Standing Out in Ohio Podcast
Listen and learn how some stand out from competition and gain market share. Information helpful to agents and buyers. Conversations with professionals and entrepreneurs regarding their stories and what makes their companies and themselves stand out and gain competitive advantages. Listen to stories from Ohio real estate agents and related businesses to help you know how to improve and who to consider using for yourself or friends. Created by the owners of a highly rated home inspection company in Ohio and the Winners of Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest https://homeinspectionsinohio.com/
Standing Out in Ohio Podcast
Decoding Indoor Air Quality: Radon, Mold, and What Really Makes You Sick
Indoor air quality affects our health in ways we don't immediately recognize, with radon and mold being the most common but widely misunderstood threats in our homes. Professional testing and proper remediation protocols are essential for addressing these silent dangers that can cause serious health issues over time.
• Radon is an odorless, colorless radioactive gas that causes no immediate symptoms but is responsible for 21,000 lung cancer deaths yearly
• Long-term exposure to lower radon levels can be more dangerous than short-term exposure to higher levels
• Any house foundation type can have radon issues – slab homes are not immune to high readings
• Mold is always a symptom of a moisture problem that must be fixed first before remediation
• Mycotoxins from mold are serious health threats and new air testing capabilities can now detect these compounds
• VOC testing helps identify chemical off-gassing from new materials or active mold growth
• Ethical companies will only recommend necessary testing rather than selling unneeded services
• Post-remediation verification testing ensures air quality has returned to acceptable levels
Visit Environmental Consultants of Ohio for professional indoor air quality testing or Home Inspections in Ohio for comprehensive home inspections including radon testing.
To learn more about Habitation Investigation, the Two-time Winner of the Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest Plus the Winner of Consumer Choice Award for Columbus Ohio visit Home Inspection Columbus Ohio - Habitation Investigation (homeinspectionsinohio.com)
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Welcome to the Standing Out in Ohio podcast, where we discuss topics, upcoming events, news and predictions with real estate professionals and entrepreneurs. Listen and learn what makes their companies and themselves stand out and gain advantages over the competition and gain market share. Subscribe for the latest news and discussion on what it takes to stand out from the crowd. Now here's your host, jim.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome to the Stand Out how Podcast. This is Jim. I'm here with Laura laughing at me as I speak oddly.
Speaker 3:Drink your coffee, baby. I will, I will.
Speaker 2:All right. So indoor air quality how do you think most people define that? That what they, what they think about for right off the bat like mold is probably the biggest one. Yeah I would agree with that. I would say maybe they think carbon monoxide maybe I even get a question.
Speaker 3:I I haven't been breathing well. I'm concerned it's radon.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Does that make?
Speaker 2:sense. A lot of people don't know, but does that make sense?
Speaker 3:Well, how about we do this? How about we listen to our break and then we come back and talk about it?
Speaker 2:All right, let's listen to this.
Speaker 4:Habitation investigation is the way to go for a home inspection in ohio. Trusted licensed home inspectors for your needs from radon to mold to warranties for a great home inspection, you really can't go wrong.
Speaker 2:Visit home inspections in ohiocom all right, laura okay, so I'll just say an older person says hey, I'm having trouble breathing. Can you see if I have radon? Does that make sense to you?
Speaker 3:no, it does not, would you like me to know? Well, actually, maybe if it's an older person and they've lifted the house for a long, time yes, true. So okay. So here's the deal with radon Radon is an odorless, colorless radioactive gas. It can come into any foundation type. All it needs is a crack airflow to come up through.
Speaker 2:Radon does not immediately cause breathing issues, does not immediately cause cancer, does not immediately cause pneumonia or anything like that, because it doesn't cause pneumonia or breathing issues. So if I walk into a house that has high radon, I'm not going to feel that. No, my breathing wouldn't be changed.
Speaker 3:Not at first. No.
Speaker 2:So if you're living there for years, if you're living there for years and years or are susceptible, or smoke. If you're smoking, do you really care about your health all that much? Let's be honest a little bit there.
Speaker 3:But anyway, if you smoke, yeah, radon is going to Eight times more likely to cause cancer Lung cancer. Yes, rad radon is going to Eight times more likely to cause cancer. Lung cancer yes.
Speaker 2:Radon only is related to lung cancer. So- 21,000 lung cancer deaths a year attributed to radon. And if you smoke, you are personally eight times more likely to get lung cancer.
Speaker 3:We have this year actually gotten a lot more calls from kids whose parents have died like obviously older and they died from lung cancer and never smoked a day in their life.
Speaker 2:You know when you said that it's like you imagine how sad it would be to get a call from an eight-year-old kid. Yeah, my parents died. Can you see what's going on?
Speaker 3:no, anyways, it was not an eight-year-old, okay, it was like an adult.
Speaker 2:It was an adult like they were in the 30s or 40s I'm like oh shit that'd be bad no, that'd be tragic, that would very much be. But these were all older, they all had, you know like sorry to be a downer for everybody, but no, that was not the case.
Speaker 3:They had still said that they had cancer and they never smoked and they wanted to know what was going on. And they did have high radon levels in their houses. So in all probability that's what caused it. But what they say statistically is that longer periods of time and lower radon levels are more apt to cause cancer than shorter periods of time with higher levels. It's the long-term breathing it in that causes the cancer.
Speaker 2:So if you have long-term exposure to the higher levels, that would be bad. So it's not just, it's the time and the amount.
Speaker 3:So, once again, radon does not cause any immediate issues. You're not going to catch pneumonia, you're not gonna have problems breathing. It is a little more sneaky than that it's sneaky now.
Speaker 2:It doesn't really. It does not matter the type of house where you'll find it really doesn't have a type of house foundation where you'll find radon, mold, say carbon monoxide, because the exhaust doesn't do what it should for the gas water heater. I mean, we went into a house yesterday, picked up a radon monitor. It was not a big house, house was on a slab, single story house on a slab. The radon was what? 23 something, 23.9. That's up there. Epa tells you four or higher. You should get it mitigated.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:It does not matter the type of structure. You can still have high radon. So that's one of the big myths. So other indoor air quality issue you said, so radon's one issue that you'll think about they think about mold was the symptom of a moisture issue, which is no moisture, no mold unless you had your. You had mold growing because you had a moisture problem. You had a leak and you fixed the leak but you never cleaned up. You're going to have mold spores just kind of flitting about. They're not growing anymore.
Speaker 3:And possibly mycotoxins, because we're learning more about mycotoxins now too, mycotoxins, yeah, so that could be another podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mycotoxins is another indoor air quality issue. That just because they float around and now I think we're the only company in the state that can do air testing for mycotoxins.
Speaker 3:I think we are right now.
Speaker 2:We'll definitely be the longest standing company that that can do a mycotoxin testing in the air with that.
Speaker 3:That's a newer test virus, yeah that's just been out within the last couple of years.
Speaker 2:But that's one of the tests. If there's never any mold issues in the house, there's no need to test for the mycotoxin. There's no point in doing that. That would not be the first test you want to do. So say, somebody calls you and goes hey, they're feeling sick. They don't understand why it happens in a certain area of the house. What would be? I know we have like a kind of mental flow chart we have written down.
Speaker 3:We have a form that we would kind of like Go through with them, like over the course Kind of go to your doctor and he goes hey, what's going on?
Speaker 2:He'll write down that and he'll kind of through deduction, kind of figure out what the issue is.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's kind of like what we do, very similar, yes. And upon what they say, what might be one test you would do?
Speaker 3:Let's go back to that one example with the wife that had breathing problems in the kitchen and the garage. So they were asking questions about VOC and mold testing. So one thing about VOC is that it can tell you if mold is actively growing, because as mold grows it puts off its own form of a VOC called an MVOC. So we could tell them if mold was actively growing, but we couldn't tell them what kind or anything like that more, for if you've remodeled lately or if there's new stuff that you've brought into the house, or if it is a new house, or whatever the case may be, it's, it's more of her chemicals.
Speaker 3:Yeah, voc looks like chemicals in the air so when I looked through her chemicals, a lot of it was like scent free.
Speaker 2:She used vinegar for stuff.
Speaker 3:I looked because I'm like, okay, should I do that? The only thing that she had that could potentially have thrown something up was like those alcohol sanitation wipes. You know like that and everybody uses those and that's going to come back to your alcohol.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ethyl alcohol, yep.
Speaker 3:Which is what I told them.
Speaker 2:It's going to evaporate quickly. You don't use those all the time they're not just sitting out, so I have seen a few people use them all the time and they were self-reflecting their own issue. But anyway, back to this house so.
Speaker 3:So we talked about the fact they haven't done any remodeling. They haven't changed anything. So there's really no sense to do a vocC, because VOCs are basically cause when man produces something, and when they put it together, they combine it with chemicals and then, as it sits in your house, those chemicals come out of it and it's called off gassing. And that's what can make people sick if you don't get rid of that gas that's coming off. But they had nothing like that. So why make them pay for a test that they don't need rid of that gas that's coming off, but they had nothing like that, so why? Why make them pay for a test that they don't need?
Speaker 3:right, so so then it was then we talked about the mold that'd be mold testing.
Speaker 2:Yes, and and you actually saw.
Speaker 3:I actually saw moisture issue, but once again, there's no mold that you want, there's nothing that yeah you know.
Speaker 3:So what my suggestion was use the money that you would have had to get this test, get this area fixed up and cleaned up, and then I can come in and I can do a test afterwards and let you know that there's nothing in the air and that it's you know that it's, it's been taken care of for you. Yeah, because I mean and and you know some people might like be like, well, you, you need that pre-test to know that it's clean. No, I, I mean yes, but no, when I go and I test it at the end, if it's not anything in there that's dangerous or it's similar to outside, they're done, it's not a problem. Why make them pay more money for something?
Speaker 2:in a a case like this, what we're seeing, okay, this this is obvious. You have this going on, almost guaranteed it's mold. We didn't test it, but darn good chance it's mold, but it's definitely a moisture issue, which tells us-.
Speaker 3:It's 99.9.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you said, there's no species of mold you want to keep or you're okay with having in your house. So it's like, why bother testing? That's something that kind of makes us unique as a company.
Speaker 3:We're not going to just oh, yeah, you got to pay this and we'll do this, some people that won't even go out and do like a mold test or a mold inspection for under 1200 see that's insane. That's insane like just flat and like they've they've told me this personally they don't go out unless it's 1200 minimum. Yeah, and I get that, like I know your time is valuable, but you know you're talking about people that have bills and that have medical problems and they're trying to figure that out and they don't have the money, so trying to do the best that you can for them and still yeah.
Speaker 2:We're not going to rip people off. Yeah, if you have, you have a mold issue. I'm like, all right, gotta do remediation right and you may be a little time off work. It gets expensive. So yeah, we have to charge. We have lab fees, we have expenses, we have to pay the inspectors equipment there's so many things that add up, it's amazing. But we're very affordable and we're not we're not gonna gouge somebody.
Speaker 3:if you don't need it, you don't need it, they don't need it.
Speaker 2:They don't need it. So I'm thinking about it on this one. So VOC test that we do is good. General indoor air quality. There's mold actively growing and then weird chemicals. That's more like when we don't see a big moisture issue anywhere. We're like, all right, let's just see what's in the air. If we do, if somebody has a problem and we see moisture issue, all right, mold now maybe we do a test to see how spread it is within the house.
Speaker 3:That might be something they'd be interested in doing but once again they're going to be spending so much having a company come out. Well, I know and I would rather do post clearance testing for them and to make sure yes, yes and and you can write protocol.
Speaker 2:You know what the protocol is all? Formal remediator, even though there's no licensing or requirements in ohio. Definitely have laura here with environmental consultants of ohio yeah, I got my normie pro designation yes, I think did we talk about that?
Speaker 2:I don't think we did. I have to look through the episode make sure. I kind of thought we did, but maybe you should give a whole description of what that is. But anyway, laura's the person in contact. If you have a mold issue and you have somebody fix it, have her go. Well, let me double check what they're doing. First, because we've seen mold remediators not, not do it correctly and they made the issue worse.
Speaker 3:Well, plus if they don't kill the mold before they start messing with it. Oh, mycotoxin and they're yeah, and there's two separate species of mold on top of that we can do this later.
Speaker 2:But yeah, never mind, you'll make mycotoxin, I'll make people sick and that's a whole nother thing.
Speaker 3:Because mycotoxins are actually used, with the DOD, as chemical warfare. Yes yes, it is.
Speaker 2:Just saying that's something you want in your house. So anyway, we'll talk about that. I can't think of a little segue going with that Get more coffee baby. I do. We will upload this, get a link to that video. We are on more share. I think it was that this one. That was maybe the other podcast, but anyway we'll get you a link. In there talks about the inner air quality test and things like that oh, maybe we can put a link to that questionnaire yes, give me that give me that web page.
Speaker 3:All right, I can do that all right, thanks everybody you've been listening to the standing out in Ohio podcast.
Speaker 1:Be sure to subscribe on Spotify or Google podcasts to get new, fresh episodes. For more, please follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, or visit the website of the best Ohio home inspection company at home inspections in ohiocom or Jim troughcom. That's J I M T Rt-h, and click on podcast Until next time. Learn and go do stuff.