Air Quality Matters
Air Quality Matters inside our buildings and out.
This Podcast is about Indoor Air Quality, Outdoor Air Quality, Ventilation, and Health in our homes, workplaces, and education settings.
And we already have many of the tools we need to make a difference.
The conversations we have and how we share this knowledge is the key to our success.
We speak with the leaders at the heart of this sector about them and their work, innovation and where this is all going.
Air quality is the single most significant environmental risk we face to our health and wellbeing, and its impacts on us, our friends, our families, and society are profound.
From housing to the workplace, education to healthcare, the quality of the air we breathe matters.
Air Quality Matters
Air Quality Matters
#47 - Brandon Chappo: Confronting Mold Hazards – Health Impacts, Legislative Efforts, and Advocacy for Safer Indoor Environments
Struggling with a mysterious illness, Brandon discovered that the culprit was closer to home than he ever imagined—mold.
Join us as Brandon, from the Change the Air Foundation, shares his journey through mold-related health issues and how it ignited his passion for advocacy.
Through his insights, we unpack the staggering reality that so many American buildings may harbour this hidden health hazard.
This episode sheds light on the complex health ramifications of poor indoor air quality, illustrating why awareness and community support are essential in tackling this widespread issue.
With no standardized exposure limits and varying sensitivities among individuals, it's a complex puzzle that demands urgent attention. Mycotoxins, the dangerous byproducts of mold, are linked to a plethora of health issues—from asthma and allergies to more severe conditions. We emphasize the importance of recognizing water damage signs and the need for professional assessments when health problems persist, stressing the broader societal and psychological impacts tied to mold exposure.
Brandon's story isn't just a cautionary tale but a call to action. We explore legislative efforts, like Illinois' Senate Bill, to protect consumers and promote public health with active certifications for mold remediators.
Our discussion highlights the Change the Air Foundation's mission to foster safer indoor environments through research, education, and strategic partnerships. By sharing real-life experiences and legislative victories, we aim to ignite meaningful change and ensure healthier living spaces for everyone.
Brandon Chappo - LinkedIn
Change the Air Foundation
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Welcome back to Air Quality Matters. I believe we already have the tools and knowledge we need to make a difference to the quality of the air we breathe in our built environment. The conversations we have and how we share what we know is the key to our success. I'm Simon Jones and this is episode 47. Coming up a conversation with Brandon Chappell. As we creep into the winter season here in Ireland and the UK and we prepare for another battle with damp and mould across the housing sector, it can be easy to forget that this is a global challenge and one that many are on the front lines fighting the good fight.
Speaker 1:This week I speak to Brandon Chappell, who is co-founder and director of public policy at Change the Air Foundation, a US non-profit organisation helping families across the country breathe safer indoor air, with a focus on damper, mould and water damage. Change the Air is an organisation with powerful stories of ill health and fighting the system, success and policy change and the long road ahead. Brandon speaks from a place of genuine advocacy and personal experience and offers a fascinating insight, I think, into the state of water damage and mould remediation in the US. We talk about his personal story with mould and ill health the landscape in the US and the work that Change the Air is doing. If you have an interest in this subject, it's not one to miss. Thanks for listening. As always, do check out the sponsors in the show notes and at airqualitymattersnet.
Speaker 1:This is a conversation with Brandon Chappell. Podcasts like this give people a perspective on conversations like Damp and Mould outside of their normal realm of expertise. You know we're just coming into in this part of the world winter now, here in a very damp and rainy island today in the UK, and Damp and Mould is a massive problem for us. But we often don't project outside of our own environments and understand quite how big a global problem this is. So to kind of jump straight into that first question how big a problem is damp and mold in the States, for example?
Speaker 2:That's a great question and it's something that when I first got sick, I needed to try to get a better understanding for me personally, if this was just a one-off situation where I was just unlucky to be in one bad building, or if this was happening on a much broader scale. And it didn't take me long to realize, through countless social media support groups, through research of my own, that not only wasn't this an isolated incident. America, or 50% of our buildings, have the presence of dampness and mold. Other estimates have that higher at the foundation and just through our conversations with folks and even personal experience of just going in and out of buildings regularly, we think that's much higher. We actually think it's closer to 75% 85% of buildings and there's been some data through the EPA. They did a building survey and they found out, of 700 buildings that they surveyed across the country, that 85% of them had at least a history of water damage, which, of course, it only takes one event to have mold present after 48 hours as little as 48 hours. So we think it's enormous and it's part of the reason why we're so passionate about getting the word out on the potential health ramifications of this and the need for more research to better understand the health ramifications of this.
Speaker 2:Because if we're talking at maybe a conservative level of half of our homes, how many people are being exposed to this knowingly or unknowingly? How many health symptoms that they're chronically having to deal with may be rooted in poor air quality? Unsafe indoor air quality may be rooted in poor air quality, unsafe indoor air quality and what part of that is mold and dampness and all of the particulates and the toxins that that's emitting. So it was an alarming thing for me to realize when I first got really sick from this, and then to realize, ok, there are countless people, tens of thousands, just on support groups alone, that were dealing with this. And then to realize, man, we don't have a lot of regulations, we don't have a lot of consumer protection mechanisms in place, public health information appropriations, et cetera. And it's why we feel so passionate change the air foundation to try to help fix it.
Speaker 1:There's a lot to unpack there, um, and one of the first things that struck me was that when you went looking the place, you found some of those answers were support groups, and the fact that their support groups exist is probably telling in of itself. That there are groups of people wandering in the wilderness looking for answers and coming together in facebook groups and whatsapp groups trying to figure this out. That this isn't more coordinated in some way, I guess was the. The genealogy of the, the foundation was that? Hang on a minute. There's a gap here that he's addressing somehow, right?
Speaker 2:that's right and it's, you know, and we've seen this with any other issue that's come about like lyme disease here in the united states, like a lot of people were getting sick and, you know, having the same symptomology, and then they start coming together. I mean, it's, it's the same in the water damage and mold community. It's like, hey, what was the common denomination of our stories, which was, you know, we're having all these health symptoms affecting multi-systems of the body. We've gone to countless physicians, right, they've referred us out, they've done all the low-hanging fruit lab testing and finally they, you know, I guess one could say you could get lucky that somebody said, hey, why don't you check your home? Why don't you check your air quality? And when they do, they find that you know it's rife with dampness or water damage and mold and that when they address it and remediate it or in many cases people have to move their bodies begin to respond and they begin to get better. And it's not just a cough. This can be extremely devastating to people's health. I can tell you that from personal experience, which we can get into later. This upends people's lives and it's a nightmare to deal with.
Speaker 2:And so when we were seeing all these stories. Just on, the support groups is to your point, simon, and we were looking around going. Where is the help? Groups is to your point, simon, and we were looking around going. Where is the help? Where's the oversight? Where's the research? Where are the consumer protection mechanisms? And they're not there. And then to learn that this isn't a new problem, that this has been happening for decades. It was a little disheartening, but out of that, the community is beginning to come together and there's just countless courageous people that are using their voices and at the foundation we're trying to be one of those mechanisms to finally come together, link arm in arm and spread awareness about this, have these types of conversations to try to get people to understand the potential ramifications for these exposures and why it's so important for us to fix it properly and not just spray over it or paint over it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of the things you mentioned there that I think is worth unpacking a little bit is this need for research, because one of the objective truths of mold in buildings is that mold exists everywhere in the environment. It's both inside and outside buildings. It's not something that we can inherently get rid of. The potential for mold is always going to be there. We just have to create the conditions for there to be an excess of it. Nobody's saying a bit like some pollutants that might be in our built environment that there are no safe levels of. It's not something we're going to be able to eradicate from spaces.
Speaker 1:But there is a point at which mold becomes unhealthy. You know anybody can have a small amount of water damage in a property. They will get mold appearing. If that isn't dealt with straight away and if that's cut out and gotten rid of before it spreads, then it's not a problem. Like everybody, particularly in this part of the world, everybody is going to experience a little bit of black mold in and around damp areas of the building like shower trays and around window reveals if your windows aren't too efficient. Those kind of things aren't necessarily unhealthy. They can be a sign of building physics challenges or certain environmental conditions, but we're not worried about that.
Speaker 1:But there's a certain point, a line and it will be different for different people's vulnerabilities that it crosses a threshold and becomes a problem, and that's what we're talking about here and I think the challenge and you point to it a little bit is we. It's hard to know where that line is and because there's no central source of information or one truth for this, it's hard for people to know is what I've got a problem or not? And because it affects people in so many varied ways and people's vulnerabilities to it are so different, one person's response can be very difficult, different to another's, and you probably found that when you were researching your own health issues. It gets entangled with all sorts of other potential health issues. It makes it very difficult to pinpoint that it's mold causing that problem. Right, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just to add on to that, I think it's a great point. You know we're never saying that. You know you need to get your home where that there's a test that you're taking and there's zero spores of mold. I mean that's never going to happen, but it's getting that level down to. You know, a normal fungal ecology of a healthy home, right, and when people are often sick from this and they're testing it, I mean these numbers are just astronomical of what fungal spore counts are out there and the toxins that it's emitting. And it's not just mold in a water damaged building. There's bacteria, there's endotoxins and there's beta-glucans and mycotoxins and you know the particulate matter which is causing an inflammatory response. So the way that we approach this is to say you know, look at the number of different signs in a home that could be showing water damage. If it's just one area in the corner of a home, you know, in the shower, okay, deal with that. But then you know if you, you know, are having health ramifications or symptoms that you can't really pinpoint. Or if there's other areas in the home, like bubbling, paint cracking, staining, you know. If the humidity continues to rise, you know. Then we believe that you know, it's worthwhile to get a proper inspection done to see what's going on.
Speaker 2:One of the issues that we found in this space and that other indoor air quality pollutants have set like permissible exposure limits set for this, and we don't have that, at least in the United States, for mold. The EPA hasn't done that and it's very difficult for us to have this conversation because, as you point out, some people are a little more sensitive, that we're still trying to understand why that is, and there are probably a number of different factors to that. But we want to be careful to to like set up a threshold limit or a permissible exposure limit. That is good for a lot of people, but it's still not good enough for some. So the way that we approach it is, if you suspect there's a problem and if you see a lot of mold and oftentimes you won't see it right I mean, if you're seeing mold aside from outside, you know a shower or something like. It's usually the tip of the iceberg and it's usually behind a wall or it's in a crawl space or somewhere that you can't see, often, um, that is the root of the exposure, and so for, for for us at the foundation. That's why we say it's important to listen to your body, to look at the signs of the home and, if there's a suspicion, get it tested. Get it checked. It's worth it.
Speaker 2:The literature already speaks to you know how serious that these toxins can be. Right, we know that mycophenolic acid, for instance, is a toxin emitted by penicillium mold that's immunosuppressive. They actually use that in pharmaceutical drugs. We know that mycotoxins are carcinogenic, right, there was a report done by the National Toxicology Program through the NIH here 15th report to the United States Congress of known carcinogens. Two of them were mycotoxins aflatoxin and ocrotoxin. A right, this comes from aspergillus and penicillin mold. What we're saying is we need to have more research and have a better understanding of what this is doing to the body, because and let me just go back to that stat that we started with Simon If 50% of the homes, at least here in the United States and I think in the UK I'm not sure the updated numbers I've seen as high as 30% of homes, at least out of the government statistics that I've looked at.
Speaker 1:Depends on who you talk to. Some of them, the official ones, between 2% and 5%, which I don't think many people believe. But yeah, certainly 30% to 50% of, we would say, rented accommodation, social and affordable rented or private rented accommodation. There's been some statistics that would say it would be that high Right right, and the point being with that.
Speaker 2:So let's say that that's true, right, 50 percent here, maybe 30 to 50 percent UK. And we already know that these toxins can be this bad Right, we already know it causes asthma, allergies, eczema Right, we're finding that. You know the carcinogenic properties of this, the immunosuppressive properties of this. We're finding that, the carcinogenic properties of this, the immunosuppressive properties of this, what are these exposures doing to these people living in the buildings and the kids and the elderly, and even just people of regular health? I mean, when I got sick, I was 30.
Speaker 2:I was at the prime of my health, of my life. You know, I was a former air traffic control specialist for the, for the Federal Aviation Administration here in the United States. I had to have a clean bill of health to do that job and it changed when I moved into the building and nobody could understand why that was. And so, again, I think what we're, what we're saying at the foundation, is there's enough literature out there that speaks to these multi-system symptoms that people are experiencing beyond just the respiratory issues. We're talking neurological issues as well, and we just feel that it's worth researchers, academics, government agencies to be taking another hard look at this and having these conversations, because the prevalence of this is huge. I always say this and, being an indoor air quality specialist like yourself, I feel like we can't really have a good, thorough conversation about indoor air quality without including water damage and mold, because of the prevalence of this Right.
Speaker 1:If it was just happening in 5% of homes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I agree, yeah, and I think one of the challenges has been it's been very difficult to measure, you know.
Speaker 1:And pharmaceuticals, we understand their impacts on immunology, but what we're not seeing are the large scale cohort epidemiological studies that attach your DALIs and QALIs to that risk is to that risk.
Speaker 1:Now, one of the big pieces of the work that's been done over here by Ben Jones and Max Sherman has been looking at the daily impacts of indoor air quality in the built environment and standouts in there are things like particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide and formaldehydes and all the usual suspects, but missing from that list is mold and it's quite shocking that it's missing from it. But, as they point out, the work is based on the available evidence and what we don't have is evidence at an epidemiological level of the health impacts of mold on large cohorts of the population. Um, but, but if so, if we can tie that down, it's a useful tool then to start pulling the gears of of uh legislation and regulation because, as it stands at the moment, best estimates the the impacts of indoor air quality on long-term health is as harmful as smoking at the moment, you know. So we know there's significant impacts to years lost to life and disability because of our exposure to those pollutants. You add mold to the mix. It could be significant for sure I think.
Speaker 2:so. I appreciate that and this is again, this is part of these conversations Right, where are the epidemiological studies? Where is the research ever even endeavored some of these Studies? And there was a few through the NIH, actually, national Toxicology Program to look at these? You know, to study stachybotrys right, which is one of the nastier black molds, and as per Jill's kind of slime. There were studies that said let's look at the health ramifications of these and water damaged buildings. They were nominated in 2001, nominated, but they haven't moved. And so you know the the.
Speaker 2:The other thing that that that's very frustrating for our community is like and I can only speak for the United States but CDC, epa, they all have different like information and recommendations, and so we're trying to get the agencies to have more consistent footing and resources that they're putting out there. They'll speak to the respiratory ramifications of this. They'll speak to the allergenic ramifications and dermatological, but then they say it could be also harmful for you to be in these exposures if you're immunocompromised. And I'm going no, we think this is causing people to become immunocompromised. There's a big difference there, right?
Speaker 2:Mycophenolic acid again, I'll use that as an example. I was shocked when I learned this. I had testing that showed I had high levels of that in my body, simon, and in one of the footnotes of that analysis it said by the way, be aware that might be high and flagged. If you've been taking these two pharmaceutical drugs, cilcept and Mifortec, and I went last I checked, I'm not taking any prescription medication, so I wonder what those are. And I looked in you know the primary chemical and that was mycophenolic acid, which of course was a derivative of penicillin mold which of course was incredibly high in the building that I got sick in. And so there's correlation there to say. And, by the way, that drug, just so people know that's used in organ donor transplant patients to suppress their immune systems, to not reject the organ donation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's really alarming yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, um, that that's alarming to me. It's like, why was that in such high amounts in my body? And the correlation that I can only make is you know the building I was living in for almost two years, breathing in every day and my health just continued to descend. And so I think it's just one example of asking, like, where are the epidemiological studies on this? We have the patient testimony, we have provider testimony. Countless thousands and thousands, and yet it's not being done.
Speaker 2:And I think you're right, we can only make you know standards or solid recommendations, sometimes off of those that research, but we have enough already to start to say we know this isn't good for you, we already know that, we know it's deadly right, um, already, uh, you know, like that, that young, poor kid in the UK, kid in the UK, who died of, I think, of that respiratory infection because of his prolonged exposure.
Speaker 2:This can kill people, and yet we're not having these tough conversations to try to get this out there. And I think that's part of what we're trying to do here is to get everybody to come together, especially in the indoor air quality industry and specialty, to say can we start also talking about this more Because, I'll be honest, I mean I've been grateful for all the amazing work that everybody's been pushing for IAQ really truly but I'm not seeing a lot of talk about water damage and I think that's part of the reason why I'm at the foundation that we're trying to push this out there is to start having that conversation, because we think it's that important and we think it's potentially that serious, and I can speak from personal experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and as I often point out, moisture balance or water damage in buildings is one of the few pollutants that actually causes damage to the building as well. So there's a double hit here. There's two reasons to, if you needed more than one, but there are two reasons to get on top of this because it impacts real estate. But I think perhaps therein lies the double-edged sword a little bit. Certainly we've experienced it in this part of the world.
Speaker 1:The reluctance to take this head on, I think in part, is at least because it's tied to real estate and the value of real estate and to recognize the problem recognizes a problem at the heart of society and that's how we value the health of buildings and the structures of buildings and the safety of buildings and so on. And there's a lot of cost tied up into that. That's a lot of fear from the people that manage assets or have to maintain them that in some way recognition of this problem or standards around this problem is going to incur cost. Um, so we see and we saw a culture over here of lifestyle blaming. So in rented accommodation that they would say well, it's the tenant's behavior, they're drying, closing doors, they're not opening windows, they're behaving in a way that would exacerbate the problem. So you started to see those narratives develop. Is that something similar you see over in the States? Is narratives building around the problem, that aren't dealing with it, that are obfuscating it or skirting around it in some way?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it all comes down to cost and money. Truly, I think A lot of times, you know, people think that they're covered by insurance over here when they have mold and they're not. There's actually mold exclusions in many homeowners insurance policies and renters insurance policies. I think the insurance companies know how prevalent that this is and they know that they would be paying out enormously if this really got out there. Realtors, I'll just speak to this. You know one of the bills that we tried to get up and running in one of our states here in Ohio, which is where I was from that was the first state I ever got. We found that the Ohio Realtors Association was not too keen on our bill that we tried to promote, which the bill basically was just for a mold information and awareness campaign and also for disclosures. Well, they weren't supportive of the disclosures aspect. Well, why do you think that is?
Speaker 1:Because it would affect sales.
Speaker 2:You got it and so of course they didn't come out publicly. That was just behind closed doors, because you know they'd look a little bad, I think, to the public if they found out. We don't want a potential buyer knowing that there's mold and water damage in this house. I mean that would be pretty bad. There are some disclosures in states I think there's 19 right now but they're all over the board. You know they're vague, they're weak.
Speaker 2:It's like the one in Ohio was. You know, buyer beware, every home contains mold. That's it. That was the only thing it said. Didn't ask if there's been an inspection, if they had a water damage event, if they ever had a remediation done. There was no disclaimer talking about, you know, if there is the presence of mold that you know that here's. Here are the potential health ramifications.
Speaker 2:So I think it leaves the tenants and even homeowners themselves, like buyers, like really vulnerable um to these exposures of the cost, of what it would cost them to fix this appropriately, that they'd rather just sweep it under the rug as much as they can or just offer the tenants to break their lease because they know they'll get somebody to come in and rent right after them and who won't raise any issues with it. And I think that's why, simon, we've thought through this pretty deeply. That's why it's so important for us to continue to talk about the health ramifications from this and to continue to push that, because unless people know how severe that this could potentially be to them and their families, I think many of them will just think well, that's just some mold in the corner, that's just mold. You know, mold it's no big deal, it just. It grows on my bread. If I keep it too long, it's not a big deal. But really, if it's in an amount that is unnatural and you're exposed to it day after day, it's going to be a real problem.
Speaker 2:And so we're not trying to vilify landlords, right. We're not trying to vilify these management groups, but we are. We are wanting them to be accountable to providing a habitable living space for people that are renting, or for buyers of a house to at least know what they're getting themselves into, themselves into, and, if they are in a home that is water damaged, when they go and find an inspector or a remediator, that those folks have to be properly certified and licensed or following an accredited standard, which, by the way, simon, in the United States. Only seven states require a mold inspector or mold remediator to be certified or licensed. That means the majority of them don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Remind me to come back onto that one, because that's a really important point. When you were talking just there, Brandon, it reminded me so much of a conversation I've been having over the last couple of weeks about radon in homes. So here's another pollutant that we know the source. It should be an absolute slam dunk for buildings. It can only be one thing. We can't mistake it for anything else. We know very well how to treat it and remediate it.
Speaker 1:Yet you can't give a test away. People don't want to know. Like literally, you can go to an area with high radon, offer free tests and the percentage of people that will take a free test off you will be less than 10%. And this is a pollutant we know causes lung cancer at quite horrific rates. So you'd think people would want to act. So it speaks to me a little bit about human psychology that there's a balance in how we frame risk for people, that they don't obfuscate this, that they can understand it and understand the value of the risk and the value of the remediation, but equally frame the objective truth around some of these pollutants. And I think this is where also there's an analogy between radon and mould In Ireland, for example, probably at least half of all homes are in a high radon area.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:That means if you're going to buy a home, there's as good a chance or not, when you buy that home, that it's going to have radon in it, right? So why on earth isn't part of the buying process, and the surveying process and the transaction process include mold remediation. And if there's a concern that it's going to reduce the value of the property, well, the obvious answer to that is is I would value a property far more if it's in a high radon area, if it's got mold on remediation in it, than if it didn't, because the fact of the matter is there's a higher chance than not it's going to have flipping radon in it. So I would value that property better as a result, not devalue it. And the same applies particularly in certain stark parts of the world with damp and mold.
Speaker 1:There's a very good chance, particularly in certain parts of the world Florida for example that if you don't get buildings right, you're gonna have damp and mold. So you would expect inspections and transactions to be dealing with this properly, no less than you'd expect an inspection to be checking the, the structural integrity of the roof and the foundations and all of those other really important things that are gonna cost you if you don't understand them when you're buying a property. So I think it's a really interesting part of the discussion is the how do we frame this in a way for people that they understand that, look, this isn't a one in a hundred chance that you're going to have a problem with damp and mold or radon or whatever the other pollution. Is this something we just have to get used to dealing with and figure out how to build the built environment around us to manage this risk. And it should be part of all transactions, all rental contracts, all insurances, all you know, because otherwise we're just burying our heads in the sand.
Speaker 2:That's right. You said it perfectly really. The only thing I would add there is we found and just to get into the psychology aspect of this a lot of times in our community the mom might be really sick or one of the kids, but the other kid isn't quite as bad off and the dad or the father or whoever the partner is, isn't, because they're going off to work every day, because each member of the household isn't equally as sick or bad off. A lot of times they immediately write off that it can't be the single source of where we're living. So that that's a problem in and of itself, right, that's number one problem in and of itself, right, that's number one. If the mom becomes aware that mold might be the issue, she has a heck of a time sometimes with her partner to get on board with it, you know, to test the home, to get it remediated. Why? Because of the cost. I mean, this is these are not cheap problems. I mean we totally empathize and understand that, right. I think remediation costs on average in the United States are like $5,000 to $10,000 to $15,000. That's not nothing and a lot of these people are living paycheck to paycheck. They don't have the money and there's not really any government assistance programs to help them. And then when they try to get insurance to cover it, anytime the word mold is mentioned it's excluded. So it comes down to them.
Speaker 2:I think what we're trying to at least do is to just give people the tools to try to make the best decision that they can for themselves and their families themselves and their families and, if they decide to go forward with it, to have some assurance that the folks that are inspecting or remediating the home are properly trained and licensed and that departments of health and government agencies are at least giving them enough public health information for them to make an educated decision. That's a good starting point. It can't force anybody to do it, but even those things don't exist right now, simon here, and I think that's what we're trying to build our baseline of, because I think you're right. It's like how do you get somebody to not bury your head in the sand Because it's more convenient to do that? And people think of their home like the world is already a tough enough place as it is. Your home is your castle, it's your safe space, and for people to even have to fathom the idea that it is actually the root of their harm is incredibly difficult and understandably so for them to try to deal with.
Speaker 2:So we don't want to evoke messaging of doom and gloom. We want it to be serious, we want it to grab people's attention, but we also then want to offer them hope and say you can fix this, we have solutions, we're trying to build tools and resources for you, and you're going to be much better off long term to not be in a damp building or exposed to mold or radon or any other pollutant, whether or not you're incredibly sick now or it takes years from. You. Don't ever want to get to that place. Trust me to take it from me. Who's who's been, who had a chronic illness for years and still dealing with a few symptoms, even though I'm much better. Um, your health is your wealth. It's everything. It's worth it to get this checked. The health of your home is directly related to the health of your body and of yourself, and so we're just trying to get people to understand that as best as we can. I'm not sure what a better phrasing would be, but I think if we can just lay it out like that.
Speaker 2:That's as good as we can do for now. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and think you you really hit home that point there. One of the things that I always like to consider is agency in this and you know, for for many people, their homeowners and their choices that they're having to make and budgets that they're having to manage, and and so on. But there's an also a lot of parts of society that don't have the agency to fix this, that are tenants, that are in a market where it is a seller's market. They don't. If they that, the threat of losing their home or not being able to rent somewhere else, all of those choices are taken away from them and it can be an incredibly dark place to be in that kind of an environment where, um, they're creating a culture of it's a lifestyle problem. It's your fault, it's your health, you don't have any choices anyway, and we have to be really careful when we're framing this problem that when we frame risk, when people don't have agency to fix it, we can create problems just by highlighting problems that people can't solve themselves. Sometimes this does have to be solved from the top down, not the bottom up, so I'm always aware of that.
Speaker 1:One of the points you made was about this safe space and you know, I think Maslow's hierarchy of needs and all of that you know, with shelter being front and centre. I think COVID taught a lot of us that the home was the place that we retreated to. It was our safe place. It's our place of rest and recuperation and safety and it's a very hard place to project to if you're not in that environment. What it means when a home is not a safe space, when it's a place of anxiety and ill health and worry and tension, and quite how damaging to mental health that becomes.
Speaker 1:One of the things that we've been very keen to push in this part of the world, particularly in the social rented space, is looking for the silence. Communities out there who are afraid to speak up about damp and mold in their properties, that are ashamed of damp and mold in their properties, that don't want to invite friends around. There are kids growing up who have never had friends around to their home for parties and for play dates because of the shame of the environment that they live in. This, this problem, takes people's lives away from them in a whole number of ways. That has a cost to society, without question um, and is eminently fixable, but it's going to require a seismic shift in how we plan for it.
Speaker 1:And one of the points that you made I thought was really interesting and I made a note on it, was the cost of this, and the challenge when something is costly is that a whole industry creeps up that provides some, let's just say, cheaper alternatives to fixing the problem. And I and I know that's a problem that you battle within the states, as we do here the the fly by night, give the mold a good old wash and a paint over and chuck a new bathroom in brigade right, swoop in, take a few hundred, bob off somebody and disappear into the night and, hey presto, a few months later the problem comes back and they've had a load of chemicals to breathe in in the interim as well. Yeah, you know, like that's a huge problem, isn't it? When something is expensive to fix, there's invariably a whole underbelly of an industry that's floating around mopping up that problem.
Speaker 2:That's right. We we call those folks here spray and pray, right? Yeah, yeah, you know we have remediators that come in and say, oh yeah, you got a big problem. To spray it, it'll knock all that mold down, it'll take care of business and charge them thousands of dollars they don't have and they leave and folks move back into the building. They're still sick and they're left holding the bag and they got to go find another remediator who knew what they were doing.
Speaker 2:And that's why it's so important that we try to set certification or licensure requirements for proper training or for folks to follow a proper standard. Like here in the United States there's a standard through the IICRC. It's called the S520. And it's the only you know credit industry standard for mold remediation and it deals with it properly and appropriately. It's on the fourth edition they just released it and we find that our community gets the best results when they find remediators who are following that standard to the letter, and so we're pushing for that. It's not as if that these don't exist. It's just that we're trying to get states to adopt that standard for those folks that are doing that type of work, because people do prey on others and when you're in a state of fight or flight.
Speaker 2:Right, you're sick, or your, your kid's sick, you're having a hard time keeping down a job, your home is incredibly damaged. Like you're, you're grasping for any hand that is put out to you to try to fix it. And it's incredibly, not just emotionally damaging, psychologically and physically and financially. You know I mean this. This problem hits all of those prongs, uh, in the most, you know, deepest vulnerable places for people, and so, um, I wanted to speak a little bit, too, to your point about the mental health aspect of this. I think it's really important. Brown university did a study in 2007, I think it was and, uh, they found and they and I don't think they were even looking for this, but they found that people that were living in damp and mold were 44% more likely to develop depression. Wow, almost 50% more likely. The reason for that, right, cosmetic. Maybe they're just embarrassed to have their kids living there or they can't have anybody over, but we feel there's also a physical component to that too. You know the inflammation that exposure is causing to the body, to the brain. Right, it's probably multi-pronged. That's an alarming stat, right, anxiety, depression, mental health is just rife in this community, and not least of which is because people feel gaslit a lot.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you deal with that over in the UK or Ireland or not. They go to their doctor, they try to bring it up with a landlord or their spouse maybe, and they're called crazy for this. Mold can't do that, water damage can't do that. You know it must be something else. You're causing a scene for nothing. You want us to do these expensive inspections and these remediations and fixes, and it's probably not even what the problem is, right, and so people then kind of hide away.
Speaker 2:I've known a lot of people that have been completely cut off from their families here because they just won't believe them, and it's very difficult for them to find a space that is safe for them to try to heal in because of the prevalence of the problem. Right, fifty percent of the buildings here have a problem. You're not giving a lot of people options, and especially at a price point that they can afford, especially if maybe they've lost their job as a result of their illness. Right, it can be a real nightmare for folks. And so, again, not to be doom and gloom about it.
Speaker 2:We exist to change the air foundation, to try to be one of those beacons of hope to say we hear you, we understand, many of us have been there ourselves. We have solutions. Just like you said, simon, there are solutions to this. We just have to get the problem out in front of the right people and industry and stakeholders and researchers, agencies, politicians and we have to get them to understand the potential severity of this. Also to get researchers and academics to say man, this might be worth another look for us to dive deeper into the epidemiological ramifications from this and then also to try to help to provide resources, especially for those who are lower income and under poverty.
Speaker 2:One thing that came out of we did a national policy brief through the foundation, which was looking at the economic and health data known health and economic data from dampness and mold in residential settings in the United States. And you know it was easy for the economists to find that you know if you live below the poverty line here or lower income, you're twice as likely to have this problem. And, just to your point, these folks don't have any money. Sometimes they're living in public housing, right, if they can't get the agencies themselves or the management personnel to take this seriously and to deal with this appropriately, they won't and they suffer and they have nowhere to go. And until we have that data that shows how serious this can be, how do we move legislators, how do we move government agencies, how do we move those people to actually take action, and appropriate action, not just hiring somebody to come in and wash or spray, but getting somebody to come in and do a proper remediation job, which, albeit, is more costly.
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Speaker 1:Now back to the podcast. It's difficult, if you're not exposed to this, to understand what an environment is like that is unhealthy, through damp and mold. And you know, I've spent a large part of my career in and out of various public housing, social housing properties, tenements, properties with damp and mold problems. And when you come from a healthy environment and you spend an hour or two in these buildings, you can't wait to get out. There's a physical reaction. If your body's not used to it and you're coming from fresh air into these spaces, it's overwhelming. Yet humans are incredibly resilient and what we find is is families and kids and people living in bedrooms and living in those conditions for years and years and years and they become used to that environment in a way that somehow they block a lot of it out and it must just be eating away at their health and well-being day after day after day, and that's at the extreme end.
Speaker 1:One of the big challenges we have, I think, with damper mould is there's this huge middle ground of people just getting by. You know there's always a spectrum of this stuff whenever we're talking about indoor environmental quality and you've got extreme cases. You know the the, our abishak, that young two-year-old boy level of extremes, where you know it's viscerally upsetting to see the environment that they're in. You can't believe anybody lived in a building like that and we, you know I go into properties like that all the time where you you're literally scraping every color of mold you can imagine off of bedroom walls, behind kids beds, like just the worst possible environment. But for every one of those homes there are thousands of homes just getting by, where it's in the background there's an unmistakable smell of mold and bleach and fragrance in the air the whole time trying to combat a problem. Yet you'd walk into that property and it looks like anybody else's property. The surfaces are clean, the carpets are free of mold, it looks okay. Yet you spend any time in there and you really understand the problem. It's there and it is.
Speaker 1:There are millions of people living in buildings that, over their lifetime, are gonna have an impact on their long-term health and well-being and I think this awareness raising that you're doing, creating the language and framing this problem, is one of the most powerful tools because without it people don't have a reference, as you say you and perhaps we'll come on to that you started to find yourself becoming ill in an environment, started to join some dots, but there's nothing manifest out there that maps this out for you. Manifest out there that maps this out for you. Um, and you may not have furry mold growing across every surface of your bedroom wall and your your bathroom, yet something's happening in your environment and you can't quite put your finger on it, and that's the journey that so many people go on, isn't it that? Trying to find a way of connecting. There's something about this environment that's making me sick and I don't know what it is. And that's where you found yourself, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:It was yeah, you, you, you teed that up perfectly. Um, this problem is so sinister because oftentimes you can't see it. A lot of times you can't smell it. Um, so it's not visual, and I think that's what one of the things covid did, I think, for the world. Was it made people this is a silver lining, I suppose in a way, was it made people realize that the thing that you can't see or sense in any way could harm you? Right, it's the same discussion that we can have with indoor air quality, pollutants, with mold, right, dampness, right.
Speaker 2:When I was living in a this is good when I was living in Cleveland I was from Cleveland, ohio, originally, and I had moved into a flipped home, uh, downtown Cleveland and aesthetically it was one of the nicest apartments I'd ever been in Great. When I got sick and I'll just go over some of those symptoms because I think that's important for people to know it wasn't just a cough, right, I was having neurological issues headaches, dizziness, brain fog, word-finding difficulties, having some memory issues as well, insomnia. I was having some gastrointestinal issues. I was feeling really, really horribly. Now, this was highly unusual and I'll just say this again because I was a former air traffic control specialist. I had to have a class two airman medical to be able to do that position for the government. So when I was going to the doctors, they're like you know, you previously were fine and now you're having all of these multi-system symptoms and they could not figure it out. What was wrong. They were doing all the low hanging fruit lab testing. They were sending me off to specialties. Okay, you just now have new chronic daily headaches. Um, you're now having just you know all these gastrointestinal issues. We don't know why you're waking up countless times in the night having all this insomnia, which you never had a problem with before.
Speaker 2:And it took a year for me to go to over 10 different medical providers Cause I knew something was wrong. Just like you say, you got that innate, knowing there's something wrong that they're not picking up on, even though they're telling me everything's coming off fine, like you look on paper, you look well. And I got really lucky, simon. I went to a physician at the Cleveland Clinic, pretty world-renowned medical institution, and I had been to many physicians there but one physician. She basically asked me the critical question. After you know, I think it was within the first three questions of us meeting. She said tell me the critical question after you know. I think it was within the first three questions of us meeting.
Speaker 2:She said tell me about the place that you've been living in since 2018. At the time, I got sick in 2019 and, uh, I met her in 2020, so it's been two years since I had moved into that building. And I said, yeah, you know it's hardwood. You know hardwood floors, original hardwood floors. It's an older building, brick, you know all that. And she's like, no, no, I don't, I don't want to know any of that. She goes any areas of water intrusion, any moisture, any musty odors of any kind, anything like that. And I said, yeah, down in the basement, like all the time, there's water down there constantly. There were a couple other people that were living there and there was a washing unit that had a clogged drain, so anytime somebody do wash, it'd be all over the floor. It's concrete, but it was just adding to the humidity. The foundation had issues. Every time it rained or snow would melt or whatnot. There'd be water leaking and seeping in all over the floors and our HVAC units were down there as well, and I'll never forget it.
Speaker 2:After I told her that she stopped typing her notes and she took her glasses to the end of her nose and she looked at me and she said so tell me why this isn't a good story for mold. And I went what are you talking about? Like the stuff that grows on bread? She's like no. She said we actually have people that come into our little group here at the Cleveland Clinic, their functional medicine group. She goes we probably have at least one person a day that we see here, that is, we suspect, or that we know is living in a water damage building and the symptoms, while everybody's body is different, just as we say right, everybody's going to present differently. She said they're very similar to yours, and so I. She said I recommend you have the place tested by an indoor environmental professional or mold inspector and then we go from there and we'll do testing on that.
Speaker 2:Well, anyway, results came back. It was rife aspergillus and penicillium mold, even picked up stachybotrys and cotomium on an air sampling, which is highly unusual because those are heavier mold spores so you shouldn't really pick those up on just a short air sampling most times, which means that there was a much, probably a wider problem with that or a few colonies and I had to leave. She said you need to leave yesterday. Like you've been here for two years, I want people to know listening too, and this is important. It's not as if you're going to go walk into a bad building and fall over.
Speaker 2:Right, this was months in the making. This was chronic, daily exposure creeping up. This is me having to stay home from you know, and I got sick. Maybe I'd five months before the pandemic really hit. So then what happened? Right, People started staying at home. They're not going out socializing, so you're sleeping there. You don't feel well. So when you don't feel well, are you going out and having a good time and partying and doing all this? No, you're laying in bed. Covid hits. You're not socializing much anyway. The only place that you could be really was your home, and so it was like the perfect storm.
Speaker 2:But you know now that we're in this footing now and living in the post COVID era, people working more hybrid or remote work, or maybe you know in that sense, we're seeing a higher prevalence of people in the community that are getting sick because they're not. You know, they're in the source of the problem much more often, and sometimes it's not their home, sometimes it's their workplace, by the way, right, which is a problem in and of itself. But when I realized just how much of my life had been changed by that, I mean I'll just speak frankly I lost a personal relationship, serious personal relationship, as a result of my health not being tip top, a hundred percent. I lost about half of my belongings that I couldn't properly clean or I didn't feel comfortable with, like you know, your poorest items like couch and your bedding and stuff that's not covered by insurance. Um, and then oftentimes, like you know, the medical insurance. If you're lucky to even have that, some of the treatments and testing that they were having to do isn't always covered.
Speaker 2:So a lot of this was out of pocket and you're just sitting there wondering like how did this happen, or why did this happen, or was I just unlucky, or was there anybody else that dealt with this? And that kind of wraps around to our first. You know, the first question you asked in prevalence, and that's when I kind of went on this journey to quickly start asking has anybody else dealt with this? I was 31 or 30 or 31 at the time and I had never even heard of this mold and water damage causing somebody to feel so unwell, to become so sick, and it didn't take long right To see countless, countless people in the community I mean, I'm talking tens of thousands just on a few support groups and so alarming. My story is not unique. In fact, I'm one of the more lucky people. Why?
Speaker 1:Cause I was able to move and I had the agency to move and my dad.
Speaker 2:I had to move back into my dad's temporarily and his place was safe. I was lucky comparatively, even though my whole life had imploded. And then I start reading about people who lost their job, who can't afford to get their kids healthcare, or they can only afford to get their kids treated, but they can't afford to get themselves treated. Some people these are extreme, but they're true and they need to be talked about are living in their car because they can't afford a place and they can't find a place that's safe, that isn't affected, and there wasn't any sense of urgency about this in the. You know, just being talked about.
Speaker 2:No government like, as I said before, there wasn't really a lot of government health information, not a lot of resources for people to lean on who would need it most. Resources online were all over the place of like how to deal with this appropriately. Like what, what? What do you need to look for in a? An inspector? Or what certifications or what? What does a good inspection look like? Or a remediator like, is it okay to just spray it? Does it need to be removed?
Speaker 1:independence of information. You know you go looking for information and all you're getting is the uh, spray and pray information thrown at you. It really hard to find the right information yes, and it's so.
Speaker 2:I I don't. You know, I'm speaking about this from my own experience, because I was, I learned, even as unfortunate as I felt I was and in a way, it was unfortunate. I quickly realized how grateful I was for how you know, that I was able to hold down a job and have insurance yeah and have some, and in a different time, but a different time, brandon.
Speaker 1:You know, if it had been way before covid or way after and you weren't at home as much and you were working, it may not have been as serious a problem. And then all of a sudden, harder to track down. And you're just getting by and it could have been impacting you for decades and you never really knew. Just getting by and it could have been impacting you for decades and you never really knew yeah, even though I wouldn't have been feeling well, you know but, again, and I think that's the other thing.
Speaker 2:Like people are always like, this is I'm serious about this. It's like, and you know you, a lot of times you'll see people that have been living in a water damaged building. They've got this sunken, sunken eyes and they're a little bit more pale and they're just tired, you know, because their body is just constantly under this barrage of toxins it's trying to remove and this inflammatory response. Right, they're not being able to function at a prime level, at a hundred percent. And, um, I I really wonder how many people out there are dealing with like headaches every day. Or, you know, they're not sleeping well, they never wake up rested, right, it's not necessarily like taking them down completely, but, as you say, it's just chipping away.
Speaker 2:I really wonder if we could clean up our indoor air quality, the place we spend 90 percent of our time every day. Air quality, the place we spend 90% of our time every day, right, at least in the West, at least here in the United States. And um, if we clean up our indoor air quality, how much better will people start feeling, how much better did people realize that they could feel that they didn't even think was fathomable? I truly wonder, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't know. You know we can get our knickers in a twist over exactly what the cause of this or that is, or how big a problem it is, or what exactly the fix is, but we know enough to know that air quality is the single largest environmental risk we face as a human species. This is worth fixing, it's worth investing some time in, and what you went through is what many people are going through, and every spectrum either side of that and this is the challenge is providing them with signposts to be able to go. Well, hang on a minute and join some of those dots. That knowledge is power. It really is. So you started to realize there was these gaps. How did the change, the air foundation thing, then come together? Um, yeah, great question there from the beginning.
Speaker 1:Was that something you were part of as a founding member?
Speaker 2:yeah, I was, so I was a co-founder of that. Let me back up just a moment and then I'll tie that into the foundation beginning because I think it's important. When I got sick and I realized it was the home and, by the way, I was in a rental and it was month to month, so again, that was another very lucky thing I could break the lease and leave and they did have to end up fixing that building because another person got sick there as well, by the way, I was going to ask actually what happened when you ask around, were there other people sick in the same building?
Speaker 2:was yeah, and there was another gal who lived there who got sick, and there are two other gentlemen, but they left after a year and the gal and I had been there both for two years, which which wasn't so again, it was that chipping away factor, right? Yeah, um, when I moved and I just my whole life kind of imploded and, um, I was doing research to try to understand like the literature that existed out there and just under, you know, kind of getting in that space of like I mean, so insurance doesn't cover this, our building codes and the way that we're putting up buildings is inadequate and many times that's causing the problem right off the bat. Public health information isn't out there. Physicians don't even quite understand this exposure and what this can do to the body, so then they're missing it, people are gaslighting or they don't think it's real. Right, it was all of these, all of these factors were playing into this mess.
Speaker 2:And so at the time and now I grew up, even though I was an aviation guy, um, I grew up and I had a real interest in history and government Don't know why I just put my nerd glasses on. I just was always interested in that, um, and I thought to myself boy. I need to try to do something, something about this. I don't know what that even looks like. So I just had the mind to start reaching out to my state legislators and my federal representatives and government, and one of them got back to me and it turns out his staffers legislative staffer got sick from the same thing at off-campus housing at ohio state university. That was very serendipitous, I thought so. She knew. When I reached out as a constituent of his, she said hey, there's, this is legit. I was affected not quite as bad as he was because I left after a year, but she said this is legitimate. So the representative wanted to meet with me. Um and uh talked at length. My physician at the Cleveland Clinic actually met with him on a day off to speak about this because of how many cases she was seeing. He wanted to do something about it and asked me to help him write a bill, the Ohio Indoor Safe Air Act, which would have again, again established an information and awareness campaign through the Department of Health and also for disclosures For real estate you know, commercial and residential settings to give people some awareness of what they may or may not be getting themselves into. Well, that bill didn't pass. But what that bill did was it brought me into the policy reform space.
Speaker 2:Now, totally amateur, right, I'm just a constituent, I'm still working for the FAA, I'm doing this on the side and I found myself just totally passionate about this work and over the couple of years I was pushing that and as many more people I was talking to and across the country that I was realizing just the lack of any legislation to protect people. I just kept chipping away at it. Ended up, universe kind of had the stars aligned and in 2021, I met with I met Michael Rubino, who runs a mold remediation company and also indoor air quality expert, and then Kendra Seymour, who's our executive director wonderful, wonderful people. She's an educator at heart and the three of us kind of came together and said there's not a ton of indoor air quality nonprofits and there really wasn't any that was really focused on water damage. Right, even though at Change the Air Foundation, we care about all indoor air quality pollutants and we want to change the air foundation. We care about all indoor air quality pollutants and we want to create, we want to change the air. But we felt that, given the scale and severity of the water damage discussion, and that nobody was really kind of taking the tour, you know, taking the lead on it to push it. We wanted to get, we wanted to stake, stake our flag in the ground on that issue and so we formed Change the Air Foundation and we launched in June of 2022. And Kendra's family and herself were affected by living in a water damage building Mike, of course, his business. They were helping all these sick people that all the time and Mike just became passionate about wondering why that there wasn't more sense of urgency out there, right, because he was seeing how devastated that some of these families were and individuals were and we wanted to try to do something about it.
Speaker 2:So, again, change the Air Foundation, we're a 501c3 nonprofit. We try to help families in the United States breathe safe indoor air and live in healthier homes, and we do that by focusing on three things research support. Right now, we're supporting a few very mold-literate physicians here in the United States. In a survey I think they're trying to get about a thousand people that are currently being exposed and currently dealing with health issues and putting all of that into a data set test you know all of their, all of their um labs that they're getting but also correlating that with all the environmental testing that they're, that they're getting and they're they're. I think they're trying to make that survey much like the Horowitz Lyme disease um survey was that initially got that disease out on onto the map. So that's.
Speaker 2:We're always looking for research to support free education and resources. That is a huge thing. Off of change, the air foundation dot org you can go. We have a indoor air, your indoor air um podcast. We have free downloads and guides, like any things from like things to look for for water damage, signs of water damage, checklists, questions to ask your indoor environmental professional questions to ask your remediator certifications.
Speaker 2:Right, we have all of these different classes and resources and education for people and we wanted to provide that, simon, because when we got in the space as we talked about, people are like looking all over the place to try to get this reliable information and they go to one website. It tells them one thing, they go to another. It tells them something else. They're already sick enough. They don't know who to trust or who to believe or where to put their money, and so we wanted to be able to create a safe space for them to be able to get those resources for free to try to help them navigate this. We actually have a start here. Function now, if people are dealing with this you know for the first time, or they're learning about this and they don't know where to go, go to our website, go to resources tab. Start here mold and water damage. Start there, it'll guide you. I wish that that was around when I had gotten sick, actually, and that's part of what we're doing, right, we're trying to like learn from what we had or didn't have or what we would have done differently, so that we're trying to save that heartache and heartburn for other folks.
Speaker 2:Last thing on this, then I'll get off my soapbox about the foundation.
Speaker 2:But we do policy reform and of course, that's what I do as director of public policy at Change the Air Foundation is.
Speaker 2:I work with individuals, volunteer constituents in states across the country who come to us and say that they want to use their voices and their experiences courageously, by the way, because it's not easy to talk about and to put yourself out there to try to make a change and an impact. And so we work with volunteers to interface with their lawmakers and staffers at the state level and try to get bill proposals and bills passed and then, of course, I also do a lot of that advocacy work at the federal level. So we've had some help in getting a federal bill up and running, the Healthy at Home Act, which would have dealt with mold in public housing in the United States through HUD. So that's primarily what we do at the foundation and man. We really hit the ground running a couple of years ago and we've been having some nice successes so far and we're just hoping to keep creating that aura for people to feel comfortable. And we're a big tent organization, very communal.
Speaker 1:We want people to come and to benefit and also to pitch in um if they feel passionately to do so and look, you're part of a global community like this is a global problem, you know, and there's lessons and learning for everybody. I think, and I think it's really interesting for people to look in at what you folk are doing, because this is new. So this, this, this, what does it look like when a group recognizes a problem? What does the structure look like to create the format for information and legislative and change and lobbying and all of that stuff?
Speaker 1:you know, I think it's really insightful for people to see that. And, as you say you, a start just as simple as having a roadmap, a workflow, a start here process for people that they've got something that they can go to and go okay, you've, you think you've got a problem here. Here's some steps for you to start working through and that could be enormously stress relieving for people just to have that. And you've had some success both at a state level, haven't you with with some of the policy work you've been doing recently yeah, yes, and thank you for saying yeah.
Speaker 2:So we, we were thrilled uh, by the way, it's four years in the making, right? I started this advocacy work four years ago, um, and didn't have a win. We didn't have a victory yet. I mean, we had a lot of proposals and we had a lot of great conversations and planting seeds and spreading awareness to lawmakers which is all positive, by the way but we didn't have a win yet. Back in August of this year, we were able, with the help of a couple other allied organizations and our amazing volunteers who were sick in the state of Illinois which is where Chicago is, in Illinois, if people aren't familiar with that we were able to get our first bill passed in the Illinois General Assembly. It's Senate Bill 1087, the Mold Remediation Registration Act, and the bill did a couple things. It requires all mold remediators in the state to have active certifications and financial liability coverage, to be signed onto a registry with the state, and also for a public health and awareness campaign for mold through the Illinois Department of Public Health. So it did two things it tried to ensure that consumer protection, so that people that were getting their buildings fixed by a remediator, to make sure that those folks were at least certified and hopefully following the standards, and then to be signed on to a registry. So you know, a point source for people in Illinois to make sure that who they were hiring had been vetted, and then also for people to have that vital public health awareness and information about why it's so important to get a proper inspection, what mold can potentially do, et cetera.
Speaker 2:We think that that was just.
Speaker 2:You know, it was a twofer, it didn't solve every aspect of the problem.
Speaker 2:But of course, as you're probably familiar in policy work, you can't go in with a bill that's just all encompassing because the thing would probably you can't go in with a bill that's all encompassing because a bill already has a high enough mountain to climb to pass as it is and then to try to add in all of these different aspects of it would just really bog it down. So we felt that that was a great cornerstone bill to start to build off of and kind of a blueprint for us to try to emulate in many other states. And I'll say this just as a last piece on that what was so heartening about that bill was that it was bipartisan. I mean which you know, a Democrat and a Republican got together and wanted to put that forward. Take that a step further. It passed both the House and the senate in the illinois assembly unanimously didn't have one vote against it which showed how common sense that having this in place is. Many legislators and staff we talked to already assumed that it was in place.
Speaker 1:That happens all the time yeah isn't that it's always such a great sign when you're talking to people and they go is that all not already a thing? And you go, no, quite frankly. And they go oh jesus, okay, right, yeah, where do I sign? You know, that's usually a good sign where people are shocked that that's not already a thing.
Speaker 2:You know right so it makes our you know it makes our I don't want to say our job easy, because it's not easy, but it's like when you have an issue that literally affects everybody, doesn't matter your age, your background, your right, it doesn't matter. We all breathe indoor air, and I think most of us want ourselves and our families or our friends to be living in adequate, habitable living conditions, and so, in that sense, it's an issue that people can really come together, on which I don't know how the political climate is over in Ireland and the UK as much, but here in the United States it's become it's, you know it's. It's getting a bit tough to find common ground, but thankfully we've been able to do that at least with this issue, and I not just the mold and water damage, but I think even indoor air quality in general. I'm seeing a real groundswell of support for that. So I'm really, we're really proud to be a part of this global community making this push.
Speaker 1:We're just coming at it from a from, you know, this specific niche, which we think is important and you know, I think one of the powerful tools that you have is that you're coming at it with very powerful stories. These are real people with real lives that have been affected in real ways and being able to tell a story is very helpful when you're trying to build a narrative behind policy work. One of the challenges we have in air quality is it can be quite esoteric in its nature sometimes and we're talking about very advanced air chemistry and building physics and fluid dynamics and social science and very hard for people to package that. But I think people can imagine getting ill in damp and mold homes and how that might impact you, and I think the stories that come with that are impactful.
Speaker 2:Let me just share just one quickly with you, Simon, if you don't mind.
Speaker 1:And I apologize to kind of jump in there.
Speaker 2:There's a story that we like to tell. We actually have this on our website. If you go, you can see. It's Aria's story, really interesting one.
Speaker 2:We had a dad come to our foundation with this incredible journey that he and his family had gone on. His daughter, um, had developed alopecia right, folks don't know, that's where you lose all your hair. Um, actually, she lost it all over her body and she was four, and previously she, you know, had a full head of hair and everything. Um, they went down this rabbit hole of trying to figure out why that happened. You know, they went to countless physicians, dermatologists, you name it, and something innately kept telling him that they were missing something. Right, I mean, they were having her do these like really kind of extreme treatments where they would put like an acid gel on their head and have to wear like a nightcap and it was supposed to, like the body was supposed to attack the you know, inflammation instead of the hair follicle. I mean, it was really kind of the brutal stuff to try to get her hair to grow back and it wasn't working. It was just making her suffer more. And the dad finally started to look into different groups and different conversations about this and somebody said, hey, you might want to have your house tested for any indoor environmental pollutant. So he did. Well, come to find out, the daughter was in her bedroom. The window had been leaking that they couldn't tell into the wood and into the drywall Right. And when they had that remediated, um, they said that the wood was actually pulling like like pulled pork I mean, that's how sopped it was, but they couldn't tell because of the way that the paint was over it. They found lead in some lead in that paint and also stacky botryrys mold, which is that nasty mold all around them. So they had that remediated. Well, within eight months she had a full head of hair. It was the environmental toxin or pollutant was the trigger for her alopecia, which is genetic toxin or pollutant was the trigger for her alopecia, which is genetic. And so that's a powerful story because and I will speak plainly in air quality in general you can't see it A lot of times they call these illnesses, people that are sick, the invisible illness, because and I heard this from physicians well, on the outside you look fine, right On the inside I feel terrible.
Speaker 2:Well, this was finally something that somebody could visualize. That was a direct cause of hers, and so I share that with people because it really makes people step back and say you know, we're not saying that environmental toxins cause alopecia, but in her case it was the trigger for hers. How many other illnesses or ailments are out there that are maybe a direct cause or maybe at least, at the very least exacerbating it, that you don't know about? So that's one of the stories I share, and apart from my own, and then of course we have our volunteers who share their own stories of their, their friends or their families or themselves, and it really moves politicians and legislators and we hope it starts moving people in industry and more more broadly, because I need they, we need to get these stories out there and with successes like the, the legislators successes that you're having.
Speaker 1:What's the what's? Let me rephrase that what's the what next in those states? So you get something like that passed, is that just the beginning of your work? Really Is that the foundation from which you can then impact change, or is that your work done? I guess not. Getting something passed, getting some rules in place and some words on a document is only part of the journey. Right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I suspect I could be doing this work for the next hundred years if I live long enough. That's how much of it that you could do In Illinois, for example. Right, we could work on firmer disclosures. We could work on inspectors now next to be certified. We could work on insurance. We could work on landlord tenant habitability laws that haven't been covered by that one bill. Having said that and by the way I just want to reiterate this, most States in the United States don't have any laws protecting folks when at least comes to water damage.
Speaker 2:Really. I mean that really shocks people. Like it's the wild West, like in Ohio, for instance, when I got sick, I could have woken up the next day and created my own LLC as an inspector or remediator and it would have been lawful. It see, as an inspector or a remediator and it would have been lawful, it would have been fine, even though I wasn't required to have any training or certification. Right, it's just which is crazy to us, it's insane.
Speaker 2:So we're going to try to keep emulating that blueprint bill and, of course, we'll build off of it in many states because again, when you get one bill passed and you've already been talking about this in committees and people have already been reading it, you know the legislators and staffers have already been like kind of at least abreast enough of the problem. Then building off of that makes that that you know that issue was, that issue was already compelling enough for them to vote yes for the first bill. Now it's just shoring up all of the other gaps in the system in each state. We're focusing on the state level, simon, because federal and now, by the way, we still advocate at the federal level do not get me wrong, but we feel that there's so much power at the state level? Because it's this you know, indoor air quality in the united states isn't regulated, so that means that it needs to be regulated at the at the state level right now. So that's where we should be, but things tend to and in fairness, fairness.
Speaker 1:The environmental conditions could be very, you know the the causes of damp and mold and problems could be very different state to state depending on, oh for sure, where you are, you know. So it makes some sense that it's localized to some degree right, I think, federally.
Speaker 2:What we would like to see, though, is, you know, the epa, the cdc, nih, you know hud all them coming together and doing the necessary epidemiological work, doing the research, trying to get down to the root of what these exposures are doing to people's bodies, and also to kind of have standardized language that they're giving out to people that might be going to these websites or that are linked. That's saying the proper way to deal with mold isn't by putting bleach on it, which is still out there on some of these websites. It's the right there's. There's certain ways that these things need to be dealt with. These are the type of certifications that you should be looking for when you're hiring somebody, right? They don't have that information, and so I think, federally, we do have some work to do when it comes to that.
Speaker 2:A lot of work to do. Rather, it's totally inadequate. I mean, I'm just going to speak plainly what they have now is not working. The status quo is broken, so we need to keep pushing them on that, but at the state level, you know, in Illinois there's over 10 million people that live there in the state, so that bill passing, you know, helps those people in a way, if they ever have this problem or if they ever need more information, they can at least know they're going to go to that their public health website and get adequate information about this or what they might be dealing with, or to try to find somebody, and they can know this that their remediator is at least certified and should be doing the right type of work. Again, our plans now is to just try to emulate that, as in many states across the country, as we can, to keep shoring up that consumer protection and public awareness and then to keep adding on to those bills with some of those other aspects that we just talked about.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you what next for the foundation was talked about. I was going to ask you what the what next for the foundation was. But I'm guessing, as you've indicated, you've got a blueprint that you think works for legislators and you could spend the next, as you say, 20-30 years just trying to replicate that state to state to state. You know, I was laughing when you said it was, you know, a long four years. I bet there's a few people out there working in that system that think four years was a bit of a race.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, probably yeah, you know like say it's one of those you could if you think you've got a blueprint that works and the great thing is is you can show success. You know which? A lot of people work very hard and never actually achieve that with these kinds of things, so it's it's great to have that, because it's a flag in the ground that you can point to and makes it so much easier for others to replicate. So, yeah, I'm guessing a large part of your what Next as a foundation is just trying to repeat the successes. Is it across different states?
Speaker 2:It is, and that's just policy-wise. I just want to make that point. I mean, we do more than that, right, we do. We want to keep supporting research, we want to keep, you know, putting out education. I know, like next year we're going to be really looking at the HVAC industry and you know how many problems that that folks that we're speaking with are seeing, speaking with or seeing.
Speaker 2:I mean there was one HVAC technician and I think we're going to be doing a story on them that he was in the end he's down in. I think he's in Alabama or Louisiana, which is, of course, you know, is in the deep South. So they're dealing with hurricanes and water intrusion and rain and humidity all the time. Well, this gentleman kept having seizures all the time after so long and was going to all these you know physicians and one of them actually wanted to do brain surgery on him to get it to stop, and it wasn't even guaranteed that it would work. And they found out it was because of his, all of his constant exposure all the time to mold and these HVAC units and bacteria and all sorts of stuff and this thing. Once he realized that and he got away from that, or he detoxed enough or he knew, you know, the proper PPE to be wearing when he was doing these jobs. His seizures stopped right Because that was the trigger for him.
Speaker 2:And so we want to get the HVAC industry. You know, we want to engage with them more on this topic because we think that there's a lot of good that can come from that and education, and we can learn from them and they can learn from us. So that's that's going to be put on next year. Of course, we're a very consumer focused nonprofit residential space, so we're constantly trying to again get more information awareness out to the consumers.
Speaker 2:And even we want to start a doctor outreach program as well, because I can't tell you how many people have gone to physicians and even though these physicians are very well-intentioned, really, these folks you got to think of it these folks got about two hours of medical training with mold typically.
Speaker 2:And so the first thing they think is, if somebody brings up well, I think my house is water damaged they go. Well, let's have you do an allergy test, but if that comes up negative, they immediately go. We don't think that that's the problem, right? So there's a lot of education that we can be giving to our physicians to say and we have a medical advisory panel, by the way, at Change, the Air Foundation. So you know, you know we do have physicians that are working with us and trying to put this information out there to their colleagues so that they're not just passing off folks right away to a specialty, when what we're hoping is that, within the first couple of appointments, and they do their low hanging fruit and they're asking their normal questions, that they're finally asking the crucial question, which which is what my physician did, which was tell me about the place that you're living in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tell me how often that should be a question that's asked far more often. In general, I think, about your environment, like for sure. It's like there was a really great article I was reading the other day that was talking about the value of the b and c question with your doctor's visit, and the point they were making, and that is is that people, particularly if you pay for visits um are very limited with your general practitioner. You know you go in there and invariably you have a long list of things that you probably want to discuss with them, and often the symptoms that are chronic um don't get to the top of the list, right? You know the doctor, you go in there and see the doctor and they they see that you've got high blood pressure and all of a sudden it's all about making sure you're not going to drop dead of a heart attack or you're going to drop your cholesterol, you don't get down to these kind of niggling background symptoms that are probably evidence of poor environmental conditions and that just never get.
Speaker 1:You never get to discuss that. So there was a great, there was a great strategy of um that this person was talking about in the article, about going in suggesting people go in with a list to the doctor and say I would like to discuss these things in our visit today so that they signpost with the GP that there are some other things going on. If we get caught up because the GP will catch a couple of the important things and probably want to root cause those and you may never get to some of the other ailments that may be important, to some of those primary conditions that you never got chance to discuss but also might be evidence of something else that's going on with the environment and I think that's a real. When you were talking it reminded me very much of that article because I bet that happens an awful lot with damp and mold, that you've got these chronic lower priority symptoms as you see them that just never get discussed with the medical practitioner or practitioner never gets to talk to a patient about and this just gets missed.
Speaker 1:The other thing I was going to say was that ASHRAE at the moment in your part of the world is is making a big shift towards health in the next period. So I think it's good timing, from a engaging with the hevac industry perspective, that there's a real focus on health and buildings, but again born out of the pandemic standards like 241 and so on. A real, not a shift in thinking, because I know a lot of people within the evac industry have always considered air quality and health, but as a a general direction for the whole organization, I think there's a shift towards health and also a much more of a recognition, following the pandemic, of this multidisciplinary element to the built environment that we need now. Right, I've had to having medical people, occupational hygienists, hvac people, engineers. Success in the built environment isn't going to be born out of one silo or another. It comes from everybody working together, and damp and mold is an absolutely classic example of that, I think.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 2:No, I couldn't agree with you more, and that's partly what we're trying to do is try to build this coalition of like-spirited, like-minded organizations and individuals who we can help support in their missions and vice versa, because there's all this obvious overlap and we, you know this is going to take a village for us, but I think if we can all collectively keep hammering home the costs of this right, the you know, the health aspect of this, um, I, I think that's that's our strongest play to get the public to, you know, want to continue to see change occur, and I think that's really where we're going, where, where we're leading, because you know, there was a lot of valiant efforts early on.
Speaker 2:I I was reading the history of this. You know there was a lot of valiant efforts early on I was reading the history of this, you know for certification requirements and licensures for this problem in the States, but I found that they were never talking about the health aspect and so they couldn't get lawmakers and staffers and people to really prioritize it. And so we found putting that front and center is really what compelled these lawmakers to want to do something about it. Right, because it becomes that serious. It's not just the fact that it's an unregulated industry. It's the fact that there's an unregulated industry that is adding to the dismay or the harm, or the financial harm, for the people that are just trying to live their life and to get better and to be well and to be happy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and some legislators there's an economic cost here as well. You know the, definitely the cost, the cost in absenteeism and presenteeism and efficiencies within business. I mean you can speak from personal experience. It might, it may not mean you're absent. I mean it was probably different for yourself working in the aviation industry, because there's a level of performance you need to even be at work. But in a lot of environments people dragging themselves into work were operating at 60, 40 percent of their capability, week after week, month after month, with these chronic conditions. That's a hidden cost to business. That's enormous. And now, as we've said, from pandemic, this shift in what work is and so much more homeworking environments, this now becomes an occupational health problem that this is a problem for business to be aware of because if large, particularly in the knowledge economy, if large swathes of your workforce are sitting at the end of their bed working from home for large periods of the time in environments that are not optimal, that has an impact on your bottom line, you know, and that is a cost.
Speaker 1:If business starts waking up to that, that's another pool of resource for this that could be really important, I think, and that not just for damp and mold but for air quality in general, in general.
Speaker 2:And I totally agree with that.
Speaker 1:We're trying to unpack and figure that out. It's very difficult for businesses to understand where and when you cross the thresholds of someone's castle. It's an awkward space to be, as a business, in someone's home but nonetheless, the fundamental performance of your business, your bottom line, is impacted by the performance of your business. Your bottom line is impacted by the performance of your people and if they're in environments that are in unoptimable, that is that, um, it's the joseph allen 330 300 rule thing all over again. You know, if 90 of your business cost is your people, a five or ten percent impact on the performance of your business costs has a massive impact on your bottom line, you know one of the things that came out of, so that again I'll talk about that policy brief.
Speaker 2:By the way, if any listeners are interested, if you go to our website change the air foundationorg and go to our policy tab, you'll be able to click on something called policy brief and you can read that 14 page. There's a lot of infographic it's not all just literature about the known economic and health impacts updated right of dampness and mold in residential settings in the US. Extraordinarily eye-opening. One thing that came out of that was you know, there's not a lot of economic health impact literature that exists a ton anyway. The most that exists out there is for respiratory issues and asthma, at least here in the United States. The last estimate that had been done was I think it was by two folks, Maduri and Fisk, out of the EPA in 2007, looking at dampness and mold and asthma cases in the United States. Well, they found at the time that about 21% of all asthma cases were directly related to dampness and mold. Right, that's one of five people, that's a lot. At the time that they were estimating that the cost of that was about three and a half billion dollars annually. Right, Not just from you know, own personal healthcare costs, but loss productivity, et cetera. When we had industrial economics update those numbers for now 2024, and given all the other literature, that number isn't three and a half billion that we found it's closer to 40 billion An enormous change. Just asthma alone. We're not talking about any other health ramifications of this.
Speaker 2:So when we, you know, when we're talking about costs and that's one thing that we, you know, was born out, was born out of a lot of the conversations I had in Washington DC talking to offices, especially the Republican offices, where they they very much were saying you know, we, we, we, you sold us on the merit of the issue, but do we have any idea of what the cost is? You know, we're very much taking the tone of data-driven policy right. Well, we didn't have all the data in one place, at least enough for people to kind of read and digest. That's why we did this policy brief. So the fact that we can now go into these offices knowing what we know, which is, I think, only scratching the surface, Simon, to be honest, honest with you, because there's a lot more research that we need to do in surveys and etc. We can say, at the very least, this is affecting millions of people and is costing us billions of dollars at the very least tons of billions yeah, and this and air pollution tends to keep bad company.
Speaker 1:So when we're fixing one problem, we're invariably fixing a lot of other problems as well, so there's often a double hit to this stuff. I mean, I wonder what the return on investment would be for the States to give you, I don't know, a measly $100 million for the next couple of years to deal with damp and mould, if it's costing billions to society. There's a hell of an ROI there, right and this is the infuriating thing about this kind of work For what is relatively small bucks, in the grand scheme of things, the impact that you could have with foundations like this could be enormous. How do you find funding as a matter of interest? Are you looking for further funding at the moment? How does that growth plan work? Does that come from states as charitable? Are you looking for philanthropy? How do you fund efforts to try and broaden the scope of what you're doing?
Speaker 2:You mean at the foundation Simon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I mean good work like you're doing. How does that get funded and how do more people fund it to?
Speaker 2:get activities. Well, great question. It's the age-old question of all nonprofits that do incredible work with a variety of different topics and subjects. When I got into the space, I just I have such admiration for people that that work in NGOs and nonprofits and 501 C3s, because trying to find funding is a constant struggle for these people. So, basically, right now and again, we're only about we're closing in on three years old at Change, the Air Foundation, but we've been supported by just philanthropically inclined people, major donors and our community.
Speaker 2:Of course we do donations and that's how we've been able to do this. Work is off of their charity and generosity. Also, you can go through government grants or other private grants, of course, but those take a lot of time and of course you need, you know, for us to be able to expand at the foundation, you do need some money to be able to bring on people, to have some overhead, you know, to run the programs that we want to run. So right now we've been supported by just uh, you know, our community, of course, here, which, of course, in the water damage community, simon. To be honest, these folks don't have a lot of money because they've spent it all on the remediation jobs or their health right. And then we've had a few really just incredible, very passionate donors that we're so grateful for. But really for us to broaden it's going to be finding other major donors or other people who are philanthropically inclined or believe in our mission or can see the ROI which I can promise you and I know I'm biased with Change, the Zero, but I can think of no better ROI than supporting the work we're doing, given the scale of the problem and how much work we have to do. You can affect so many people's lives across the country and, frankly, in the world.
Speaker 2:This problem is not just isolated in the United States. You know, in the UK and Ireland, australia, I mean anywhere there's building materials, anywhere there's water, there's going to be an opportunity for this problem, right, yeah, so yeah, if people, if anybody would want to get involved, please reach out to us, go to changetheairfoundationorg. You can email me, brandon, at changetheairfoundationorg. You know, please reach out to us. You know, go change the air foundation dot org. You can email me, brandon, at change the air foundation dot org. We can set discussions and just, you know, if you feel inclined and motivated and impassioned of the work we're doing, please consider us, you know, with your charitable giving. We would be so grateful for that. So, yeah, so it's that. And then also, just you know, maybe looking for certain grants that you know we would be in line for. But so far that's how we're getting by. But man, we've got all these great plans that we want to, that we want to launch, but we just need the financial oxygen to do it.
Speaker 1:So yeah and yeah, and time is a as a valuable resource. Well, I'll, of course, include all the links to the organisation in the show notes, as usual. Brandon, it's been great talking to you this afternoon, a pleasure, as always. I really enjoy our chats, and a couple of hours has flown by, as I suspected, without any trouble whatsoever. I think it's been a really valuable insight, both into what you're doing as an organization but for people in other parts of the world that listen into this podcast, that this isn't an isolated problem, and to see how other parts and other jurisdictions are dealing with this challenge as well. So I thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Simon, thank you so much for having me and, on Air Quality Matters and all the work you're doing, I'm just I'm super grateful for it and hopefully we can keep making an impact together. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:No problem at all. Look forward to meeting you face to face at some point. Thanks a million, brandon. Speak to you soon, take care. All right, take care. Can I ask a favour? If you enjoyed this podcast and know someone else who might be interested, do spread the word and let's keep building this community. This podcast was brought to you in partnership with 21 Degrees, lindab, aeco, ultra, protect and Inbuit all great companies who share the vision of this podcast and are not here by accident. Your support of them helps their support of this podcast. Do check them out in the links and at airqualitymattersnet. See you next week.
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