Is Your House Making You Sick? Find Out with Caroline Blazovsky!

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Let's get to it.

This week we're digging back into the vault for one of our favorite conversations from earlier this year with America's healthy home expert, Caroline Blazofsky.

Now let's get this hour started.

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

I'm Eric G. And man, we have a full house here.

Of course, we got John Dudley sitting in here as normal.

Hey, John, you brother.

Good to see you, man.

And now we're going back to one of my best friends here who used to be especially during COVID when we had nothing else better to do, was the former co host here, my friend, America's healthy home expert,™ Caroline.

Good to see you, my friend.

What is up, bro?

That's my brother.

Oh, yeah.

I had to put trademark because that's a whole other if you're using it, you're breaking the law, as Judas Priest would say.

We can't put some priests in here like old time.

Very cool.

Very cool.

I thought we'd have a great discussion today about healthy things around your home.

And there are so many different things and what was considered healthy a decade ago.

We have so much more science and stuff that's showing what we're making mistakes from building construction to the the stuff we do around the house.

And I can't wait to see John Dudley's eyes open up on this one because he's going to go, what are you two talking about?

But Caroline, you know, I go old school on this stuff.

I know it, I know it.

If you don't eat dirt, you're going to get sick.

Come on, Caroline.

For the people that are new out there, let's talk a little bit about you real quick.

You're known as America's healthy home expert.

When I got stuff that I have to lean on, you're the first person I call and go, this really the best plan or what can we do?

And we debate it, right?

Because we think houses are not.

There's never going to be the right answer.

I think it's always Going to be a combination of health versus practicality, sustainability, energy efficiency.

It's something that's always open to discussion.

And that's why I like talking to you, because we're going to.

We're going to basically hammer out all the details and figure out some alternative that probably falls in the middle somewhere.

So, yeah, homes, we know there are a plethora of problems and we're here to sort it out for you.

You know, one of the ones that always drove me nuts in the sustainability thing.

And this really brought me back to when I was working with Johnny.

Remember working at old time woodwork.

We were working there and we were up against some cabinet competitors that were selling stuff out of Portland down here.

It was using particle board, but it was made out of straw.

The problem is, is this stuff.

If you put a drawer glide onto the side of this for a cabinet and you put stuff in the drawer glide, it probably blew out where the screws went into it.

This was like trying to build stuff out of rice cakes that you would get at the grocery store.

And it just didn't held up.

I actually did two big kitchens up in a place called Suncadia, which is a big resort.

They tried to do this whole green thing and they got the cabinets installed, but they couldn't even put the countertops on it without it breaking and breaking down.

So it just wasn't strong enough.

So literally, they went right into the landfill and I put new cabinets in there before the homeowners had even moved in.

And I'm like, how sustainable it is if you can't even make it through construction.

So bad.

Yeah.

Let alone if you own a horse.

Starving horses, kitty, pigs.

It blows my mind how stuff like that even makes it the market.

Like, how what?

Yeah, I think that brings up a good point, Eric.

Like when we talk about greenwashing.

So you have to be careful.

Even if somebody says something's green or it's healthy, you really need to look.

We were talking about rice hull.

Do you remember we were talking about rice hull?

Wood in concept.

You hear it, you go, oh, that sounds great.

And your builder will say to you, oh, look, it's stronger than wood.

You don't have to worry about it deteriorating.

It's made from rice hull.

And you go, oh, what could be in rice hull?

And then when you start to really analyze it out, it's made with pvc, which is LE vinyl chloride, which is, to me, a carcinogenic material.

So you've got to constantly be on the ball looking at, okay, just because something sounds green doesn't necessarily mean it is.

Yeah, we just talked about that the other day.

Right.

Like, yeah, and so true.

I mean, buddy, that's got one of those building these tiny homes with coconut husk siding and corn scraps and.

Yeah, anyway, all that kind of stuff.

But some of the things they're putting it together with are like, like you say, Carolyn, pretty toxic to be able to make it strong and keep it holding together.

You're like, that's not very green if you'.

You know, it's got the additives over it.

Yeah.

And then also we have to worry about fires.

And 100 million people were affected by fires in the.

Over the last few years.

That's a lot of people.

And so what are we building with and what happens if we have a fire or flood?

And there was a study, and I just talked about this on a new.

We just did a conference that was all about healthy life, healthy living, healthy homes.

And I brought up that the science is now showing us that a couple of weeks, months later, after you've had a flood or you've had some type of climate change event, these.

Our lungs are impacted, our health spans are impacted.

You kind of knew it, Right.

When there's a, when there's a major disaster in our minds, like, from a logical standpoint, we're like, okay, we know it's going to affect our health, but now the science shows us that it definitively affects our health.

Right.

So what we build with and how those homes are going to withstand when we have fire and water damage is going to become, I think, going to be the bigger issue.

We always talk about energy efficiency and healthy homes, but I think coming forward, it's going to be about how the home acts with climate change.

Wouldn't you say, Eric?

You wouldn't be surprised to see that at, like, the home building shows, like, coming in the next, I'd say, five years, we're going to see, like, stuff like that.

Yeah, I think so.

I think climate change is always one of those.

That kind of drives me nuts sometimes, too, because our climate has been changing the entire time that humans have been on this planet.

You look back and they go, oh, look at these ruins in Rome.

And they're out 30ft into the ocean.

Yeah.

Because that's where the water line was 3,000 years ago.

And so this isn't something new.

And I'm not some climate change denier.

But at the same point, if you look at what, let's say a house is going to last a hundred Years.

And there's a lot of arguments that say today's houses won't.

But let's say that.

Is it going to be 3 degrees or 4 degrees?

What's the difference?

And so I really don't think of climate change so much as is going to change it from that aspect.

Because I think.

Yeah.

Will it be warmer in certain spots?

Absolutely.

Could it be colder in certain spots?

Absolutely.

And that's kind of why they, I think, drop the global warming thing, because climate's changing wherever.

And the other thing I look at is, is if it was going to be that crazy, you wouldn't see all these climate change activists right now buying beachfront property.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna argue that point.

I'm gonna argue.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Yeah, I know.

Here we go.

I was go in the middle with.

I get your point there, Eric, because I'm kind of on the same page with you.

But at the same time, I will say we are seeing increasingly more disaster, like crazy stuff happening.

Like.

Right.

So maybe it's more than just rising tides and, and temperature going up, but we're seeing some really erratic weather patterns that are.

Things are a little wacky and a little wild right now, for sure.

What does that mean?

I have no idea.

I'm not a scientist.

Absolutely.

So we're all in agreement, right?

I think that's the thing.

Water is causing this severe weather and why is it impacting us so severely and our building structure.

So then it comes down to, as home professionals, home improvement experts, what do we do about it?

Because you can't.

And the, and the other question, and I'll throw this out there too, which is something I've been thinking about, is we've got these, the government trying to say, hey, we're going to go to 50 year mortgages, we're going to go to a longer mortgage.

And we have these houses that after 10 to 15 years, somebody comes in, a new home buyer buys a brand new house.

After that time period, the house is pretty much, let's say, a nice word for a dog.

Do, do you.

Remodeling, Right.

It needs help, it needs remodeling.

It's trashed.

And the homeowners barely can afford to pay their bill, barely can afford to pay their mortgage.

And yet they've got a house that they thought they would get 30, 40 years out of.

It's just not happening.

Roof, siding, exterior windows, building envelope, whatever we're talking about.

So that, so are two issues.

Right.

We've got severe weather.

We don't, let's not say what it is.

We just know it's coming.

Yeah.

And then on top of it, we've got building construction that's shoddy.

So what do we do?

Yeah.

And it's interesting.

And building code, I think, I think the first thing we have to do is we got to get building code up to speed in the United States.

And so it's somewhat.

And of course, how we build homes in Florida is way different than how we build them in New Jersey, New York, slash, port.

Around the House.

We'll be back with more from America's healthy home expert Caroline Blazofsky in this best of around the House episode.

What's up?

This is Sticksydenia and Satchel from Steel Panther and you are listening to around the House with Eric G. Yeah, we.

Love Eric G. And you should, too.

1987.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

This episode we pulled back out of the around the House vault that has nearly 2,000 episodes.

You can grab on your favorite podcast player.

Let's rejoin our conversation with America's healthy home expert, Caroline Blizzofsky in this best of around the House episode.

Building code that makes sense.

I can drive around here.

I've sent Caroline, I don't know, over the last seven or eight years, I don't know how many pictures I've sent you.

I went look at this and it was just absolutely horrible.

It doesn't matter if it was in California or Oregon or anywhere else.

And anywhere in my travels that you see badly stapled up Tyvek around a building that is supposed to be a vapor barrier that clearly isn't going to be a vapor barrier and it's not going to hold up.

And last, and then on the other end, I go around and see homes that they're actually putting a complete rubber membrane around the outside that's a roll on thick.

Looks like about 10 coats of paint.

Now.

That's awesome for keeping the water out, but what's your breathability on that?

So there's so many different one new rule changes all the other things in the building.

And you got to account for that.

And we're not and we're not accounting for the budget.

I think too of the homeowner they're expecting every time you turn around.

So if you're tightening your building envelope, whatever you're doing a zip system, then they're saying, okay, you need mechanical ventilation.

All of this cost falls onto the homeowner.

And my question becomes if the homeowner can barely pay their mortgage.

How are they expected to make these changes and implement them?

And I think that's one thing the building industry isn't taking into account.

They're saying, okay, if you're going to build energy efficiency, then you've got to put this state of the art ventilation system and how do the people afford it?

And then if you don't do it, then you're living in a building envelope that's making you sick.

So then we get back to the whole point of like now the occupants unhealthy.

Now we're running up medical bills, now we're running up the cost of health insurance in this country.

So it's like I, I've always thought for a long time that if you were actually making smart choices with your house, somehow that should be allocated or, or basically allowing you to have some sort of break in your health insurance.

So if you're making these changes to have a better environment, why wouldn't your health insurance or the cost of it be reduced?

And those two things like home improvement and healthcare, there's this disconnect and it really should be more of a synergy.

And that's why I do what I do to try to get people to understand that it's a collaborative effort.

Right back in the day that was kind of the first generation.

And the formaldehyde level that was in, that's what the beginning of OSB and MDF and they didn't know it was just the cheapest chipboard you could imagine.

Sprayed probably with God knows how much formaldehyde and resin and, but it saves.

On your, on your.

When you go to the morgue at the end of life, you're already pre installed formaldehyde.

So you're like halfway there.

It's like being pre wired for a house charge, for a car charger, you're halfway there.

But no, seriously though, it's, and it's, and there's a lot of things that we can do just simply around our inside of our house.

Great example.

I was just talking to Johnny about sitting there going mattress shopping and going okay, what's in this mattress?

I want to pay attention because you can go to Amazon and buy a $300 coated mattress.

Not only knows what's in it and then you can turn around and go spend $10,000 on a mattress and have a little better idea.

And then you can get into the custom super healthy ones, which are more than my first four cars I bought.

So you know what I mean, Caroline?

And that's just one piece within your home.

I think what he actually said was I want to be careful because if I'm not, Caroline is going to yell at me for what I bought.

That's the truth.

Unfortunately, with mattresses you're kind of in a jam because I've done a lot of research on them and you're.

You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

So if you've got.

Let's just say some Eric bought a mattress.

Tell them what you want to tell them what brand you bought to see.

Yeah, I actually went to a local store here in Portland which is Mattress Warehouse usa.

Not a brand at all in that that they physically buy all the parts and they build their own mattresses there, which is cool because I can walk back and see exactly what's going in these things.

There's no secrets.

You could literally walk back and say, hey, can I watch you make my mattress?

And you can sit there and watch them make it.

Which is cool.

And that's good to know too because you know where they're manufacturing a lot of these manufacturers for mattresses.

You couldn't even walk in the joint.

You walk in and you'd be like, you need to have serious a P100 respirator and be prepared because so toxic.

And then you can walk into other ones.

Companies like Essentia that are making these newer mattresses where it's much lower volatile organic.

However, when you're looking at mattresses.

So Eric picked.

You went with a foam.

Right.

Tell them what.

What was kind of.

It's.

It's.

It's a kind of pocketed coil with three layers of foam over the top, which is cool.

So it has the certa pure foam, which is the.

The better.

What we call the better foam.

Yeah.

And that's a traditional mattress.

Right.

That's what's going on.

The problem with.

When you go with.

Even with the Serta foams, even though they have a reduction in VOCs and reduction, there's still a petroleum based polyurethane foam, which is.

Okay.

Do you want to be laying on polyurethane and petroleum all day long and putting your head down in there?

For me, I wouldn't.

But then again, you have to consider price point.

But there are.

Naturopedic makes a mattress which is pretty comparable.

What'd you pay for yours, Eric?

About a thousand bucks.

I got a good deal.

I paid under 800 bucks for mine.

So that was for a queen.

That was.

That was a.

That's very there.

It was a 2,500 mattress, basically.

But yeah, yeah.

So you're looking.

That's standard.

If you're getting a beauty rest, assert those are all the standard you can get into.

Those purple mattresses are they run 4 or 5,000.

And I don't know that they're from a.

From an orthopedic standpoint, I think that they can do a lot of benefit.

They actually designed the purple the great.

Which sits on top of it.

I don't know if anybody knows about it.

It's actually made out of mineral oil, which I don't know that that's all that great.

But the.

It's made.

They basically say, oh, it's a safer material.

But it was made for burn victims, which is cool.

It was so that when a burn victim would lay on that type of infrastructure, you wouldn't.

You could toss and turn and move and it wouldn't open your wound and do all these things.

So then they started using it, and I guess it used to be intellibed, I think, and then it became purple.

So you have things like that.

But then of course you've got synthetics.

And the biggest thing that I found interesting is a lot of beds use fiberglass.

Did you know that, Eric?

It's in the mattress.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

That's pretty crazy to me.

I don't need that.

You know what I mean?

I just look at that and go, yeah, no, not good.

Not good.

This one here is.

All the foams are certapure US certified, which is kind of cool.

So that way, you know, it's.

And they don't have any fiberglass or off gassing chemical stuff in there too, which is cool.

And the very top is a.

Is a woven thick cotton, natural cotton top on top of it.

That also keeps you away from those foams and stuff, which I thought was cool.

You have to really do your research on these mattresses.

And there's stuff hidden like the fiberglass that you wouldn't know.

And the other thing is too, when you start to have a mattress that's your kids are jumping on it, it's broken, it's got some kind of rip in It a tear, it's time for it to go.

Especially if it's an older mattress, because the older ones, there weren't as many guidelines as there are now.

So people who hang on mattresses for 20 years, then they've got their kids jumping on top of it.

It's.

You could have fiberglass, you could have silica.

There's a lot of crazy things in there that could be coming out.

So.

But yeah, there's definitely research.

Yeah.

What do you think about all these fire retardants that they force them to put on these beds?

Because I see recalls all the time that, oh, this bed mattress didn't meet the fire prevention standards, and they get recalled.

And I go, okay, you're putting a chemical on the bed.

That can't be great.

Yeah, now they're trying to.

A lot of the mattress companies are changing to go into the wool rayon.

They call it a proprietary fire fireproof because you still are required to have fireproofing on a mattress.

And that's because some idiot somewhere decided to smoke their cigarette in bed.

Ca Mattress fire on fire.

And now we're forced to have chemicals sprayed on our mattress because a small percentage of someone decided to burn up in their home on a mattress.

But, yeah, they could use asbestos, by the way.

I think I'm gonna live forever.

Oh, my God.

Around the house.

We'll be back with more from America's healthy home expert Caroline Blazofski in this best of around the house episode.

Foreign.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

This episode we pulled back out of the around the House vault that has nearly 2,000 episodes.

You can grab on your favorite podcast player.

Let's rejoin our conversation with America's healthy home expert Caroline Blazofsky in this best of around the house episode.

Except for futon.

What is it?

It's a bunch of feathers.

I don't know.

It depends.

There's all kinds of different ones, but, yeah, very basic.

Hippie, you know?

Yeah, there you go.

I don't know stuff, but it ain't chemicals.

Oh, it's good.

As one of John's good friends, I can say that dude has an ability to sleep anywhere.

I was gonna say I'm pretty okay with the tile floor and my leather tote.

I don't think that hasn't happened a few times in the last couple of years.

Even so, yeah, I've witnessed that over a dozen.

I am no mattress pro.

I'm like, yeah, that feels good.

Okay.

I used to be like that.

I'm like, Jealous because I don't remember.

When you're young, Eric, I could sleep anywhere.

It didn't matter.

Just give me a blanket and a Dorito sleeping bag.

And I was like, good to go.

I'm out.

I'm done.

It's like I can't fall asleep to save my life on toss and turn.

And so I don't know, something, Caroline, that you got me on early on with us working together was you asked me what was in my garage that was attached.

And the absolute stuff that you have in a workshop is not house friendly.

From the MEK to the brake cleaner to the lacquer thinner to the stains to whatever else to the roundup that's sitting out there.

All the different stuff that you have sitting around.

Not really great to have inside the building enclosure.

Nope.

And I just had a. Oh, go ahead.

I'm not going to live forever because I did spend a number of years spreading millions of square feet of polyurethane coatings and bathing and tolueling and MEK to get the stuff off me after every day of work.

Oh, man,.

I think I'll hit 85 and be okay.

No, Johnny, you trained.

You trained well.

It's like training for a marathon.

Your liver was like liver.

Your liver is like a marathon runner.

She did.

Add to that all the other derelictions of my life and my blood test results just a year and a half ago, two years ago, the guys.

No, your liver's great.

I'm like, that's impossible, dude.

You don't understand.

You don't understand the liver of a seven year old.

It is beautiful.

Regenerates every six months.

Oh, man, so funny.

But Caroline, you, you really.

Let's hit on that, because I think that's an important one of some things that people can do around their house, because people are going, oh, man, I can't.

I can't afford to go spend three grand on a new mattress today.

But what can I do around the house to get things dialed in a little bit better?

And maybe it's using your vent fans and cleaning out the garage a little bit and putting in the shed, right?

Oh, yeah.

And I was going to say before John was saying what he was saying, I have a.

Had a client and this is cool what we're doing now.

So there's different laboratories.

Like there's a laboratory called Vibrant Labs and you can go get your labs done.

And we do what's called a Tox Burden panel on you.

And so we look at real time, right?

You get your blood work Done.

We can see exactly what chemicals are building up in your body.

And this is everything from your pesticides to automotive.

If you're looking at roundup pesticides, we look at everything.

Tongues, heavy metals.

And we can actually see where your body isn't doing so well at detoxifying because everybody's got different types of.

Everybody's got different types of abilities to methylate different things.

We're doing that now, which I like because it makes my job easier.

What did he say?

I have the constitution of a stone.

Somehow I don't.

I'd like to see your tox burden panel.

I would love to see it.

No, seriously, I would love to see it.

Absolutely.

Just to go, there's no.

It's off.

That's wrong.

Do it again.

But you're probably one of the people that there's certain ways to methylate things out of the body, and some people just don't have that DNA to do it right.

So you always see, like, you say, oh, this guy lived to 110.

He smoked, he drank, ate chocolate all day and had terrible diet and smoked cigarettes and had martinis, and he lived forever.

And that's because certain people just have the ability to do it and to have that gene and they can methylate.

So a lot of the clients I see don't have that ability, so they end up really sick.

And this woman was really interesting.

She came to us.

She ended up getting her toxicology panel done.

And we saw all of these automotive stuff in her blood, Eric.

Crazy levels of stuff that you would only see on somebody who worked in, like, an auto if they were doing automotive stuff for a living.

And I said, this is really weird.

This is just associated with car maintenance.

What are you doing?

And she goes, my husband's a mechanic.

And I said, where is he working on everything?

She goes in the garage, but not attached.

It was out.

He had his own separate garage.

But he had been an auto mechanic his whole life.

And guess what was happening.

He would come in, work on the cars, come and sit in the kitchen, have lunch, bring all these chemicals on his body that he was like, you just.

He could do it, right?

And it just didn't bother him.

Maybe he had a tolerance.

Maybe it was just he methylated well.

And she was getting sicker and sicker.

And when we looked at her blood work, which was so cool, we could see all these chemicals.

And then they brought me in to say, where are these chemicals coming from and how are they relating to her?

Where?

And like, how are they getting into her Home and it was her husband.

So it's pretty wild.

Like.

That's wild.

Yeah.

No, and I see so many people on.

On in social media and stuff, and I feel bad because they've built a wood shop in their basement.

Maybe they're in a more metropolitan area.

They've got a.

A city house.

No garage on the back or anything like that because it's just an alley back there.

And they're like row houses.

And they've got their wood shop in the basement.

And I'm like, oh, man.

If you think about how toxic wood like walnut, black walnut is, or any of the other ones, and then you throw in all the finished chemicals, cleaners and everything else.

Not a good place to be.

Talk about that a little bit like, about the woods, because I kind of get into that when I'm dealing with some clients.

But some of these woods can be highly toxic to you.

Some of them are in their.

In their woods, you see all the time.

Like black walnut.

I have to be care.

I've done enough black walnut projects that I have become sensitized to it.

So if I'm out there sanding, you will see red face and around the mask, where the mask was from just the skin contact from the black walnut.

How about cedar?

We've got pine, right?

Are there.

I know there's less aromatic woods, obviously, like redwood, the oaks, maple.

Those are better, I would think.

But I guess if you're allergic to maple, you're allergic to.

It doesn't matter.

Some of the ones that are pretty crazy, like you people build furniture or something out of it.

Super poisonous.

It's like the wood, the bark, the needle, something.

People go, I'm gonna milk it out of that.

No, black locust, same kind of thing.

The bark can cause nausea.

Wood dust will get you.

But even, you know, black walnut causes dermatitis, dust irritation.

Teak is really crazy to work with.

And then you get into some of these other woods, like the rosewoods or the bubingas, satinwoods, that kind of stuff really can get you there.

And so you gotta be really careful.

Just the dust.

Even some cherry, like American cherry, can do that.

And so you gotta be really careful.

You shouldn't go out and take your rhododendron and azalea bushes and burn them because that puts off toxic smoke.

So you gotta be really careful with what you're doing with woods and stuff, because some of that stuff isn't awesome.

Now they're doing all these exotic woods, like Eric and I were talking, so we're on the, I'm on the east coast and you cannot get cedar, you cannot get redwood here anymore.

They just, I guess it's too expensive to bring it in from the west coast or wherever they're importing it from.

So now we're seeing all these strange woods that people are not used to do like dealing with or even know like what the impact is because we just haven't worked with it.

Like we have the red Grandis.

I told you that's like a new thing.

I'd never worked with that.

Yeah, and there's, and there's even like sources of mahogany, but it's not called mahogany.

You can look it up, Eric, because there's, there's all these different types of exotic woods and like we just don't know about them and we don't know what it means if you cut them in the house.

And then of course, like I was telling you about the rice hull, you need to know what's in rice hole.

What am I cutting in my home?

It's not good to be cutting pvc like and you may just think it's rice all and not even know.

So it's, it's getting a little crazy.

But you can't get a lot of the traditional stuff here anymore.

Yeah, it's crazy.

So you start looking at these probably 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, you started seeing companies come up with different hybrids because they were trying to come up with a sustainable way to farm, get quick growth, but get a hardwood.

So they would take eucalyptus and mix it with something else to get a wood.

There was a popular one.

One of the first ones that came out was done by, I think it was done by Georgia Pacific and it was called Liptus.

It was a eucalyptus hybrid.

So they could farm it, cut it off at the ground, it would grow back up very quickly and it was a great wood.

It's not probably that much different than the red Grandis because that is a eucalyptus hybrid.

So it's probably something very similar in that comes into it.

And it's pretty non toxic when it comes to dust, which is pretty good too.

But when you get into these woods that are the hybrids, they also can do funky things like the eucalyptus.

I was, I think, John, you remember this when I was working on that big Lincoln Square project and it was the cabinets up there, we put that in there.

And the problem with it is nobody realized it until you started putting a whole kitchen together.

Is that the wood, because of the silica that's in the wood, refracted Light.

So when you held a cabinet door up, the rails, which were the top and bottom pieces of the square frame of a recessed cabinet door were way darker.

And so if you put.

It was like a pen and teller trick.

You would tell someone to put on.

The dark spots and then take the door and put it on its side and it's dark again.

And they look like you're David Copperfield doing magic tricks.

But when you have a building full of glass walls, that makes a difference.

And so there's a lot of these little things you got to pay attention to because it always looked like the top and bottoms were darker than the sides.

And there was nothing you could do with it because that's the wood,.

The red Grandis.

So it's supposed to be completely durable.

The thing I don't like about it is I think it smells like a banana.

And you know me, I don't like smells.

So Eric knows that I'm like, like anti smell.

I used it on a project and I was like, what?

It keeps smelling like banana.

So I'm like, I like it to go away.

I don't want to keep smelling banana in my house.

But that's what you can get.

Is not bad, though.

Banana rum.

Johnny's shaking his head at me.

But, you know, that's.

I was thinking banana's not that bad of a smell compared to like oak.

I can't stand the smell of oak.

Everybody's got a different preference.

That's.

I think the worst would smell.

And this is a project that I messed up when I was working.

It wasn't my fault.

It was just.

I didn't realize that this was even a case.

I was working on a project when Johnny and I were working on old time woodworking together, and lady went out and bought a bunch of reclaimed redwood.

It was gorgeous.

It was this almost really dark gray.

What I didn't realize it came out of Nally Valley, Johnny.

And it was the pickle vats down there.

Nally Valley.

And I hate pickles.

I hate vinegar.

Anything that smells like vinegar.

Oh, not my thing.

People go, you want vinegar on something?

Nope.

You're gonna ruin it for me.

Not my deal.

But I was like you.

There was nothing you could put on top of that was gonna keep a hundred years of vinegar coming out of that.

I'm sure nothing was growing in it because it was probably with the vinegar.

It was probably the ph was probably off the charts.

But still, you got to be careful.

Like with reclaimed woods.

Where did it come from?

Was that a A wood floor out of a chemical storage facility that had, right, you know, Agent Orange in it for 30 years or what it was seriously.

Or pesticide.

Are they sprayed it for termites?

Think about that.

You're picking up stuff that's got like all kinds of chlorodane sprayed on it for years and that stuff just continues to outgast.

It's got 100 year half life.

Yeah, it's crazy Bananas sounding better and better by the minute, isn't it?

I guess, maybe.

I guess, yeah.

You're trying to convince me, John, but.

I don't know, I'm just trying to soften the blow.

Sounds like you're done with the banana scent.

I'm trying to just kind of ease you into acceptance.

Right.

So what's funny was I ended up going to a show over on New Year's Eve, which was ironically a show that Caroline and I had talked about six months before if she wanted to go to Jealous.

So jealous I had forgotten about it.

But as I was driving down there, I was following two semi truckloads of redwood and I was going to take a picture of it, but it was too dangerous to take a picture of it because I was driving.

But I wanted to take a picture and send it to you and said, hey, I can, I can divert them your way.

I keep saying, eric, I'm going to need you to send me like two by fours.

You just can't get it.

We've gone like far.

They don't have it anywhere.

And they'll say it like on the website and you'll go on and you think, oh, they have redwood.

They're like, it's too expensive to bring it in.

We just.

They're not doing it.

So I get stuck with red Grandis and cedar.

But I was going to talk about, remember Eric, when I did the build and we put in Owen's Corning insulation?

Yeah.

And I was doing a construction project and we put it in and at the same time that it was going on, somebody had cooked maple sausage.

Okay, so think about this.

So you got maple sausage and then you walked in on the project and you smelled maple and like a sugary.

It smelled like a caramel macchiato from like Starbucks.

So here we're thinking like, oh, it was just that the maple got down into the, into the house and somebody was cooking sausage.

This caramel smell kept coming for like weeks on end.

Finally we're like, what the heck's going on?

We call Owen's Corning.

And Owen's Corning says yeah, we over baked the insulation and basically overcooked it.

And we've taken out the formaldehyde and put like a sugar component to it.

And when you over bake the insulation in the oven, it basically forms like this crystallized sugar and that all that insulation has to come out because it's never going to smell.

And all of it had to be removed.

So talk about a product going skunk or bunk.

No, wait a minute.

If you got sugar in there, my question now is, is what about like black ants and things like that, Right?

No, that seems to be asking for food for ants and pests and stuff to come in there.

Because it's sugar.

Yeah, it's some kind of sugary product, they said.

And when they.

When they baked it, I remember that.

Remember.

That's crazy.

And it's like paints, the same thing.

I've had clients where they've gotten really sick and they've painted and they got like a skunk paint from, you know, bear or whatever.

They picked up a paint can and they didn't know, and they painted it on the walls.

And that smell is, like, atrocious.

And you have to.

There's no getting it out after you paint it on the drywall.

It's like, drywall's coming down.

They finally discontinued Caroline, our Metro paint here in the area, so.

Oh, good.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So it's one of those things that you look at it and go, man, okay, how does that.

Because it's crazy out there with.

With some of this stuff that you're seeing.

And.

And I think we've got a real risk.

And I want to kind of pivot on this because I know we're going to run out of time a little bit, but there are so many things.

Like we got rid of that Metro paint.

It's thankfully it's gone because to me, I thought it was an innovative recycling, but that stuff was making toxic wasteland.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You were taking the leftover toxic waste and putting it on the wall, which I wasn't a fan of.

But we've got a lot of building materials out there that we are now trying to use.

And again, I think we're starting to put ourselves back into those places in the 80s and 90s again where we were trying all these innovative things that nobody really tested enough to see if they're going to work.

Nobody tests anything in our industry.

When you have.

We can put anything in a house and there's no guidelines.

That's always been the issue.

Eric and I have Talked about that so many times.

Right.

We don't have of an FDA or an epa, not anything to test a building product.

So basically, it's like a free for all in our industry.

And you see these companies taking advantage of it.

They don't care until somebody complains and throws up a lawsuit.

Really?

Since asbestos, what big lawsuit have we had in the building industry?

And I know for a fact from testing homes that there are products in there that are completely suspect, that shouldn't be there, that are making people sick every day.

Other than all the lawsuits that have been going on with the.

When the Monsanto stuff with the.

With the.

The weed killer, there.

There hasn't been a lot outside of asbestos lead, and that's kind of it.

And there could be some big ones out there.

There are some products out there that we.

That you run into, Caroline, that are just brutal and they're making people sick out there.

And then on top of it, we're seeing these building systems that we're building that are just trapping moisture in the wall cavities.

And then five years later, they're ripping walls apart because you got a moisture sandwich going on.

Yeah, yeah, It's.

It's a free for all people.

We just think we're safe because somebody builds our home.

And.

And people spend a lot of money nowadays.

A small home could be, especially in areas like Los Angeles, even Oregon, big cities.

Seattle, New York, Miami.

You're talking about a small house costing $1.5 billion.

This isn't chump change.

This is people.

It's out of control.

And you're getting junk for your money, and you don't even know what's in it.

You don't know the chemicals, nothing.

Things being moderated.

There's no governing body.

So I don't know.

It's.

It's crazy what's happening.

So on that, Caroline, we don't have anybody really doing the same thing for cleaning materials.

And you run into a lot with what people are just buying over the counter for cleaning materials out there.

Yeah, cleaning materials are the.

The easiest thing to say is less is more.

You really don't need a lot to clean your house.

I give it to these big companies that started the cleaning industry, the cleaning products, because it's just.

It's the biggest hokum.

It really is you.

Yeah, you get a little hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, a little mild detergent.

That's all you really need to clean your home.

And barring you have a good vacuum, I think the vacuum industry is really important.

Having Making sure you have HEPA VAC and all that kind of sealed system.

But, yeah, they've gotten away with just.

It's so much marketing.

It's crazy.

And then it's a lot of chemicals.

Right.

You're adding all that stuff in.

What are you seeing, Caroline, with those.

The.

I'll call them the wet wipes that we see out there that kind of want to throw the brand out there.

But it's the tube of wet wipes that you get for.

For cleaning and sanitizing around the house.

Especially during COVID we use them anywhere.

So we saw that Eric and I talked about during COVID when I was testing air samples.

We kept seeing this delimonene come up.

Really high levels of delimonene.

And so this is why you talk about something being green or healthy.

Delimonene is citrus.

So anytime you crack an orange or you use something that's got that lemon, that nice lemon smell to it, that's all delimonene chemical.

And it can be natural.

It doesn't mean that it's not necessarily synthetic.

But when people were using all the wipes and they were disinfecting everything with the disinfection wipes and buying boatloads of them at Costco, BJ's, or whatever you have.

Yeah, we ran into all these people having poor indoor air quality because we were picking up the chemicals from those wipes inside of the homes, and it just escalated.

And people were storing them in vats, and they're never hermetically sealed.

So even though you think you.

They're in the package still and it's not affecting you, they actually are leaking out all the time.

So.

And that's a natural thing.

It's not.

Your body doesn't know the difference between a paint can or gasoline or benzene and then a natural scent like citrus.

It just knows it's got to get rid of it.

It going back to John's liver would be able to get rid of a lot of.

A lot of citrus.

I don't know how.

I really don't know how.

That's it.

Yeah.

That and the metabolism of a squirrel.

I somehow study you, John, John, Eric and I can study him.

We'll use him as a.

As a. I'd be a good test case for sure.

We'll put John in and see what happens.

We'll start you as our new FDA or EPA of homes.

As far as citrus goes, I was always a big pledge fan, and I can't imagine that stuff was good for you.

So what you're saying, Caroline, I gotta be careful because I've got.

I gotta get to juicing here.

But I've got literally have two 5 gallon buckets of fresh lemons I brought back from Southern California.

I probably should be careful with those and get those things wrapped up.

That versus leaving them in the house somehow.

I think that's okay.

It's not okay.

Good.

I think you're.

I think you're not slicing them all at once.

And this inhaling lemon like all day.

Long, I'm gonna juice them all at once.

But yeah, going to put my.

It'll be a little more.

Yeah, it's what it is.

Lemons.

I got an issue.

Like, wait a minute.

It's to remember that natural things.

Eucalyptus is natural.

Puts off Aalto.

We're talking about the smell of banana radon.

Radon.

Natural.

Radon's natural.

It is.

It is natural.

I just.

This is natural.

It is.

Silica is natural.

And silica does all kinds of stuff to you.

Like, like we find that, believe it or not, one of the biggest things we find in homes is high levels of silica dust.

That's.

People come to me and they're like, oh, I have a mold problem.

I'm sick.

I can't breathe in my home.

And then we test their duct work and it's silica that's the problem.

And they never cleaned up after a demo project or a modeling project, a build project.

And they have serious amounts of silica dust in their home.

I'm talking like there's millions.

There's millions of square feet of polyurethane coatings that I did.

We threw millions of pounds of silica sand on them to.

They're like for parking decks and things like that at Microsoft.

And me at 20 years old, I'm like, I don't want the respirator.

Probably not good.

Just throwing handfuls of silica sand out of wheelbarrows all over this polyurethane field of toluene vapor.

See, we need John's lungs, too.

We need his liver and his lungs.

Yeah.

And then throw two packs of cigarettes on top of that, two packs of.

Marlboro Lights on the.

On this for 40 years.

You gotta.

It wait.

But I'm going to tell you something, John.

This is why you're healthy.

Okay?

So they did this study, this is interesting about carbon monoxide.

And everybody knows what carbon monoxide is, right?

It's a colorless, odorless gas that we don't want to be around because it could potentially kill Us in high levels.

So when Covid was around and all these people were ending up in the icu, they went into the ICU and they expected to find, like, people who smoked a lot and were really drank a lot and were toxic, and that's why Covid was affecting these people.

But when they went into icu, they found people like me who were, like.

Like, not doing any of these things, and we're, like, totally pristine.

Not smoking, not vaping, and we were really sick, Right?

Yeah.

So they started looking at carbon monoxide, and we were looking at it wrong.

Like, back when.

Before we had any knowledge when Covid was happening, but carbon monoxide.

So smokers, when you smoke, believe it or not, you get high levels of carbon monoxide that go into your body from the cigarette, Right.

Anything, if you smoke anything.

And the Indians used to do this, right, when they would smoke their paoli, and they.

Yeah, whatever it was.

Yeah, yeah, they smoked a bunch of stuff, but they used.

They.

There was reason behind what they did, and they did this because they were smart and they somehow knew that carbon monoxide, that cigarette, prevented viruses and prevented the body from being able to the virus to adhere.

So all these people who had Covid, that were smokers, did you have Covid?

I did, yeah.

Twice.

And did you have it severely?

Not at all.

Are you a smoker?

Two packs a day for 40 years.

40 Plus.

Yeah.

And yeah, to speak to your point, I'd watch these UFC fighters get laid up in the hospital for.

For 90 days, six months, like, healthiest dudes in the world.

And I'm chain smoking with COVID and I'm fine.

I'm like, I was tired for a couple of days, like, see?

And again.

And it's funny you say that, because I always swore by that model in my younger years of dereliction.

It was like, nothing can live in me.

That's why I never get sick.

Because people are like, all you do is drink and smoke and other things all day, every day, like a derelict.

You was our human.

You never get sick.

Totally.

They used to call me the weed because I couldn't kill, Right?

Dude, you're just like, a weed.

You won't, like.

I'm telling you, if you just pollute and abuse your body sufficiently, it won't allow any of that.

That would jump to shark here, brother.

Allow the other nonsense, like viruses in there.

No, but the point is that.

And there's.

Kids don't pick up vape and start vaping, because they'll give you every other reason why you shouldn't be vaping for other.

I would not do, surprisingly.

But the carbon monoxide is a legit thing.

And so when you smoke that carbon monoxide, which is interesting on the inset of a virus, prevents the virus from replicating, prevents it from going into your tissues because your body actually produces.

Like when you get sick, it starts to produce CO to get rid of the virus naturally.

But if you're already smoking, that virus has a hard time replicating, like in your case.

However, the downside to all this about carbon monoxide is that when you're trying to get better from COVID So say you get Covid and you're not a smoker and you're exposed to carbon monoxide in your house.

Say you have a slight leak, right?

Your gas, you don't know it and you've got a 2ppm where your detector's not going off, but you constantly have a gas leak, which happens all the time.

And we could talk about that, Eric, about detectors, how, like, how poor they are.

But detectors are set to go off at 70 ppm when your carbon monoxide has been running excessively for four to eight hours.

And then the detector goes off.

That's really bad, right?

That's like.

Yeah.

All the other levels leading up to it are just as badly.

Exactly.

And all you're sick all the way through, and you're just like, I don't know why I'm sick.

I don't.

And then all of a sudden, the detector goes off and you're dead.

So that's why this whole system is best messed up.

But if you're trying to recover from a virus or Covid and you're exposed to high levels of carbon monoxide, then you won't get better.

It's the opposite.

So our body has this really weird relationship to carbon monoxide.

You need it.

It's actually something that we're studying it more and more, and I had the privilege of studying with this really cool toxicologist who taught me about carbon monoxide and the interesting play it has in our body and that we actually do need it and that it functions.

Every disease, every disease known to man that you can get will raise your carbon monoxide in your body naturally.

So they can tell.

And it's got 280 biomarkers.

So if you're exposed to carbon monoxide, your molecular structure, your biomarkers in your body will change just because of carbon monoxide.

So it's.

It's a really interesting gas, but in your case, John, it kept you probably alive.

And.

And less sick than someone like me who didn't smoke.

Well, yeah, I thought for sure I would just get crushed if I got.

Yeah, yeah.

But.

And oddly enough, every time I do start to get sick, or actually get sick, which is super rare, I smoke more.

I don't know if that's just because I can't taste them as much or if it's like, no.

Or if it's some subconscious fighting against it.

I don't know.

But I always smoke more when I.

When I.

Or your body knows.

Your body might.

It's so trained to know that that high level carbon monoxide is actually helping you.

It's.

It's.

It's a proven thing.

It's not like, hokum.

So, yeah, I was just being silly, like, trying to thumb my nose at it, but you just kind of made sense out of it.

Thank you, science.

Yeah, There we go.

Caroline, we're running out of time, as always, because we could do this like a Joe Rogan thing for four hours and then be going into the night and.

And go, where'd the time go?

Because that's how this rolls.

And you and I have done this a million times, and that's exactly how it goes.

But there are so many people out there that are like, I think my house is making me sick, and I think I've got a mold problem or I've got something going on.

How do people track you down?

Because I tell you what, you're the one I lean on when.

Okay, I know somebody that's not feeling well, and I think it's their house.

Expert.com.

If you type in.

My Healthy Home is the name of our company, but anything like Healthy Home Expert.com.

My Healthy Home.

Even if you just.

Healthy Home, Home, who's the best in the country?

We come up trademark.

Come find us.

We can test your house for everything.

We can test your water, we can test your air.

We can test your building.

We are like, we can do it all here.

So just hook us up with you nationally, and we will.

We'll get you better, and we'll figure out what's going on.

Caroline, this went.

This took five minutes, it seems like, and we got this far.

It's.

How did we just get this far?

And it was a full show, so thanks for coming on today, my friend.

It is so good to do this.

It's been way too long, and we got to do this.

Maybe we should do this every month or two and dive into the subject, because it's something we just haven't covered enough of.

Since you haven't been on the show, we talk.

So for those who don't know, Eric and I are very best friends and we talk all the time.

And I lean on Eric whenever I have a question or I see something because I know he's got the answer.

So if you're tuning into this podcast, he's the right guy to go to because he's my right hand for everything that's happening.

It's how it goes.

And John, great job today keeping keeping us apart here and, and adding your.

Your crazy science in this too, because.

I like it the best I got.

And actually, you two were much more civil than I expected.

Not that I expected uncivil, but, yeah, there was not a ton of banter.

I think we skirted the rabbit hole.

Maybe.

I don't know.

You kept.

You kept us in the middle of the road.

Keep smoking and staying healthy.

It's all good.

There we go.

That's what I do.

On that crazy note, I'm Eric G. And for John Dudley.

And of course, Caroline Buzowski.

You've been listening to around the House.

You don't wanna be a Debbie Downer.

Just turn around upside down don't be a stick in the mud Grab your.

Buddy, grab your butt Take this good.

Time and turn it up louder no one ever talks about the night they went to bed Countenance.