Speaker 2
So let's now understand. You mentioned buildings and how mold is in buildings and presumably homes are buildings as well. So it's in there. Let's say that some family is moving into a brand new home, just just built, let's say today, completed, or a brand new apartment building if that's what they're doing. So how does the problem of mold even start when there was nothing to begin with? Is it the rainwater that's coming in, seeping through? Is it a leak in some kind behind the wall somewhere that starts at all? But like, how does it start and how does it spread and how quickly does it spread?
Speaker 1
Well, so new construction. There's a whole bunch of issues with new construction. Number one is that buildings are built outside. Right. They're not built inside unless you're doing a prefab and you're building in a factory and then assembly and on site, which is by the way, good strategy if you're if you've got the budget and you're and and and the concern about this right so building indoors and then moving outdoors is actually better than building it outside and things on weather and then when you finally get a sunny day and you're ready to go, you know, put up the siding and put on the roof and stuff will stuff still wet. And there are right there rules around this that are poorly enforced about, you know, testing the materials, but you only need to test a few of them and find a dry spot to give you the green light to close things up and you close up stuff that's gotten wet and hasn't been cleaned. Then you're going to end up with a high fungal load in the buildings in the building structure. You know, and then, and so once the building has been built, let's say it has taken on water, which is kind of inevitable in most climates. And let's say it was not properly dried and clean before it was close up by the way, which is no building, no building that's built, no builder ever stops and addresses these things. Once you've closed everything up, there's a few different things first of all, low quality of construction is very common, you know, the artisan is dead. And so leaks happen very quickly in these buildings because they're built with cheaper, faster materials and they're built without a lot of care for best practices. I've seen so many situations where windows are installed upside down. You know, just really dumb stuff, no flashing whatsoever. And these things don't show up until there's a really significant problem. And oftentimes, you know, the leak can happen in a wall for weeks or months or even years before there's a visible manifestation. Meanwhile, it's offgassing the microbial gases that cause a lot of illness. And so, and contributing and also adding to this is a really important point. We talk about mold, but really I'm in the healthy building business. Okay, and people call us from old because that's the hot button and because it's got a distinctive smell and because it's, you know, it's popular in the news. But what's a what's a real problem these days in modern construction and modern life again going back to the chemicals is the VOCs volatile organic compounds and VOCs are just to define that for your audience. Are chemicals that that at one temperature are liquid or even solid and then and then when you raise the temperature, they they become gases. And so the most common one or the most popular one is alcohol. Right. So one temperature is liquid and then evaporates and then becomes a gas and and alcohol is a good example because alcohol is also it is an industrial solvent, but it's also a microbial gas. It's also microbial, right, we make this through fermentation. And so, so microbial gases are called M VOCs microbial VOCs. And so, so when mold grows it produces those VOCs, but backing up to where I was going with this other piece, which is a blind spot is that buildings in modern buildings are loaded with these compounds and many of them are group one carcinogens.