, let's say a decade old, it might be all completely dead, and yet, it's there. It's still just as much of a problem from the standpoint of allergens and and toxins. Not only that, but right now I think they're only able to test for about 13 different types of toxins associated with with Stachybotrys of the tricolours thing types of toxins. And it's been estimated that there are over 200 different types of biotoxins that Stachybotrys can produce. So, you know, there could be things that are going on in our homes based on bio toxins that we have no way right now from a technology standpoint of measuring, but we can measure the Stachybotrys Chartarum and unfortunately, the Chlorohanata was not one of the organisms that they developed it for. And in fact, over the last 20 years, nothing has happened with that nobody has developed any more primers and probes for different types of molds than what those original 100 were. And I think we really need to be looking at that. You know, it's it's not that hard to develop a primer and probe that there. There are laboratories out there that are doing this commercially all the time. And now that the EPA is patent has expired, I am looking forward to the days when these become more widely available that as somebody who's you know, a researcher or an investigator like myself, and I also do research but I can go to the developers of the various primers and probes and say, Hey, this is what we need. Here are 10 samples of this particular type of mold, different locations that it was collected from, we'd like you to develop the appropriate primers and probes. And I think that the technologies that we have today are just so far advanced. Unfortunately, it's expensive to use the new technologies. But what they tell us it's like, during my first years doing this, if we didn't find the actual growth and couldn't collect the tape lift off of it to identify the type of organism. And it had been something from 10,15,20,50 years earlier, we may not find the viable organisms necessary to culture it and figure out what's going on. Exciting times.
Erik Johnson:What about the common substances that defeat PCR testing?
John Banta:Oh, inhibition? So that's been a real interest of mine. And in fact, I can't remember I think it was at the at the surviving mold conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida that you presented in Erik? I can't remember if that's where I did my presentation on inhibition.
Erik Johnson:Yeah, in fact, I've recorded a little of it.
John Banta:Okay. Very good. Well, that's, we, we know that there are inhibitors that cause problems with DNA analysis. And, you know, I mean, the types of inhibitors that do that have been extensively studied for forensics, for police work, for example, they have to know, you know, when, when they can't use evidence in court for various crimes and, and things like that. And so, we've been able to find out a number of things that cause inhibition based on, on information from police work, blood and urine are both inhibitors. And so if you have, if you have cat urine, on a surface that you're collecting your sample from, it may cause an inhibition. And so I'm gonna, I'm gonna rag on laboratories for a minute. There, there are quite a number of laboratories out there that are doing various types of PCR testing. And with regards to the ones that were licensed by EPA, the EPA did not dictate all of the quality control measures are the things that should be reporting. And I as an environmental consultant, I want to be able to look at a report from laboratory and see the quality control measures that tell me, you know, what has happened with regards to a sample. So I want to know that there was enough dust in the sample, I want them to weigh the sample before they analyze it, and then tell me how much weight of dust there actually was, and then how much they actually used. I also want them to be doing some quality control work. There's an organism called Geotrichum candidum. It's a type of mold. And there is a primer and probe for it that was developed by EPA 20 years ago, but it's not commonly found in residential structures. When EPA first developed this, they went out and they tested 1097 homes throughout the country. And they ran these various tests on it. And then they developed the ERMI score, which again, I don't very much like I think it can be misleading. But then they also reported on a value called the geometric mean, and what the geometric mean it's a statistical value that helps to focus on what is normal. And so if you have an outlier, it's not going to record it. Let me give you an example. If I had five houses and the numbers were one spore equivalent per milligram of dust of Stachybotrys two spore equivalents, three spore equivalents, four spore equivalents and a million spore equivalents. If I took the average of those five samples, the average went end up being 200,000, which doesn't really represent the million very well, nor does it represent the 1, 2, 3, and 4 very well. On the other hand, if I took the geometric mean of 1,2,3,4, and a million, and calculated that the geometric mean for that is 27. And I would argue that 27 is a whole lot closer to 1,2,3,4, and a lot more representative of what normal would be, as opposed to 27 being representative of a million. So anyway, we have that value of the geometric mean, which I find to be very valuable for helping us to understand how our homes in comparison to how is a particular home in comparison to what was seen in that 1097 out there. And then about three years ago, EPA repeated that study with another 703 homes, and the values on the geometric mean came back largely the same, which gives us even more confidence that using this method for interpreting those results is valid. And then we're very fortunate to have Dr. Bonnie Passmore on our staff. Dr. Pasmore has her PhD in biochemistry and physics. And she worked at UC Davis for about 10 years before joining us almost 20 years ago. And during that time that she was working at UC Davis, she was actually testing some of the first thermo cyclers that we're being developed to automate PCR testing. And so she has a wealth of understanding and a wealth of knowledge, that's been very helpful. But in any case, getting back to the Geotrichum control, if you get an unknown sample from your home, and you add a known quantity of Geotrichum candidum to that sample, and then you run that sample, the results that you get back should report the approximate amount of Geotrichum candidum that you added to the sample. And if for some reason it's not there, then the question is what's happened? Well, what's happened is there's some form of inhibition that has caused problems. So we were able to work with a laboratory that was willing to do the Geotrichum control, we supplied them with spiked samples of Stachybotrys that we had added various other types of things to, and we tested about 27 different substances, that could be spilled in, in a home. So we tested coffee, and milk and alcohol and just all kinds of things. And what we found was about a half a dozen of those substances turned out from that list to be inhibitors. Tea tree oil was an inhibitor, and that finding that the type of of biocide it's a natural phenolic compound. It's a it's a natural biocide, which should kill, but what ends up happening is the tea tree oil actually inhibits the ability for the DNA to be analyzed. And so you could get a result back that says nothing, nothing there. And it's just absolutely false. You know, there's a lot of statements that have been made about, oh, mold is everywhere, and therefore we shouldn't worry about it. Well, some molds are everywhere. And those some molds tend not to be the problems that we find in indoor environments that have gotten water damaged. And the key difference, I believe, is temperature. You know, Stachybotrys loves to grow at 68 degrees and higher, and it grows very poorly at temperatures of below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Whereas Cladosporium, the most common outdoor mold, it doesn't like temperatures around 68 degrees, which is the temperature we keep our own set. Instead, it grows really well at 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and lower. And in fact, a lot of species Cladosporium will grow all the way down to freezing. And so those are the molds, the cold loving molds, for most parts of the United States tend to be the ones that are selected year round, I mean, most nights it drops down well below, you know, 68 degrees throughout the United States. And so if you can't maintain that temperature for a long enough period of time, then the organisms aren't going to grow. And so we find that the Penicilliums and Aspergillus is that grow in water damage scenarios typically are mesophilic. In the middle, same temperatures that we like, we like to be in the middle. And those are the ones that tend to grow in a water damage situation. Now granted, there are some Penicilliums that will grow at much colder temperatures. We've all seen mold developing our refrigerator on different types of food items. But those are not the same types of organisms that we typically find as a problem with regards to water damage. Doesn't mean I'm encouraging people to eat that moldy piece of fruit. No, I'm not, but it's probably not the same types of organisms.
Erik Johnson:I heard a rumor that gypsum might be a PCR inhibitor.
John Banta:So with gypsum we actually tested that gypsum in and of itself is not an inhibitor. However, a lot of gypsum wallboard has clay in it. And it turns out that clay is an inhibitor. When we were doing our initial 27 things to look at inhibitors, we were trying to get pure cat urine to test and kitties don't like to cooperate with providing those kinds of samples. So what we did was we allowed the cat to go in the litter box, we got the purest form of clay litter that we could, we let the cat go in the litter box. And then we did two samples, we did clay, and we did cat urine and clay mix together. And they were both inhibited, we couldn't get any results from either one of them. And that's one of the boom on goes to the light bulb. Some not many, but some of my clients have had places made out of Adobe, others have had places made out of straw clay, that's a big thing for my co author Paula Baker did a report for our book, prescriptions for a healthy house, her husband and her have promoted that system of construction for as long as I've known them. And anyway, and then there are clay washers that are used instead of paint. And we've found lots of those buildings are inhibited, we can't get the results back. If you get an ERMI that comes back with everything completely non detected, including the group twos, which would be the Cladosporium and in various other types of common outdoor sorts of molds, it's probably not a valid result, it's probably because there was clay, or rust, iron oxide will do it. The literature says that just about any kind of metal oxide, so aluminum oxide, lead oxide from lead based paint. Let's see. So based on our tea tree oil research, we found that phenolics are inhibitors. And if you look at a lot of the essential oils that are being used in various types of mold treatments, I'm of the opinion that they oftentimes are causing an inhibition of the results, not actually getting rid of it or killing it making it disappear. Not only that, but I find so many of my clients are really hypersensitive to odors and essential oils, you know, you're just replacing one type of problem with another, especially when you consider there's a big difference between, you know, a couple of drops of an essential oil in a in a big pot of soup, versus using it over 1000 square feet of building. It just it doesn't make sense to me.
Erik Johnson:Back to a Chlorohanata, the most frightening thing I heard at the Fort Lauderdale conference was that it produces immune suppressive compounds without the inflammatory ones that would give you warning to its presence.
John Banta:Yeah. And the concern there for me. I mean, that's a concern, but I'm not a doctor. So I get to, I get to gloss over those things because, you know, I don't practice medicine. I practice building related types of investigations. But here's the thing, if it is a problem, we don't have a good test for it. Once it starts to break down, you know, I mean, you can you can culture it when it's young and new and fresh, and find it that way or do a tape lift and find it that way. But if we're looking at it from the standpoint of several decades old, I have no idea what it's what its life expectancy is we know what it is for Stachybotrys Chartarum, we dont for sure for Stachybotrys Chlorohanata. And so are we dealing with levels of of biotoxins that it produces that are still present decades later, but we have no, no way right now to test for it? So I really hope that the EPA is patent expiring will result in companies that develop primers and probes starting to make these things available, we'll certainly add them into our our panel, as soon as it's available. And I'm I haven't had time. But I really do want to see that end up happening.
Erik Johnson:There's a lot of discussion about everything has to be thrown away, people are tossing all their possessions, everything they own. Well, I put my stuff in storage, and I couldn't even visit it for several years. But at the five year mark, it completely melted away all the toxic value disappeared and all the stuff that I had in there, even without cleaning, became completely inert after five years.
John Banta:And one of the questions in my mind, and I don't have an answer for it. And I'm not a doctor. But I wonder if the toxins are disappearing, or if or if you were developing more of an ability to tolerate, you know, they've got the they've got the bucket concept where everything is fine, too. You filled the bucket to the top and then it starts spilling over and at least from my wife's experience, as she got further away from when she was being highly reactive, the bucket got bigger, so that there was more space to fill it and so very likely could be a combination of the two.
Erik Johnson:Well of course I wanted to find that out. So I had somebody else reproduce this experience and found independently, that it was the same thing with the five year mark. And we actually went back and forth and cross checked each other, so that we can verify that it was the same for both of us, even though our mold experience was in different places.
John Banta:Have you published? Haha.
Erik Johnson:No, I thought, we need to look into this because a lot of people are throwing things away on the basis that it will never die down and we're not sure if that's true or not.
John Banta:So, you know, it's, it's been my experience that in most cases, hard surface items can be cleaned, effectively. But, you know, a lot of people, when I watch them do the cleaning, they're either using ineffective methods, or they're skipping spots, they're not, you know, doing as thorough of a job as they need to. And so I do encourage people, you know, there's some things that should have been thrown away, whether it had a mold problem or not. And so those things you automatically get rid of, and then they're the things that that are easy to clean, and not a big deal from that standpoint. And I think that those are real important and helpful things to do. But I've had people that have thrown away family memorabilia, their childhood photos, photos of their parents, and things like that. And once they, you know, start feeling better and realize that it's gone. It's just very sad. And so I encourage people to store things, you can always make the decision to throw it away later. But if you wrap something up, seal it up tightly in packaging, then you know, it should stay good. The one thing that I would tell people they need to do is add some desiccant packets, silica gel packets are easily available, and you don't want to be trapping the moisture inside a box or something like that, or plastic wrap, because it can result in mold growth inside. If you have a temperature change. If the temperature drops, then the humidity levels will rise a 20 degree difference in temperature, as the temperature drops 20 degrees, the relative humidity goes up by 100%. So a drop going from 77 degrees Fahrenheit to 57 degrees Fahrenheit. If you have 50% relative humidity inside a box that gets sealed up, it will rise up to 100%. And of course, at 100%, there's going to be enough moisture for a lot of different types of molds to grow. I just have a question, I feel like I know the answer to this question. But if there's a chance you could give me a different answer. My son's in a moldy Middle School and I'm actively avoiding mold. We have protocols in place for his clothes and his shower when he comes home and there's no alternative schooling methods available. What do you recommend that people wash our clothes with? Even though I've had this protocol in place, his clothing was completely ruined by the end of the year. So this follow up year, we're going to do it separately where we have clothes that are just for school and clothes that are just for the home. But are there any washing protocols that can stop this stuff from taking hold and actually ruining clothes because I'm one of those people that's reacting to non porous items that no matter what I do, I can't get clean. Well, and that that is difficult. One thing I would suggest is that you take a look at what kind of synthetic materials, you might be wearing clothing wise. Just like a magnet, opposites attract. And so if you have natural mold spores with negative charge and synthetic clothing with a positive charge, you become like a dust magnet and attract these sorts of things in. I have found that in most cases laundering with a regular soap or detergent. I like branch basics. I like Seventh Generation free and clear. But typically this will get the spores out. Now if you've had actual growth that's occurred in a different story. But if it's just spores and fragments that have gotten into the materials, then typically that will take them out. And I find that line drying is usually more acceptable than then drying in a clothes dryer. One of the things I've been able to track down on several occasions have been clients that have popped their clothes into clothes dryers in moldy parts of the home. And what the clothes dryer is doing is creating a negative pressure that's pulling a higher concentration of those spores out. And then it's getting into the air and it's passing through the clothing as the clothing is drying, so that you end up with a redepositing new things redepositing. Now in a home that doesn't have a mold problem? I don't necessarily have an explanation for it. But those are the types of things that are certainly worth looking at. I know we're right up on the hour mark and I want to be respectful of your time. Does anyone else have any final questions or words of wisdom before we wrap up here?
Erik Johnson:No, it's been a great talk.
John Banta:I'd like to mention my new book. It was co authored with Paula Baker Laporte. It's called Prescriptions For Healthy House, a practical guide for architects, builders and homeowners We've expanded since the third edition, there's an additional approximately 75 pages in it. And almost all of those are pages about water damage and mold. And if your listeners either go to to our company's website at www.pathways testing.com, or well, if you if you go to that site, you can click on a link, and you'll be able to enter a code Banta, capital B, A, capital L, capital, capital B, A N T A, and you'll get a 10% discount. But it's also available through Amazon and other sources. You know, so far the biggest complaint we've had is it's expensive. It's it's $65 for this 399 page book, and that is a lot of money to put out. I wish we could do it for less and what we have been able to do is offer it electronically and Kindle version for $25. So just be aware that that it is out there that way as well.
Alicia Swamy:Great. I wanted to ask, Would it be okay, if we're able to maybe raffle off a free copy to our audience members? Absolutely. Great. So we'll we'll post that when this episode comes up for airing and then I'll just give you the address of the winner and then you could just sent directly. Well, thank you so much, John, for joining us. It was a great conversation. You are, you're so seasoned in this industry. And so you've seen it all and you've dealt with mold issues personally in your own life. It's just maddening, isn't it?
John Banta:It is. I haven't seen it all though. I, you know, I don't think a week or two goes by that something new doesn't pop up. You know, it's like I'm, I'm 67 years old now. One of the reasons that I moved to Arizona was to slow down a little bit and put a little more focus into research and writing and then telephone consulting, spending six hours a day in Bay Area traffic was taking its toll. But I'm putting in as many hours as ever, and I doubt that I'll ever retire.
Alicia Swamy:It's a labor of love.
John Banta:It really is it really?
Alicia Swamy:Yeah, I'm a former Bay Area. I don't know, person eight Bay Area. I don't know how, what's the what's the proper terminology there. But I totally understand it's just a interesting place. It's just a little too crowded.
John Banta:Well, not only that, but I think that we really do have when when we look at our geometric mean for our office, and the samples that we've collected in the Bay Area, we do find a higher geometric mean for Stachybotrys and other types of molds in San Francisco. And I think that, you know, the styles of construction, you've got buildings that are right next to each other zero clearance, where there's no ability to really fix walls, the right way. Yeah, and then buildings were built in the early 1900s. And back then they weren't building them as tightly as we do today. And you know, okay, so we, we didn't have as much mold in the 1906 buildings, because we use lead based paint, and that was a wonderful anti microbial, but you tear those materials out, you put gypsum drywall back in, you don't do a good job of sealing up the exterior, so that the water is not coming in. And now you've got a problem. Or if you seal it up, you seal it up with elastomeric paints, which traps the moisture inside the walls in the Bay Area. Moisture is trying to flow from the interior and drive to the outside, it hits that side of that elastomeric paint. And we've seen bubbles, you know the size of a baseball that form on the outside of the house and you stick a pin in them in the water, just start spraying out at you. And that's all because you know, we exhale a quarter of moisture a day when you add in cooking and cleaning and bathing and everything else. You know, that's almost a gallon per person per day in a building. And if it can't get out, something's gonna go. Yeah, it's gonna give.
Alicia Swamy:And I'm gonna I'm gonna leave you with this last question. So in your experience, what has been your most mind blowing discovery in the world of environmental testing?
John Banta:So my most mind blowing when I'm not able to talk about because I'm under a confidentiality agreement. Oh man, which is a whole nother show to talk about, you know, the, the problems with, you know, trying to do the right thing and ending up in a situation where if you say something you get in trouble. But I think the one that I can talk about a house in, in Phoenix, Arizona, the reason I can talk about it is because it did go to court, and and I was deposed in that case, so it was public record. The family knew they had a mold problem. It was discovered that a refrigerator water supply line had been leaking, probably for three months caused massive amounts of Stachybotrys to grow. The company that came in to remediate the mold basically pulled out one side of a wall in the kitchen, left the mold in the other side of the wall and behind the cabinets and everything and then set up ozone generators to try to kill the mold. They ran the ozone generators for 48 hours, turn them off, let the play sit for another 24 hours. And at the end of that, they said, It's okay, the mold's all dead, you don't have to worry about it. And so the family came back, they dropped off the dogs and went off to work and to school. And when they got back at the end of the day, both dogs were dead with blood coming out of their noses. And unfortunately, by the time I got involved with the case, both of the dogs bodies were gone, they had been incinerated. At that time, there was a laboratory in Germany, that could test for satratoxin and a couple of other toxins associated with Stachybotrys, but it was $6,000 per test and six months to get the results back. But it would have been worth it to be able to see whether the the bleeding noses was caused by that. I mean, pulmonary hemosiderosis in children. So, but the thing is one of the dogs was an older dog, and if it had died, you know, then maybe it was chance, but both of them together at the same time. I think that was probably the the one thing that was the most eye opening for me. And that was that was 25 years ago.
Alicia Swamy:Wow. Yeah. Yeah, we I mean, if you've heard some of our recent or previous podcasts where we do talk about Ruth Etzel and Dorr Dearborn and the pulmonary hemorrhage.
John Banta:I had the pleasure to meet both of them at the fifth annual conference in Saratoga, New York. And yeah, outstanding researchers just pleasure to have been able to meet them. You know, in that case, what I believe happened was that the ozone actually stimulated the mold to produce more mycotoxins than it would have normally. And, you know, ozone generators, they're outlawed in California, there is a loophole where they can still be installed in an HVAC systems. But one of the pieces of research that I came across that really had me concerned, you know, we were told that the ozone could be used to break down pesticides like malathion and it did, you know, you test before you have got them out by and you test afterwards, and it's gone. But what we didn't realize was it creates byproducts. So there's a byproduct, I think it was called Naloxone, and my Naloxone it turns out, when you treat a malathion with ozone, naloxone is created, and it's 1000 times more toxic than the malathion originally was. So I think there are just all kinds of side effects. Yeah, there may be some uses for ozone, I don't have a problem with it and ozonated water swimming pools, hot tubs, you know, various types of applications. But man from the standpoint of inhaling it, I've seen so many people that have been knocked for a loop by it. And it's probably the side reactions that you just don't know what's there, so you never know when it's going to come back to bite you.
Alicia Swamy:Thank you for that, John. Thank you, everyone. I wish we had like five hours to chat with you. But I do have one last question. I promise you, I will not ask any more and we'll let you go for the day. So there's a big, there's such big interest about Klinghardt's, you know, quote unquote, his pilot study that he did or I don't know what you want to call it, that EMFs are increasing mycotoxins. Are you seeing this as a viable theory?
John Banta:I've not done anything personally to to really follow up on that.
Alicia Swamy:No, yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah, no problem. I figured I'd ask an expert see if they have any interest or even experience in that. So
John Banta:I think that it could be an interesting area of study. You know, one of the frustrations, I think, with electromagnetics, is that we are definitely being bombarded by more and more and more, and I'm not sure how we're going to, I'm not sure how we're ever going to deal with them. I would hope that we can deal with the mold. But...
Alicia Swamy:Let's start with the mold first.
John Banta:There's some things we can do in our individual homes about the electromagnetics that are great, but from the standpoint of you know, what's going on out there, man, and it will probably take another 30,50,100 years for us to really understand.
Alicia Swamy:Absolutely. Well, thank you, John, I appreciate you for joining us.
John Banta:You take care. Bye bye, everyone.
Alicia Swamy:Bye everyone. Take care