Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen, Inc. Transcript Dave Asprey: We just came out of this house. There's black mold in the ceiling. There's water damage all over the place. What happened here? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: The home has been vacant for a number of years. We were contracted to come and do some initial testing. We did some thermal imaging, which you did also. You can talk about that a little bit after we get done here. We did some air testing. We found the mold spore counts were in the thousands for aspergillus, penicillium. Dave Asprey: Those are toxic molds? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Toxic molds, yes. Also stachybotrys, which you're going to talk about. Numbers were high enough that determined that the entire home needed to be remediated, entire home needed to be torn out, and then we do our fogging treatment to kill the mold. Dave Asprey: If someone was living in a house with this kind of damage, what do you think would happen to them? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Everybody's different. There's ten thousand different varieties of molds and how everybody reacts is a little bit different. Over time, everybody, and I mean everybody, their immune system breaks down, and they start experiencing flu-like symptoms, headaches... Dave Asprey: How did water get into the house? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: There's a number of ways. This particular house, the pipes are broken, and the roof needs to be replaced. As you walk through the house before we tear everything out, you can see water stains in about twelve or thirteen places throughout the house on the upper floors. In the basement there's water. There's 1
a three-foot water line around the basement floor, so you know that water had been sitting for some time. Typically, when homes are vacant for a couple of years, pipes freeze and thaw. When they freeze they break, and if the water is still turned on, you have a water problem. The other way is the water table rises with storms, no power on in the house, sump pump doesn't get to work because there's no power, and the basement fills up with water. Dave Asprey: When someone's basement fills up with water, what happens to mold in the house? Just walk me through that. Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: It's like throwing gasoline on a fire. Dave Asprey: What is? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: When you put water in a house that already has mold, you're giving mold all of the ingredients that it needs to grow, so you're fueling the mold. You're helping the mold do its thing. Dave Asprey: If someone's in a house and they find a water spot on the ceiling, should they be worried? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Anyone who finds a water spot should absolutely have it investigated. Dave Asprey: If they were to call AuntieGen, your company, and say, "I want you to investigate this," what would you do? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: We come in, and we would do an air test. We don't actually do the analysis ourselves. We come. We take air samples. We mail those samples off to a third-party lab, and they send us the results. Dave Asprey: And the results when they come back, let's say they find some mold. What would the next step be? 2
Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: We would go over a plan with the homeowner to remediate, make arrangements for them to depart the house while we do the work. In this home, we didn't have to section off any parts of the house. We don't have to put a bubble over the house. We don't have to put plastic up. We don't have to keep somebody safe in one portion of the house because we're remediating the whole house. In some cases if we had to, we'll build a containment so that the people that are in the home don't get affected by the mold that we're remediating. Dave Asprey: I've interviewed a bunch of people who said they had to leave their belongings behind because they had mold on them, but you can't see it. What's your experience? Do people really get mold from just water in the house that's so bad that it ruins their belongings even if they can't see it? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Mold lives in porous materials. In some cases when you have couches that have foam, even our treatment isn't going to save it. If you have mold on your clothing, you can use the product that we use to remediate to wash the clothes and actually save clothes. Dave Asprey: How does the product that you use in a home work? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: It's a two-part product. Part A is an accelerant, and part B is a hydrogen peroxide-based product. When you mix the two together, they become a powerful killing agent. The beauty of the product is just after 6 or 7 hours, part A and part B, after there are no more mold for them to eat, the two products actually eat themselves away until they become carbon monoxide and water, so it becomes biodegradable. Dave Asprey: That was the stuff that we saw you spraying? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Correct. Dave Asprey: Okay. What's the name of that product? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: MDF-500. 3
Dave Asprey: What percentage of houses do you think just at large here in New York, if you had to just kind of take a guess knowing it's not scientific, what percentage of them have a mold problem? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: I happen to know that it's over 80% of all homes in the United States have some sort of a mold issue. Dave Asprey: 80% is the highest number I've heard from an expert. How did you get that? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: It's what's told to us in the industry. Dave Asprey: Wow. Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: When I say some degree of mold, I mean, if we did an air test, we would find a mold number in that house. Dave Asprey: What's the most common source of water that causes mold to grow in a house? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: The most common source I believe would be groundwater. Dave Asprey: The most common source of toxic molds is groundwater. How does groundwater enter a house? I mean, the house is up on something. Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Most of the jobs that we do are vacant homes where the power's turned off, once again, the sump pump is not working, so the groundwater has an intrusion in the house. Groundwater comes up, you have two or three feet of water sitting in the home for a period of time, they have no choice but to fuel the growth of the mold. Dave Asprey: It literally wicks up. If you're a homeowner and you're going to be out of your home for a while, what can you do to protect the home? 4
Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Make sure that the power stays on. Make sure that you have a battery backup for your sump pump in case the power goes out, so that at least your sump pump continues to work while you're not home. Dave Asprey: Okay. If you come home and you find out that there was water, the right thing to do is... Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Call a mold remediator. Dave Asprey: Just as a default behavior? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Absolutely. Dave Asprey: Okay. What does it cost to have you come in and look at a home to do the basic analysis tests? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: We charge three hundred and fifty dollars for an air test. If I go to somebody's home, and it doesn't require an air test, I normally don't charge them. Dave Asprey: Okay. About three hundred and fifty dollars. If I was going to buy a home, is a mold test required for me to purchase the home? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: It's not required in the state of New York, but if I were buying a home, wouldn't buy a house without doing an air test. Dave Asprey: What if you were going to rent? Would you do an air test? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: I would want to protect anybody who was renting my home, and if I was renting from someone else, I would do an air test before I moved in, absolutely. Dave Asprey: How many people do you think actually do an air test before they rent or buy a home? 5
Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Not near enough. I think the percentage is ridiculously low. Dave Asprey: People are going to spend a half a million dollars on a home, but they don't spend three hundred and fifty dollars... Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: It doesn't make any sense does it? Dave Asprey: What's the typical cost of a remediation. I know it ranges, but kind of just give me an average. Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Our remediation is a little bit different. We don't adhere to the 40-year-old protocol that the large mold remediation companies adhere to. We don't bring in dehumidifying machines. We don't bring in negative air. The product that we use, the MDF-500, doesn't require us... we don't have to get the water content in the wood down to below 10% humidity to treat the wood. If you think about it, you put a dehumidifier in the house, you bring the humidity of the home down to below 10%. Now somebody puts a moisture meter in the piece of wood, and it's down below 10% humidity or 10% water reading. Then after they leave and take the dehumidifying equipment out of the house, and the relative humidity in the house is 60, 70, 80%, what do you think happens to the wood? The wood's going to soak up the humidity and go right back up to the same humidity that's in the room, so why do we dry the wood in the first place? It just doesn't make any sense. If we can treat the wood without having to dry it first and still get a zero or one part per million mold count in that house, then we've eliminated... haven't spent all that money on negative air machines and dehumidifying equipment. Dave Asprey: What is the average cost to go into a home and remediate it? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: For this home right here, the average cost would probably be between thirty and fifty thousand dollars. Dave Asprey: For an average home with an average amount of water damage because you've done thousands of homes now what's... three hundred and fifty dollars to test 6
and know before you buy a home. How much is someone likely to spend if they just have an average water problem? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Conventionally, anywhere between ten and thirty thousand dollars. Dave Asprey: With the methods you're using, how much would they typically spend? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Less than half. Dave Asprey: What's the mold count in an average home? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: That depends. It depends on where you live, whether you're in the northeast, southeast, Midwest, in the desert. I would think that in the northeast, somewhere between a hundred and three hundred parts per million is what people live with. Banks and insurance companies require us to get below three hundred parts per million, that's a passing air test. When we get done remediating this house, our numbers will probably be down below ten parts per million for any mold that's in the house. Dave Asprey: What do insurance companies think about toxic mold? What's their approach to it? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: I don't know if I want to answer that question. Water intrusions which cause the mold don't get covered by insurance companies unless it's a pipe break. If it's an act of God, they don't want anything to do with it. You're not going to get covered. Pipe breaks are different because it's a mechanical failure, so it'll be covered. Then the mold that is a result of it takes time to manifest, so the insurance companies will find you at-fault if you didn't take care of it right away because now you have a mold situation that took place three months later. It's pretty gray and it's a horrible area because people suffer and don't get reimbursed by insurance companies just for that reason. Dave Asprey: If a pipe breaks or you have one of these other problems, is the homeowner going to be able to see it if it's a small leak or if it's condensation? 7
Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: The condensation and small leaks that drip slowly over a period of time are what cause the most damage. Dave Asprey: I noticed in the kitchen, I pulled down some of that drywall and with the drywall up there, you could see paint. There was no marks at all on the paint and you peel back the paint, and there's layers of cardboard just full of black mold. How often do you find that where there's nothing on the surface? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Most times the moisture originates from behind the wall. When you're looking at a wall and it looks okay on one side of the wall, we know that when we pull the drywall out, the back of the wall's going to be ten times worse than the front of the drywall. Dave Asprey: Do you ever get calls from people who have unexplained symptoms, and they're just wondering if they have mold even if they don't see any big water in the house? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: We had a customer whose child had asthma. This is when I first started in the business. We went and we treated that customer's house, and two weeks later we got a phone call from the customer. He called us and said that his daughter didn't need her inhaler anymore. At that moment is when I decided that this is the business that I definitely want to be in because I felt really good that I had a part in helping somebody overcome a problem like that. Dave Asprey: When I was a kid, I lived in a moldy basement, and, funny enough, I had asthma, and there was a correlation for sure. There are so many families who have these kinds of problems, do you often times hear that people improve in how they feel after you come in and do the work? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: The first thing that people say to us after we treat their home is... If I talk to them the next day or two days later, I'll ask them, "How did you sleep that first night in the house?" They'll say, "I slept like a baby. I haven't slept like that in a long time." That's how I know we did a good job. 8
Dave Asprey: Walk me through the remediation steps that we saw in the house today. Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: The first thing that we do when we come into a house is we do a pretreatment. We'll fog the house once to kill the majority of the mold that is surface mold so that it protects the guys. The next thing we do is we're going to take out all the carpets. We take the carpets out first because the carpets are the most porous materials in the house that are going to hold the most non-visible mold. Once the carpets are out, we have a better slate to work on. Then we're going to tear out all the drywall. We're going to go room-by-room. We're going to pick a room that's furthest away and walk through. We're going to make sure that there's nothing impeding the guys from going through staircases, things of that nature. Once all of the drywall is out, all of the insulation is out, then we'll determine whether or not subfloors have to come out. In this particular case, you saw us ripping up the hardwood floors. The subfloor, that's going to be coming out so you can see right into the basement. After everything is out, all the nails are pulled, all the screws are pulled, all the insulation is gone, any porous material that could fail an air test has got to be removed, then after that's done, then we start fogging. You saw a little bit of the fogging where we actually had the fog foamed up. The MDF-500 is a hydrogen peroxide-based product, so just like hydrogen peroxide on a cut, it foams up because the cut is a living organism. Mold is a living organism. As soon as the MDF-500 hits the mold, it foams up just the same way. We know to scrub that area, fog it again, scrub it, fog it again. Dave Asprey: You go through that process and that's what you're doing in here. Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Yeah. Dave Asprey: What do you do with all this moldy stuff that was in the house? Isn't it toxic? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: Mold occurs in nature. There's probably as much mold outside as there is in that garbage bin right there, and that's going to go to a dump site. The dump site knows that there's mold coming in. Dave Asprey: Do molds growing in houses produce more toxin than outdoor molds 9
because of the environment they're in? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: The toxins don't have anywhere to go in the house. They just recirculate in the house. The toxins outside have a place to go. They move with the wind. Dave Asprey: Do people get sick from outdoor mold? Paul Bershatsky, AuntieGen: If they're exposed to outdoor mold, absolutely. 10