While Dr. Jill recommends hiring a qualified mold inspector to check your living space, she knows that sometimes that’s simply not feasible. Sometimes, you need a “first step” check.

While many people rely on an ERMI for this first check, in Dr. Jill’s experience, this misses one of the most important bits of evidence – the toxins.

Why an ERMI Isn’t Enough

An ERMI will test for DNA evidence of mold spores and spore fragments. Mold spores and fragments can be found if the spores are exposed to the indoor air or accessible for testing. Spores and fragments contribute to allergic symptoms, such as hay fever, sinusitis, histamine and mast cell issues, and asthma. However, mold-related illness can occur additionally from the toxins in a damp, humid, or water-damaged building.

Not every building’s mold issue can be found by an ERMI if the mold colony is invisible. If the mold is covered over or hiding behind building materials, or worse, thriving in the HVAC system, the spores are trapped, but the toxins can easily move into the indoor air. In those cases, an ERMI alone can be deceiving.

We need to know the toxin load of the building.

Toxins Make the Difference

Mold mycotoxins are responsible for the other 70-80% of the symptoms seen with mold-related illness. Toxins from mold and bacteria are nanoparticle-sized, moving swiftly through building materials into the indoor air with normal daily home activities that create changes in air pressure, such as opening a door quickly. The toxins may be the only thing making a person sick.

It’s important to test for mold spores, spore fragments, mycotoxins, and endotoxins.

Hayes Microbial has the mycotoxins covered. Their test detects 25+ mycotoxins!

• 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol
• 4-Deoxynivalenol
• 15-Acetyldeoxynivalenol
• Aflatoxin B1
• Aflatoxin B2
• AflatoxinG1
• AflatoxinG2
• Chaetoglobosin A
• Citrinin
• Diacetoxyscirpenol
• Fumonisin B1
• Fumonisin B2
• HT-2 Toxin
• Mycophenolic Acid
• Neosolaniol
• OchratoxinA
• Roridan E
• Satratoxin G
• Satratoxin H
• Stachybotrylactum
• Sterigmatocystin
• T2
• Verrucarin A
• Zearalenone

For some reason, the indoor environmental professional (IEP) industry has been slow to adopt mycotoxin and endotoxin testing. Dr. Jill has countless examples where families were still sick from their homes, and where mycotoxin and endotoxin analyses were the only things that detected the problem.

Sterile swab

Did you know that many of the environmental tests out there don’t require a sterile cloth? If you collect a dust sample on any old cloth and it detects mycotoxins, how do you know that they came from your home or from the cloth? You don’t!

A sterile cloth collection ensures that what they detect at Hayes Microbial actually came from your home.

Combine with spore testing

Mold can impact your health in multiple ways:

• Spores
• Spore fragments
• Chemical off-gassing
• Mycotoxins

The problem with mold is that we never know which of these 4 aspects might be making us sick, unless we test.

Combined with a spore test of the environment, commonly referred to as an ERMI, the toxin tests round out the picture of the health of your living space.

Dr. Jill combines mycotoxin testing with The Dust Test, which uses the same DNA PCR detection of mold spores and fragments as an ERMI, but also combines these findings with decades of research, to produce a test result that gives you a clear picture of the health of your home.

Worried mold might be making you sick? Test your home’s mycotoxin load NOW!