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Eric G. Welcome to the around the House show, the next generation of home improvement.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining today.

This is our midweek update.

This is the show that goes on in the middle of the week that, well, doesn't get topics that don't get carried on last weekend's show and sure as heck won't make it into this weekend's show.

Thanks for tuning in today.

I'm a little tired today.

I had my worst enemy at night.

I'm sure you have all dealt with it at some point.

Yeah, it's that wayward smoke detector doing the random beeps in the middle of the night.

Which one is it?

Yeah.

And I made the mistake that I say I'll never make again.

Oh, yeah.

I'll just go back to sleep.

I'll get it in the morning.

Yeah, that led to about three hours of sleep last night.

I've been so much smarter to get up and fix it, take care of it, deal with it and go back to bed.

So I just spent about 20 minutes here this morning trying to chase the beep around the house because it's only every few minutes.

So you wait.

Beep.

Oh, I think it's over there.

Beep.

Oh, I think it's over there.

Yeah, I was doing the smoke detector walk of shame this morning.

Just what everybody wants to do.

I know you guys are all doing it too.

It's just one of those things.

And, and this is a hardwired system, but it's that battery backup that you really can't control that's beeping, that's failing.

So time to put in some new ones.

They're only seven years old, but that tells you what.

It's kind of like milk.

Sometimes the date says it should last this long and sometimes it doesn't.

So I'll be chasing those down and looking for some replacements because odds are if one does it, they're all gonna do it.

And I'm not losing any more sleep today.

I wanted to talk about something that's coming up that this is my calling out of a prediction.

I think we have another epidemic coming up in housing, in construction, in our homes that is going to be akin to our asbestos and lead paint issues that we've battled.

And this is going to be bad mold remediation.

All that water damage we see, I think this is going to be bigger than what we have seen in the past with asbestos and lead paint issues.

I think you're gonna see.

Have you had mold remediation done by this company?

Please call and we'll name off three names that sound like a law firm.

I think that is in our future, which concerns me for a number of reasons.

And we'll talk about that here today.

And we're gonna just glaze over this.

Cause we can't do a whole show on it here.

And this is our midweek, so it's much a shorter episode.

But I think that we've got reasons why that I think this is going to be similar or worse than the asbestos or lead paint.

Because they both involve invisible hazards that when mishandled, can really cause serious health risks, lead to costly litigation.

And then we get the regulators in there, and that creates a whole other issue as well.

Asbestos and lead paint were both said, ah, it's a minor deal, not a big deal.

Then all of a sudden we saw cancers, neurological damage, all that stuff coming from them.

And we figured out that, wow, it's a bigger deal.

And I think we're seeing that with mold now.

We're seeing incomplete removal.

They're not containing things.

They're not fixing the original problem that caused it, which is emerging as another silent epidemic on our hands.

So here's my thoughts, and I just want to get your guys's take on it.

The health risks from a bad remediation job mirrors those chronic exposures like asbestos.

So when you don't do a mold remediation.

Right.

That leaves those viable spores behind.

Right.

Which means that's going to grow someplace else and it's going to lead to ongoing contamination.

So cdc, like them or not, they found that mold exposure can exacerbate all those respiratory issues, asthma, allergies, and insensitive individuals.

It can be really bad and give chronic conditions, cognitive impairments, sinus, all those things that you have.

And I had that as a kid.

I had a sinus infection that went for over a year.

And I think that was a combination of maybe some mold, and it was a combination of allergic to cats that were in the house.

That was not awesome.

So that's one of those things that I dealt with that as a kid.

So if you look at it at 2023, EPA report on indoor air quality really emphasized that improper cleanup, like not addressing all the mold that's in the H Vac systems, for instance, can recontaminate spaces within months, just adding on the exposure to that, you know.

And so when you think about who gets hit the hardest, Kids, the elderly, people that are immune, immune compromised.

So we really see that some issues are coming up.

And then for instance, a 2022 study in the Environmental Health Perspectives found a post remediation mold level in 40% of tested home tested homes that remained above safe thresholds which correlated to a 25 to 30% increase in asthma attacks among kids.

We saw in 2019 some serious toxic mold crisis in US schools in California and Florida.

And those botched remediation sickened hundreds of kids with symptoms persisting for years.

So I think what we're going to see here, and especially the high failure rates that we're seeing when people are going back and checking out if things were remediated correctly or incorrectly.

Great example.

Industry auditors revealed that 60% of mold remediations are ineffective due to shortcuts like using the biocides without source removal.

According to a 2024 Inter Nachi International association of Certified Home inspectors survey of 500 cases.

Yeah, it's a small one.

That's a big number.

What does that remind me of?

It reminds me of the asbestos abatement in the 80s where they just took it out, blew out the space, called it good, spreading the fibers everywhere.

So I'm seeing this coming back up on the horizon and of course we're seeing the court cases growing.

Court saw 150% rise in mold related lawsuits from 2018 to 2023.

Many targeting remediation contractors for negligence.

Which just looks like the litigation boom that took out John's Manville and people like that over asbestos.

Now here's a scary one that I think it's going to affect every homeowner out there.

US insurance industry estimates mold claims will exceed 5 billion annually by 2027.

So I'm thinking that I'm looking at this, I think this is going to be a big problem because that's the mirroring the same things that happened with lead paint and those cleanups.

So I think we're going to start to see stuff like there was a case in Florida in 2022 settlement against a Florida remediation firm.

20 million for 1500 homeowners.

So I think what we're going to see is a lot of class action lawsuits, a lot of this stuff against remediation companies.

So now we're going to start to see how that affects us.

You're going to see insurance companies diving in because they're losing their butts on this.

Right.

So you're going to start to see insurance carriers going, hey, we are only going to allow certified mold companies come in.

We're going to let make them prove with testing, which you should have anyway.

They're going to basically go in there and make sure that if somebody sues them, they have all the stuff to back themselves up, which is what they should be doing anyway.

But we really haven't seen that on a large scale.

So I think we're going to start to see revised standards out there.

We're going to see a lot of things going on as far as new standards for mold cleanup and stuff.

And I think we're going to really have to.

It's going to start looking like, you know, when the asbestos abatement company comes in, we're going to see a lot more of that.

And the problems we're seeing too is some companies come in, they stop the water damage.

They go in, they dry it out, they spray a bunch of stuff around there that could be toxic in itself.

So I think this is going to be a big issue and I think we all need to be very careful because that's the problem with this.

Any one of us could have a pipe break tomorrow and any one of us could sit here and have a huge remediation problem.

Great example.

One of my buddies I'm not going to name by name, he's been on the show as a guest.

He's listening.

Thanks brother, for tuning in.

He had a mountain cabin.

It's a couple hours from here up on Mount Hood.

We had an ice storm.

Power went out, guess what?

Heating kicked off, broke some water pipes, froze it up.

His security camera stayed on.

He was going to go back out there later and check.

All of a sudden in the middle of the morning, he gets this alert on his camera that something's happening.

Yeah, it was water running out of the building because, yeah, the upstairs cabin pipes broke and guess what happened.

Yep, he had a half inch water line running for hours and by the time he saw it, he still had 90 minutes to get there.

So he had to run all the way out there.

His remediation costs, because it was not in the city close by exceeded what his coverage was for the house.

What his coverage was.

It would have been cheaper to tear that place down and build it up again for just the remediation.

So make sure your insurance documents are right and that you're covered because I've seen some insane water damage.

I worked on a house that I was a cabin designer for.

Three story house folks.

Went to Europe.

Water line.

You know that hose behind your washer and dryer, the rubber one?

Yeah.

Burst.

It filled up the lower level of the three story house until it pushed out the sliding glass door.

Had feet of water in the basement.

Ran down all three floors.

They had to gut that thing to the studs, remediate it and put it together.

It was worse than a house fire.

So make sure guys keep an eye on this.

This is an emerging story we're going to keep on and I'm going to bring on some people to talk more about it.

And I think this is something that's going to get pretty crazy out there.

So want you to be careful, check your coverage to make sure you're good.

And I think it's something that we're gonna have to pay more and more attention to as time goes on.

Cause it's something that I'm very concerned about.

Hey, we usually talk about recalls this time of the time of the show as well.

Looking here, Anchor power banks.

Recall due to fire and burn hazards.

Take a look at those.

About almost half a million of those.

Take a peek out there and then your typical stuff you see out there.

And homey dressers.

Recall due to tip over entrapment.

Yeah, they didn't put one of those brackets in there.

Some baby loungers, kids helmets not working.

Lots of toys for kids.

Some portable vaporizers are catching on fire.

Lithium ion.

A lot of cotton candy makers here.

About 21,000 of them that catch it on fire.

Icy breeze cooling, portable fan same.

A lot of flame burn hazards here.

So a lot of that kind of stuff that you see.

Nothing huge on the tools.

Again, I think that we had talked a few weeks ago about Keter recording cord.

Recalling their cordless grease guns and grease gun hoses due to laceration hazard.

That was a big one.

And then of course the Ryobi pressure washers due to it exploding and risk of serious injury.

So if you've got one of those Ryobi electric ones, take a look.

That could be an issue.

All right guys, we went way long today but this was an important one I wanted to get out to you.

I'm Eric G. I really appreciate you guys tuning in and we got a great show coming up this weekend.

So I can't wait to share it with you.

And thanks for tuning into the show.

I appreciate you have a great rest of the week here.

I got a lot going on as well with some new content coming up.

Just posted up a brand new video on Land sod on the YouTube page.

Check that out.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for tuning in to around the House.

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