#14 - Mould, Misdiagnosis, and the Making of a Healthy Home with Jess Ward

Jess Kismet (00:00)

Hello and welcome to the Building Sciology Poddie where we talk about better buildings to live and breathe in. My name is Jess Kismet and today my guest is Jess Ward. She is doing some really important work at the intersection of health and our homes and she is the founder of a business called Mould Wise If you've ever found yourself Googling symptoms, staring at a musty patch of... ⁓ If you've ever found yourself Googling symptoms, staring at a musty patch on your ceiling or wondering if your home might be making you sick,

Jess is definitely the person you want to be talking to.

Jess not only tests home for mould, she also provides a lot of information that empowers people to understand the environments that they live in and their bodies to fight the safer, healthier spaces. So if you are not already following Jess's Instagram page, I will put a link in the show notes. You really must. In this chat, we are going to dig into why mould illness is so misunderstood. The links between building mistakes and chronic illness.

and what we can all do as homeowners, renters, builders and designers to be a little bit more "Mould Wise" So welcome Jess and thank you for joining me. No worries. So start from the start. Can you tell us a bit about your career and how you decided to get into building biology and how you got to where you are

Jess Ward (01:03)

Love it, thank you. Thanks a lot.

Yeah, not sort of with any expectation of ending up here. So yeah, my background isn't in animal science and I was a dog attack investigator before I was doing mould inspections. But in 2021, my husband and I bought and moved into our first home, which yeah, we were so happy to find newly renovated by a couple of house flippers. And I was six months pregnant. We moved in and my health slowly started to

decline. ⁓ I'd sort of had some niggling symptoms and health issues of some kind building up for like 10 years prior to that, but nothing that was truly bugging me. And then when I moved into that house, it was like an explosion in the severity of those symptoms. having like ⁓ ringing my ears, muscle twitching all day long, ⁓ really bad gut issues. I sort of couldn't eat anything other than a carnivore diet. ⁓

couldn't sleep, but worst of all, most intolerable of all the symptoms was brain fog. Just waking up and feeling like a drunk lady from the second I got out of bed to the second I went back to bed. And yeah, it got terrifying. My husband started getting used to phone calls from me, like saying, hey, I'm at the shops, that brain fog, things happening again. Can you help me find my way back to the car? We were just sort of accepting that as some level of normal until one day I finally went, all right.

Jess Kismet (02:39)

my goodness. ⁓

Jess Ward (02:44)

This isn't just new mum stuff like something is seriously wrong here. GPs are telling me my blood tests are all normal. ⁓ I need to see someone else. So I sought out a functional medicine doctor who they're sort of, if you haven't heard of one before, they're sort of more inclined to look at things like parasites, heavy metal toxicity, a bit more outside the box medical conditions. So I went and saw one of those and when I walked in there, she said, you're a textbook patient for toxic mould illness. ⁓ Is there mould?

Jess Kismet (03:12)

So

did she ask you many questions before she came to this conclusion or was she just like bang, that's it?

Jess Ward (03:17)

Well, I was just truly there for my brain fog and gut issues. All the other things I had going on, was like, that's just a bit of this and a bit of that and I can manage that. So I just wanted help with the gut issues. And she, when she sort of made me go through all my symptoms, I was there for two, but then I found I was ticking boxes for like 40 different symptoms. And she's going, no, you're mould. You're mould person. I'm like, I there's no mould in our house. Like it looks new. ⁓

Jess Kismet (03:38)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jess Ward (03:46)

We've never seen it. We've never smelt it. And she just didn't care and said, get a mould inspector. And, and when the inspector came, he stuck his head in the ceiling cavity below our upstairs bathroom and found that it was leaking into the ceiling cavity below. And there was chockers black mould for meters and meters and meters. And because of the way the bathroom was sort of situated in the middle of a two story house, the contamination was flowing out into.

every other room. So there were high airborne counts of over the whole house. ⁓ yeah, that led to a sort of, yeah, very, very eye opening sort of journey. I also was able to work out that, ⁓ yeah, what had been happening with me for the past 10 years was mould exposure to lesser degrees in other homes I was living in. And that my then one year old son, who was having unexplained hives, rashes, food intolerances, didn't sleep.

Jess Kismet (04:18)

Wow.

Jess Ward (04:43)

all the rest ⁓ was also as a result of mould exposure. So we ended up going through a whole home and contents remediation and ⁓ medical detox and just saw all of those symptoms disappear.

Jess Kismet (04:56)

Wow. So did you both get blood tests to confirm that there was mould toxicity in your body? Like this is actually a question I've got further down in my question list, but I'm going to get to it straight away. ⁓ How did you guys get diagnosed? Because your husband, I understand, is not mould sensitive, just you and your son. So could you explain a little bit for me and for the listener about how you came to understand that you both have mould illness and ⁓

Jess Ward (05:09)

Yeah, yeah.

Mm. Yeah, that's right.

Jess Kismet (05:25)

what it means for your family.

Jess Ward (05:27)

Yeah, so one of the reasons that in spite of having these symptoms, I was never looking at my environment. I was always thinking, man, my guts are so stuffed up right now. And just, this is a me problem, an internal issue was because my husband wasn't having symptoms of any kind. And ⁓ what we now know is the reason that I was reacting in the house is because I'm genetically susceptible to toxic mould illness. And it actually is about

one in four of us that have a defective HLA-DR/DQ gene, which makes us unable to mount the correct immune response to be able to detox mould. ⁓ And yeah, so when my body sees it, instead of sort of tagging it and beginning to filter it out of the body, it just kicks off an inflammatory response when my body starts going front intruder, front intruder, over and over again, mass release of cytokines in these inflammatory molecules and keeps me in a

chronic inflammatory response, which is why ⁓ the illness is called Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. So if you don't have those genes, it's still not good for you to be breathing mouldy air and down the track, you could find that you have some sort of be penalised by that in some way, but are unlikely to have outright symptoms of mould exposure. ⁓ then, yeah, so interestingly, that first integrative doctor I saw, she said that it was

Jess Kismet (06:23)

Mm-hmm.

you

Jess Ward (06:49)

so clear to her that I was a mould patient that I didn't need to do any testing and just to start getting treated. And that's not the way my brain works. I was like, I can't upend my entire life for an illness that sounds fake without any evidence that I have it. Like I'm going to need more. ⁓ And she allowed me to do a mycotoxin urine test, which some practitioners like those others don't, but they're pretty accessible now though.

Jess Kismet (06:59)

Hahaha! ⁓

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jess Ward (07:17)

nearly $700 back when I did it, but they're about $280 now. So you can do a mycotoxin urine test or you can get, no, you can actually call up a company called NutriPath by yourself and say that it's a self-referral. If you call them by phone, you can call and do that. And there are other ways that you can test for exposure, like testing if you have this mould gene, which is just a blood test. And you can also do a blood test for

Jess Kismet (07:22)

and that's through only a functional doctor.

going.

Jess Ward (07:43)

CIRS biomarkers. There's a whole heap of inflammatory markers that when they're all positive will tell you you have this this syndrome. So I ended up going on to do all of those tests and finding out that I ticked every box for having it and then I went all right I believe you now.

Jess Kismet (07:50)

Thank ⁓

And all of those tests were again through your functional medicine doctor. not the urine test because you did that DIY but all of the other blood

Jess Ward (08:02)

Yeah. ⁓

So I did a urine test with a functional medicine doctor and then I ended up actually switching over to a naturopath who has CIRS herself and just, I just thought it would be a better fit and she was the one who ran all the blood markers for me. Interestingly, the naturopath was far more interested in running the bloods and providing the prescription medications than the doctor. The doctor was a little bit more natural, like holistic minded than was, than was

working for me at the time.

Jess Kismet (08:38)

That's interesting. ⁓

Jess Ward (08:39)

Yeah, using natural

sort of medications to try and remove the mould like charcoal and so on. that if you're genetically susceptible to getting sick from mould, then you'll be there for forever in a day trying to get mould out of your body using charcoal. There's prescription drugs available to do that at much quicker speeds.

Jess Kismet (08:52)

you

and your naturopath prescribed those. So they are prescription only drugs that your naturopath was able to prescribe. Is that right?

Jess Ward (09:01)

the naturopath

will recommend them and then people either have a good GP on site to get them or they go back to the functional medicine doctor and get them. that's the kind of, it's a, yeah, it can get a bit convoluted because unfortunately there are some amazing naturopaths treating this, but they can't legally prescribe the prescription drugs. So.

Jess Kismet (09:10)

Okay.

Right. I've

never been to a naturopath, so I don't quite know how they work. Yeah. So it's few step process. ⁓ And the reason I'm kind of honing in on this is because I think this is a fairly pertinent question that gets asked. Someone suspects I've got mould illness but I've got no idea how to confirm it. ⁓ And so I'm just trying to drill down into what you did and what you recommend that others could do to find their own answers.

Jess Ward (09:23)

No, I hadn't prior to this, but yeah.

Mm.

Mmm.

Yeah. So you

you can like, you can test your body or sometimes what people do is just test their house first. And whether that's jumping straight into an inspector, if you know you've clearly got water damage or you've had a leak or whatever it is, but sometimes people just go away for a week, go camping for a week, get a tent that you know hasn't been stored, you know, bit damp in an old shed for 10 years, you know, take away a tent that you know, that's not gonna have a problem in itself, but

Jess Kismet (10:00)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jess Ward (10:13)

Go away from the house and see if you notice a shift in your symptoms in that week. And that'll often give people pretty good idea about whether their environment's impacting them or not.

Jess Kismet (10:17)

Yep.

Yeah, yeah.

Jess Ward (10:24)

⁓

that, actually happened for me because when I was in the stage where my functional medicine doctor was saying I had toxic mould and I was saying, does this lady know anything? I actually went away for five days at Christmas. And in that time, I noticed that my brain fog was basically back at zero. ⁓ my son's rashes and hides completely disappeared. Like symptoms were reduced by.

Jess Kismet (10:33)

No.

Jess Ward (10:50)

such a large factor that when we went home I said to my husband as we're walking the front door I said look at our son's face without the rashes and let's check back in two days and sure enough in two days it was back and so we ⁓ decided to sort of push forward with everything.

Jess Kismet (11:05)

Oh my goodness. Quite a phenomenal, a phenomenal story. And I'm so glad that you guys managed to find some answers reasonably quickly, because I know that there are some that go through these sorts of symptoms for years without understanding what's going on. And the psychological strain of that must be huge. Like, am I dying? What is going wrong here? Like, what is wrong with me? Yeah, like it's crazy.

Jess Ward (11:06)

Mmm.

yeah, definitely went through all that. Cause times, times

where I was living in a university share housing and stuff, guess my symptoms flared up and down depending on where I was living, but living in uni share housing, sometimes that accommodation was pretty not outrightly mouldy. I never lived in outwardly mouldy homes, but understanding what I do now about ⁓ water issues in buildings as an inspector, I realised that there were so many red flags in.

Jess Kismet (11:50)

Yeah.

Jess Ward (11:50)

the accommodation I was staying in and yeah, lots of nights spent Googling questions in the realm of, am I dying? Like just really scary. Yeah. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (11:59)

Yeah. ⁓

I get random tingling, like my lip, for example, little anecdote, has been tingling for about three days. And I get random tingling up my skull, on my back, in my legs. And I Googled that a few years ago and a told me I had MS. So there I'm at the doctor getting MRIs. No, you're fine. There's nothing wrong with you. Well, I'm still...

Jess Ward (12:07)

Mm-hmm.

Yep, big mistake. Yep.

Jess Kismet (12:23)

tingling. And I've just put it down to, well, that's just what my body does. And I don't know how to fix it. And I just got to tolerate it because my symptoms aren't like yours. They're not debilitating. It might not be mild. might not. Who knows? But I would sure like to know what's going on. I don't think you just tingle for no reason. Okay. Anyway, let's move on. Let's move on to the next question.

Jess Ward (12:32)

Hmm.

Yes.

Jess Kismet (12:48)

So what do you think some of the most common misconceptions about mould in homes and how do you go about educating people and correcting those misconceptions?

Jess Ward (12:56)

biggest misconception by a mile is that a mouldy house is something, is a house that looks like something in a horror movie that's like about to fall down for how decrepit it is, molds crawling up the walls and over the ceiling. And when people think of a mouldy home, that's what they think. And it's just so far from the truth. That wasn't my home. That's not the homes of my clients. And mould will be where water damage is, where

Jess Kismet (13:10)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jess Ward (13:25)

Moistures in waters intruded into a building in a place where it shouldn't be and that doesn't a building it doesn't matter how nice or expensive a building cause that can still happen. So ⁓ that's a big one and the same thing I said to my doctor when I heard that I had a ⁓ mould exposure issue. I was like, but my house is new and I hear that a lot from clients and I know to just disregard it Yeah

Jess Kismet (13:44)

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

absolutely. ⁓ Someone told me recently that the Frank Lloyd Wright Falling Water House is currently just been slapped with an $11 million repair bill because it was not designed and built with correct water and moisture management. So it doesn't matter how expensive or how famous or how heritage listed your house is. ⁓

Jess Ward (14:03)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

⁓ absolutely, yep.

Jess Kismet (14:13)

So you've gone through some of the symptoms that you had, like brain fog, your son's rashes, et cetera. I know there's like a, in terms of self-diagnosis, there's that cluster symptoms chart. So could you explain a little bit about what the symptoms are and the correlation, like how mould gets into the body and how it affects the body?

Jess Ward (14:25)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. ⁓ yeah. So in people with CIRS who were sort of predisposed to having that chronic inflammatory response, the kind of symptoms you'll hear them talking about it is really what I described ⁓ sort of across the board. ⁓ fatigue, brain fog, gut issues are so common, sleeps a bit off, some mood issues, just feeling sort of flat and out of sorts. ⁓ that's really common in these aches and pains. And it can sort of turn into a fairly lengthy list of symptoms because, because the immune system.

⁓ is involved. But in other people, for people who aren't predisposed, you know, mould is something that our bodies have to detox. You kind of think that if you see mould on a wall, it's just sitting there and not like harming anyone or doing anything, but it is actually releasing its spores, particles, fragments, and that's something that we inhale and then our body has to figure out what to do with it. So ⁓ some of the most common effects from mould are

be respiratory effects, is coughing, wheezing, sneezing, asthma, allergies, the symptoms that people are typically pretty willing to accept ⁓ related to mould. And secondly, infections. ⁓ When you hear someone moves house and then suddenly they've got constant colds and flus, well, they get over one cold and another one comes back, recurrent pneumonia, bronchitis. ⁓

upper lower respiratory tract infections or ear infections are really common in kids. Those sort of things can be related to mould. And then you have direct toxicity from mycotoxins. Mycotoxins being the defense chemicals that mould can sometimes release and they sort of act like a poison and can build up in things like the liver, kidney, tissues and cause harm to people. yeah, sort of number of different ways, but it's,

Generally speaking, it tends to harm people who are genetically susceptible to a more severe degree. ⁓

Jess Kismet (16:35)

So

you're saying that the mould spores get into our bodies and then the micro toxins get into our bodies and they're two different things and they affect us in different ways.

Jess Ward (16:43)

Yeah, and honestly, depending

on which doctor you talk to, you'll find different responses to that question. So there's a whole sort of beef that goes on about whether there's colonization occurring in the body, which the Shoemaker, so the most evidence based protocol for healing from toxic mould is called the Shoemaker protocol. It's the most sort of popular. They don't think that the body's colonized. It's purely just this inflammatory response and the remaining sort of inflammogens need to be dealt with.

Jess Kismet (16:48)

Okay.

Yeah.

Jess Ward (17:12)

And then other doctors say you need to take anti-fungal drugs and all sorts. But yeah, it sort of would depend on who you talk to. Not my area of expertise, but I went the Shoemaker route and detox using prescription binders. And that saw a full resolution of symptoms for me without actually using anti-fungal drugs.

Jess Kismet (17:19)

Okay.

Yep. And as you've mentioned binders, what are they, how do they work? Please.

Jess Ward (17:36)

Yeah,

so they so if you're a normal person and you're sort of inhaling mould and your body's trying to deal with it one of the ways that it'll excrete mould is by pulling into the bowels and you becomes out by bowl movements. So these prescription binders are bile sequesterers that will sort of pull the toxins into the body and allow someone with CIRS to poop them out as a normal person would and yeah, so

Jess Kismet (18:00)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jess Ward (18:06)

The names of those, the ones that are usually prescribed are Cholestyramine or Welchol But if you're just sort of a normal person, it's hard to refer to myself as a non-normal person, ⁓ yeah, if you've just had mould exposure and your body does have a pretty good capacity at detoxing it, then usually things like charcoal, clay, Chlorella like plant-based binders are pretty effective in helping move the needle.

Jess Kismet (18:15)

You

You

Okay, and are these things that need to be prescribed by that functional medicine doctor?

Jess Ward (18:38)

⁓ The ones that I use, Cholestyramine and Welchol the ones with the long, scary sounding names come from doctors and the other ones, charcoal, clay and so on, you can just get anywhere online. People can get them for themselves. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (18:52)

Okay. And is that something that

you would suggest people do? you know, someone thinks they've got a bunch of symptoms. I'm just going to go and get Trichol or I'm just going to go and get colo whatever it's called. Or I'm going to attempt to get it from my doctor. Like, is that something without going through all the testing? Is that something that people should do?

Jess Ward (19:03)

Mm-hmm. ⁓

I'd say

no because if you're saying you've got a whole bunch of symptoms that in association with mould that probably means you're a genetically susceptible person in which case you'll need to go through an actual protocol and step one is ensuring your environments clean testing the house figuring that whole bit out which can be the hardest step and then number two making sure you're in a position to detox because some people need to do a bit of work before they can detox or they'll get sick and then after that sort of the using the prescription binders and a few other things so it's not

Jess Kismet (19:24)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jess Ward (19:39)

It's actually pretty complicated and not something that you would generally be advised to try and work through on your own. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (19:45)

Yeah okay, all right thanks

Jess. It sounds pretty intense. Just moving into a mouldy house and then bam you're faced with all of this stuff. Wow.

Jess Ward (19:51)

Yeah, yeah it is, it's a lot. it, yeah.

Mmm.

Jess Kismet (19:58)

So let's move on to houses. Could you tell us, you're a mould inspector, you go into people's homes and you do surface testing and air testing to give them a profile on what is going on in their house in terms of mould exposure. So what are some of the funkiest things that you found, almost interesting things that you found in your inspections?

Jess Ward (20:17)

most interesting things. ⁓ It's all interesting, but ⁓ gosh, honestly, what I mostly see is bathroom leaks. It really would be resoundingly failed bathrooms, new bathrooms, old bathrooms. And I mean, that's what happened in my house too. And it was, was a new bathroom, but yeah, I commonly see that. And especially if it's in a modern build and you've got a Gyprock wall cavity behind that, then there's all sorts of

Jess Kismet (20:21)

you

you

Jess Ward (20:46)

disaster that can start occurring in that wall cavity. have seen a couple of failed bathrooms recently in older double brick homes and because there's like masonry behind the bathrooms, the test results showed that the mould wasn't actually that elevated. yeah, generally see bathrooms are contaminated and then cross contaminate the adjacent environments. ⁓ lately I've seen a few kitchen sink leaks that have turned pretty catastrophic.

Last week I noticed just, you know, a bit of swelling and stuff at the kitchen cabinetry. And when I put a air sampling pump down behind it under the sink cavity, returned a reading of 50,000 spores per cubic meter and a lot of ketomium. that's sort of, it's hard because it's, you know, that's something that a homeowner isn't paying much attention to. It's really just a little bit of swelling, but it really, what it signals is water damage and hidden mould. And that's what we found. And she's very unwell.

Jess Kismet (21:30)

Mm-hmm.

Hmm. So I've done my mould testing tech course, just one, one subject out of the diploma. am advanced diploma. I'm aiming to one day finish. Um, and I remember one of the things that Nicole said, Nicole Bijlsma the tutor. One of the things that she said to us is that you generally won't go into a house with visible mould to test it. It was visible. can see it. Like, you know, it's there. So you're not going to bother testing a home that's got visible mould. So

Jess Ward (22:09)

Mm, yeah.

Jess Kismet (22:14)

What's the place you start? When you go into a home, you test each room, right?

Jess Ward (22:20)

Yeah, I tend to, I tend to test, comprehensively sample the whole home and then based on what I find in the inspection that say the kitchen's cabinet, the kitchen sink turns up as, you know, seems like it'll be problematic because of the swelling I found. then, I've also noticed some warped skirting boards behind the bathroom. Let's, let's prioritise and we'll test these areas first. And then sort of pending how that looks, we'll, we'll test the other areas. ⁓ but

Jess Kismet (22:25)

Mm-hmm.

Jess Ward (22:50)

Yeah, I sort of find that's the best way to do it because as well if say a bathroom turns up as contaminated unexpectedly then the person's going to want to know well is the bedroom that's opposite that bathroom contaminated and if you haven't sampled it then you have to go back sample it again and it's an extra cost so that's how I do it.

Jess Kismet (23:02)

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah. you just sample, ⁓ you take a sample from each room and then decide which ones, because each sample costs money to get tested, right? So you over sample and then decide which of those samples you're actually going to send off to the lab. Yeah.

Jess Ward (23:17)

Mmm, yeah.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Then I just leave

it with the client to I'll tell them what I think is most important to sample and then I'll leave it with them because you can hold samples for up to two months at the lab.

Jess Kismet (23:31)

And so you just send everything in and you say test sample one, three and six. Yeah. Okay. mouldy cars This is something that really, I didn't even think of. There was somebody in my course who also got really sick from their mouldy car And I understand that this has happened to you recently as well. So that's two people I now know who've been made sick from their cars. So could you please tell us a little bit about what happened?

Jess Ward (23:36)

Mmm, yep, yep.

Right, yep.

Hmm.

Yeah, so if you have CIRS and you find out that ⁓ you're sort of a hyper responder to mould and ⁓ need to go through that whole journey, it's sort of not unknown to us that cars are often part of the problem. And I found out when I was realising my home was contaminated, that I also realised my workplace was contaminated, they'd gone through a mould remediation actually that none of us paid any attention to thinking like, they'll do whatever they have to do. Totally dodgy. ⁓

And then I realised that my car was also contaminated. So I had like an eight year old ute that had been stored in a damp garage. ⁓ No attention ever paid to the aircon or the filter for the aircon in the car and all the rest. I slowly realised like, ⁓ I feel terrible every time I get in here. So I purchased a new car. ⁓ Unfortunately, that car that I got, it was a Kia. It just, it just had an aircon system that was more

prone to mould buildup and I sort of wasn't paying attention to it, wasn't realising how quickly mould could actually start to build up in an aircon. And so at about sort of six months of just leaving the aircon untouched and not paying any attention to like trying to turn the heater on or the fan at the end of my car trip to sort of dry out the system, ⁓ I found that I was reacting to mould in the aircon. And yeah, wow, we thought I was going to get a bit of spray and get rid of it. And it turns out through a

long-winding internet rabbit hole I went down and talking to so many mould remediators, integrative doctors, ⁓ auto mechanics and AC techs and stuff that once mould has truly taken hold in an aircon, you actually can't get it out. ⁓ And the reason for that is in order to access all the pipes and tubing and everything, you'd need to basically take the aircon out and replace it. Like actually take the

the dashboard out and put a new aircon in, which is just crazy. Yeah, yeah, really difficult to fully get out. It's probably not going to bother people who aren't hypersensitive to mould, but for me, I could feel it every time I was in the car and it was really quite uncomfortable. ⁓ But then, yeah, very unfortunately, I had another car after that that was brand new and I just felt terrible in it from

Jess Kismet (25:59)

Well.

Jess Ward (26:25)

day one, ⁓ tried to, yeah, I've had a lot of bad luck, but I've learned a lot about mould in cars. And I just didn't feel good in it. Even though I was getting my typical set of mould symptoms, every time I got in there, I just used every excuse under the sun that, maybe it's, don't know, chemicals in the car or just something. And it wasn't, it was mould. And there's so many ways that that can happen. Like we don't know whether, you know, a window gets left down and

Jess Kismet (26:26)

So that's two new cars.

Jess Ward (26:51)

the rain or what happens when they come over on the ships or they sit in ⁓ a car yard for six months with persistent humidity, whatever it is. But I ended up finding out that that particular car and that model that I had that actually deep in the darkest depths of the internet found that they actually had problems with the robots in the manufacturing factories, not correctly sealing internal components that was then allowing water to enter the car. And the manufacturer, which was Ford, had ended up buying back a number of them saying agreeing that they were.

were leaky vehicles. So I assumed that that was that I probably wasn't crazy and ⁓ that was probably what happened with my car. And anyway, I ended up posting about it on Instagram because I thought this is maybe not that rare if I've come across this two times now. And I put something up on my Instagram and coincidentally, one of my consulting clients saw it. She just bought a new car. She has CIRS, felt symptomatic in it. She'd only had the car for like two days.

Jess Kismet (27:23)

wow.

Jess Ward (27:51)

decided to test it and found that it did have a skewed and abnormal mould ecology. So I helped her to craft a letter and so on and sort of take it back to the dealer. And the dealer acknowledged that the new car did have a mould problem and astoundingly said that, don't worry, we've had another mould sensitive person who's returned one of these cars before too. Yeah. It was unbelievable.

Jess Kismet (28:12)

wow yay go Jess!

Jess Ward (28:18)

And then at the end

of the week, I turned up to an inspection and that client said to me, hey, I saw your post. I've got a new Mazda, it's a year old. The door seals have been leaking since day one and water gets in and there's mould in there and I keep taking it back to them and they said they're not going to do anything. And for me to sort of shut up and go away. So yeah, unfortunately, I don't think it's that rare. ⁓ And not to start scaring people that everyone's got mould in their cars. I don't think that's the case, but just that for people who are experiencing symptoms,

in their car to know that it's not impossible that there might be a mould issue.

Jess Kismet (28:52)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

⁓ well done. Well done for supporting that client to get their ⁓ car replaced. That's incredible. I feel like that's not an easy thing.

Jess Ward (29:00)

Yeah, it was...

No, and it was awesome because she's already going through so much with her house and all the rest to buy a brand new car and then it has my... it's just... yeah, it's truly ridiculous, but it can happen. ⁓

Jess Kismet (29:11)

insults to injury right?

Goodness me.

So you had some success with your consulting client getting her car replaced by the manufacturer, which is amazing. I also saw that you.

Jess Ward (29:15)

Mm-hmm.

Jess Kismet (29:24)

I also saw that you showed on your Instagram page how to replace the air conditioning filter in the dashboard.

Jess Ward (29:31)

Yeah, it's called the Cabin Air Filter and it's essentially an aircon filter.

Jess Kismet (29:35)

Yeah, I've never seen anyone do that before.

Jess Ward (29:37)

Hmm so sometimes if you've got a really good mechanic when your car's been serviced they might do it for you but Oftentimes they're not and people don't know this filter even exists But just like any aircon it does have one and when it's not been changed at minimum once a year It should be changed bi-annually for people who are mould sensitive But when it's not been changed once a year, then you'll see this thing turn from white/light grey to like black

over time. if you open up your glove box and you can sort of just YouTube how to take out cabin air filter for my ex model of car. And if you take yours out and you see it looks black and scary, then you know that that's probably been a source of mould exposure for you in your car through your aircon system.

Jess Kismet (30:24)

interesting. If anyone listening goes and actually You Tubes how to change their cabin air filter and you find something manky, let me know in the comments. I would love to hear about your stories. Or if you do regularly change your cabin air filter, also let me know because this is a new thing for me. I'm learning all sorts of new things. Also Jess, there was an insurance claim recently that you helped somebody with, and I understand it's a long story, so we don't have to go into it all right now. But are you able to comment on that at all?

Jess Ward (30:32)

You

Yeah, one recent one was actually in relation to some insurance works that had been completed. It was a laundry flood and it was taken care of by insurance and not the insurance mould remediation company didn't truly remediate it and it led to a bunch of sort of ongoing cross contamination in the house, a bunch of toxic mould and contamination of contents. I was able to sort of

Firstly, assess that that person's that client's mould reports to tell her that she was still having an ongoing mould issue because she wasn't actually aware of that. But I could see from the data that she'd been provided that it wasn't a safe home. then actually, ultimately, insurance agreed to give her a complete loss. What do they call it like a complete loss of contents? Kind of means they'll replace all the contents in the affected areas. And that was me working with her to show that no, this isn't right. That's not right. This they've.

They failed here and there and it was a really good outcome for her.

Jess Kismet (31:53)

Yeah, again, is not covered under many, many sort of home and contents insurance policies. It's excluded in a lot of professional indemnity insurance policies, I understand. Like, it's not a thing that is well insured.

Jess Ward (32:06)

Yes. ⁓

no, it's not mould in this case in relation to the laundry flood. was. So if you can prove that the mould is related to an insurable event, like a particularly a particular storm or a water damage event, then it will usually be covered. But if there is sort of not really covered in any other case and yeah, insurance companies have a real knack for not finding mould when they do inspections, because sometimes I go in after them and it's genuinely

Jess Kismet (32:15)

Uh-huh.

Mmm.

Jess Ward (32:36)

like, I won't swear, but very frustrating to see that clients are given a report that says everything's fine here, which you will find if you just take an air sample in the middle of the room with all the doors and windows open. And then I come in and say, no, this house is actually not fit for habitation. yeah.

Jess Kismet (32:51)

you

So another question I have is remediation. Not all remediators are the same. So how do you know how to pick a good one? And how do you know if I've done a proper job? Because remediation to some people is paint, bleach, you know.

It's not always, in fact, I think a lot of people think that that is sufficient. I know I went into a home once where the whole bottom bedroom was the young daughter's bedroom. And it was as a masonry wall at the back of her bedroom. And they painted this beautiful mural over it because it was mouldy. And so the parents had decided to make that wall pretty. And the whole room just stunk like musty moisture. And this was before I learnt about

Jess Ward (33:36)

my god.

Jess Kismet (33:40)

CIRS and before I learnt all of these, was a bit earlier in my career, I was doing a blower door test on someone's house and so they, according to what they understood, had fixed the problem. So what is, how do you get rid of mould

Jess Ward (33:58)

Yeah, so yeah, a lot in that can be, it can be really difficult. Yes, to, to find a good remediator. ⁓ I'd probably be where to start with that. Make sure you use an independent inspector to start. ⁓ You don't want to use and actually goes against the industry standards, which are the IICRC S520 standards to use the same inspector and remediate it because there's obviously a conflict of interest if they come in, tell you what's required.

they could potentially exaggerate the amount of works that are required. And then when they're finished, they do their own testing. So that shouldn't occur either. You should use an independent inspector to verify that the house has return to a normal mould ecology after that. yeah, generally speaking, we need to move on from this idea that mould needs to be killed. Like I'm always seeing people post about who's got the best recipe for a mould killing spray. it like,

clove oil, which essential oil bleach, what else do I see? How much vinegar to use and all the rest. look, there are occasions when, you know, mould can be clean. We're talking about a little bit of humidity related mould. There's been condensation on windows and molds formed in the dust on the frame or there's a bit of mould on, I don't know, something non-porous. And in that case, it really just takes a bit of hot soapy dishwater to get rid of it because you're just physically removing the mould. But generally speaking,

If you've got mould growing on a ceiling from a ceiling leak or there's mould on a wall from a water damage that's behind that, those building materials need to be physically cut out and removed. And there's a real information gap there where people think that they could scrub that off, but it's not addressing what's, even if they manage to do that, it's not addressing what's behind the wall cavity. ⁓ And then,

Jess Kismet (35:35)

Good luck.

Jess Ward (35:49)

Yeah, so mould needs to be physically removed with appropriate containment in place, plastic sheeting to make sure that everything stays in the affected area. They use air filtration devices, negative air and so on. But another thing that doesn't happen and is especially important for people with CIRS is small particle cleaning. so cleaning of cross contaminated or cross contaminated areas. Say you've got a bathroom that has a mould issue, their mediators might come in and do a good job of

stripping that out, removing the shower or whatever it is. But if there is cross contamination occurring in the bedroom, whereby over the last few years, you didn't know there was a mould issue and the mouldy air is going out and those particles and spores and so on are settling over the pillows, mattresses, carpet. If that's not addressed, then people often feel just as bad before the bathroom is stripped out as they do after because they haven't addressed that lingering contamination. And that's a real ⁓ sort of

Yeah, gap in the industry too often that that doesn't happen. And that's the reason to use an independent inspector because they're to go through, identify the mould sample to tell you which areas are cross contaminated and which contents are contaminated and then direct the remediator to so they know where to target their remediation efforts and their cleaning efforts. ⁓ Because, yeah, it's often that the contamination remains in the environment. I think people just generally unaware that contents can become impacted because oftentimes I chat to people and

they've fled from a mouldy environment that they realised was making them sick, but they've taken with them their pillows, their bedding, their super, super porous items that probably should have been replaced and they're still symptomatic.

Jess Kismet (37:21)

No.

Yeah, yeah.

And you can you wash mould out of out of clothes? Like, I found a sleeping bag, for example, that was in my cupboard, but I moved house and I looked and I thought, that's that's grown mould. Do I can I put this through the washing machine or do I have to just ditch it?

Jess Ward (37:44)

Yeah. So if mould's just been cross contaminated for, sorry, if clothes have just been cross contaminated, for example, you had clothes sitting in that master bedroom next to the ensuite and they've just been, have settled spores and so on on them. Yeah. They just go through the washing machine and they're clean. But if you have actual mould growth on clothes, it can't be washed out because basically the roots will have threaded their way through the fabric. And if you wash it off and it looks fine, all the roots will still be remaining in the fabric. So the only way to deal with it would be.

cut out that section and it's often just not practical. yeah, no, if it's on a porous item, it has to be discarded if it's actual growth.

Jess Kismet (38:19)

Yeah. Tuck it.

right. Thank you for clarifying

So what are the early warning signs for homeowners that they should be looking out for for mould that exists in their properties and how do these relate to CIRS symptoms?

Jess Ward (38:40)

Yeah. So it's really just becoming accustomed to, or aware of the signs of water damage, which I've on briefly, you know, swelling, warping, discoloration on building materials, swollen, ⁓ skirting boards, warped cabinetry and so on. And it's sort of like where I mentioned that, that kitchen with the, the, ⁓ swollen cabinetry. If people are aware that water damage is almost interchangeable with the word hidden mould, then

They could sort of address things before they become a really big issue. The problem is that people don't know and no judgment from me because I was exactly the same before all of this. And I would have just thought that's just my cabinetry. That's just the way it looks. ⁓ And yeah, it's really a really big clue that there's something going on and something that needs to be fixed. ⁓ yeah, for this person who is going through going

Jess Kismet (39:18)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

with it.

Jess Ward (39:37)

down the route of being diagnosed with CIRS at the moment, it had a ⁓ massive, massive impact on her health, which has been really unwell and just sort of lucky enough to come across ⁓ mould exposure and think to check the house for mould.

Jess Kismet (39:49)

And in my part of the world, we talk a lot about condensation and ⁓ moisture management. Do you think that most mould issues come from water leaks, burst pipes and things like that? Or do you think that an equal amount comes from condensation issues like window seals and what we call interstitial condensation, which is inside the wall cavity itself or inside the roof cavity? ⁓ Do you think that it's easy for you to tell or is it?

not so easy to tell those two things apart.

Jess Ward (40:22)

think it would be hard to tell from preliminary testing and probably because most of what I find is water damage. So then after that, you sort of need to go back through and sample again, once those areas have been remediated and see if there's something remaining that speaks to an issue with the building envelope at large. And I will say that for the most part, people, people don't often do PRV testing, post-remediation verification testing, because they see it as an extra cost that

You know, they assume that everything will be fine after they've done the remediation works and so on. And yeah, unfortunately, even for a media like good remediators, they're they're dealing with a hidden contaminant and they're often doing their best to get rid of it. But you do need to rely on sampling to then see afterwards that it's gone. And even for my own remediation, it failed PRV twice. Look perfect. But if I hadn't tested, I wouldn't have known. And so people often aren't I think for the most part, people want

Jess Kismet (40:56)

Yeah. ⁓

Jess Ward (41:22)

Yeah, it's sort of not something I'm seeing. General humidity related mould, I do see a lot of that, like mould growing on the underside of contents underneath lounge suites, carpets becoming contaminated from not water damage, but just persistently high humidity, those sorts of things.

Jess Kismet (41:39)

I mean, I guess mostly if there's a water damage issue, is it usually easy for you to find a leak or there's like a burst water pipe or, I'm just trying to find out that like, what's your opinion on the traceability of these issues?

Is it easy for you to generally find out what the actual source of that moisture is or are you, do you not look that far?

Jess Ward (42:02)

Yeah, look,

most of the time and other times you'll need to refer out to a waterproofing expert or, you know, someone with more knowledge in that area. ⁓ You know, as I said, most of what I see is bathroom leaks, kitchen leaks, air con issues. Yeah, wet areas, laundries. So that is easy enough for me to deduce what's going on there. ⁓ And if not, then you refer out to

Jess Kismet (42:19)

Yep. Wet areas.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jess Ward (42:32)

building expert.

Jess Kismet (42:33)

How do you go about educating clients and the public on the importance of proper ventilation, moisture control and preventing mould, particularly in the context of illnesses like CIRS?

Jess Ward (42:46)

Yeah, so generally speaking, if the house is tested and found to be free of water damage and ⁓ reservoirs of hidden mould, what we're trying to do is keep a house very dry. A healthy home is a dry home and ⁓ mould thrives when there's excess moisture in the environment because that's what allows it to feed. So it really is keeping an eye on things like making sure the exhaust fans work.

properly in your bathroom and they're vented out, that you use the range hood when you're cooking, that you're sort of mindful of the amount of humidity in the air. And depending on where you live in Australia or elsewhere, ⁓ that will determine how sort of over the top you have to be about that. So here in Sydney and most of the East coast of Australia, it's super humid. It's more than 60 % for large parts of the year. And when humidity does go over 60%, that's when there'll be enough water in the

Jess Kismet (43:35)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jess Ward (43:42)

air ⁓ for mould to start growing. to manage that, most people need to use standalone dehumidifiers. ⁓ Aircons dehumidify to an extent, but some models better than others and it can be hard to rely on that alone. But yeah, it's sort of strange to like, I found for me, it was hard to wrap my head around the concept of humidity, just humidity stuff. what's, what's kind of happening is when it's super humid, it's like, there's a

huge amount of water in the air and then like a blanket of this sort of dampness going across particularly soft furnishings and things. So even though you might not see visible mould growth, when there's enough water in the air that your sort of pillows, mattresses, cushions and things are persistently a little bit damp, they are becoming internally, there is a level of mould contamination. And if someone like me who's hypersensitive to mould sits on a couch like that, a couch that's been exposed to persistent high humidity, we'll be able to tell you that it's mouldy.

Jess Kismet (44:42)

See you later.

Jess Ward (44:42)

Even

though you can't see it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, and it's just too much water in the air on fabrics all of the time. it's, yeah, it's important to be mindful of that. The best thing you can do is get yourself a thermo hygrometer online, which sounds fancy, but it's really just a little digital square. They're like 15 bucks on Amazon. If you use thermpro, T-H-E-R-M-P-R-O. ⁓ And you can just station it around the house. Check the

Jess Kismet (44:45)

This couch is mouldy ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Jess Ward (45:11)

it's not going to like consistently over 60%. And if it is, know that you probably need to buy a dehumidifier to keep that in check.

Jess Kismet (45:18)

Yeah, that is something

I recommend to my clients a lot is in like when they're trying to build, you know, they're trying to build more airtight. Like how do I know if I'm ventilating this properly? There's a lot of different things you can do, but if I don't want to do any mechanical ventilation, I say, buy a monitor, put it in, put it in your living room, put it in, you know, your bedroom and check, measure it. See if you're getting above 60 % on a regular basis. And if you are, then you need to do something about it. Hmm.

Jess Ward (45:34)

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And it's the same with what I

said air cons can dehumidify because sometimes people rely on those. But the best thing to do is check the hygrometer and then turn on the air con and then run it for a while and check the hygrometer afterwards. Because some air cons will change nothing at all about the amount of water in the air and others will do a great job. So it's something to be mindful of. And as someone with CERS, I can tell you that it feels much better in a home when when humidity is being managed.

Jess Kismet (46:03)

Yeah.

Yeah, I lived in Queensland for a lot of my life. I remember we had one of those, know, those velour type couches. The velour. They're like, they're just like fabric, type of fabric back in, you know, early 2000s. And ⁓ yeah, it was, it was covered in this film of, of mould just, just because also we had some bright spark put a, in fact, evaporative cooler into our house.

Jess Ward (46:21)

Yep.

Jess Kismet (46:43)

into this particular house in Queensland. So that was introducing a heap of just moist air constantly dumping it into our house. And our shoes went mouldy, the couch went mouldy, like bags, just incorrect management of heat, air and moisture in that house.

Jess Ward (46:46)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yeah.

Yep,

yep, that's it, yeah.

Jess Kismet (47:03)

So we've talked a lot about the problems with mould and the health impacts of mould. So what trends or innovations in building science or mould testing or remediation are you excited about ⁓ and how do you see the industry evolving over the next few years?

Jess Ward (47:22)

Honestly, it's pretty simple answer, but I really just think it's about awareness and I can say that that's changing. Sometimes I think, is it just my algorithm? Is it that all I see is mould stuff and mould science and I just think it's changing and it's not, but it is. And even from when I was diagnosed with having mould illness a few years back and you you'd tell someone and their eyes would glaze over and go, what's she talking about? that a real illness or whatever? ⁓ And there was just nothing about it anywhere.

I really do think it's changing. If we could just get it to the point where if someone goes to the GP with this arms long list of symptoms that are otherwise unexplained, that they'd be asked the question, have you checked your environment? Have you considered your environment? And I think, I think that is starting to shift and it's something to be excited about because this is a very treatable illness. what's hard about it is that not enough people know about

you know, about mould exposure to think to test for it or check for it.

Jess Kismet (48:20)

I think one of the other challenges, one of the other barriers to getting diagnosed for this sort of illness, just as a bit of a segue here, is the expense of those integrative medicine doctors. They are, you you go to your GP and it's a $30, $40 gap if you claim Medicare to have an appointment, but an integrative doctor, those appointments are longer, as I understand it, but they're also hundreds of dollars, or they can be hundreds of dollars. So...

Jess Ward (48:29)

Yes, yep, yep.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Jess Kismet (48:50)

Yeah.

Jess Ward (48:51)

Yeah, it's

hugely prohibitive. Sometimes it does suck because I wouldn't say that the consults are even necessarily longer because sometimes they're frighteningly short for what you pay. But sometimes people get around that by using a CSRS aware naturopath ⁓ and they're a lot cheaper. And if you've got a sort of open minded GP on site who would be willing to prescribe the binders upon seeing your test results and so on, then that's how people can manage it. That does happen.

Jess Kismet (48:54)

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh-huh.

Jess Ward (49:21)

Yeah, it's not every GP is going to be willing to use those medications if they don't understand what they are or why they're prescribing them and they feel it's bit of taking a medical risk, but that's sort of how people tend to make it make treatment a bit cheaper or more accessible.

Jess Kismet (49:36)

Okay, all right. So you're excited about increased awareness and I think that is a really good thing to be excited about because mould illness has been dismissed for so long and the anecdotal evidence and the medical evidence is just overwhelming as far as I'm concerned. Just what I see in my job and people like yourself and the worldwide algorithm as well, it's a global issue, happens to.

Jess Ward (49:45)

Mm.

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jess Kismet (50:05)

anyone anywhere. yeah, it's for it to for Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome not be recognized as an official illness by the Department of Health in Australia is an absolute tragedy. Yeah.

Jess Ward (50:24)

It's convenient is what I'll say. I mean, we've been talking

about, we've been talking about sick building syndrome since the 1970s. It's not, it's not a new Yeah. It's not getting the recognition it deserves.

Jess Kismet (50:30)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not at all. Not at all. All right, this last question. What is the one thing that you would like the listener to know?

Jess Ward (50:43)

⁓ If a remediation company is promoting fogging, run a mile in the other direction. Please know that fogging is not a true solution to addressing your mould issues and spraying magic juice in the air is not going to change anything about the mould ecology in your home for more than a couple of hours. You need true remediation in form of removing contaminated building materials and addressing other problems in the building. Too often that is

is being recommended to people and people are wasting money they didn't need to on it.

Jess Kismet (51:20)

Thank you, Jess. Thank you so much for your time. This has been a really, really useful and informative conversation. So thank you so much for joining me.

Jess Ward (51:28)

Thanks so much.