Transcript of Episode #117 Featuring Michael Rubino! Air Quality and Environmental Wellness, The fatal truth about mold, HVAC systems and indoor air quality, Home testing solutions and more! New

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All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli Podcast. So my guest flew all the way in to see me from Tampa today, and it's just— I swear to you, no matter how many people come and see me, I'm always just humbled and flattered that anybody even cares to fly to come and see me. I, I don't care how long I do this, It is, it is really, really something, man. And I just, first, before we even get going, I appreciate it because I know the flights suck and dealing with the airports and they're long. And so the fact that you want to come see me, share what you learn with me, it is just greatly appreciated. Now, I will say this, I've talked a lot of similar type topics in health and fitness and everything biohacking, and I've covered a lot in all of these episodes, but you do some things a little bit different. So I was extra, extra looking forward to this today. So we're gonna get into that. But my guest today is an air quality expert and he's an environmental wellness advocate. He's a founder, he's a speaker, he's a podcaster, he's an author, a father, a husband.

I mean, he does it all. And, and I'm, I can't say enough about him, but he founded All American Restoration in 2017, which ultimately became Home Cleanse, and I'm sure some of you have heard of that, but we're gonna get into that. We're gonna get at everything about air quality, things that I don't know that I'm excited to learn about, and some things I do know that I think that we need to expound upon. So my friends, it is with great pleasure that I introduce Michael Rubino.

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And by the way, I mean, the flight was very worth it to sit here with you today. You have an amazing platform. I love how much you educate people. And I think that's— it's a really important, you know, thing to do.

I appreciate it, man. I really do. I, I try to bring people like you on here that already have a good audience that deserve more and that can make a significant impact and difference in people's lives because that's what it's all about. And that's why I think I connected with you right away when we talked, because I could tell right off the bat that that's what you're all about. And so we align quite well, and I'm excited to get into some of the things that you do. Now, unfortunately, what you do is a big problem and unfortunately not enough people talk about it or realize it.

Yeah, it's actually a culmination of many different things. Starting off with when I was a kid, I actually had asthma and I had no idea why I had asthma. I went to the doctor and they just said, you had asthma. And they said I would probably have asthma for the rest of my life. And that was it. And I had an inhaler and I just kind of went about my day and I was really struggling to breathe. When I was 8, we moved from this crazy New York City apartment over to a single-family home in New Jersey. And it was literally like date coincident, the inhaler was gone. I mean, I went to the doctor again and they were like, this is a miracle. I mean, it's, this is unheard of. And so in hindsight, like if we were to pull up a picture of Google Maps right now and I gave you the address, 54 Oakville Street in Staten Island, New York. And you took a look at, at where I was living, you might get an understanding of exactly where I'm going with this.

I could picture it.

I was for sure exposed to mold as a kid and, you know, dealt, dealt with some health issues as a kid. And I didn't know it at the time. Obviously the doctors didn't know at the time. None of us knew at the time. My parents didn't know at the time, but that obviously stuck with me as I started to reflect back on why am I here doing this work? But it was actually after Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast where I'm originally from. That I started to, to really do this work. I mean, I was interested in design. I was interested in music. I wasn't really interested in, you know, mold remediation or doing something from, from this perspective of cleaning homes the way I clean homes today. I stumbled upon it. My dad had a restoration contract, you know, contracting company since I'm 5 years old. So I've been around it my entire life. But it was after Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast that I saw these pattern of people getting sick inside their homes. And it was, I mean, mesmerizing. I would go door to door, ring doorbells, be invited inside, and I would sit at the table and hear all these different stories of all these different health challenges that people were going through.

And I, I didn't quite understand it. You know, I just, I was in my 20s. I, I didn't understand it at all, but I, but I understood that people were in pain and I believed them. One of the stories was so miraculous because this woman, she was, She had like EMF sensitivities. I couldn't bring a cell phone inside. I couldn't stand near her with anything that had any sort of radiation capabilities because her skin would actually burn. I sat at her kitchen table and she showed me Polaroid pictures of her skin, like beet red from just using a computer or being, you know, being around a microwave. I mean, and this is in my twenties. I didn't understand EMFs. I didn't, I just, I knew radiation obviously is not good. I, I was going to school. I understood that we, you know, set off bombs and that radioactive material, not very good. Right. But I didn't understand it from this. I mean, EMFs typically when we're talking about cell phone radiation or things like that, these are very low level, normal levels of radiation that the average person can withstand. This person couldn't withstand it.

And one of the things that she said was date coincident for her is this stuff started to happen to her. After Hurricane Sandy. Wow. Like before that, she was like, I had a microwave. I used, you know, phones and computers. I, I didn't have to hardwire anything. And so, you know, that was one story. Another story, I, I'm dealing with a, an older woman who was like, hey, I, I live life very normally today. I'm, I have debilitating joint pain to the point where I'm, I need a walker to walk around. And you know, she was probably in her 60s, but she was young. Like I wouldn't consider someone in their 60s all of a sudden, you know, someone who's too old and should be dealing with debilitating joint pain. And she was showing me pictures from the year prior where she was like on cruises with her friends, no walker. All of a sudden she's like right after Hurricane Sandy, this is still debilitating joint pain. All of these places, by the way, I found extraordinary levels of mold in them. I mean, extraordinary. All of these places had been quote unquote remediated already, but yet there was still extraordinary levels of mold counts inside these walls pulling into the HVAC system.

It was in the HVAC system. So when I looked at it from that perspective, I thought, wow, there's something here. And I think the thing that really crossed my mind wasn't just the fact that, okay, wait a second, we're getting sick from homes. That's, That's extraordinarily a new concept for me. But it was also this fact that, but wait a second, these houses were quote unquote remediated. Like they looked totally fine from, from an, just walking through like freshly painted walls. It looked like it was totally repaired, but yet behind those walls there was carpets of black mold. In those HVAC systems, there was extraordinary levels of mold and all of that was dispersing throughout the house. And I started to say, well, how could this be? And it was through this journey, the stories started to repeat themselves over and over again. And I started to realize we've got an epidemic here.

My head's spinning because to see that for you, I, I'm thinking about what you encountered, where you're going, you're going through the process and going, wow, what, what is it? What is it from this hurricane that did this? Right. And it's also chilling to me because on my way here I had a call with a cardiologist who was interested in coming on the show and he, his whole thing was talking to me about mold on the phone. I had it on my speakerphone.

His name's Jack.

Jack.

Yeah. Jack. Okay. Great guy. Yes.

So Jack Wolfson.

Yep.

Yeah. I had a message from him and it said, hey, have me on your podcast. I'm like, okay, you know, let's do a call. So my wife was listening to it and I'm looking at her and I'm going, and, and it's, You know, I've had a lot of discussions on mold, man. And he was quoting it to the Bible, which obviously hits me a certain way.

And we'll get into that.

Yeah, absolutely. He was talking about Moses talking about it in Leviticus. So then now I'm thinking in my head, wow, we had a brand new house in Iowa. We had this crazy water issue where all of a sudden the, it was leaking out of the ceiling, a couple years old. And before I know it, I've got this massive water issue in my basement and I had to have Allstate come in and then do all these repairs and then it A couple years later, I find plaque in my arteries. I have an ejection fraction issue, and I'm wondering if there's a correlation now there in my mind, not to go off topic. Sure. But then that brings up what Jack was talking about, about the heart and the correlation of everything with the mold. So we're gonna have to talk about all that.

Oh yeah.

Okay. So let's, let's talk about mold first. Sure. Okay. Let's give a, a nice synopsis here, an understanding of what causes it and the dangers involved in it.

So what causes mold is essentially water. You know, mold needs water, food, and certain conditions in order to grow. But essentially a lot of our homes are made out of food that mold can feed upon. So that's problem number one, right? Problem number two is a lot of our homes aren't built properly. They're not maintained properly. And then when they do have problems, they're not remediated properly. This creates a pretty big recipe for disasters. Why I think there's so many problems that, that we have today. And, you know, it just needs at least 60% relative humidity. Which in most parts of the country you're gonna get that good chunk of the year. It needs some level of water activity depending on the type of mold. So if we have leaks coming into the building and materials get wet, we're, we're very likely to have mold even if we don't see it on the surface. So I'm giving you a good example. If I have a window that leaks, if it leaks behind the drywall and into the insulation, which is very common by the way, where it would typically leak, I might not notice it.

but it, it's gonna stay wet for at least 24 to 48 hours because we're talking like basic third grade science at this point. We've got trapped moisture. If I take a wet sponge and I put it on the top of a counter for a second, I want you to visualize this. The area underneath that wet sponge is gonna stay wet far longer than if it was wet around the sponge, right?

Mm-hmm.

That's because moisture gets trapped. There's no airflow, so it just stays wet. We consider that trapped moisture. When I have building materials sandwiched together, touching one another and they get wet, they're gonna stay wet far longer cuz there's not enough air movement to help it dry. And so we're gonna have, when insulation gets wet, which most of our homes that have windows on those exterior walls, we're gonna have insulation. When that gets wet, like a sponge in your wall, it's holding onto that moisture, creating enough moisture and enough time. For that mold to then grow all behind your wall and you don't even see it. So that is really part and parcel of the issue, is many people have hidden problems and they have no idea that these hidden problems are wreaking havoc inside these walls, which are affecting the quality of air that they're breathing. And the average person takes about 20,000 breaths per day, or a great way to visualize that. Is you actually fill up in your lungs about 2,500 gallons of air every day. That's about enough air to fill up a normal size swimming pool, just to get some perspective, right?

So, you know, there's a lot. And if we have problems that we don't know about inside of our homes, unfortunately, statistically, it's, it's many of these homes. The largest home survey ever done was in 1994 by John Spangler, was a joint project with the EPA and HUD. And they found that 50% of homes had a history of water damage. 50% of all the homes they went into had a history of water damage. 80% of those homes had visible signs of mold. Now, I can tell you, I go to a lot of homes all the time, especially people dealing with chronic and complex health issues. They want to know what they need to do to fix their homes, and they look totally fine. Like, I have to, like, really investigate to figure out what is happening behind these walls, behind ceilings. And I'm looking for the usual suspects of where water typically comes in. But when I say it's an epidemic, I mean it is an epidemic. And I think that it's easy to become fearful of that. The problem is, is that I, I'm not trying to drive fear. I want to empower people because if you stick your head in the sand, which I feel like is what we've been doing as a society, we've been painting over it, putting bleach on it, just ignoring it altogether, thinking it's not a, a, that big of a deal.

Well then we're gonna have these, this declining health issue that we have here today. So I think we, we can't stick our head in the sand anymore. We can't be fearful of it, but we have to take action. 'Cause if we don't take action, we're gonna continue to be a victim of this. And, and I think that's not the position that we want to be in.

Well, it's fear or awareness. How do you look at it? And people, people live in this like convoluted type of life where they just want everything to be one way. And because we were told this, and it's just a hell of a lot easier to listen to somebody say this is it and that's it, as opposed to looking and really digging deep. It's easier to say something's idiopathic, or that's just, that's just what happens as you age, or that's just what happens. It's a hell of a lot easier to do that than to do what you do.

That's right.

I mean, nobody wants to be Sherlock Holmes, dude. I mean, that's just, they just don't, you know?

Right.

And, but that's where the answers lie. We desperately need people like you because you actually find the problem as opposed to, well, that medication didn't work, so maybe this one will. So that one's affected me negatively. So let's put you on 100 of 'em to rob Peter to pay Paul over and over and over and over and over till we just ruin your quality of life to keep you alive.

Literally.

Right. I mean, that's the process. Yeah. So let me ask you this. Is it more prevalent in like older homes or is it potentially possible that newer homes can have this same sort of issue without you even knowing it? And could that be potentially how it was built? Something that was done?

Obviously time is a factor.

Sure.

So older buildings obviously have more chance of having more problems, right? Because if, you know, there's leaks over the years and they weren't fixed properly, the odds of them having some problems are going to be a little bit greater than a newer building. However, that being said, unfortunately, a lot of the newer buildings that we're building have their own set of issues. I'll give you an example. A lot of the homes back in the day, they were balloon framed, so they had gaps between the exterior wall and the interior walls. All these pipes and electrical wires would run through them. And you would essentially have wall cavities that could travel, have air traveling from all the way up to the roof. Yeah, it's all the way down to the crawl space, basement, what have you. But we don't build homes like that anymore. There was an advantage to those homes, and that was if water did come in, it really didn't impact the interior of the space.

Right.

Because it, it was probably going to come in and travel down to the crawl space. Now, yes, one could argue that that can create mold and bacteria in the crawl space, in the basement. Which obviously would end up impacting the air quality of the home. So yes, that's true. But what I mean by that is like we didn't have these, these, you know, kind of trapped moisture issues that we have today, but all these building materials sandwiched together being built on top of one another. Right. So there's that aspect. The other aspect of older homes is you had a lot more air exchange. They didn't really have insulation. They didn't have the modern HVAC system. They were, they were designed to just have a little bit of temperature controls just based upon the way in which the house was constructed with having a lot of airflow so that you didn't really need HVAC, right? When we started converting into HVAC, that was, that was problem number one, 'cause now we introduced temperature differentials. Yeah. So that, that's where the first, I would say, domino that started to fall fell. Then when you get into this energy efficiency crisis, for those that don't know, basically 1970s, Richard Nixon's president, we had a global energy crisis.

Because we had a global energy crisis, we started to push towards energy efficiency. We wanted to make things more efficient. Then it would be cheaper from an energy perspective to utilize and live in these homes and buildings. The big problem with that is in order to make homes more energy efficient, you basically take away the air exchange from outside to inside. You insulate the crap out of these homes, you seal the crap out of them so you don't lose any heating or cooling, because again, this all goes back to the comfort and the, the modern HVAC system. All we're trying to do is make it cheaper to have more comfortable air. So we go through all these hoops to achieve that. The problem is, is that when we went down that road, nobody thought about indoor air quality. I mean, it was just completely ignored. I would argue that it's still ignored today. And with that being said, what ends up happening is you've got these homes that are tighter and tighter and tighter. We're like in a snow globe.

Yeah.

That's the best way to describe it.

I know.

And we use chemicals in our house, you know, maybe not people like you and I, but the average person uses a lot of chemicals in the house. We have microplastics, you know, because our clothes are synthetic. We, we're shedding a lot of microplastics in the environment. We've got our own virus particles and bacteria particles that we produce as human beings, 'cause we are essentially gigantic human compost, right?

Right.

And, you know, then we have problems like mold and bacteria because of water damage that enters our house. We've got microbial accumulation that occurs on the HVAC system because the way in which we've designed this beautiful thing to keep our house, you know, warm when we want it and cold when we want it, is it, it has an evaporative coil which constantly condensates, right?

Right.

So we talked about what does mold need to grow? What does bacteria need to grow? Well, it needs moisture. Well, there is a source of moisture in your, in your HVAC system. Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

And so now as mold and bacteria get to it, which they're always getting to it unless you have a really high-grade filter, but who knows about that? That's another thing we need awareness on. Right.

And that's another story.

Yeah, I know. And so what happens is it starts to grow on the coil, essentially turning that into a mold factory, a bacteria factory, and that's another part of the issue. So going back, just rewinding a little bit, you know, I would argue that I think the actual modern home is worse off than the homes that we were building, you know, 50 years ago. And I think that's something that we, we want to take a look at. Now, it's not very expensive to course correct, right? And I think, you know, a lot of the building biologist communities, a lot of these really healthy building communities are doing a great job. Starting to say, well, wait a second, we need, we need air exchange, we need fresh air coming in. You know, they're starting to realize that, that we've gone a little bit far down this road. We might have created some problems that were not intentional, but just happened in the course of things. And so it's, it's great, but it's such a small microcosm of where it needs to be. And I think, you know, as we have these types of conversations and people start to, to think about this, A lot of change can, can happen because of that.

See, I wasn't sure, but I had a feeling and that's why I asked you because the obvious thought would be, oh, I got a new home. I don't have to worry about that. That would be the obvious thought. 'Cause when I was talking to you before and I told you my cat was sneezing and, and it was just weird that she keeps sneezing and I kept telling myself, but it's a new house, but it's a new house. They, but then I thought, man, they must have done something or whatever. And then what did you recommend me to do? Clean the ducts, right?

Yep.

So why would somebody need to look at those? And how big of a problem is the duct itself in the house? Like, yeah, what would cause something like that in a brand new house for me that it could potentially be dirty and need cleaned?

Yeah. So, you know, kind of the secret I gave you was when most houses are being constructed, they're running the HVAC system because they want to, you know, they, they want their workers to be comfortable.

Sure.

While they're working. No harm in that. But when you're running the HVAC system while you're creating dust, all that dust gets into the HVAC system and it becomes food for mold. It becomes food for bacteria, not to mention it just recirculates. And so if you think about your cat, your cat has a, you know, it's very low to the ground. And I mean, it's spending a lot of time walking around on the floor and horizontal surfaces. Well, where does our dust collect? Our dust collects on these horizontal surfaces. So when you talk about like, how does indoor air quality affect our pets and our children? I would argue it affects them much more than it affects adults. And we're seeing how problematic it is for adults, right? And so I think this is something that we want to be mindful of. And what's the solution for that? I said, you know, you should get your, your HVAC system cleaned. Yeah. Because all that dust that's been accumulating, that's still circulating around, you can get rid of that. And problem solved, you know? And, and so it's, there's solutions to everything and that's the beauty of it.

But you have to know that there's a problem in the first place or you're not gonna go and reach for a solution.

Well, I, when I got off the phone with you, I told you I'm putting that up on my screen and I didn't do it. And then we went for a walk last night and went to get the mail and I pulled those like monthly coupons out and fricking duck cleaning. I said it right on the countertop. I said, and I said, okay, he told me to do this and I didn't do it. This is the sign.

There you go.

So it's sitting right there for me to do it. How often should one take that route, clean your ducts? Is that a once a year thing?

Yeah, I would say it's a once a year thing. And, and I think timing also matters on that. I want to explain that a little bit. Please. And I also want to talk about filtration. I think filtration's really important for the HVAC system. There's something called, called a MERV rating. I think we all have heard of HEPA. Yeah. You know, but there's something called a MERV rating. And essentially the MERV rating is the higher the MERV rating, the smaller the particle could filter out at a specific efficiency. HEPA is essentially a 99.97% efficiency.

Mm-hmm.

And that's really what that means. And it gets to a certain particle at that efficiency, typically 0.3 microns, right? However, you want to look at it from this perspective of sometimes you have higher filtration than just like what the HEPA standard is, which is just one particular size at one particular efficiency. Sometimes you can actually get better than that. You can get better than HEPA. At a pretty high efficiency rate, that's worth looking into and investing into because, you know, you're really getting a smaller particle from getting into the system, which is going to provide you more longevity and less maintenance costs. So you want to look at it from this perspective of maybe I can invest a little bit upfront and get a better filter, but actually I save more in the long run. And that's, that's sort of the strategy that I like to look at because if we have better filtration, we're going to be breathing better air. We're gonna be having less dust in our house because it's gonna, it's actually gonna be sucking that dust up and trapping it in the filter. It's like almost like thinking about having an air purifier in your HVAC system.

Well, if you think about what an air purifier is, it's just a motor and a filter, right? And fancy piece of plastic typically, but that's what it is. So it just draws air in, traps particles in the filter, blows cleaner air out at the top. So it's essentially cleaning the air. So that your lungs aren't the ones doing that. But when you take it to this perspective of like with the HVAC system, everybody should be cleaning their system and their ducts, even if they have good filtration, at least once a year or every other year, depending on how good your filtration is. And the exact time that I want people to clean their HVAC system is in the fall.

Okay.

And the reason being, it's a very simple reason. And, you know, people can argue with me all they want and just understand this one thing. The thought process that I have on this is in the wintertime, people are typically putting their heat on. Their heat is typically a dry heat produced by their HVAC system. That dry heat can break apart the microbes that are growing on the coil. All right. Because they become brittle, they become smaller fragments. And they circulate around the house a lot easier. And it's past the filter already.

Mm-hmm.

Right. So whatever is past the filter, the filter's not gonna unfortunately do anything with. It's just, it's got free rein to kind of circulate across your house. And the reason that I, that I came up with this one, I, I've seen so many HVAC systems get tested at thousands of HVAC systems, but I've seen this firsthand where I get the most calls actually over the wintertime. Dealing with symptoms. And the reason is, it's very simple. In the summertime, you're outside a lot. Mm-hmm. It's nice out. You're getting dinner outside. You're not, you know, yes, the mold's probably starting to grow and the bacteria's probably starting to grow in the summertime. Mm-hmm. You know, but you're outside more. You're not experiencing it more. You got these nice, cool, breezy nights. You open the windows more, things like that, right? You just don't see it. Then in the wintertime, right, you get that dry heat, it starts breaking those, those particles apart. Now all of a sudden they're traveling through the ductwork. Think of it, the HVAC system, like the lungs of the home. And now you're breathing that in. Now you're, you're inside more because it's cold.

Nobody wants to go outside in the wintertime, right? Seriously, unless you live here. Unless you live here. Sure. Or where I live. Right. But, you know, the rest of the planet typically is cold and sheltered inside. They don't want to leave. And they're going from 90% indoors to maybe 99% indoors. And guess what? Right. They start to feel those effects.

Right.

And so if you do it in the fall, then you can remove all of those microbes and particles before you turn on the heat so that when you turn on that heat, there's nothing to get brittle and break apart and travel across the house. So I think the secret to that is get better filtration. Clean your system every fall and you'll avoid those, you know, I mean, think about the flu season. It's like every winter, right? Yeah. Well, if your immune system's weakened, 'cause you've got a ton of mold or bacteria in your environment, don't you think you're gonna get sick more frequently from viruses and other things?

More than likely.

Yeah.

Okay. So I'm, I'm gonna do a breakdown here, but for the, for, in all seriousness now, for the people that live in places like here or Hawaii or whatever, does it matter the time of year? When they do the cleaning? Can they do it anytime or do you still say fall?

I would still say when the weather's getting cooler.

Cooler.

You know, even if you don't have heat, you know, and you're not gonna use heat. Yeah. That's fine. I would still say when the weather's getting cooler, 'cause you're gonna have a sort of, sort of a reset.

Yeah.

Like if you can do it after the humid season, I think you're gonna provide a lot of value and longevity into how long that system stays clean. Okay.

So let's do this then for everybody. Let's make it really simple and easy to the process on what you recommend. So we're gonna clean the HVAC system.

Yep.

And is that also proportionate with the ducts that you were talking, or is that totally different? So HVAC duct cleaning.

Yeah. So they're, they're different pieces, but they're tied together. Okay. Right. So like if you, there's gonna be a closet somewhere or a crawl space somewhere or an attic somewhere. Yeah. Where you're gonna have an HVAC system.

Right.

And that's usually that, that big tin hunk of metal that you see somewhere. And it's usually got 1 or 2 lids that you could pull off and you could see the unit. And then it's got the ductwork that attaches to that. Sure. So that's where the motor is. That's where the coil typically is. That is blowing the air through the ducts that then, you know, connect to the rooms in your house. So you want to find that hunk of metal because in there is the evaporative coil that you're going to want to clean for sure. That is— think of that as like the source of where it would grow. It doesn't mean that it can't grow in the ducts. It can, but it needs moisture. So it's going to grow either closer to the coil, like that main trunk line that, that comes up and connects to that big hunk of metal, or there has to be something wrong with the duct somewhere where like maybe it's leaking, the air is leaking. And so you've got temperature differentials, hot air outside, cold air blowing through the duct, and there's a split in the duct somewhere.

And so boom, it creates condensation and you start to get mold growth in there. If you don't have that problem though, then you're really just looking to clean the dust out inside the ductwork because within that dust you could have mold and bacteria, right?

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Okay, so we got the HVAC, we got the ducts. Now we've brought up filtration. Okay, so here's the question in terms of filtration. Like, my house has, man, I don't even know, 7, 8 filters that they told me to change every 30 to 60 days. Is that what you're talking about? Is there some sort of special filter with the HVAC in particular in that area that you're talking about?

I mean, I have a special filter. But what you're talking about is true. You could— you probably have these filter grills throughout your house.

Oh yeah, everywhere.

That are in your ceilings and your walls, whatever.

Require a big-ass ladder and every—

Yeah, yeah.

My handyman to do it because I don't do that type of thing.

Listen, listen, that's, that's one way to do it. You could just abandon all that and get a really good filter installed at the unit if you've got the room for it. And that would be much better quality. So think about it from this perspective. If I've got filter grills all over my house, and I put filters in there, I'm really not going to be able to do better than a MERV 13 filter in there. And even that could be questionable. It's going to restrict a lot of airflow because you've got— you're basically— you're trying to suck air through a straw here. The ductwork is the straw, but you've got your hand partially covering it, right? So you're restricting a lot of airflow. You're not going to be able to put like a MERV 16 filter in this area throughout every return in your house, or you're going to probably choke your system. And then it's just gonna freeze, the coil will freeze. That'll be its own nightmare.

Right.

Right. So you would benefit from installing something at the unit cuz you can go way higher because it's obviously a built-in chamber, a bigger chamber, so you can disperse the airflow through it.

Mm-hmm.

Without having to worry about choking the system essentially. And you could actually benefit from getting a smaller particle removed from that. And then you, nice thing is like if you went with a filter I like, you would change it every 2 to 3 years. That's how long it lasts. And then you would be able to ditch all those things and the ladders and just leave your ladders in your garage and not have to worry about it anymore.

It is ridiculous how many there are. I remember when we were walking through, because it's a new house and I was going, what? Like, since when? You know what I mean? Like, I'm used to like, because I lived in Iowa and it's like you change it very infrequently, you know, right downstairs with the heater and the the air conditioners and that's it. But you know, here it's like you got two air conditioners and they're two different parts of the house that like our bedroom functions separately than the rest of the house.

Right.

So many things there that I think people wouldn't be clueless about that would never even think twice about that are just wrecking health, just damaging lives. So when it comes to mold, and then I'm gonna shift to like detection of mold, what do your recommended ways of going about that and what you exact— exactly do, but Can you talk about different problems that mold will cause a person, a child, a pet, like telltale signs and then how bad it could potentially get?

I want to say one thing really importantly first, please, before I get into that. If we look at America and our systems, our government systems, they're all disjointed and discombobulated. The CDC is telling people to still use bleach. The EPA is telling people, please don't use bleach. And all the different state department, health department websites are all saying different things. And so it makes it very difficult for people to wrap their head around what, what do I do?

Right.

And, you know, I feel like today more than ever, we're starting to wake up like, hey, our government might be slow to regulate things for our benefit. And, you know, there might be, there might be some problems there.

Right.

Right. And the, the, the big thing about this is, is that unfortunately the science has been really slow to evolve, mainly because the government hasn't been appropriating a whole lot of funds to study this subject. Started to sort of change after COVID, right? We started to realize, wow, there's something that can travel through the air that could be smaller than what I can see that could potentially harm me, right? It was like sort of the first big idea. In that direction. Now we're, we're appropriating more funds. Now we're starting to see things. We're start— the research is starting to come out. I mean, there's a lot of beneficial things happening. The NIH did an update, I think it was September of 2025.

Mm-hmm.

And it's not a com— it's not a complete list of the dangers of, of what mold can do, but it's a step in the right direction. See, previous to that, that paper, you know, really from a government perspective, the best data that we really had was mold causes asthma.

Right.

And that was sort of all they were willing to sort of say, right? Even though there were so many medical journals and papers out there that were really talking about mycotoxins and the toxigenic effects of those and how that's problematic. We know, or maybe, maybe we don't know, maybe we're finding this out right now for the first time on this podcast, but the FDA regulates, or I don't know how they regulate this, but they know mycotoxins are bad and they're trying to regulate it in the food supply. I say try, because I don't see how they could possibly enforce this in all, in all particular areas, but no, at least they know about it and they set some, some guidelines to prevent mycotoxins in our food supply as best as possible. We know it's a problem in coffee still. We know it's a problem in peanuts and peanut butter and nuts and things of that nature. But you know, where they're at least, you know, have some different angles of which they've been working at it. But from an air quality perspective, it's like, you know, it was like completely missing. The data on these government websites was even still to this day, it's, it's very disjointed, discombobulated.

Yeah.

The NIH came out and said, hey, it can cause cancer. I mean, just the big C word. Is something that really nobody would've ever wanted to admit. Right, right. Finally, they're like, th— this can cause cancer. Now, why do they, why do they come out and say that? Well, because we already had the, the evidence that mycotoxins can cause cancer. Mold produces mycotoxins. That's one of the big problems with regulating in our food supply. However, we haven't been talking about mycotoxin exposure from an air quality perspective in our homes, because unfortunately, if we have mold in our walls and that mold is a mycotoxin-producing mold, then there is a potential that it could produce mycotoxins and there is a potential that we could be exposed to that. Now, again, not to cause fear or panic, but we want to be able to control that and we want to have our mycotoxin exposure to be within normal ranges. We don't want to go out and We don't want to have too much exposure. We want this to be something that we can be in control of. Well, how could we be in control of it if we haven't been given the information?

So I was so appreciative and quite honestly, I was shocked when it first happened because I was like, you know, I've been, I've been fighting this for 13 years and, you know, finally, you know, it kind of felt like the information was seeing the light of day in the name of being able to help people, right? Because I'll tell you, over the past 14 years, if you wanted to know how many skeptics I've been in front of, I mean, quite a few, 'cause I would sit down at people's kitchen counters and being like, hey, based upon your levels, I think you should probably take some action. And it's like, well, is this illness really that, or is it something else? Or, and I always said, you know what? You don't have to take my word for it, right? I want you to go leave your house and I want you to go away for the weekend. And if you notice you feel better when you're outta your house, then you feel worse when you're in your house and your symptoms flare up when you're in your house. You might wanna start thinking that maybe the trigger is in your house, right?

Maybe this is triggering your symptoms. I'm not gonna say it's causing your symptoms cuz causation and triggering and correlation, right? These are, these are words that I would, as someone who's not a doctor, it's not something I get into. But if you feel better outside your house and you come back into your house and you get triggered by these symptoms, Well, then maybe you might want to do something with your house. You know, who would've thought, right? And that's sort of been the guiding light. But when this paper came out in September of 2025 and it said it can cause cancer, neurodegenerative disease, right? Neurodegenerative issues like brain fog. When it said that it can cause inflammation and asthma, and it started to talk about the multi-systemic issues that mold can have on the human body. That was a huge win. Yeah. And it, and it was a huge win for the public because now they could do something about that. Right. And when the NIH comes out and says this, now doctors who have been unsure of like, is this real? Is it not? Do I look at this or do I not? Now they have something that they can look at.

That's a credible body of information. I think that is so important. And, um, You know, a colleague of mine, Brandon Chapo, he's a director of public policy for Change the Air Foundation. He was, he was telling me that he met with the CDC and the EPA recently about, you know, trying to get some change going on the websites because, you know, that's where these people go for information. We've gotta have good, accurate information. And, uh, you know, he called me all excited and was like, hey, you know, look, I, I don't know what they're gonna do. But they did realize that their information's a bit archaic and they, they are looking into, you know, updating it and stuff like that. And I think to me that that's a, that's a really beautiful and powerful thing because, you know, it's, um, I think it's, it's one of those sad things that people rely so much on the government to, to, to be this maker of change. But when you understand how the government works, it is 20 years behind the change. Is pioneers and platforms like yours where, where people actually get to learn things because it's the people that care, that see things with their own eyes, that can observe, that say there's a problem here.

And it's that, that, that really creates that change, not the government. Look what Elon Musk has done with SpaceX and all the technologies he's built. He has inspired change. The government didn't develop these rockets that could take off and land themselves back. The government didn't develop the electric vehicle. We cannot expect the government to innovate for us or to have our back, especially when these massive companies, they pay millions of dollars to choose who they want to win these elections.

It's rough. And being dependent on people that like you said, they've got 3 different websites with 3 different things when it would take one call to an IT person to make a simple sentence change. I mean, seriously, it's— they act like when you ask of something like that, like it is just the most difficult thing on the planet to make happen, to change something factual. And that is the most disturbing thing that I can even imagine, that lack of care and the things that they actually worry about and talk about and bicker about amongst each other. They're not role models. They're not anything of any kind whatsoever that anybody should model their life after. And this is not a government attack.

This is a fact.

This is why I've done what I do, because everybody's got a role. Your role clearly is what you're doing. It is helping people to see and realize an aspect of their lives that is detrimental that you're trying to fix. My role is to get people like you in front of people and to be able to convey the message properly, going back and forth with you and teaching and asking the right questions. What's everybody's problem? What are they saying? That's the problem, not the personal attacks. What is the, what is the main problem? You know what the main problem is? Confusion.

It's simple. Confusion.

The people that are actually asking genuine questions that aren't bitching and running their mouth online, they're confused.

Oh yeah.

And what's, what did you just say? The place where you're supposed to get your information, it's confusing. And then they turn everybody against each other and say you can't listen to this person or that person when you can't even update your website for 20 years.

That's right.

Who do you listen to then? I would listen to the guy like you that's in the trenches every single day and has spent their life's work doing it. So I just, I don't want to go off topic, but I want to spotlight that. So anybody that attacks anybody that comes on here's credibility because we don't have 75 letters after our name that's bought and paid for. That doesn't mean anything because they're getting taught what they're, the people above them are telling them to teach and what they're paid to teach them. It's not the fault of the person in school. It's not the fault of the person that genuinely went to be a doctor to save lives. It's the school and the people they're learning from. So what you've done is so commendable because you do it every day and you talk with real people and you see it and you learn it. And that's what I want to get into next because I know how to lead into something. What you do, what exactly is the home cleanse, the dust kit, these tests? What is it that you actually do? And is it something that you feel like every single home should do at least once?

Or what's— just explain it, not from this is my business and whatever, like for the perspective of actually what's the purpose and the reason for this and why is it imperative?

So the purpose is to create an end-to-end solution to end the suffering of chronic illness created by poor indoor air quality. That's the purpose. It's a very simple purpose. And it's a, what the business offering has evolved over time because every time I would hit a wall in being able to help somebody, I realized that the wall was created by the word that you said earlier, confusion. A lot of people are confused. I can sit down with you at your kitchen table and I can show you numbers on a page and I can show you how you should do something about that. And you could even go to, Modern medicine's amazing, by the way, cuz we can actually correlate specific molds in a home and the specific toxins that those molds produce in your body to show you, hey, you may want to take action. You still have to be the one to take the action. I can't force you to take action, but I want to educate you on taking action and taking the right action. And I think that's really important. One of the problems that we ran into is I would leave your kitchen counter and Most people that call a few people and get some opinions, I think is a really important thing.

However, in this industry, if you call 3 different people, you are going to get 3 wildly different opinions. And that is definitely part of the problem. I'll give you an example. You've got a leaking window. I'm going to tell you, hey, you got to open up around this window. We got to pull out that contaminated insulation, the contaminated drywall. We're going to have mold growing on the lumber behind it. We have to remove the mold from the lumber. Right. We have to see what— why the window is leaking in the first place. Is it poor flashing? You know, something is occurring that's allowing the water to come in. We have to make sure that's corrected. Right. So it's a bit of an elbow grease type process. There's no, unfortunately, magic solution. I'm going to tell you that. You're going to say it makes sense. I'm going to tell you what I think it's going to cost. You're going to be like, okay, I think that makes sense. I'm gonna leave. You're gonna have somebody else come in. They're gonna say, well, that guy's crazy. You don't have to do that. I got a fog. We could just fog it away, man.

We could just, for like a third of the price, we could just fog it away. And I'd say, you know, you could spend a third of that price, but you won't even get a third of the value, right? Because that mold is not gonna just disappear. The conditions that allowed it to grow in the first place are still present. This fog is not perpetuating walls and insulation and removing and eradicating mold from those surfaces. It's not. This is a living organism. I just want you to think about like, you've got weeds growing in your walls. You think spraying some weed killer on it's gonna kill it? You think it's really gonna take care of the problem or your weed's gonna come right back? Raise your hand if you've used weed killer in the backyard and if the weeds came back. Come on guys, this is not the solution. Right. The solution is to, to remove it and solve the problem. But if you're a guy sitting at a kitchen counter and one guy's telling you it's 3x the price, another guy's telling you it's a third of the price, that's going to cause confusion. And you know what that guy's going to say?

He's going to tell you that guy Michael Rubino is trying to take advantage of you. Well, it's very easy for you to be convinced of that when you've got a solution that's a third of the price, except when it doesn't work. And then you call me back and you apologize and you say, I'm really sorry, I spent a third of that guy and he didn't work. And, but these situations happen all the time.

Sure.

And you've got all these different people trying to sell some product or solution, but they're missing the actual point of what we need to do, and it's to remove the issue, the source of the problem, and then correct it. Like, we have to unfortunately do surgery in the home, you know, like you've got a bleeding artery. We, we can't just give you a, a pain pill and, and just hope for the best. Like we've gotta fix it. Right. And so that's sort of the situation. So in realizing all of that, I realized a couple different things, which is why I started to evolve the end-to-end solution. So we've got the skepticism and the competitive nature of the industry itself on trying to sell their solution or product. You've got the other side of the, the issue as well is the inspection side is absolutely terrible in terms of like having a standard. I'm going to explain why. If I let somebody come into my house and do an inspection, more often than not, they're going to rely on a technology called air sampling.

Mm-hmm.

Now, I'm not suggesting we throw the baby out with the bathwater here. I just want people to understand from a screening tool perspective, It's the worst screening tool you could possibly use, and it is used as a screening tool incorrectly all the time. I'll give you an example. They'll set up a tripod.

Mm-hmm.

And there'll be a pump and there'll be a little air cassette on that pump. They'll usually do it in the center of a room.

Mm-hmm.

Let's just say the average size room is 10 by 10 with 8-foot ceilings. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

To a 10 by 10 room with 8-foot ceilings. This machine collects 75 liters of air. Well, 75 liters of air pass through it.

Mm-hmm.

It collects the particles within that 75 liters of air, particles of a very specific size because it has to fit inside the hole and it has to then get into the slide so it could be analyzed in a lab. Okay. With all that being said, 75 liters of air. Now, going back to that 10 by 10 room with 8-foot ceilings, how many liters of air do you think are in there?

No idea.

I only know it because I looked it up. Over 22,000 liters of air. All right. Now, if you're listening to this, I want you to get out a calculator and I want you to do 75 divided by 22,000. It is less than 1%. So we are basically. With that technology. And by the way, what a lot of these guys do, they charge you like $2,500. I'm gonna tell you the business model. They do like 4 or 5 or 6 of these air samples across the house. Okay. Maybe the bedroom, maybe, you know, the bathroom, the living room, wherever, you know, wherever they, they just do this. A lot of them don't do a really good job inspecting. They just kind of set this up. It's, it's, it's profitable for them. That's why they do it.

Of course.

And, and Air testing has been the gold standard for as long, as long as the technology really came out. And so what we're doing is we're basically taking a drop of water and analyzing one drop of water and then telling people, don't worry, the whole ocean is good. That's how we have to look at this. And so that became so freaking problematic for people. I would have people call me up and say, hey, I don't feel well. I know it's not mold though. I'm thinking maybe it's VOCs or some other things. Love, you know, would love a second opinion on this. And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah. So why do you think it's not mold? Just outta curiosity. Just cuz I always, I don't, yeah, I don't always think it's mold by the way, but I'm just curious, why do you think it's not mold? Oh, because I did air testing. Okay, good. Can you send me those, that, that report? And I look at it and it's 6 air samples. I'm like, oh, okay. You could see in the photograph, usually they'll take a picture of like where the, where the, the machine is, right?

Yeah.

Oh, I see it's in the center of the room, blah, blah, blah. There's no fans or anything like that. It's not like they're trying to stir up the air and then get a, get a sample. It's just ambient air sample. And I'll be like, okay, how big is that room? Oh, it's 22 by 10, you know, 22 by 12. Okay, good. So we've got like 40,000 liters of air inside that space and we've analyzed 75 of it and we're saying the whole space is good. And they're like, well, that doesn't make sense. And I'm like, I know it doesn't make sense. And by the way, these reports say everything's perfect. The house is fine. So there was a technology, it was probably 2013 or '15, somewhere around there that I stumbled upon what's called an ERMI test. And an ERMI test is essentially, well, the ERMI stands for the Environmental Relative Moldiness Index. This test basically uses a technology called MSQ-PCR, similar to the PCR COVID times, the nose swabs. This isn't a nose swab though. This is a dust collection sample. And, uh, just like PCR, if you don't know what it is, you basically can put something in it and then just match something.

You have these primers that go into the machine that tell you, I don't know, you want to look for 36 different species of mold. You can put 36 different species of mold in there. Then you can take a cloth and then you can put the cloth in there. Basically the dust from that cloth, if it has mold in it, you can match it with the primers that are there. That's really how it works. So if you wanted to check for COVID, you'd put COVID in it and you'd do a nose swab, then you'd put that in there and see if there's COVID. If there's COVID, we, we've got a match. Totally different topic and I don't even want to go there, but that's how the technology works. Whatever you put in, right, you can match. That's just a DNA-specific analysis, right? Mm-hmm. So I came across this technology and, you know, the inspectors I was working with at the time, they were using the technology and they were, when I looked at the numbers, it was very interesting because you would have these air tests that would tell you this, everything's normal, but then you would have like all these indicator molds, indicator molds, by the way, they mean these molds that are typically more water reactive, hydrophilic molds.

These molds cannot grow if the home is not water damaged. Like, you can't have them as sources in the environment if the house is not water damaged. Doesn't mean you can't carry it from outside to inside or something like that. Right. And if you saw one spore, you'd be like, okay, it could have came in from outside. Right. But if you start seeing thousands, yeah, like, no, I think it's a little more than like I tracked that in. Right. Should we— should probably look for a source. So we, so we developed a test called the DUST test, which by the way, all your listeners are going to get 20% off that test today. They're going to use code Dylan.

Yep.

Um, thank you. And, and the reason that I developed this test, it ain't to make money. The margins on this test are absolute garbage. It ain't about making money on this test. This test is about giving people answers. And actually, I, I specifically created this test with the mindset of, I want this test in every doctor's office in America. Because for so many people, when I— when they go to their doctor and the doctor says, I think your house is part of the problem, you need to get your house checked. They look through Google, ChatGPT, wherever they look at these days to find people. They find random people on the internet. They call said random people on the internet. They come in and they do those air samples in the center of the house. Analyze less than 1% of the air quality across the entire house and tell people that everything's fine. And I got so sick of that. Not just because— two, two reasons I got sick of it. One, because it created skepticism. Now people think it ain't mold anymore. I can go and do my own, you know, go off and do something else.

But when I started interviewing people and seeing how many people started to put their attention elsewhere, go 4 years in a different direction, still every day taking 20,000 breaths per day in that house, getting sicker and sicker and sicker and have no idea why, because they already discounted the mold aspect or the house aspect. I've got a problem with that. Not only do I have a problem with that, but the fact that most people are spending money and they're going to 3 and 4 and 5 inspectors trying to look for answers and not getting any answers. I've got a problem with that too, because again, we, we now are spending resources on things and not getting answers. And so what's happening is we just keep getting sicker, staying in the environment that's contributing to the illness of whatever we're feeling. And, you know, I, I, I could confidently tell you, you could pick any autoimmune disease out there. I will tell you that they will have some level of sensitivity to mold or that mold will trigger some level of symptoms. That they might experience with that autoimmune disease. I'm not gonna sit here and say that I think mold causes those autoimmune diseases because I don't think we have enough information to be able to, to make quite that claim.

But I'll tell you, if you have it and then you live in a moldy home, you're not getting better. Right. It will, it, you will get these symptoms that will spike and trigger having these conditions. And I can confidently say that because the thousands of people from all walks of life, with all backgrounds, all different ages, dealing with all different autoimmune conditions, having the commonality of toxic levels of mold in their home, the mycotoxins they're breathing in, whatever it may be, the bacteria, the water damage, the VOCs, the chemicals they're breathing in, all of these things equate to they feel terrible at home, they feel great when they leave. So why do we develop the dust test? Because the dust is almost like the DNA of the home. Look at it as a blood test of the home, however you want to look at it. But if I've got mold in the ceiling above me, if I've got mold behind a wall, if I've got mold in an HVAC system, I might not be able to see it. It's going to be in my dust. Why is that? Because if you think about it from this perspective, if you ever sat near a window on a sunny day and you saw the ray of light refract off the dust.

You're like, holy cow, my dust is everywhere. Are you getting that visual right now?

Absolutely. Yeah. All the time I see that and thankfully my wife's a daily cleaner, so it's gone very quick. Yeah. But yes, yes. And I know what you're talking about.

So the microbes that are going to travel through the air, they're gonna attach to the dust.

Got it.

And then they're gonna become part of the dust. And so they're gonna be on the surfaces, they're gonna be on the floor, and unfortunately they're also gonna be in the air. And you're gonna be breathing that in because it's unavoidable. We have to breathe. And dust is part of our, our environment. And it's gonna be more than just dead hair and skin cells. It's gonna be the microbes in, in the environment. And so what we've noticed over the years is the more microbes you have, the more sources of microbes that you have, the higher the levels are gonna be in the dust. Got it.

Well, I'm gonna take this test and report back.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

So, and it'll give a synopsis of a new home and what it looks like, and that'll give an indicator for people. So, dude, masterclass, absolute masterclass. I can't tell you how appreciative I am and appreciative that you took the time to break that down in all the ways that you did. And I'm excited to share this with everybody because I haven't dug into this anywhere to the extent or level that I should have. So you just gave me something extra now for the knowledge bank. That I can start, you know, really relaying to people because it's, it's amazing to have a voice like yours. But then when I get the knowledge, then I can start to convey this more too, and we can just work together to, to get the understanding and word out of these things that are ever present. So man, the, the time flew and the conversation was amazing. So I, I appreciate it. Like you said, give the link, the code will be down there with my code Dylan for the, the The Dust Test, but just give the, the website for that and then where to follow you online.

Yeah. So go to thedusttest.com. That's where you can use code Dylan, get your 20% off. Just start there. That's the beginning of the journey. The test is $299. So with that 20% off, you get a pretty steep discount. Yeah. And that just gives you the information to tell you what to do. Yeah. And we've got an end-to-end solution if you need it. Right. And just the point is you want to empower yourself with information because you can't fix problems if you don't know the problems exist, right?

Right.

If you do need help further than that, you want to know what filters to buy, cleaning products to use that are safer, alternative products that aren't chemical-based, but that can get rid of things like mold and bacteria, you can go to homecleanse.com. There's amazing stuff out there. That's where if you wanted to speak to someone live and get some expert opinions, that's the website to do it. And then if you're interested in change, you should go to change the air foundation.org because that the three pillars of Change the Air Foundation is education, policy reform, and then research. So there's a lot of exciting things happening there. And if you want to follow up on some of the change and some of the work we've done with the Mold Act and military housing, please go on there. And if you want to follow me and you want to hear more about what I have to say on social media, please @themichaelrubino.

Sweet, man. Well, I appreciate everything. Like I said, especially taking the time to come and see me and to get this information out. So, brother, truly appreciate it. You're doing great, great, great work, and I'm going to help you on this journey to educate. And I hope everybody really takes note and heart to what we discussed today. So that being said, stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli signing off.

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