#61 - Hector Altimirano: Rethinking Mould - Health Implications, Diagnostic Challenges, and Global Collaboration in Building Science

In this episode, we delve into the intricate relationship between mould, our built environments, and health. Hector Altamirano shares insights on how mould serves as a messenger for underlying issues in our homes, the potential health impacts of mould exposure, and the importance of fostering healthier living conditions.

• Exploring the binary discussion surrounding damp and mould 
• Understanding mould’s role as an organism in our environment 
• The interaction of moisture and health in the built environment 
• Discussing the complexity of mould in mental health contexts 
• The need for a nuanced approach to mould management 
• The significance of time and occupant behaviour in mold growth 
• Emphasizing the importance of multi-disciplinary dialogues 

Do check out the link for more information about the UKCMB and its additional resources on moisture in buildings.

Hector LinkedIn

UKCMB

UCL Bartlett

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Mold in the Built Environment
• 14:04 Exploring Health Risks of Mold
• 21:43 Navigating Complexity of Indoor Environmental Science
• 37:12 Understanding Mold Growth Over Time
• 45:43 Diagnostic Challenges in Identifying Mold
• 57:23 Global Challenges in Mold Detection
• 1:09:15 Challenges and Efforts in Mold Prevention
• 1:19:13 Exploring Built Environment Research Opportunities
• 1:29:16 International Collaboration in Moisture Buildings
• 1:44:08 Building Community Through Podcast Partnerships

Transcript

Simon: 0:00

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters, and 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 coming up a conversation with Hector Altamirino, professor at UCL, the Bartlett, and the academic director of the UKCMB. We talk about damp and mould a lot on this podcast, an ever-present challenge to our built environment and health globally but the conversation is often quite binary in nature. You either have mould or you don't. A mould problem is either solved or it isn't. To exist on this earth is to coexist with mould. Its nature, presence and impacts are deep, profound and nuanced, and its interrelationship with our built environment is fascinating.

Simon: 1:14

I sat down with Hector, who is without doubt, one of my favourite people in London, to discuss this fascinating subject. Hector has been at the forefront of study and standards in moisture in buildings for a long time and his work at the UKCMB with others is an important epicentre for discussion around moisture in buildings. We talk about the complex nature of mould, moisture balance in buildings and the work the UK Centre for Moisture in Buildings does, plus a few tangents in the conversation, as per normal, recorded live from UCL in London. I hope you enjoy this one. Don't forget to check out the sponsors in the show notes. This is a conversation with Hector Altamirino. Joe notes this is a conversation with Hector Altamirino.

Simon: 2:06

I mean, what's interesting to me is that the conversation around damp and mould in social housing is particularly social housing, but more broadly in the built environment, I think is often presented quite binary in nature, in that there's either mould or there isn't, usually because it's visible or it isn't, or that we need to eradicate mould in some way, that if it's there it's a problem. And my feeling is is it's much more nuanced than that that the mould is a natural part of our environment, and I thought that would be an interesting start for the conversation about how we think broadly in terms of damper mould. Mold in our buildings and I know that's something you talk about quite a bit in your presentations is about what do we mean by mold? What? What is it? How widespread is it? I mean, can you speak to that a little bit, as to how perhaps we should start thinking about mold in our lives, as it were?

Hector: 3:02

yeah, yeah, that is a good question and it was a good start of the conversation, I think, because I don't think we know enough about mold mold as a microorganism or as the kingdom of fungus in general, and how they relate to the built environment. And I have been doing, as you know, researching mold for many years and actually when I started to do research at UCL, it was about mold and trying to find the ways of preventing mold from growing on buildings. And my first approach was well, how much I know about mold? I mean, how can I prevent something from growing in buildings if I don't know enough? So this is how my journey has started in some way, and this is something that I try to teach my students, but also every time that they invite me to give a presentation, and try to educate the audience a bit more about mold.

Hector: 4:05

I'm not an expert on mold per se. I didn't study microbiology, I'm an architect by background but I thought that understanding mold as an organism is quite important. It's the only way in which we can really prevent them. Now, how do you prevent mold? Mold, as you were saying, we talk about thousands of mold species and genera, which is the families. So how you can prevent mold if you don't know which species you're trying to tackle. It's the same that I mean in my presentation when I talk about animals how you can prevent animals from growing in the world, in the environment. That is really difficult. I mean, let's think on one species at least and then you can start to probably understand the problem. And this is how. Yeah, I think we don't know enough about mold. We know a lot, but still there is a huge journey to try to understand, from a research point of view, what is there.

Simon: 5:09

And it's your sense from microbiologists that mold is still a frontier science in a lot of ways. I mean, we know, like you say it's like. I guess the analogy for me is like air quality we know a lot about air quality, we know a lot about air chemistry and things like that, but there's still a sense that we're still there's a lot to learn, there's a lot to know. Is that your sense from the microbiology world, that there are just thousands and thousands of species and we know a lot, but we feel like we're still peering into a big hole really in our knowledge. Yes, I mean, we know a lot, but we feel like we're still peering into a big hole really in our knowledge.

Hector: 5:46

Yes, I mean we know a lot I'm pretty sure the microbiologist expert, they know much more than I know about mold. But bringing mold to the building environment area or to physics or building physics is something completely different, because it's not just about mold, it's about the condition within our buildings. The building physics of a building is when we talk about moisture. So there are so many parameters, so many areas that we need to bring together to try to understand how we can prevent it. Now, in my journey to try to understand mold, I always I mean now this is what I said when I gave a presentation is that for me, mold is some kind of messenger. It's not that bad. Obviously, the bellow to a point that can be dangerous is just something that we should prevent. But is this messenger telling you that there's something wrong in your home and you need to deal with it? So in some way I don't see mold as the body in this equation or in this term.

Simon: 6:50

Well, it's an organism and it's signposting that it now has the conditions to flourish and to flower and to be visible. We perceive that as something wrong in the environment of our home, but it doesn't, you know. It's a sign for us perhaps that the building is out of kilter, but I guess for the mold it's going. Happy days Like this is now great for me.

Hector: 7:19

Yeah, if mold is growing, it's because they're a perfect condition for them to grow. That's it and as soon as they start to grow, they're going to create more spores, they're going to release the spores, they're going to continue their process of trying to survive. That is their nature in some way. So happy for them.

Simon: 7:38

Yeah, and our buildings don't live in isolation from the rest of the world. They are part of the environment. You know, mold is a natural part of the environment. So, left to its own devices, that environment will consume that building and rot it and decay it and bring it back to the soil eventually, to the soil eventually. That's just what we're doing generally with our built environment is fighting against that natural decay process really in a lot of ways? Yeah, certainly, I mean we need to do it.

Hector: 8:11

I mean, obviously, mould in excess or a particular type of species, they can harm certain individuals and, when they're being exposed, people with specific physical conditions or weak immune systems. So we need to try to avoid mold from growing in buildings for sure. But, as you said, this is something natural, so it's going to happen. They are there. At the moment, we are breeding mold spores. You're coming from another part of, I mean from London, and you brought breathing more spores. Yeah, you're coming from from another part of, I mean you know from london, and you brought your own spores from whatever I was from. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, we, the air is full of spores, so they're out here.

Simon: 8:55

We're not going to ever get rid of and have a completely clean um environment is it fair to say they're part of what we'd call a microbiome mold and mold spores? Would they be classified in that, in that they're part of the natural organisms of an environment? Absolutely, yeah, absolutely so. At some level I guess there's a. It's not healthy to have no mold in an environment. That they must. It plays some part at a very small level, even at decaying dead flies on your windowsill or you know like it's breaking down. Mold has a job to do, doesn't it, in breaking down stuff everywhere in in our environment. If so, we don't want to get to a point where we've got a sterile environment, I guess, where there's zero mold in our blood that is a really good question.

Hector: 9:59

Yeah, and probably that is a research question for someone to look in more detail. If you ask me, I mean coming from another country where, probably, I grew up in an environment where, hopefully, you are exposed to as many things as you can outside. It's the only way to build your immune system to be stronger, which is completely different to what we are doing today. That we're trying to clean everything. Now I'm not so sure, but I don't have the knowledge to be able to say yeah, and completing sterile environment is something that we need to look for and more. We need more. I want to believe that we need more. I don't know, I'm not so sure. What is there? Our relationship, physical relationship with mold, if we need to breed them or not. I mean, I don't know what is the role that they play in our body.

Simon: 10:44

I mean, is there some kind of symbiotic?

Hector: 10:47

There is something, but I'm not aware of that. Yeah, I mean, we have. From what I understand, we have a species of mold within our body that is there. I don't remember the name of this, but I'm completely wrong. But, yeah, I wouldn't be able to say, yes, we need mold. Yeah, to be able to physically, I mean, be healthier. I'm not so sure, but you're, you're right in terms of the biome. So we interact with a biome that is full of mold spores and bacteria and probably all the type of microorganism, and and, and, and probably we need that yeah it.

Simon: 11:26

It's interesting, isn't it? Because when we look at the built environment and and I use housing because housing is so there's such a discussion around damp and mold and housing, for obvious reasons, um, but the conversation is so binary and and the I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that when you're trying to grapple with something big and I think damper mold in housing is a big problem, it's an existential problem to try and solve. An existential problem to try and solve. One of the first goals in that process is to try and understand what good looks like. Where are we heading? What's the direction of travel? And if we're wrong to say from the start that the direction of travel is no mold in homes or the eradication of visible mold, are we setting a standard for ourselves that's either impossible to actually achieve or undesirable in some way?

Simon: 12:36

And that's the interesting thing for me is that that kind of discussion about if, if we want to understand the roadmap because I'm involved, as you are, with housing organizations, talking to them about strategies for dealing with damp and mold challenges the direction of travel is just kind of loosely termed, you know, dealing with damp and mold in housing.

Simon: 12:56

But to really define that path, a bit like we've done with sustainability, trying to understand the path to net zero. You've got to kind of figure out what does good look like here, and that for me actually isn't clear. You know, I know from experience, particularly in this part of the world, it's almost impossible in a lot of buildings to eradicate visible mould 365 days of the year, adicate visible mould 365 days of the year. In certain areas of a property there will be enough cold surfaces or moisture, naturally, because of wet areas or so on, that you'll get some mould. It's that trying to figure out what the good looks like. How do we frame what an acceptable or tolerable level of it is, if we accept that there's something there? Do you know what I mean?

Hector: 13:50

I know, but it's a difficult, I guess, question and discussion because I think we should try to eradicate. We don't want any more growing buildings, but we need to accept, as you said, that more is going to grow at some point. This is something you cannot get rid completely. Now the issue in social housing is that you don't know who is using your homes and, again, you don't know what are their health condition and what you don't want, I guess, as a local authority, to provide. A house that isn't healthy, that is, a house where actually mold is likely to develop. You need to try to avoid that. For sure, I have mold in my home and I'm trying to avoid having it and I try to educate my family on what to do to prevent mold. Specifically, as soon as you see something, let's clean it. But, as you said, I mean it's quite difficult because they are part of our environment. They have been here, probably in Earth, before us. So how you can get rid of something that is so important?

Simon: 15:00

Yeah, and you know I suppose I often talk about it well ad nauseum, actually on the podcast. Podcast is this looking at stuff through a risk lens, and the interesting thing through a risk lens is that it's very difficult to have no risk eradicatable. But what's the tolerable? Is that? What's the tolerable level? What's an acceptable risk, as I've got the health and safety statement, is it? But am I doing everything that can be reasonably expected of me today to mitigate the risk? That's kind of the question you're asking.

Simon: 15:38

Um, the challenge we have, particularly in social housing, I think, is that people have other battles to fight and often remembering to wipe down a little bit of mold around the shower cubicles or around window reveals is not at the top of the list of things to deal with that week and and that's why the problems build and so on, because it's quite frankly not a priority. It wouldn't be for me either in a lot of those situations. So I think risk always sits in a list of priorities in any situation and sometimes mold is, you know, down the list of things to worry about if you're trying to put food on the table or heat your home.

Hector: 16:18

Yeah, absolutely. Now having, I guess, a bit of mold in the kitchen same coin, the toilet, toilet is something acceptable. We all have it. Okay, yeah, I'm probably. But if that bead of mold gets uncomfortable and then suddenly you have in the whole world, that is something that you need to try to prevent.

Hector: 16:37

Now we have done some research some of my colleagues on acceptable level of mold spores in air and it's a quite difficult question to answer too. So one of our PhD students and one of my colleagues is trying to benchmark mold spores in air and probably you can do it if you compare, and probably we're going to be able to do it. Actually, if you compare clean houses I mean you don't have any visible mold, but still you have many mold spores in there and houses that are contaminated, so you can see the different levels of mold spore in there. But the issue is you may have a house that has really low levels of visible mold but actually you don't know the species and that species. Probably a few spores of that species could be more complex than a lot of spores of another type of mold species, and this is where the whole conversation became quite difficult. So a bit of something could be quite dangerous for a particular individual with a particular health condition.

Hector: 17:44

Yeah, and that is something that we don't know yet. I don't think there is enough research that can tell you that we know which one of the species are more complex for humans, but there are so many there and this is something that we don't know yet. And another thing that I want to say about the species that I said in my presentation I gave the example of why I just mentioned that every year you see in I gave the example of why I just mentioned that every year you see in the news a new species of lizard or a new species of plants or anything that is discovering somewhere in the world, in an exotic island in the Caribbean, I don't know, and then suddenly you have a new species that haven't been determined. We were not aware that existed. So imagine with more how many are there that still we don't know.

Simon: 18:28

Yeah, yeah, interesting. And what is it about mold that does us harm, do you know? I mean because you've got the mold spores, which can provide allergic reactions to things, but you also have mycotoxins as well that are released, the VOCs, or I think it's called MVOCs that are effectively producing gases that causes harm as well. Is that the limit to the harm? Is it basically the spores and the toxins that are released?

Hector: 19:03

The mycotoxins that they release, and they release these mycotoxins to fight other microorganisms, not to fight us.

Simon: 19:10

Okay.

Hector: 19:10

And yeah, if we get in contact with those and I guess at different levels, yeah, they can affect us, so the mycotoxins are often a competing thing that they're trying to out-compete other species.

Simon: 19:25

It's actually other species.

Hector: 19:27

That's what they do. Now, one thing that and there's plenty of research in terms of how mold can affect health, but I think one area that we haven't really looked in enough detail is the mental health effect of mold, and I think I want to mention this because I mean we are doing a literature review at the moment to try to understand what is in the literature related to mental health. What are the main mental health conditions or psychological conditions that have been reported in the literature related to mold? But also for me it's more interesting what is the method that all the researchers have used to actually see that link between mental health or psychological health and mold? How do you have really assessed that relationship? What kind of method or questionnaire or I don't know experimental work you have done to try to say, yeah, there is a link between the two of them?

Simon: 20:30

And you've obviously, I'm guessing, scanned that literature. What's your sense of it when you look at it? There's obviously enough there to have a look at it.

Hector: 20:40

I mean we're still working on it so far. We have found, when we talk about mental health, actually there are some conditions, and I also mentioned psychological health. It's because of psychological conditions, because what we have found is that researchers have reports on depression, on anxiety, on sleep depression and on cognitive performance. So those are the four main areas that researchers have reported that are linked to mold. Now what we have found is that in many of the reports there's not much information about how that, what the method that have used actually to link the two. And this is what I am really interested in, because at the moment I mean I want to go in another direction, which is trying to understand the mental health and mold. I mean we're trying to. We are developing a proposal at the moment to look at that. So this literature review was done to inform actually our proposal and our methods.

Simon: 21:43

So, yeah, you don't want, you want to use a method that have been is a standard method or something that has been validated and I imagine there must be an awful lot of confounding factors in a lot of that research, particularly if you're trying to look at a. If it's at an epidemiological level must be very difficult to get the numbers to draw meaning from it. If it's at case level, you've got the confounding factors of the environment. The other, because often if you've got damp and mould present, you might have other air pollutants present as well, and we know that some of those trigger cognitive impacts and mental health problems. So I imagine it's a really messy picture.

Hector: 22:24

It is complex.

Simon: 22:24

It is really complex, you know, if there's any kind of direct toxicological evidence that that mold spores or mycotoxins are actually creating a physiological or mental response in some way, because that, because that that's the kind of the straight line stuff, isn't it? We say the exposure to x creates a symptom of y? Um, that's where it gets easier. But when you start moving it into the environment, where it's is it the lighting, is it the fact that I'm? You know, let's face it, if you lived in a damp and moldy bedroom, um, you'd be pretty depressed about that environment anyway. Yeah, whether or not the mold is having a confounding impact on that or not, that's a really hard one to unpack.

Hector: 23:12

I imagine it is complex. It is really complex and, as you said before, probably a family that cannot heat their home. That is going to be their bed.

Simon: 23:19

Or other children in their life. Yeah, all sorts of things.

Hector: 23:22

How would you just detach that from just more?

Simon: 23:26

and that is when it became super complex, yeah yeah, as I was just talking to pavel yesterday about, you know, even trying to untangle the basic indoor environmental quality stuff from air quality, you know the impact of noise and light and sound in amongst air quality on things like cognitive performance, like we really are at the frontier of understanding the combined effects of all of this stuff.

Simon: 23:50

It's a really hard space to navigate through and often a lot of the tests that we've got to determine things like cognitive performance can be pretty woolly, you know, for doing score testing at the end of the workday and things like that Not the most ideal. So it's a really interesting space. Ultimately, I suppose and as a practitioner in the space, often I don't care too much. In some ways what matters is the result and if people are struggling with mental health because they're in damp and moldy conditions or they're in damp and moldy conditions and they have mental health challenges, it makes some sense to sort out the damp and mold. It's a non-harm intervention in that sense that it's not going to make a situation any worse by improving someone's indoor environment. Absolutely, so it's a very low-risk approach to try and mitigate a risk.

Hector: 24:49

Yeah, but what you need. I mean you need to understand that if you're going to improve the built environment, what kind of improvement are you going to propose and do? So you may think that you're going to improve it and making a huge effort to try to do it. Maybe it's not the solution. So this is why I mean you need this kind of research. Now, for me, I mean not having that kind of information is great. I mean there's more research, more crazy ideas, yeah, more discussion with the students, more discussion with colleagues. And this is when things get quite interesting for me and exciting. I mean, dealing with all the discipline is something that I really love. So, as an architect going to microbiology, then it was something. It was a whole journey, but a journey that I'm enjoying quite a lot. And going to health also, I mean that is it's fascinating.

Simon: 25:40

I think that's. The fundamentally exciting part of indoor environmental science at the moment is the multidisciplinary nature of it. We were just bringing in more and more disciplines into this sector and opening up more and more avenues and joining more and more dots. That's where the game is at. Yeah, absolutely.

Hector: 26:01

We talk about mold and what is the main driver of mold? Humidity, moisture in buildings, water, where that water comes from, then how we have removed that water, ventilation and then the whole area of ventilation in research and and developing methodologies to actually answer those kind of simple but really complex questions.

Simon: 26:34

Yeah, and and for me in a way it's quite analogous to some of the conversations I've had on the air chemistry side of air quality as well is that there's just this expansive area of research and knowledge acquisition going on in that and the joining of different disciplines. So it's incredible, like so from people coming into this field. I mean there's a lifetime of potential learning and and business and like it's just a phenomenal space to be in. I can't emphasize that enough, but but the the beauty of what we're often doing when we're trying to deliver better outcomes is we have to condense all of that complexity through the conduit of a home, let's say, and in that space there are only so many levers we can pull to engineer a better outcome, so you have to kind of squeeze all this complexity. It's similar to me to the sustainability question.

Simon: 27:44

In the early days there was an organization called the natural step that kind of put it really well and that was that you could spend the next 20 years being like a rabbit in the headlights at the just sheer complexity of the what sustainability is. You could pick a fight on batteries or solar panels and fight there for the rest of your days if you wanted to, or you could broadly agree that resources are diminishing, demand is increasing and somehow we've got to find our way through this funnel to whatever sustainability looked like. We won't know what that is until we get there, but we can. We agree on the direction of travel. Similarly, for the built environment in, let's say, housing. We've got all this complexity of damp and mold and air chemistry and so on, but at the end of the day, these are people's homes, where the mechanisms for dealing with damp and mold and what will come onto this moisture balance is there's effectively three drivers for mold in your home. That's the presence of moisture, presence of food for mold, and we'll come on to this moisture balance is there's effectively three drivers for mold in your home. That's the presence of moisture, presence of food for mold and a temperature that it can grow in. Yeah, right, everything else is going to be a given. You will have mold spores.

Simon: 28:55

So the only levers that we have at our disposal to control this problem um is is those three conditions. How do we control those three conditions? And I think you put this really well in your talks and the UKCMB, which we'll definitely come on to later. I think really coined this term moisture balance that at the end of the day, we are always going to have food available for mould to grow in homes, aren't we? At the end of the day, we are always going to have food available for mold to grow in homes, aren't we? And we're likely to always want to have a building at a temperature that mold likes to grow in, or the species that we're talking about. So there's only really one lever here, and that's the moisture piece, isn't it?

Hector: 29:38

It is. This is the most important one. And in terms of temperature, as you said, I mean nutrients is full of nutrients the whole. I mean the materials, building materials and even dust and our skin. I mean, we all shed a lot of pieces of skin, millions of them every second or every minute, I do not remember and those are in there, they get stuck on surfaces and that is perfect condition for nutrient-full mold to start and feed from there.

Hector: 30:09

But, as you said, water is the most important. And going back to the moisture balance, yeah, I think that is a really important concept. So homes are in constant movement. They're never static. This is going to depend on the conditions outside, it's going to depend on the conditions inside, it's going to depend on the building envelope. But if you get to one extreme, which is too much moisture at a particular time for a long period of time, what you're going to have? You may have a problem with mold growing. And yeah, you're right, I mean, moisture is the most important one. And in terms of temperature, indoor temperature is ideal for mold, but probably not ideal, but it's in a range that actually allow the development.

Simon: 31:00

I'm guessing with mold, there's some species flourishing colder and warmer. I mean there's probably a second trim, is there? So the stuff that we see is the stuff that enjoys the environments that we create for it. But as that changes I mean, is things like global warming do you think going to have an impact to that? If we're subtly shifting the ambient temperature, how we manage spaces, are we going to see different species or speak.

Hector: 31:31

I believe we're gonna see different species. Yeah, um, talking with uh I forgot his name a professor from um College, I forgot, I should remember his name were just discussing about how moles can adapt. So I'm pretty sure, as climate change is happening and conditions are changing, we're going to have a new species, for sure, but also for the existing species. They're going to adapt to new species, for sure, but also probably existing in a species. They're going to adapt to whatever new conditions we have indoors Now. We're going to have a change in temperatures, a change in probably more rains, more humid environments, probably more rain penetration, I don't know. I mean many things can happen, but certainly I mean mold. They're not going to go away. We may have more, we may have less, no idea. New species, probably, species that today they are not of concern and at some point they're going to be kind of concerned. Yeah, no idea.

Simon: 32:35

Yeah, I keep thinking of the Last of Us Netflix. We don't worry about that.

Hector: 32:41

You know, what is really funny about that serious is that, um, I was well, as I said, I was given, I mean, I was looking at mold for many years and then suddenly I saw my son playing this game and I thought, well, that is quite weird. And he mentioned that, actually, with this about mold, and and this is when I went to look at um, this particular species, cornicep, which is the one that get on the bodies of insects, exactly, and it's amazing how actually that series of that program is based on something that is real it's happening, it's quite amazing, it's quite yeah.

Simon: 33:20

Did you see the opening sequence for the guy being interviewed where he was saying what is your biggest fear? And people were saying about viruses and pandemics? He was going no, not that, not that, no fungi. And he was explaining that these cordyceps at the moment they require too high a temperature. But if something were to happen this was kind of back in the 60s and 70s if something were to happen, I don't know like the Earth was to warm by a few degrees. All of a sudden you could find that species adapting and it was really really ominously, but it was brilliantly done.

Hector: 33:54

I haven't, I haven't. Yeah To me. I probably just saw one of yeah.

Simon: 34:00

I'll send you the link. I'll put the link to the YouTube video in the podcast notes for people to freak out. It's a brilliant sequence. They have a couple of in the television adaptation to it. They have a couple of sequences that became quite popular. One of them is that interview where he's kind of saying look, they were laughing because it wasn't a problem, it seemed ludicrous. He was saying, look, the Earth would only have to heat by two or three degrees, and that's the problem. And then, 30 years later, you know we're talking about global warming. So it made it very ominous and very real sounding. Yeah.

Simon: 34:34

And then the other one was um, the lady who's a cordyceps expert gets called into the first of the infections and she's sitting there after having discovered that this is a cordyceps in the brain and it's in Malaysia or somewhere like that. And the chief of the army is saying well, what do we do? And she says you need to bomb the city. There's no vaccine, there's no, this is it, we're done. And she says I want to go home now. And it's just like whoa, and that's the. I want to go home now. And it's just like oh, and that's the start of the Last of Us. That was the movie, the television. It looks really well done. Actually I haven't.

Hector: 35:13

I think this is in HBO no HBO.

Simon: 35:16

yeah, it was on Sky or something Pretty sure.

Hector: 35:19

I mean, it's in my to-do list of things that I need to.

Simon: 35:23

It's not everybody's cup of tea, but I think for a couple of sleepless nights, those two YouTube videos will get everybody going. Anyway, we massively digress, as always. Hector, I think it's interesting to talk about moisture balance because, again, moisture in buildings is something that we tend to talk about in quite a binary nature. You know, the building's too humid, or the relative humidity is too high, or it isn't, and so on. Um but, but I'm now been on the pedestal ever since uk cmb kind of coined the term of this moisture balance concept and this recognition that every building and every space is probably going to have a different balance point. You know, there are these things that interact with that moisture balance. You know the fabric, the systems, the people and their activities, all these things are having this impact on this. Where this balance point sits, and depending on how occupied your home is, how much volume it has, the efficiencies of the materials, every building is going to have a slightly different point at which that building's in a healthy balance and you, you shift one element of those factors and you can have an impact on the others.

Simon: 36:44

Yeah, so the the example would be something simple. Like you, you improve the temperature of the home by reducing drafts, but now you've reduced the overall ventilation rate which allows. So you've increased the surface temperatures, but you've also now increased the, the vapor loading in the building, and now the building is you. By fixing one, you've shifted it out of balance. So it's that, it's just try it's. I think it's a great way of describing nuance balance, because it isn't the fixed thing, it isn't an either or yeah, each bill and and it will evolve over time. As families grow up and leave and chat, you get teenagers and they now introduce unbelievable amounts of moisture into the prompt of cycling. Better, bring friends, bring friends. You have bedrooms, boyfriends, four or five people in there overnight on sleepovers and things like that. It's unbelievable how a building will evolve as a family evolves.

Hector: 37:54

Yeah, no, that's true.

Hector: 37:55

But when you said I mean bring kids to the home and it's sleep how a building will evolve as a family evolves. Balance again. But what I was saying before is when the balance out or the house gets unbalanced for a longer period of time is when we may have a problem, and mold is the one that is telling you listen, there's too much water here. This is what I'm growing, but for that to happen because the temperature usually are not really high for mold to develop really quick, so you probably have many days, weeks or even a month when mold is going to start to grow of that unbalance.

Simon: 38:35

Somebody was talking to me the other day about kind of acute and chronic conditions, which I thought was quite another interesting. What did you say? Acute and chronic? Which I thought was quite another an interesting letter. What, sorry? What do you say? Acute and chronic? Uh, so a good example of that would be if you have a water leak.

Simon: 38:50

So if you saturate a surface, there's a good chance within a few days you'll start to get mold right. If so, if you saturate a surface, within a short period of time you can create conditions for mold to grow. So you need to fix the leak and if, if it's, if it doesn't need repairing, if you can dry it out, great. But if you can't, you might need to cut out, damage the pastable and so on. But if you saturate a substrate, you can get mold growing pretty rapidly.

Simon: 39:22

Whereas if, if it's a, if it's a surface temperature problem or where you're getting surface condensation or um or vapor loading in the space, it's more, it's more of a chronic, it builds up over time, it starts to appear. Whereas, yeah, a leak is quite a quite an acute event, yeah, that happens, and if you don't deal with it, you've, you just you've basically created a saturated surface. Yeah, for mold to grow, I thought, but I don't know if it's a perfectly true analogy, but I think it's an interesting one in the sense that because we know, certainly from from evidence, that one of the most common reasons for mold in properties is physical moisture. You know from leaks, whether that's from outside to inside or from plumbing leaks say. You know that physically saturating a surface with water is a pretty good way of getting damper mold in a space like that yeah, I mean, it seems right okay.

Simon: 40:27

Yeah.

Hector: 40:27

But also if you have a leak that you can spot straight away, even if the materials are completely wet, I guess if you have a dry environment, that material is going to dry out in a probably short period of time. Yeah, unless you have too much water even behind the material let's say a wall, insulation or the kind of building material behind, and everything is completely saturated. So actually you don't have enough time for that to dry out. Probably that is going to generate a problem. Yeah, but usually I mean probably what I will say is that if you have something, let's say a pipe that's broken and timber or wood that get wet, probably you're going to have another type of effects I mean some kind of changes on the material structure, more than mold growth straight away.

Hector: 41:24

Yeah, I'm sure this is another thing that we don't consider too much is. We talk about temperature, nutrients, humidity, but there is a really important point which is a parameter which is time For mold to grow. You need time and if you look at the, there is some kind of graph that is called isopleth. I don't know if you have seen them.

Hector: 41:45

No, I don't know you have one axis relative to meat and the other one temperature, and you can see that at different temperature, combination with humidity, mold is going to take a certain amount of time to germinate, or when the spore just crack and start the eifel, the mycelium, to grow, and then a certain amount of time for the mycelium to develop and start to grow in millimeters per day. So time is really important here. It's not that let's say I put that glass of water here on that wall and straight away I want to have more. No, that is not going to happen at all.

Simon: 42:21

There's a germination period. There's a germination period.

Hector: 42:25

You have a spore Probably this wall is full of spores and then, if you get proper condition, that spore is going to crack. We're talking about micro, really tiny things. So it'll crack and then it's going to start to expand. So, if you look, it's really beautiful how they look like I mean, an eipha is like an arm that starts to grow, and then the eipha is like an arm that starts to grow and then the anipha became a mycelium, which is all this structure, wide structure.

Hector: 42:49

And for the mycelium growth and for germination growth you need specific environmental conditions, okay, time, but also for sporelation, which is actually when the mold starts to produce more spores, that are the ones that are going to be released, which is the black thing that you see. So when you see a surface which is black, it's because it's millions and millions of spores and some mold just releases the spore naturally. Another one is just when you move it with moving of air. So, yeah, so time is something that is just critical here. But this is what, when someone called you and said well, you know what? I have a wall that is full completely covered with monad.

Hector: 43:32

You said okay. My God, I mean to get to that point. There has been weeks of proper conditions.

Simon: 43:39

Yeah, yeah, but sometimes you know those conditions. If a wall is damaged or there's a leak or something. It's not an insignificant problem to solve, is it? Absolutely it's a challenge, yeah.

Hector: 43:52

And this is why I mean understanding what is the cause. The root cause of maul is something quite critical. Yeah, just on there, let's clean it. Yeah, simple. But why is causing this more? Is it because of this, as you said, break of a pipe or some kind of source of water from I don't know from outside, or is this ambient humidity? So having that kind of diagnostic is quite critical, because then you know what to do.

Simon: 44:20

I'd like to borrow your attention for just a moment to discuss ACO, a partner of this podcast. Aco, an EI company, specializes in pioneering new technologies in fire, carbon monoxide alarms and Internet of Things technology. Many know them as the go-to company for these products. In fact, this year they're celebrating 35 years in business. I particularly know them for their outstanding work in the housing sector, with their Homelink offerings, aiming to solve some of the industry's most serious challenges. The technology incorporates environmental sensors and a gateway to offer connected home solutions, which has a proven track record in helping landlords reduce operational costs and carbon emissions while improving residents' wellbeing and safety. Issues at the heart of the housing sector, like damp and mould, fuel poverty and energy efficiency, are all in the crosshairs of ACO. I've been amazed at how they are innovating here with a laser focus on unpacking some of the complex nature of these challenges in a way that answers the what next question we so desperately need at the moment. They have a great network of experts and installers. If you're in housing, they are definitely worth talking to.

Simon: 45:43

Trusted is a overused word, but not here. Ask around and echo are synonymous with it. Details are in the show notes and at air quality mattersnet and at echo. That's a I, c, o dot, co dot. Uk. Now back to the podcast. Yeah, well, you should know what to do. It's like breaking out in spots. You know you're not eating well and sleeping well. It's a visible sign that I'm not looking after myself. My skin has decided to tell me that, yeah, I'm unhealthy.

Hector: 46:16

Well, it's the same way when you talk, when you wake up in the morning. Let's say, one of your kids wake up in the morning with a bit of temperature, yeah, and then you said, well, something is not right. Yeah, what you don't know. It could be an infection, it could be a tooth, could be I don't know, it could be an infection, it could be a tooth, it could be I don't know, it could be tummy, it could be anything Too tired, no idea. So how do you know? So that fever, temperature, the thing that could be more is telling you something in the body of this person. This individual is wrong, but what exactly? We don't know. You know that something is wrong, but what exactly? We don't know. You know that something is wrong. So let's try to take it to the GP, and GP is going to be able to tell you what is happening.

Simon: 46:56

Yeah.

Hector: 46:57

So this is what I was saying. I mean doing a proper diagnostic, then you can resolve the problem in such a way that more is not going to occur again. What are you thinking now?

Simon: 47:06

Yeah, the diagnostic thing is an interesting one. What are you thinking now? Yeah, the diagnostic thing is an interesting one. Um, the. There's a couple of questions that come to mind to me about the diagnostic part of it, that there's the diagnostic element, which is the there's something wrong with the building. There's something wrong with the building. The building is out of balance. Who are the right people to have those conversations with? Because the things that cause that imbalance are quite widespread. It often falls between different disciplines, between ventilation people, surveyors, damp and mold organizations, rising damp companies.

Simon: 47:53

It's been quite a split sector for a long time and I think in the diagnosis of the whole, we've often been applying specialists in one element of it who may or may not be incentivized to sell their solutions or not. You know, and I think everybody's aware of those problems. But there's, I think there's a challenge in that correction of moisture balance in buildings that sometimes the right people aren't engaged. My feeling is and I was speaking to, speaking to somebody a few weeks ago about it that it's a bit like a general practitioner. It's a generalist you need in the first instance that's going to look at the whole. So surveyors, those kind of professions that aren't coming in from a particular angle but are going to look at the problem as a whole and then root cause and maybe hand off to a specialist if they need to, a bit like a general practitioner would do.

Simon: 48:56

But the second part of that, that diagnostics, and you have this conversation yesterday. First thing a GP generally does for a general problem is send off for bloods. You know, go and do a test to figure out what it is he's looking at. There's the symptoms part, which is the what he's presented with, which is a bit like for the building. But at some point you go and do a test and figure out yeah, what? What's actually out of kilter? Is it a virus? Is it bacterial infection? Is it x, y, z?

Simon: 49:29

And we struggle with that with mold, don't we? It's a. It's a hard thing to measure. Um, where are we these days with diagnostics of mold spores in airs or swab tests of mould on surface or in dust, like if you want to know if you've got a mould problem and it may not be that visible? Is there a way for you currently to be able to determine whether there's an unhealthy amount of mould in the air, because you look at mould all the time and culture it and all this kind of stuff. But can you put a device? Is there like an air quality monitor as it stands today? I mean, if we put a better dish, with any kind of agar.

Hector: 50:22

where mold is going to grow in this table for the next half an hour, then we close it, put it in the incubator, but sure tomorrow something's going to be growing there. So, as I said, mold is everywhere.

Simon: 50:34

Yeah.

Hector: 50:35

Now I guess, in terms of the diagnostic of why mold is growing, my assumption is that a surveyor should understand straight away if there is, for example, a leak of water. I'm pretty sure I mean I'm not familiar with the surveyor environment, but I'm pretty sure they will be able to say, yes, I mean, this is a pipe that was broken there, or probably some kind of rain penetration or something. It's not always that simple, but I guess the surveyor has the expertise to do that. The complex things come when is what if it's not from an external source of water? What if it's because of moisture production? When?

Hector: 51:18

So let's say you come to this room, there is mold there, and you're going to ask me I called you because there is mold and you said, yeah, but when did you first spot this? I don't know, a a week ago, two weeks ago? The thing is I talk about time. So when that mold really started to develop was long before I called you. So do we know? Do we have the the the correct understanding or to understand what happened? Let's say, a month ago ago or three months ago? But we are conditioned within the building because what you said ventilation, heating, yeah, but what?

Simon: 51:58

exactly happened at the time. Is this the thing that comes every winter? Yeah, well, exactly yeah.

Hector: 52:04

So this is what I think is not just a diagnostic that you do in the day that you visit the property, but it's also try to understand what happened before, how the building is used or what are the external conditions at the time that, when more may have to start to develop. You can I guess you can do some kind of well, have a really looked at diagnostic. I mean, we did a project with one of our company to try to develop a diagnostic and we developed a really good way of monitoring the building and through different and analyzing different parameters, you can tell what could be the cause Lack of ventilation, lack of proper heating or too much moisture production, Okay, and the final one is the envelope, or a combination of all of them. But what I think was missing on the project was understanding what happened before, understanding how the building is used. The monitoring is going to give you really good data, but I don't think that is enough. Yeah, Because of time, time.

Simon: 53:11

Time is not considering that equation yeah, and I think that's the interesting thing with um the longitudinal monitoring that you're getting with devices like echo and switches and others is that they're starting to capture that time orientated process of a building changing in its use or its character or its heating profiles and so on, so you can start to see from patterns what might be driving that final outcome and maybe catch it at the point it's crossing thresholds that are going to cause damper mold. And I think that's the exciting thing about that sector is looking at that broader environmental data. What about at the other side of it where people are saying, look, I'm being caused harm by damp and mold? Are we able to speciate through tests different molds? If so, yeah, yeah, so you can. Now you know you can do a test in a home and say, yes, it's this, it's this species of mold and we know this causes X, y, z.

Hector: 54:13

Absolutely. I mean what I was mentioning before this PhD student and one of my colleagues that we have been working on, this benchmarking mold. Part of the benchmark is also understanding. It's not just to tell you how many mold spores you have in there, but also identifying the species. You how many mole spores you have in there, but also identifying the species, because what I was telling you before, you may have just a few mole spores in there that, in principle, should be the normal levels. We don't understand what I mean. They still don't know what is normal, but it could be that there are those species of mole that could harm your health.

Simon: 54:45

Yeah, I had Brandon Chappo on from change, the air foundation in the states, so they run a, a lobbying organization on damp and mold in in the states because it's a big problem there and they've got different climate zones there as well where it presents very different mold challenges to others. Uh, but the reason he got involved when it was he was very heavily affected by mold um, before he started off this foundation, one of the and got very sick from it. Um and uh, in one of his some of his blood tests that were being done, they were finding levels of um chemicals that were associated with um transplants. So that there's a. There's a, a medicine that you take which stops your body from rejecting uh organs. Um, so it's like an anti-immune uh chemical and they they were asking him questions. You know where you had a kidney transplant or something he's going. No, had nothing and it turned out when they speciate. Eventually it turned out he had massive problems with mold in his apartment complex and one of the toxins that this mold produces was this chemical that is an. There's an immune suppressant and it was a high enough levels in his body that they thought he was taking medication for suppressing the immune system and that was one of the triggers for a lot of his illnesses was effectively lack of immunity and so like that. It's really.

Simon: 56:17

I think it's really interesting when you, when you get to the point where you're saying, well, I'm getting these chronic conditions and I'm not quite sure why the question often isn't asked at a medical level what about your home life, you know, is there something in your environment that you might be exposed to? And it just so happened. After many years, one doctor went, said to him, tell me, this isn't a good story for mould in your property, have you got mould? He went, as it happens, yes, and she said I see at least one patient a fortnight presenting, like you. That turns out it's mold world and, um, you know, they they're doing a lot of work, change the air foundation in the States, looking at that Um, but they, they put a lot of focus on the air tests and speciating tests to figure out what it is, the diagnosing, the type of mold, because I think they're associating certain molds with certain conditions very specifically, which I think is interesting.

Hector: 57:18

It's interesting, I mean, I'm not familiar with that, but yeah, you present it is interesting for sure. Now that you're aware I mentioned about the mold is funny. I mean, just as an anecdote, that when I was a stud in architecture, I used to live in a basement and it got contaminated with mold, a lot of mold. My knowledge about mold was none, but what I found was how lucky I was living in this room with all this black thing that we are growing on the walls, and my first approach wasn't to clean it.

Hector: 57:51

Was living in this room with all this black thing that we are growing in, I mean, on walls, and my first approach wasn't to clean it, it was actually to paint them around and to make some kind of drawings and some kind of artistic thing, and actually after many months I was diagnosed with some kind of asthma. So I needed to leave that space, but it wasn't because I mean, what the doctor told me wasn't about mold, it was about a humid environment. So that for me was quite important because I think we don't know much about mold and people at home, many residents they don't really understand what mold and in this country we have a lot of people coming from abroad and they bring their own experiences and I don't think they're really informed. They don't really know how to use the building in this country. So, yeah, information to tenants, to residents. I mean understanding more what is a problem.

Hector: 58:45

I think, that is quite critical.

Simon: 58:47

Yeah, I mean that multicultural element to it I think is really interesting it is. I was talking to Prakash Retta in India and she was saying you know, at certain times a year in certain parts of India mould is a real problem and it's always the monsoon season and it's not because of the levels of background humidity, it's just the fact that when you get that much rain it's going to find the weak spots in your home. And she says every monsoon season you're just waiting for the damp spots to start appearing and you try and keep on top of it, but you just drench a building with that much water, it will find its way in and then every year you get the problems with the mud. So it's less an environment, because the buildings are quite open. It's less an environmental problem.

Hector: 59:41

No, but you have the again, the nutrients, you have the water, but also probably over there you have even better temperature condition, warmer than what we have here. I mean, we think that indoor environments are quite warm, but usually between I don't know 20, 22 degrees Celsius, but over there probably even higher, which is perfect for mold.

Simon: 1:00:03

Yeah, what temperatures do you stick in the petri dishes in?

Hector: 1:00:06

Well, usually you put it above 25, 30 Celsius because, again, if you look at the isoplast, the perfect temperature is, I think it's 30, but depending on the spaceship it's closer to 30. I mean really warm yeah.

Simon: 1:00:19

So if you've got really warm, humid conditions in the tropics, for example, it's just ideal. Yeah, yeah and that and that's that's. Another interesting element, and certainly something that I've learned over the last few years, is how the different regions just totally flip the building physics on its head as well. Condensation, damper, mold is born out of living in this part of the world, which is every winter in the heating season, where you're getting cold surfaces and you're closing buildings down and you that that's our mold season here. But if you go to the tropics, it's a totally different game. That's been played. That it's air conditioned spaces, it's interstitial conversation being driven from the outside in, not the inside out, it's vapor barriers in different parts, like it's a completely different set of build it's, but it's the same concept of moisture balance. Ultimately there's a there's a healthy balance point for that building that if you're conditioning a space where it's 35 degrees and a 78 humidity outside and you've got 24 degrees at low humidity inside, you're creating some really big imbalances, you know, and you could cause these problems.

Hector: 1:01:42

Yeah, I mean mall is is a huge issue everywhere, it's not just in this country. And well, in Asia, in Australia, south America, many African countries, they have the problem. So it's everywhere, it's not just our problem. And yeah, and this is where we start to talk about the species. Probably over there they have all the type of species that are more well, they probably are more happy growing over there. They have all the type of species that are more but they think probably they're more happy growing over there than the species that we have here. I haven't seen any any research on that area. To be honest, I haven't really looked at uh, species according to different parts of the world yeah, yeah, it'd be interesting to know, wouldn't that?

Simon: 1:02:26

so what's your kind of? I mean, there's no doubt about it and you've been involved in writing moisture standards in building regulations for Part F. You've been involved in housing and moisture for years. I think you, as well as any, has a good sense of the challenge we've got with our building stock to to get it move it in the right direction. Um, what's your hope for the next kind of five or ten year block when it comes to moisture in buildings? Um, you know, we've had.

Simon: 1:03:06

We've had the death of a child, which is about the most tragic outcome that you can get in the death of Arabishak. We've had the subsequent laws coming in and we kind of started that process of shifting the governance and the stock condition surveys and trying to map out quite how big a challenge we've got. But we're now into this phase now where quite big organizations that are managing quite a lot of housing are now going to have to do something about it. We've we've gone from the recognizing we've got a problem, figuring out quite how big a problem we've got, to and saying that we're going to do something about it. We're now in this phase now of actually delivering in some way. What's your kind of hope for that for that next block? Where do you think that traction is going to come from? Because it's a big problem, isn't it? You've got years of underinvestment in stock. You've got it's a complex problem to solve. It's it's both building, physics and social science and communication like it's a. It's a really big problem to solve.

Hector: 1:04:23

I mean more than a problem, I think, is that this is a big challenge, yeah, but it's a challenge that I feel that more organizations have taken positively. And I mean the same that happened with the Greenfield Tower. I mean, there were many issues there and obviously it shouldn't have happened, but it happened and things that had happened. Actually, things have changed quite a lot from a risk point of view, from the way in which we build, from the way of which the security of the building, health and safety, et cetera. I think, coming from a country where we have earthquakes, where every time that you have an earthquake, something is going to fall, then you learn from that. Okay, I started to work with mold and to research mold in 2006. And for many years, I mean, nobody was talking about mold until the boy died in 2020. And then suddenly, unfortunately, I mean, the government realized, the institution realized that we are doing something really wrong. And the good thing is that we have a law, Local authorities and housing providers they know what they have to do. I think the residents are getting more information. I think there has been a peak of we know that we have a problem and we need to solve it. So I'm really positive for the next five years. I mean, from a research point of view, it's great. There's a lot problem and we need to solve it. So I'm really positive for the next five years. I mean, from a research point of view, it's great. There's a lot more than we need to do. We're working with local authorities trying to understand in which way we can help them, not just from a UKCMB point of view, but more from a research point of view. So there are some local authorities that really want to do research and, through research, help their tenants and residents, which I think is fantastic. We're working with local authorities to try to understand what are the best practices and how those best practices can be implemented in other regions and other locations. So I think that I'm super positive about what is going to happen.

Hector: 1:06:29

I think, as I was saying, every time there's an earthquake, you don't want an earthquake, you don't want people to die, you don't want things to fall. But thanks to that, in some way it seems that we as a human do realize oops, we have a problem. I mean, all this can be resolved and could be prevented, but we don't. I mean, as a human, this is not our nature, Until something happened to you is when you really realize that we need to react. Same with COVID I mean, come on. I mean we knew that something was coming, and there was research on inequality and affection. This is transmission. How things? What do you have to do? And then suddenly I rise here and we're completely overwhelmed. It's like oops.

Simon: 1:07:14

Yeah.

Hector: 1:07:15

And cow. I mean, come on, years of research, developed country struggling with something that could have been prevented in some way. So well, have we learned a lesson? I don't think so. Yeah, I mean from an indoor quality. Come on, this was the COVID, it was a big driver of let's understand indoor quality, let's understand ventilation, which is great, it is really great, great for the area, et cetera. But from a human point of view, do we really understand that? I mean, I go to the, I take the underground every morning and you see people just sniffing and coughing and how they don't realize that actually they are sick and they're just spreading everything that they have.

Simon: 1:07:58

Well, you're asking big questions about human nature there that I'm nowhere near qualified to answer. But you're right, I think I'm probably in the middle as a realist. Um, I I asked I've asked this question of guests quite a bit, particularly ones that were very heavily involved in covid whether whether, if they were writing the book from an air quality perspective, would they have had COVID or not. Because it's it's it's an interesting question to ask people because the the, the thousands of deaths aside. You know I'm not saying anybody wants a global pandemic, but of course it asks the question was it ultimately for the good from an awareness perspective or was it a distraction, like, were we making meaningful broad progress before it? And this came along, set false expectations, false precedents and was so violent in its impact on society that the human instinct has been just to try and forget about it as fast as possible. You know that there's that.

Simon: 1:09:15

Um, I was having an interesting conversation, uh, with a lady called plum stone. She'll be on the podcast before this one's released actually for for listeners, so they're probably aware of this from the conversation, but she was from a family that has had long covid or she had a husband that was vulnerable because of a kidney, long-term kidney illness and things. Um, so they've covid's not over for them, you know. So when there was freedom day here in the uk, that stung for them because in fact it made it worse for them because kids could go back to school infected now and so on.

Simon: 1:09:52

So the reaction and it struck me because I'm probably like many where you've had a bit of a sniffle in the last couple of years and you've gone I don't want to know. I don't want to stick another swab up my nose to find out whether I've got COVID or not, which is bad on me. But I think a lot of people have been in that boat, that it was a traumatic enough COVID in their lives that we're kind of glad to see the back of it. There's a whole community of people with long-term illnesses and so on where it's not and, like you say, people on the. I'm not quite sure we're back to the badge of honour of turning up to the office absolutely hanging with cold and flu, but I don't think we're far off it.

Hector: 1:10:38

No, I don't think so.

Simon: 1:10:40

You know the oh, come on, man up, come to the office. It's only a cold, you know, we may be not far off being back to that which.

Hector: 1:10:49

I think is a shame. So no, but you can come back to the office but use a mask, some kind of protection, or if you're going to use a room, tell the people around you you know I'm sick, so you don't mind using another room, or let's open the window. I mean things that seem to be quite basic and people should have understood.

Simon: 1:11:07

I don't think they have and I wonder you know my concern is for the, for the moisture balance, damper mold question. Um, you'd hope that a death of a child and a law is enough and there's not going to be any progress. But I think people will forget. I think my biggest concern for damper mould in housing is this actually that it is an erosion of trust piece. So damp and mould has been highlighted. A lot of housing organisations have written to tenants, made it a very big deal that they're going to deal with damp and mould. They've got these policies and reaction times and so on baked into the law. Baked into the law.

Simon: 1:11:52

But, as we've been discussing here today, damp and mould isn't necessarily an eradicable problem and certainly not in the short term. So the way human nature works is you highlight damp and mould, something is done this year, this next winter it comes back again. But they only fixed the fans and did this that last year, this year they might replace the windows and do something else and then next year it comes back again and over a period of time that trust is eroded, that all that action and effort over the next two or three years somehow gets eroded with time introducing this time element to mould again. But that's my concern is that, because this is such a big problem and a nuanced problem that the one thing we can guarantee is that for the vast majority of people, mould is going to come back again. Yeah, absolutely Right, but that's not the way the problem is being presented. The problem is being presented that this is a serious problem that we're taking seriously and we'll deal with it within 48 hours and show that we've dealt with it. And now it's gone.

Simon: 1:12:59

And I think that's the challenge, because what happens in that environment is that scale. People just go. Yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before. You know, mold was here last winter. It was here. You know, you're not doing anything about it. You know, and I think that's the chat.

Simon: 1:13:18

That's the big challenge for me is that how do we set society up for the recognition a bit like the net zero challenge, in a way that this is a 2050 problem. You know, realistically it's not a a 2026 problem, but that's damper mold in the built environment. For me is it's a, it's a. Is this something we can get the handle on in the next 25 years if we start to do this properly, or are somehow we're going to be able to put put into place mechanisms that this is solved by 2030, like this is a. You know, this is something. By changing what we do as a housing provider, we fix this problem in the next two or three years.

Simon: 1:14:02

I'm not sure that's possible because it so much we don't have the resources. We don't have the resources, we don't have the people and the scale of the problem is big enough that we're going to have to tie many buildings into journeys and tie them into other works programs retrofit and general maintenance and reactive maintenance and so on that this is a long burn problem to solve. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, but it's a long burn problem to solve. Do you know what I mean?

Hector: 1:14:30

Yeah, but it's a long term. But at the same time I feel that we're doing stuff. I mean I don't want to be that negative.

Hector: 1:14:38

I mean I'm in general, super negative with human beings because we don't learn lessons, but not negative with human beings. But I mean, yeah, I don't want for people to have that impression, but I'm really positive about people and I think, for what I have seen from the many local authorities and housing providers, they really care, they're really making a huge effort. It's a huge effort because it's not simple, because our housing stock is not. It is off and needs a lot of work. There are not enough resources. You just said there are probably not enough people. That is well prepared.

Hector: 1:15:21

Many times they face challenges because residents, even though they recognize that they have a problem, they don't really want to be helped. They said I need help, but actually they don't want to collaborate. So the problem is a lot more complex, not that simple. But what I have seen these last couple of years is that a huge effort from many people and people that really care, which has been extremely positive for me, yeah, and extremely encouraging for what we are doing with the UKCMB, if at any point we see that actually nobody cares. So what we continue with the UKCMB, what we continue doing research in this area, if actually just for the sake of publications. No, yeah, I mean most of the stuff that we do with our students, my colleagues, is stuff that actually may have an impact and this is what really drives us. But at some point our research is going to be able to be. People are going to use it in industry, in the public, etc. All the links that we have in industry is because of that. We want to help.

Simon: 1:16:29

No, I think you're right and that you know if, for those of us that have been around this sector for long enough, there's definitely a gear change that's commensurate with the, with the scale of the problem, that it will be sustaining that effort. That'll be the challenge. I think that that's the the key. But you're right. I mean so many, many organisations are trying to do the right thing and you know, housing gets about. We talk about social housing, but the reason we talk about social housing so much is because there's at least an organisation that manages and is responsible for large swathes of the stock. So they're an easy target in that sense, both negative and positive. They're an easy target to blame, but also they're an easy target because changes in their patterns and processes can have impacts on large swathes of the stock. So dealing with this problem in the private rented sector or, even worse, in the private, the owned sector, is a problem that we have no idea how to solve.

Hector: 1:17:30

We don't have an idea, you know it is?

Simon: 1:17:33

uh, because it's you.

Hector: 1:17:35

Instead of dealing with what several hundred authorities, you're dealing with, hundreds of thousands of homeowners, yeah but I have attended some, some, some presentations and events where actually you see those private owners and you see a lot of people that really care too.

Simon: 1:17:52

Yeah, you and I both actually were up in. I can't remember whether it was the Suffolk, suffolk Renters, so Suffolk Renters was a really good example. Yeah, yeah.

Hector: 1:17:59

So seeing that, I think, is, I guess again it's encouraging. It's something that you see that there is a positive change, that more is need effort from the housing provider, but also from tenants. Is this just both of them?

Simon: 1:18:18

and there's tools and far more tools and organizations available to people than they were five or ten years ago. Absolutely, we'll come on to the uk cnb, but you've got healthy buildings and all sorts of organizations really trying to um provide the resources and tools for people. How did you find yourself here doing what you do, hector? You were looking at molding buildings in Chile, I think.

Hector: 1:18:47

No, not at all Years ago, no, no. What happened is. Well, I did a master's degree here in the UK in a school of architecture and it was about energy and environmental design, so it was quite broad, but I was always extremely interested in the health impact of buildings. Actually, at some point in my life I wanted to study medicine, but I didn't have the grades to go to medicine, but I was really young age.

Hector: 1:19:13

And then, while in Chile, I was working for the government looking at slums within Chileile, and I had to travel a lot, and also I used to work for a small foundation that provided housing. So I I was quite lagging off to to travel my country and to see poverty and slums and ghettos and people without house at all. But one thing and the government at that time was providing housing for what? Through subsidies? So what happened is I realized that the type of building that we were building for families in different climate conditions within the country were the same and the type of heating system that people were using were not regulated. So actually the environment in itself was quite toxic and really unhealthy and the properties were really poor. So this is when everything started. Okay, do you know what I mean. There's something here that I would like to know more and explore and do research which is about what is the real impact of building on health.

Hector: 1:20:20

And then I arrived to do my PhD at UCL and the topic was initially the rebound effect Are you familiar with the rebound effect and energy but then quickly moved to humidity in buildings, just because my group here was doing was reviewing the Part F regulations. So actually my topic I mean I formed part of a team at the time and my PhD was about mold and humidity. So the whole PhD was the small paragraph in the Part F 2006. Was that correct? So this is how everything started. So I had to do the experimental work, field work, data analysis. I did a lot of stuff and part of the outcome of my PhD was to change Part F Approved Document F was to change part F approved document F, which still is the same couple of tables that we proposed at the time with the team.

Simon: 1:21:24

So yeah, this is how everything started and that's the one hour, one day, one week, one month, yeah, and the surface water activity is unstable.

Hector: 1:21:38

So this is why they recognize that the important aspect is actually the surface reality or the material's humidity, not necessarily the humidity in air, obviously that air humidity is going to have an effect on the surfaces and the materials. But that interaction between mold and humidity, it happened on surfaces, it happened on materials.

Simon: 1:22:01

Do we use that figure enough, do you think? I don't think so. No, I don't think so. That's certainly more attractive than equilibrium humidity, this kind of. We talk about relative, that goldilocks, relative humidity, and I think everybody broadly understands that and I think they can convert that mentally quite easily, if they want to, into the that is it spending a week above 65 or a day above 85, whatever. So I think people get that.

Hector: 1:22:29

but I very rarely hear people talk about surface water activity into Into it and this project that I mentioned, that we're developing a diagnostic tool, we use it there and that was the way, in some way, to tell you if the building envelope was thermally good enough or was affecting the mall for addition. So, anyway, so this is how everything started and then from there I moved. Well, I have done a lot of the stuff. To be honest, it hasn't been just mole. I have been looking at infection-based transmission at some point, which was tuberculosis, flu, other things, but also always linked with the environment, and then later on, back-to-born diseases. And this is also something that I have been doing lately, which is putting a proposal to try to understand mosquitoes in the UK, which is something, yeah, I really get interested in methods and new subjects and new discipline, to be honest, I mean, I really love that, and always within the built environment. And with moles also, we are doing some experiments with the lighting, with acoustics. Yeah, try to understand mold in a different way.

Simon: 1:23:44

Yeah, and one of the fabulous resources you've got now is here east in UCL and your labs out there. I mean that must be an absolute playground for you guys.

Hector: 1:23:58

It is an amazing facility. Every time we go there, when you enter here is the whole location around Stratford and you get into the lab and I feel super proud of being able to have that kind of facilities. That has helped us a lot to do research and to help our PhD students. It's not just a facility that we have within our department, but it's actually the interdisciplinary that the current here is, because there are people from other departments and it's a really small community, but it's an extremely rich community. It doesn't feel the same, for example, in Blunsbury at least for me. You enter this building, you interact with other academics, but over there you interact with a student, with researchers, with other academics from other departments, with the admin team I mean cleaners, I mean everyone seems to be involved and we are all helping each other.

Simon: 1:24:59

Yeah, and there's everything there from robotics, isn't there From robotics exactly?

Hector: 1:25:04

And in terms of our facility, yeah, we have. With the years, ucl has helped us to improve what we have, and also because I mean one of my colleagues well, you know Valentina, she's into materials. So we have a huge number of equipment that allow us to understand more moisture within materials and, in my case, which is more about indoor quality and moulds. We have also some kind of facilities there that allow us to look at that.

Simon: 1:25:37

So, yeah, I think what's fascinating for lay people like myself that go into environments like here they're not unique, but it is particularly special there is that science brought to life element. Yeah, you get and feel there, um, because academia can seem quite a stuffy, distant place sometimes. You know very theoretical in nature, um, but when you go, particularly in construction science and building material science, you go to a place like that and it's instantly brought to life. You know very viscerally. You're walking around and there are people building walls with bricks and putting them in environmental chambers and soaking them and you've got sound chambers and like it just bursts to life and I think creates a connection between the theoretical and the real world. Yeah, absolutely Is that intermediary space where science meets the real. And you always I've been there a couple of times now and you always come away from the place kind of invigorated about the future of that kind of construction science.

Hector: 1:26:50

Yeah, that's happened to me every time that I go there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not just for you. Yeah, I feel super alive when I go there. I really love it.

Simon: 1:27:01

Is it a full academic course now? Is it bursting with talent and people down there now Like it's a lively place, this part of your UCL, isn't it? Yeah?

Hector: 1:27:14

it is this environment.

Simon: 1:27:15

Yeah, in which way? I mean what? You're getting the influx of students, you're getting the talent in, you're getting some good subs with the people coming through. Yeah, yeah.

Hector: 1:27:24

We have undergraduate students coming to here and using the facilities. We have a couple of courses that we have developed with other departments, but also within our own department. With other departments, but also within our own department. We have a number of MSc programs that make use of the facilities. Over there. We try to make our courses as practical as possible and we have a number of PhD students these are people that you have met in our conference when we were there which are really hand-on and all of them doing experimental work, which is amazing. Many of them, they're all super amazing researchers.

Simon: 1:28:07

And what is it you broadly teach here at UCL? Because, like you say, it's not just DAB. I'm talking to you about DAB for Mold today, but it's more. It's much broader sustainability energy piece as well, isn't it?

Hector: 1:28:20

yeah, I teach a I mean in charge of module is called building solar design, which is basically, um, uh, integrated design. It's passive design, bio-climatic design and, and in that module the student learned different tools and different concepts but they have to apply in a project, the design project. So they have to design a house, and every year I try to change slightly the location. And this year we are working with an NGO, el Esutu, which is the country in the south of Africa, and this NGO works with the communities on architecture and developing businesses, and so I thought, okay, why not to develop a house in two locations, in the mountains of Lesotho and in the main capital? So the students have to do that. They have to design a passive house in that location.

Hector: 1:29:16

This is one of the modules that I charge, but I teach in other programs and in other areas. I teach methods of environmental analysis, mainly monitoring and equipment, how students can use that. I teach also about mold and humidity in buildings. This is for a program that so on humidity in buildings. This is for a program that look at health in buildings. And I teach also.

Hector: 1:29:42

There's another more. I have a lecture. I forgot for which program it is, but it's about indoor quality. It's about but I give just examples. I mean this is just general. What is important? I mean indoor quality in buildings, but it's mainly examples of buildings that I have monitored. So I just tell them what works, what doesn't work, et cetera. What is the issue for some point in this particular building with the MBHR? The issues that we have found, probably with the control. So the system we use, let's say, is a cooling system, it's an air conditioning, but the building was overheating anyway. Let's say as a cooling system, as an air conditioning, but the building was overheating anyway. Probably even changing the filters, probably on how the installation was done. But it's just really basic things. It's more examples of case studies so students understand, because there's no point of us just showing them. I mean teaching them the theory. It's also man. Let's see what we as academics, as researchers, we have found one, more, another.

Simon: 1:30:39

You've got a lot going on. And then, on top of that, you were involved in the uk cmb yes, as well. What's your role in the uk? I'm like academic, academic director. Yeah, how did you? How did you? First? Because you've been involved in uk cmb since its inception, really, haven't you? Not really.

Hector: 1:30:55

No, I joined the UKCMB, I will say, a couple of months after it happened. I wasn't really involved in the beginning. Well, it was Neil May who was the one that founded this, and with another colleague of mine, but quite quickly they needed more help and the UKCMB is about motion buildings, and so Neil recruited us, which is the people that were working in motion building at the time, which was Valentina and myself, plus all their academics from civil engineering and, yeah, peter Riccabi, colin King, etc. And yeah, and this is how everything started.

Simon: 1:31:35

Yeah, and today the UKCMB continues to do its work. Yes, what, fundamentally, is the kind of the goal of the UKCMB? It's there as a resource, primarily, isn't it? And a centre for reset, pulling together a number of institutions to look at things like moisture and building. Yeah, it's got a number of things it does.

Hector: 1:32:02

well, we do a lot of things and with time and years, things have changed, yeah, and so we are doing different stuff with different type of activities. Um, initially and it's still the ethos of the UKCMB trying to make to help the industry and the public in general to understand motion buildings. That is what we want. We want to reduce the risk of motion buildings as much as we can and to do that we have created tools, animation, videos explaining simple concepts, but in a a difficult concept, but in a simple way. We have created, where we have been participating in a number of building regulations and helping other professionals within the country on developing them. We have created courses like the condensation top and mold, understanding the recent buildings, etc. So everything quite practical, just to help practitioners and to help industry.

Hector: 1:33:04

I'll put a link in the show notes, by the way, to the videos as well that introduce concepts like moisture balance and mold and so on, I think, and there's the other one, which is a bit more of Mold, which is just talk about Mold, which is very nice and yeah, and well, since 2021, we've decided to have our own international conference on Mold, and this is sorry. On Moisture Buildings, and this is something that we initially discussed with Neil. So I told Neil you know what I think, every year, most of us and many academics that attend a conference internationally, you go there, you present your papers, your work on moisture buildings, but usually you are just one of a few in the conference. You are just one of a few in the conference. So I just told him well, listen, why we don't create a one conference and we bring together all those academics and we just talk about motion buildings based on the different work things that at that time, we proposed and we ran the conference.

Hector: 1:34:15

2021, which was an online conference, was a success, was really good and thanks to, obviously, the people that work with the UKCMB PhD students and academics so it was really good. And then in 2023, we ran again the conference. It was online and in person in the ERAs.

Simon: 1:34:38

I was there for that one, yeah, which I think was good. That was my first introduction to ERAs, actually. Okay, because you were doing the guided tours. Yeah, it was brilliant.

Hector: 1:34:46

So I think it went really well In all respect. It wasn't a big conference, but good enough to create this kind of family of people working around the area. But organizing a conference is quite a huge challenge. It's a lot of work. So what we decided? Because it's an international conference, we spoke with a few colleagues in other countries and we said, well, do you want to take this to your universities? And a couple of them come back saying, yes, we want, we're really interested. But finally one of them say, yes, I can do it. So this year is going to run in Portugal Brilliant, and so yeah.

Simon: 1:35:27

So is it purely links with academic institutions that drive in this or is it able to sit under more of an international umbrella in some way? Because you know moisture in buildings is, like you say, an international problem. There are some countries that have centers for moisture, you know, like sweden for example. Um was the, the seed really that started the uk cmb with neil. But to get conferences to run internationally, I guess that's quite hard because you're going to have to get an academic institution to take it on.

Hector: 1:36:06

Yes, but we are open to any organization that wants to take the conference. We're happy with that. I mean, the conference is not a conference just for academics, it's a conference also for industry. So at least I haven't seen the abstract that have been sent. Now to the conference in Portugal, but at least in the other two you have a number of research done by industry and that was the purpose of this conference. It's not for academics only. There are many industry or companies that do research and we are welcome and we welcome that and organizations that are dealing with the problems as well.

Simon: 1:36:59

I mean, a big component of the moisture conference in 2023 was things like heritage organizations dealing with you know, older buildings and maintaining and managing infrastructure. You know like it's a really broad and diverse challenge moisture in buildings and an international one. I'd say it would be fascinating, and I remember from my conversations with Brandon Chappell like he was really keen to join the dots of international expertise, because there's nothing worse and we see this so often in academia is people treading ground that has already been done somewhere else and because dots haven't been able to be connected, wasting years finding out stuff that could have been. You know, I'm not saying you don't replicate and check and what have you, but we spend a lot of time, I think, in research doing stuff that's probably been done somewhere else, for lack of us actually knowing that it was done somewhere else.

Simon: 1:37:57

You, it's a, it's a real problem. Yeah, for all the, for all the literature reviews and everything that you can do, nothing beats getting in rooms with people that are dealing with the same problem but from a different angle. Yeah, absolutely so. Help you think outside the box, doesn't it?

Hector: 1:38:12

yeah and yeah, and I think this is this is the conference has that kind of purpose, and and also I mean the conference has that kind of purpose. And also I mean the other thing that we do at the UKCMB is we work with PhD students, that if you go to our website, you're going to see the affiliates and we have people from different countries that are part of this and we make a big effort on trying to put them together and create activities for them.

Simon: 1:38:36

And one of the other things you do with the UK CMB is run some courses as well. I think or certainly have developed some training. Yes, things like local authorities for damp and mould, haven't you?

Hector: 1:38:47

Yes, yeah, in. Well, just after everything started in this country because of the boy that died and there was a need of training for local authorities and Peter Rickaby designed a course that then we adopted within the UKCMB and we have been delivering that course for different local authorities within the country. It's called Condensation Urban Mall, which is not really there, it's just a quite boring name.

Simon: 1:39:25

Your marketing department needs to get a hold of that. It's sexy with it.

Hector: 1:39:29

No, it's not, it's just a goat. But what we are doing at the moment, and we are hoping that we're going to launch, is an online version of that course. And because, well, I delivered the course a couple of times and you can see that actually delivering a course on two days full days is quite time consuming, quite tiring, and you don't see that much interaction from participants, which is something that I personally don't like. So we decided to create this online course, which is for people to do in their own time. So it's three weeks and it's through one of these platforms on the internet. So, yeah, when this is done, you're going to see it somewhere that it had been launched.

Simon: 1:40:19

Yeah, and if it's available, we'll get it on the show notes as well. Or certainly links to the UKCMB. Yeah, yeah.

Hector: 1:40:26

It's going to be the UKCMB for sure. We're going to advertise the course yeah.

Simon: 1:40:30

So the conference this year is in Portugal.

Hector: 1:40:32

It's in Portugal, the University of Mino.

Simon: 1:40:35

Okay, it's in yeah, when is that? September, october, I think.

Hector: 1:40:40

It's October, the 20-something, okay, yeah, so at the end of October. So we are now in the process of, as the scientific committee is receiving the papers to review, yeah, yeah, I mean I'm really optimistic about the conference is, yeah, is the people around the world that is doing research in the area, so it's quite good, as you said. I mean it's quite. It varies from mould to health, to heritage, to retrofitting. It goes to new buildings materials, so this is quite a range. It's not just about mould, it's about moistened buildings.

Simon: 1:41:19

Yeah, and I think that was the eye-opener for me from those conferences was quite how expansive the subject is, because you don't deliberately do, but you do tend to get quite funneled into your own world sometimes. And they're quite good, those conferences, to break it down. God, I never even thought of that as an issue before. But I mean, moisture in buildings is a big universal problem, isn't it fundamentally?

Hector: 1:41:44

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And the people in this university in Portugal, actually, they have added new topics because it's the type of research that they do and we were super open to that.

Simon: 1:41:58

Yeah, that's the great thing about different jurisdictions. I suppose they would always have a different frame.

Hector: 1:42:02

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely yeah. So we we're really pleased that they decided to take it and they have taken a huge. I mean, organizing a conference is quite complex and it's really that you need a lot of resources, time consuming, coordinating to all the people that are going to help you.

Simon: 1:42:22

That's the rooms, and oh, my god, it's so many things. I had the fortune stroke misfortune of um hosting the aovc conference in dublin this last September, last September, october, um, and we had the backing of InEve, who have been organizing these for time immemorial. So it's a very well oiled machine of getting there. But even still, there's a lot of work in it. It is a lot of work. Every time I ever get involved in any kind of an event, the overwhelming feeling out the other side of it is like I don't do that for a living.

Hector: 1:42:57

Yeah, no, no, exactly no. And in our space, even though we have the support from UCL in terms of providing the location, the rooms, everything was done with a group of PhD students, undergraduate students and the academics yeah, a few academics. So it was so much work, yeah, but I think what really put major effort, there when I was a PhD student.

Simon: 1:43:26

Yeah, put a marker down. Yeah as well, for I think with those kind of conferences, if you put a decent one on, it kind of sets the standard for what the next group that takes it on yeah, it's trying to achieve yeah so it's just really good.

Simon: 1:43:39

Well, how to look. It's been brilliant chatting to you today. What I'll definitely do is include um, ucl stuff and here east. There's some great actually some good stuff online about here east with videos and things about the the area, so I'll put that on and some stuff around the UK C and B. You're exceptionally busy, so I appreciate enormously sitting down and chatting with me this morning. It's been great to finally organise it and get through my hands yet yeah, finally, no, thank you for the invitation.

Hector: 1:44:08

Thank you for allowing me to be with you and to be part of this podcast, brilliant Venture.

Simon: 1:44:16

Thanks, Anza. Thanks for listening. Before you go, can I ask a favour? If you enjoyed the podcast and know someone else who might be interested, do spread the word and let's keep building this community. And do check out the YouTube channel by the same name and subscribe if you can, as there will be additional content posted here quite regularly. This podcast was brought to you in partnership with AECO, Ultra, Protect, Imbiote and Aeroco all great companies who share the vision of this podcast. Your support of them helps their support of the show. Do check them out in the links and at airqualitymattersnet. See you next week.