Last week a patient reached out and said a new house they bought had black mold in the kitchen. She was looking for advice on what they should do.
While I am the first to say I am not a mold remediation expert, I do feel I have a great deal of knowledge due to what my wife, Natasha, and I have been through in the past.
If you suspect mold in your living environment, here is what I recommend:
Test your living environment. You can hire a mold inspector to come out, or you may contact a company like Real Time Labs to order a testing kit yourself. We have used Real Time Labs multiple times for us, and I refer all my patients to them.
Get out of the environment if your test results come back positive. There is no need to expose your immune system to more toxins. I realize this isn’t possible for everyone. When we were exposed the first time to black mold, we moved in two days. Luckily, we were in a beach rental in Laguna Beach, CA.
If you own your home, I recommend going to stay in a hotel while you figure out what is causing the mold/mycotoxins. We did this the second time we were exposed to mold.
Higher a well respected mold remediation company. Not all mold remediation companies are created equal. Do your due diligence when interviewing a company. A good start is The Mold Pros as many of my patients have had great success with them.
Ask about their mold remediation process for your personal items, not just your home.
Speaking of Personal Items
When we were exposed the first time, we had no idea about remediating our personal items. We took ALL of our items to the new home. That was a mistake!
We knew better after our second exposure.
We decided to remediate most of our personal items ourselves. We did get rid of couches, mattresses, rugs, curtains and anything we were not attached to.
Again, I am not a mold remediation expert but this is how we remediated our personal items. How do I know…my wife has her life back!
This Was Our Process…
First…We bought EC3 mold products, including their spray, candles, laundry additive and fogging solution. We washed all of our clothing in borax and EC3’s laundry additive.
We took very good care not to cross contaminate anything we washed. This involved sealing our clothes in huge rubbermaid containers from Target when transporting them to the laundry mat. We decided to use the laundry mat because it was faster lining up multiple washing machines and dryers. Plus, the industrial dryers heat to a higher temperature than personal dryers. Heat kills mycotoxins!
Dress clothes and Natasha’s “fancy” shoes and jackets that couldn’t be washed (we have read that dry cleaners don’t work well for killing/ridding mycotoxins from clothes) were fogged and ozinated.
Second…Anything with a hard surface we wiped down with EC3 spray.
Third…Anything we couldn’t wash or wipe down, we fogged using EC3 concentrate and their fogger.
Fourth…We also bought an ozone generator and ozinated everything, along with our vehicles. Keep in mind, you care mycotoxins from your home to your vehicles!
Fifth…Kitchenware was cleaned with the EC3 spray and appliances were ozinated and fogged.
Sixth…Sporting gear (hiking, cycling, mountaineering, etc.) were all wiped (if hard surface), fogged and ozinated.
This process took several days and was a nightmare. I don’t wish it upon anyone. But, we got it down and focused our attention on detoxifying our body’s.
If you have questions/concerns, schedule a complimentary consultation and let’s chat.
