🚨🚨🚨Watch Christa's free training here: christabiegler.com/blueprint

We often overlook what we cannot see, but stealth toxins like radon, mold, and chemical pollutants may be quietly building up in our homes. This week I’m joined by Justin Liberman, Air Quality Expert and Jaspr’s Head Experience Coordinator, to talk about hidden threats in indoor air and how they can impact health over time. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas formed from the breakdown of uranium in soil, and because it is invisible and odorless, it can accumulate indoors without anyone realizing it.

With experience testing over 3000 homes, Justin explains how radon moves from the soil into indoor air, why basements and certain home features increase risk, and what proper testing and mitigation actually look like. We also explore other overlooked indoor air contaminants and the connection between indoor air quality and symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, and emotional dysregulation, along with practical tools to monitor and improve the air you breathe every day.

Use code LESSSTRESSED at checkout to save on the Jaspr Air Scrubber, the air purifier Christa uses in her own home. 

I also cover air quality after floods and fires with Mike Feldstein, co-founder of Jaspr, in episode 355. Listen here: https://kite.link/355-mike-feldstein-air-quality

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• What radon is and where it comes from
• How radon enters the home and why it often goes unnoticed
• Signs indoor air may be affecting health 
• What accurate radon testing looks like and how much it costs
• Common home features that increase radon risk
• Why air quality impacts kids and emotional regulation
• Simple tools to track and improve your indoor air

---

---

ABOUT GUEST:
Justin Liberman is an air quality expert and Jaspr’s Head Experience Coordinator. With over eight years of hands-on experience in environmental testing and more than 3,000 home assessments under his belt, Justin specializes in identifying hidden indoor toxins like radon, mold, VOCs, and chemical pollutants. His work bridges the gap between environmental health and everyday wellness by helping people take practical steps to clean up their air and reduce toxic exposure at home. 

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://jaspr.co/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasprco

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
More Links + Quizzes: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

SPONSOR:
Thank you to Jigsaw Health for being such a great sponsor. 😎 Use code LESSSTRESSED10 anytime for 10% off!

I released a free training that shares the 4 steps I use to help clients reduce eczema, inflammation, and food-reaction symptoms by 50%+ in a few months — without restriction or overwhelm. The feedback has been incredible, and I answer every question inside the training. Watch here: christabiegler.com/blueprint

---

---

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Justin Liberman: A lot of people, what they'll do like they'll close their door at night for their bedroom. Then they're inadvertently increasing their CO2 by a huge amount. CO2 is one of those things where if it's very high, you can get, the fatigue, the brain fog kind of sluggishness,

[00:00:14] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:01:07] Christa Biegler, RD: All right. Today on the Less Stressed Life, we're bringing you a topic I've been excited to cover for at least six months. With Justin Liberman, he brings over eight years of hands-on experience in the environmental and air quality analysis space. He started his career at Air Quality Canada, where he tested the air in more than 3000 homes, giving him a.

Front row seat to the invisible issues affecting people's health every day. With a background in environmental science and a deep commitment to healthy living, Justin became an expert at identifying indoor contaminants like mold, VOCs, dust and chemical pollutants, often uncovering the hidden environmental triggers behind symptoms like fatigue, rashes, and breathing problems.

At Jaspr, he's now able to go beyond the diagnosis and offer real solutions, helping people take immediate action to clean up their air from catching dangerously high VOC levels and family homes to uncovering mold that halted real estate deals. Justin's experience bridges the gap between environmental health and everyday wellbeing as Jaspr's Experience Coordinator.

So welcome to the show Justin. 

[00:02:04] Justin Liberman: Christa, thanks for having me. 

[00:02:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I'm sure we can talk about some of these other things that aren't as well known as in addition to talking about radon, but I specifically was looking for someone to come in and offer an environmental perspective about radon today. And I'll just share a little bit about why that happened in general.

So for the last five or six years, we have been using a test modality and practice that looks at some toxic, , elements in general and one toxic element that we occasionally see is uranium. And we see this in tissue and so uranium is usually high when people have a presence of radon, right?

And so someone in my practice was dealing with some unusual health things as they always are unusual. No one can find the reasons, and there was mold going on, but where she was living there is high levels of radon. And although radon is known for latent lung cancer and coughing and persistent cough, it can also be fatigue and other reasons.

And I was looking at studies before we jumped on here today, and there's a 2024 study looking at radon gas really affecting the neuro part of both adolescents, et cetera. And the thing about. With kids if you get exposed to toxins, especially as a child. Sometimes you have symptoms a little bit faster even than adult, 'cause the surface area is smaller.

So that's how this topic came to be, is wow, no one talks about radon. I don't hang out with my friends and I haven't talked about radon testing with people. So I wanted to get behind the curtains and find out a little bit more about someone who's been on the ground with this.

Justin you worked for this air quality company for a number of years, so you did a lot of different types of testing. Tell us how often you were doing radon testing and why would people do that? And then I do wanna come back and talk about some of the other testing that you guys were doing as well later, but what would prompt people to reach out and wanna do that kind of testing?

[00:04:05] Justin Liberman: Sure. And I'm glad you asked it too, Christa, because. And the actual answer as far as, how, like how often do we do radon testing? I would say nearly not enough is the truth. Radon, just to put into perspective as well, at least where I was in, in Canada, and I'm sure it's probably fairly similar in the United States, but it was actually the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking.

And it's something that's very much as you said, it's not really discussed. It's not like a very, high sort of topic of interest for most people. People talk about mold and air quality and pollution, that kind of thing. But radar is not really one that is on a lot of people's radar.

And we would do it from time to time. I'd say every so often we might get a call up to a radon test. And I'd say to be honest too, a lot of the times it was more just general interest. Like it was just people who were going down that sort of learning curve, like a rabbit hole of.

Air quality in indoor environments and they found the studies in radon. They saw the issues with radon of how it is such a leading lung problem. And they said, I really want to know what's going on in my home. So that's when they would often call us in to do a test. In some instances, there were cases where somebody was going through some health issues and it, a lot of, in those cases it was at least from what I can recall might have had to do with lungs and lung problems.

Not necessarily like a lung cancer, but. Lung issues and they were wanting to verify what was going on inside their home. In particular, these were often people that were living in basements or in on lower levels because that's where radon concentrations typically are gonna be the highest, inside of a building.

So that's when we would go in, we would do our testing, we'd give them a report. The best way to get radon testing is at least measuring for several days in a row. And the longer you do it, the better too. So if you have the means to do a radon test for, a long period of time that's really the best method because it's gonna give you the most data.

That's really what you wanna see is, what are the trends, are there any spikes or times of day where it might be worse? But effectively that's what we were doing was, every so often we get called up. I'd say on average, maybe once a month is probably how often we were doing a write on tests.

So like I said, given the prevalence of the issue of it not nearly enough as far as how often we were actually testing for it, but that's why it was coming up. 

[00:06:13] Christa Biegler, RD: It sounds and I'll just say this is something I've picked up. 'cause sometimes we would do these tests and we would see people in the whole family high in uranium and and we would say do you have any kind of mining near you?

And where this person in my practice is working, there is a lot of mining as well. And I think in Canada there is. It depends on where you are in Canada of course, but I think there's also a lot of mining Texas. There's lot of mining. So these are some pockets that I feel that we see a lot of this in general, but it could be a lot of places.

So I wanna talk about quite a bit about what testing looks like and maybe like a ballpark of what it costs and what that kind of looks like in general and who decides how much is too much and how much is too little and all of that. But first of all, why might we see increased rate on. In homes and in the basement, what's actually happening?

Why is this like off-gassing happening, and why is it getting trapped in general? And so you talked about basement, so I wanna just talk about why would we see radon increasing? What specific build types would we see potentially a bigger concern for radon? And then I also wanna talk about, you were talking about basements.

I wanna talk about if it's a concrete slab where it's just like a main level as well. So will you tell us what kind of increases radon exposure inside the home? 

[00:07:28] Justin Liberman: Sure. So there, there's a number of factors that can go into it. Ultimately just to start off the journey of it, radon of course is part of the uranium decay chains.

You were mentioning the uranium testing you were seeing in some clients. So radon comes from the uranium decay chain. Uranium, of course, has a very long, really it's, you can trace it back to basically the beginning of the earth, billions of years ago. And there's a lot of different kind of components of that decay chain.

Radon is one part of it that, interestingly is actually a pretty short half-life. So it's not like it's necessarily lasting for a long period of time. So a lot of it will depend on where you are. Again, that's a good question you would ask people is do you live near any mining?

Because for sure if you live near mining, there's. Chances are that there's probably more uranium in those areas for obvious reasons that it's a, sought after material. But what'll happen is basically you have the decay chain going on in the soil, and you have from that uranium, the radon is forming.

And what'll happen is basically radon being a gas, it wants to move from high pressure to low pressure. That's just the way that most substances on earth tend to work. And the comparison of inside the soil versus the air inside the basement, that soil is gonna be a pretty high pressure environment compared to the relatively low pressure that is your basement.

So what'll happen is the radon is going to naturally make its way from the soil. It'll move through the soil. And if you have a basement space it's close enough to where this is taking place in the soil. That kind of decay process, the radon gas can end up making its way into the airspace.

Of your homes foundation. So if, again, if you have a basement or whatever the lowest level might be, that's how the radon is ending up in there. Where there are different factors, of course, will be, for example, your elevation. If you're in a basement but at the top of a hill versus set into a valley sort of thing, like much lower elevation.

That can be a big difference in how much radon might actually end up inside your basement space. You were asking about the kind of the material as well too. That can be a big factor. So if you have. Like a concrete slab foundation versus other kinds of materials. Some people have more of like a clay dirt kind of loose fill foundation for their basement.

In those cases where there's a lot more sort of access to the dirt, so to speak, like there's less kind of barriers and things between your airspace and the soil it's not unusual. We would see higher levels of radon in those cases there. So ultimately it's just forming in the soil and making its way from high pressure to low pressure.

Ending up as a gas inside your basement space, and of course then being in the air, that's something that you know, you can breathe in. And if you have a prolonged exposure, then that can certainly lead to some notable health effects. 

[00:10:02] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Okay. So if you're on a hill, is it less radon than if you're in a valley?

[00:10:08] Justin Liberman: Realistically, if you're at the top of a hill, you're probably gonna be in better shape for sure. Yeah. Just because there's overall, there's less soil around you. There's like less chance of stuff, if you were at the very bottom of let's say in a valley and kind of set into a hillside.

There's a lot more possibility of the soil above through that entire hill of radon breaking down if there was uranium presence, the radon forming, and it could make its way through versus if you're at like the very top of a hill, there's realistically less soil for that to happen and for it to make its way into your basement space.

So just from that kind of threshold, you're probably in better shape being on a hill. Really it's gonna be the higher up and the farther away from soil, the less chance. So somebody who's on, the 30th floor of a condo, their right on chance is basically zero.

And then the lower down you get, the higher the chance is gonna be. 

[00:10:51] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. That's interesting. And then just generally with a lot of construction where I live, there's always a crawl space, so I'll mention that. But you are describing an Airbnb I have that's in a valley, built into a hill in a mining area.

But it's a single slab. And so if it's a single, if it's built on a single slab of concrete, it's a little shop house. There's really nowhere else, like it's closest to the soil. So I would expect that the risk is bigger because it's almost like the main floor is now a basement,

[00:11:18] Justin Liberman: gotcha.

Yes. So in that case, the risk could be higher for sure. Although other factors too will depend on like how well maintained the space is. If your basement is quite well sealed off, if you don't have a lot of foundational cracks or just ways that stuff could make its way through, then 'cause.

That's something else we would see as well. And when we would do radon testing, we would try to observe, are there any kind of obvious sort of entry points that stuff could make its way in? So if the foundation is done well, if you don't have a lot of damage or ways that, there's more direct access to the soil often the radon levels would be not as high compared to a space where there was easier access.

To also put like an example on that. Most of the time when we went to a house with a sump pump radon levels tended to be higher in, in that particular spot. And that's actually an area we would try to focus on. 'cause and you were asking about how the testing was done, usually we would set up a few different, kind of like just the stuff that the lab gives you to actually capture like a rate on capturing device. But we would always try to have at least one of them if we saw a sump pump nearby. And pretty much every time we did that, the highest levels were where that sump pump. Just because again, that's like a kind of a direct access point to the soil there, 

[00:12:26] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. That's so interesting. I feel like I never really, so I don't have a sub pump where I live now, we live on a little bit of a sandy hill, so it's just not a thing. And I don't have one. I just, I have very little. Awareness of these sum pumps, but it makes perfect sense that they're, essentially this direct line into the soil.

So talking about testing, you have multiple, little, essentially devices picking up on this silent gas that doesn't smell like anything, doesn't look like anything obviously. So it's just picking up on this, and you said earlier you can leave them. Maybe out for more days. Is that correct? What's, what is being like, what does this device look like?

Is it universal? Is this the only way that radon is tested or are there multiple ways that radon is tested? 

[00:13:08] Justin Liberman: Yeah. So there, there's multiple ways to do and actually I will say too I'm maybe. Dating myself a little bit, because this is going back to the early part of when we were doing our testing, is that it was like this, it almost looked like your old school kind of storage cases for a camera film roll.

This little, like a black thing, a cab. So basically you'd get this thing, you'd set it up and you'd pop the tab. And that would be open to the airspace. That's what would actually, so it was like a passive sampler, so it wasn't like a pump that was pulling in air, which is usually how you'll test something like mold for example, or maybe asbestos or other kind of airborne items.

But it was a passive sampler where you'd pop the tab, you would set them up and you'd set a few of them up throughout the space, which again, typically you'd do it in the lowest level. So the basement what you would then do is leave it open for. At minimum you would do 48 hours. Oftentimes we'd do 72 96, sometimes up to a week, and then basically you would close it up, send it to the laboratory.

They would then be able to do their analysis and tell you here's exactly what the write-on levels were through that testing time. So it would give you a sense of, during that period. How much radon were you dealing with there? But it is certainly one of those things where the longer you sample the better.

And there are actually a lot of other ways you can measure radon. And you know what we would really recommend, especially in our later days of this stuff was getting a long-term radon monitor. Is actually one of the better ways to go because it can consistently measure the levels there.

And it's not unusual along with a, frankly, most other air quality contaminants levels can fluctuate during the day. If you get like a spike in the morning and then it drops at night and a couple days of data, that may not give you the full picture. But if you can go for a longer period, you can really see okay, I can pinpoint, hey, at 10:30 AM it's highest here.

4:00 PM it's the lowest tier. And then you can start to try to identify why that might be, it could be a whole host of factors, but more data in general is better. So those lab kits are still very, they're useful and they're definitely accurate. But longer term rate on monitoring is what we would highly recommend, just to get more numbers behind that, to see what's going on.

[00:15:13] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. When I do a Google search of home write-on testing, there's these $20 or less kits that show up from any big box hardware store, and then there's these a hundred dollars digital devices. So do you mean these a hundred dollars digital devices, which are more long term, that can give you data over different days?

Is that what you mean? 

[00:15:33] Justin Liberman: Exactly. Yeah. So I'd say probably like a good budget for one, realistically might be a couple hundred dollars. I would probably consider getting a couple, like just to have in different parts of the home. You could always move it as well. But just if you can get more devices set up, you can leave them in one space to really get the most out of it.

Those small ones that you're seeing, like the, the 20, $30 kind of a Home Depot depot or something like that, wherever they may be. Those are gonna be more like the lab ones where they're probably more of like a passive sampler, just, opening the tab, closing it up after a few days and send it off for an analysis there.

Valid way to test for sure. But we would definitely recommend the digital ones to give you consistent data over time. 

[00:16:09] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, it would make sense that you could. Certainly, depending on what your budget is, start to screen, for 20 or $30. And then to be honest, this gets me thinking about a lot of things that kind of maybe protect us in the home, because the bottom line is that this is just that one of those unfortunate.

Toxins that kind of builds up. And when we talk about areas that would have more rate on it, actually like I have to start to wrap my brain around it because when I was reading about it initially, it was talking about tightly contained spaces, right? The more tight that the home is, the more rate on you might have go because it's not escaping and we haven't gotten to mitigation yet.

But even the way you're talking sometimes if it's not very tight, right? When we have these foundations, because it depends on how we're. Getting the radon into the home, it's rising from the ground. Up. And so if it's tight from the top, the windows and all of that is very tight and there's not a lot of ventilation, but at the bottom there's foundational cracks that just increases.

So it's interesting 'cause it's like both things are at play here, right? It's yeah. Yeah. Totally tight. And that's I think it's a little bit related to how mold happens as well, right? Is that we have these type spaces where sometimes we're not allowing moisture to escape or humidity you to escape.

And so now we have maybe mold or mildew type buildup overall. So it's just an interesting thing. So it's like how can we reduce our toxic burden exposure? Because even though we know that radon, if you look up radon exposure, it'll sh say in five to 25 years after exposure, you can have love lung cancer, right?

I prefer not to, first of all, but I'd actually like to catch it a lot earlier and a lot of times what we're dealing with, right? I work with a lot of skin things, which is often a toxic burden conversation. 'cause when the body's bucket is full, it spills over and the skin is a safe place for it to spill over for a lot of people.

Stuff with anxiety having that spike can be a similar thing. We're just a little bit different genetically predisposed. So I think this is an interesting, topic that doesn't get a lot of place. So this was a while ago, can you tell me if you know how much it was to have someone professionally come out and do radon testing?

[00:18:07] Justin Liberman: Sure. For our case, basically we would need to cover our time on site, laboratory costs, of course. 'cause in those cases, we're usually sending off the samples to the lab. Somebody might be looking at maybe around five or $600 for a radon test. Which, I think is definitely worthwhile to get a very clear answer on what's going on.

That will be lab report analysis of the data, and of course an explanation on, hey, here's where we observed, here's where it may have been higher, here's where it was lower. Here's some obvious things we saw and here's some kind of steps you might wanna take to get things improved.

Not that it was putting together like a full remediation package, but at least just giving some concrete insight. Yeah, probably around that five or $600 range, which again, to have a professional come out, use the equipment give you a report and give you some real data and insight, I think is very well worthwhile.

'cause as you said it's one of those things that you could catch at any time. So better to. Find it sooner before it's been, oh yeah. It turns out I was exposed to radon for 10 years and I had no idea 

[00:19:04] Christa Biegler, RD: and I actually had all these other symptoms that weren't cancer before. Like I was more anxious at this point, or whatever it is, it can be, unfortunately, toxic burden can look like a lot of things as simple as fatigue and unfortunately that has become so normal that it can go.

Unchecked. And so the more mild or moderate a symptom is usually the easier to correct than when it gets quite severe for the body. Yes. So interesting. Let's talk a little bit about mitigation for radon. So if someone finds, let's say they do a screening test and then they go to a meter and then maybe they go to a full home test.

Whatever people wanna do for that tier, right? Good. Depending on what's available to them and accessible to them. What's cool is that there's some, I wonder, so I never think this about, I don't always think mold is straight. Forward. But I wonder if radon, and you've already described some caveats or things where you can do a better job screening or testing because if you go near a place where there's a sub pump or a direct line to the ground might be different than over in this other corner.

So I think that's really great to say. Let's talk about. A little bit about mitigation. What do you know about when someone finds, and I wonder who sets acceptable radon levels. Like you've lived in two countries now for sure. And so you have a lot of experience in Canada and the us.

Is there differences? I wonder around, I didn't look this part up, so I don't know. What, who decides what's normal? If we think about testing in the body. What decides what's normal is the previous sample size. It's the previous, like few months of people typically that's determining that, which is not, maybe, I don't know if that's the best practice because we're just getting unhealthier.

So I don't know. With environmental testing if we have a standard or how often that gets revised and how much it's universal versus not universal. So what do you know about, let's talk about what the range is, right? Where it's hey, you're trending near. Maybe some concerning levels where you wanna investigate this more.

Like who decides these levels and do you think that they were similar in these different countries? 

[00:21:00] Justin Liberman: Sure. From my experience, I think they were pretty similar. So I can tell you is that when we were, had this company Air Quality Canada doing the testing we would follow the Health Canada guideline for radon.

And their guideline, I believe was quite similar to, I think it was, it would be the EPA for the United States. 'Cause those are similar comparison in terms of. Environmental health, if you will. So you know, health Canada and the EPA and I believe that the thresholds were fairly similar as far as what was considered acceptable, versus this is like a, Hey, here's a, like a yellow flag, or yellow light kind of thing versus, oh, you're actually above recommended guideline. You want to take some action for this. The threshold in Canada was, and. It's been a while since I said this word, but the measurement, the unit of measurement, it's bq, which I believe was pronounced Baal or Baal, and it was basically 200 BQ per meter cubed of airspace.

So that was the, except that was the, basically if you're above this radon concentration, then it's considered elevated. And then they had a range from, I recall it was between maybe 120 or 140 to 200 was considered like. It is okay, but you want to start paying attention here takes maybe look into some action if it's below that.

Basically that's like a pretty low level. And you could look at things like a Health Canada report because they would do a report typically every few years on like very large areas in a lot of rate on sampling. And then they would be able to compile the data and say, this particular area was more of a hotspot.

So it's oh, if you live here. Maybe look into some more significant or prolonged rateon testing to see what's going on. Because the other part of that too is that they also look at it based on, and they do this with other contaminants as well. They look at it based on like kind of an acute, like a onetime elevation and then a long-term exposure.

So if they might find, like if you had radon testing for, let's just say two weeks and maybe you found that, one of the days. In the basement. You had above 200 bq, so you'd say, okay, so that was an elevation, but your average for the week was 150. She said, basically just means don't need to panic, but you have in that intermediary threshold, and you did have a time when you were above there, so maybe look into some action.

So that, that's basically how it was done. There again I believe it was, it's fairly similar for the United States too, but I will say I guess the good thing about this is that. At least it makes it a bit easier for people to follow because there are more defined thresholds. It's not like mold, which obviously is very tricky 'cause there's no standard.

It's oh, you can only have this amount of mold. Some people get really messed up with a tiny amount of mold and some people can take on huge amounts and are fine. But with radon, because they define it very distinctly, it could at least give you some kind of like a plan of, okay, I'm gonna take action here, based on how much I saw.

That's, yeah, a bit of a longer answer, but that's how that was essentially all approached. 

[00:23:45] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. And it makes sense. I feel like the mitigation is somewhat more straightforward in general, mitigation or a media more so a mediation with mold is not as straightforward. It's what's going on over here or over in this, unfortunately, so many building materials make really good mold food and if humidity has been high for some reason. I mean that as simple as that could cause some issue. And like you said, depending on what someone's threshold is, and that's the challenge, is like it's a big spectrum.

There's a big threshold of how people tolerate it. And sometimes I say to my clients and they probably wanna throw tomatoes at me. You know how wonderful that it's just showing up as a skin issue. Compared to some really significant other life threatening issue or life altering, you can't even function issue.

And I'm not saying that. Skin stuff can't be really like ultra and affect quality of life, but there are some conditions that are so unstable, right? Where we have to present, we're presenting to the ER a lot, or just like generally unstable. It's hard for you to live a normal life. So in a way it's thank you body for these symptoms that we have, but it's, this makes me think of what else could we do to try to.

Catch some of these contaminants earlier, so I'll get to that point. But first of all, what does remediation usually look like and what is your knowledge about average costs of remediation for radon? 

[00:25:06] Justin Liberman: Yeah, that's a good question. So I, and I will say upfront, because we were really on the testing side of things.

Yeah. We would recommend the remediation and mitigation. Truthfully, I don't know exactly how the, it was all charged out. I think as a rough estimate, like you'd probably be looking at least several thousand to get a rate on mitigation system into your home, like into your basement space.

But the kind of the key behind that, and you actually alluded to the word. Previously is ventilation. Ventilation's a big one in removing not just rayon, but a lot of other contaminants too. And this is also where it does get interesting, as we're talking about how like spaces that are more tightly closed off.

Are, they can be problematic for things like mold and such. But if your basement is also more sealed in that sense, like less foundational cracks, there's less chance of radon making its way through. So really the best thing to have, and really what a radon mitigation system will do is ultimately increase the ventilation and being able to pull air and pull the contaminants out of the airspace of the basement and get them outside of the house.

So essentially it's like the ideal scenario is that. You have a basement space that is well closed off in the sense that it's not having a lot of direct or like various open pockets to the outside, if you will, like whether it's a foundational crack or something else. But you do have one direct main route, which would be the ventilation system.

That's basically what the mitigate the radon mitigation system is designed to do, and it's to help exchange the air in the basement. So you have radon, you have other contaminants. That system will pull the air out by that proxy. It's helping to remove the radon gas. It's not like it's gonna prevent it from coming back, obviously it's always in the soil, so it will make its way in. And also, just as a note on this too, 'cause I should probably mention it's pretty important, it's like mold in the sense that every house we tested had some amount of rate on. It's just the question of how much you actually have.

Yeah. Because for if you have a little bit, no problem. But it's basically gonna ensure that although you'll always have some coming in, it's doing more to help remove amounts so that you're not having that buildup to where it's becoming a big problem for you. 

[00:27:07] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Okay. So this is just getting me thinking about for a low amount of money, how can we sometimes screen for bigger problems?

And so I wanna talk a little bit about ventilation here in a second. But one, we've talked about a radon meter, right? And we can go at a different tiers, maybe do some other testing first for mold, I. Have really gone to recommending people get humidity meters, especially in high moisture areas. Every bathroom especially because it can pick up on inconsistencies between different bathrooms, right?

It should increase as you take a shower, but it really should decrease if the ventilation is done. Unfortunately, some ventilation is just vented into the attic space. So all of that humidity is now going into the attic space, which is tricky. So we'll talk about ventilation, I think is gonna depend on where you live in the world as well.

And then there's also different meters that can detect leaks early. So for a pretty low cost, you can do that. Can you think of other, this is a. Too broad of a question probably, but I started to think about other toxins that you were measuring, right? You were measuring VOC. Something else that's on my mind a little bit that's come up a little bit in friend conversations lately is what happens with propane gases, right?

If you have a a gas. Oven. I've had a few instances of clients over the years find out that they were dealing with gas issues and it was causing major anxiety symptoms, major weird symptoms, et cetera, where they had the gas companies come and test for gas leaks. When you were doing any home testing, did you guys pick up on any of that in any way?

[00:28:44] Justin Liberman: NI will say not too much. Like for example, like things like propane or other kind of specific gases. Not super often. Where it may have come up is if we were doing a more like an advanced kind of gas or VOC panel, because there were some tests we would do where it basically pick up like a whole variety of.

Different kinds of gases and compounds and chemical compounds. Most of the people in the house that we were testing were actually more on the sort of general sense of VOCs. Like we would look at the total VOC levels, but not like individual breakdowns or kind of individual gases. But we did do them from time to time.

And I would say those were often the cases where it was maybe a bit more of those that kind of. Like interesting acute symptoms. They couldn't necessarily pinpoint to anything. Like they didn't know if it was mold or this or what have you. And they maybe wanted to look into more gaseous testing than we, we would look into some of those, I would say for, yeah, even things like propane and such or other kind of specific ones.

The times that we did them actually just in my experience, ended up being more like commercial and industrial. Like for example, kind of factory scenarios where they had a very specific substance they knew of and they just had to make sure that they were, complying with basically healthy government standards for those, for the workers there in the, that makes sense.

The home setting, not too often, but I do know that it's out there. Like there are, and actually you know what you, you can even get if you wanna look into home testing and we're talking about the. Sort of budget efficiency. I have seen actually portable gas meters that work quite well, really not too expensive, and they can almost look like

a barbecue lighter. So there'll be this sort of, like a handheld plastic part, a long sort of tube that can bend and flex and you can use it around the stove or other areas. Or if you have a pro, a propane like heating source, for example, you can do that and check it out. And honestly, I don't think they're more than maybe a hundred or $150.

But they can still tell you pretty well, like they're pretty reactive and they could let you know if you do have a gas leak or something else going on. And again, it's one of those things that. For not a high cost could still at least help narrow down if something's happening or not. If, and obviously if you don't have it, fantastic, but a good thing to to verify.

[00:30:45] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, and I recently got a letter from our gas company that said that they were required to check for leaks every so often. I don't remember. I hung it up to call in to ask because that is part of their job as well. So I wanna put this one into two. I'm gonna try to improve my question from before by breaking it down a little bit.

So we've talked, we've mostly focused on radon, but generally you tested a lot of things. I know you were doing more industry, which makes sense because you think about who's motivated to do to spend money. It's like someone who has to sometimes, right? Like it's not always curiosity.

And I do love focusing on these little things we can do to try to help ourselves re reduce our toxic burden. And we'll get to whether any of this can be, if and what can be supported by filtration too. All so my I'll tell you the two questions up front. I'm curious in your.

Almost decade of doing testing. What did you see in general with testing? You just alluded to it a little bit that you'd see different things. So if you have any general sense of what were some of the ups and downs or things that you saw most often or were more, most problematic with testing, if you have a story, that's cool, and then we can talk about whether there's other meters or screening tools that we've missed so far in general.

So just tell us a little bit about, with some of this contaminant and air quality testing stuff in general, what have I not brought up? As well, like that you would see. 

In past winters, my son has gotten dry hands that can crack and bleed. I found that giving him at least 300 to 600 milligrams of high quality fish oil really resolves this in a few weeks. This year I started him on jigsaw's Alaska cud liver oil because it's the best value for high quality US sourced cud liver oil.

Just one teaspoon gives him a thousand milligrams of total omega threes, which just means faster results with nature's natural dose of synergistic Vitamin A and D already found in cod liver oil to support immune health. Jigsaw sources their cod liver oil from Alaska where lying caught fish are flash frozen on the boat.

This keep the fish oil very fresh so it doesn't require more processing and deodorizing like other fish oils, which can disrupt the oils and nutrients. So when you combine jigsaw's incredible cod liver oil with some of their other wonderful electrolyte mineral products, it's a winning combination to keep your skin beautifully hydrated.

Year after year, you can get a discount on all of jigsaw's products, including Alaska Cod Liver oil, electrolyte, Supreme Adrenal Cocktail, and Potassium Cocktail, formerly known as [email protected] with the code Less Stressed 10, which you can use on each and every order. That's Code Less Stressed 10.

[00:33:22] Justin Liberman: Totally. I'd say maybe the obvious one, mold is one of the biggest for sure. Like this is just probably the most common indoor environmental contaminants that we would see.

But this is stuff that gets talked about, thankfully, like a fair bit. And I think it's only growing in terms of the knowledge base. We don't have to spend a lot of time on mold, but mold was definitely one of the largest or most prevalent items that we would see day-to-day testing, whether it was, residential, commercial, industrial, whatever it may have been.

VOCs were a big part of that. General kind of air quality contaminants, like PM 2.5, which is your fine particulates in the 2.5 micrometer size range. Which basically can be a lot of things like smoke pollen, any kind of small allergen, dander, that kind of thing. There's one compound though that I actually do have an interesting story on, and I'll share it briefly.

Because it's one that is not often thought of for affecting your indoor air, but it can actually be pretty prevalent and it can also affect it pretty easily. And this is this compound is formaldehyde. Formaldehyde a lot of people think of as, when you're thinking back to your high school biology, doing dissection and you get that formal, that very chemically smelled. And the formaldehyde is used to preserve whatever animal you're working on there. But formaldehyde is found in a lot of materials in the home as well. This can be glues, epoxies, rubbers, carpet backing paints and that's just really scratching the surface of it.

A lot of different things have formaldehyde within. And I, there's one that I don't wanna mention just yet, 'cause this is setting this tone for the story. But basically, here's what the situation was. We were called in to do a air quality test for a home that was being sold. And the home was probably built in the, I wanna say maybe the 60.

So it was, fairly old, 60 or so years old. And the the reason for the test, this was actually, it was required by the bank because the home was disclosed to have a material called ufi, UFFI. Urea foam formaldehyde insulation. So this was a material used pretty often in Canada, in older homes, and I think probably the United States would have it too in colder areas because it's a pretty good insulator.

It's a foam that was put in, between the joists and such to effectively help insulate houses. And the issue, as the name would suggest is that. There is formaldehyde inside this foaming material. So they would foam it up, it would harden, and you'd have formaldehyde inside that foam.

The good news is that as long as it wasn't disturbed, you wouldn't have a problem with formaldehyde going into the air. And this foam had not been touched, like it basically hadn't been renovated at all since it was built. So the chance of having formaldehyde in their airspace was very low. That being said, because it was disclosed that the installation was present, the bank required the test to be done before the home could be sold, like the official transaction could take place, no problem.

Pretty standard procedure. So we went out and we said, okay, we're gonna do a formalde air test. And they said, likely the home hasn't been touched. No, there shouldn't be any problems with formaldehyde. Installation hasn't been damaged. As we made our way through the home and we took our formaldehyde readings.

I was actually seeing elevations in almost every single room above the recommended guideline. I remember thinking this is not good because this home, like I remember we did the test on a Friday. The home was closing on a Tuesday, so I'm like, okay, this might be a bit of a problem for the bad timing, not good timing whatsoever, we can't lie.

There's high levels of formaldehyde and we have to disclose that and our testing. And so I remember talking to the guy and I just said, just want to confirm there's been no renovations. He said, Nope, not at all. This was the homeowner. Nothing had been done. And then I realized something, 'cause we're chatting outside that this guy smells like smoke, smells like cigarettes.

I said, do you smoke inside? Never. He said he never smoked inside. He only smoked outside of the home. 

As it turns out formaldehyde is a very prevalent material in cigarette smoke and not just in the cigarette when it's burning, but the secondhand lingering smoke as well.

So this gentleman, just by smoking outside of his home. The secondhand smoke he was bringing back into his home every day caused the formaldehyde levels to be above governmental guidelines and at a point that could actually cause health concerns in people. So just not even directly thinking of formaldehyde whatsoever, but just from that secondhand smoke.

Was causing the levels to be high enough in the home. So we then we realized that this is why the Formalde levels are so high. But the problem is, the home still had to be sold, of course, in the whole transaction. So what we did was we said, here's the deal. You're gonna rent carbon air scrubbers.

So these are like an air scrubber, removes a lot of air, like an air cleaner, but it has a very specific carbon filter. 'cause formaldehyde being a carbon compound, it's A VOC. We ran them over the weekend, retested on Monday. Levels were safe. So all was good. Everything went fine with the transaction of the home.

So the good news was that the problem could be remedied pretty quickly by that. But it was just a very eye-opening point that without even thinking about it, he was compromising his home's air quality so severely with a pretty dangerous compound in formaldehyde. So I like sharing that one.

Yeah. Because it, it Yeah. Shows how this stuff really works. 

[00:38:14] Christa Biegler, RD: I know in an ideal world, it would've been so interesting for him to move out. The cleaners. Yeah. The scrubbers to go away and then to retest later out of curiosity to just see Sure. What Sure. What, 'cause the smoke could, in theory, get stuck on the walls and or could the insulation possibly be impacting And now when you bring up that type of insulation, you're, the way you describe it is a lot like our spray foam that we use now.

Yes. Which I don't know if it has formaldehyde. Are there a lot of concerns i've seen one. Influencer of healthy home building online, complain about spray foam, but it's also from the building perspective, considered like amazing because it seals things so well and reduces, it improves energy efficiency.

Do you know on current spray foam, if there is a big risk, like with this, I assume this is an older type of foaming insulator from the sixties. 

[00:39:02] Justin Liberman: Exactly Yes to my knowledge, no. Like any, I would say realistically, if you're in the spray foam business today, they're usually much more conscious of VOCs in the offgassing.

That can happen, obviously, because the nature of the spray foam, there are gonna be some chemicals, like there will be some VOCs initially when it's done. I don't believe formaldehyde is going to be one of the main ones these days. That is, yeah. Like you were saying, more of the older style insulation the more modern spray foam and you're right, it is a fantastic insulator.

And relative to the cost of. Kind of energy conservation, it it's relatively inexpensive to spray foam and actually get a pretty good insulating value. So a lot of people look at it as like a, depending how chemical conscious you are, like a necessary evil in a way. And there are for sure alternatives, but it can work pretty well.

But no I don't think that most of the main ones today would have much, if any, formaldehyde specifically in that. 

[00:39:56] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. So that was the, what you saw generally with testing, with an interesting story. Thank you very much. Am I forgetting any other kinds of tools, screening tools that we could use to find out, man, maybe my air quality is not ideal, and sometimes I think that this can be tricky, like the way we describe old homes is that they can become dusty very quickly, right?

Because they're reasons that this could happen. And so I think about that in general might be a cause for air quality, but I don't think my home is very old, I built it 25 years ago, but I still, and I live not near populations of I don't have pollution really where I'm from.

'cause I'm out in a field in theory quite far from people. But at the same time, I still find, I've still seen the benefit of having filtration. And we'll talk about that here in a second. But is there any other. Kind of meters or screening tools that kind of help us understand, man, here's what I'm breathing every day that I can't see.

[00:40:49] Justin Liberman: Yeah, a big one for sure. That actually we haven't really talked about much, and it does relate to ventilation. A CO2 monitor, CO2 carbon dioxide is actually one of, I would say just from our experience, one of the most overlooked. Components of indoor air. Mainly just because it's directly related to how well ventilated your space is, so if you have high CO2, it means that your home is not breathing, for lack of a better word. It's not exchanging air. It's like we talked about the radon earlier. You want to have a good air exchange to help remove contaminants, but also just to help bring in fresh oxygen and help remove stale air, kind of stagnant air.

And we very much recommend just for your sort of healthy home arsenal, get a CO2 monitor. They're typically not more than about $200, maybe like a hundred to 150 but they will give you a very good indication of how well your home is breathing or how well it's ventilated and.

The CO2, it's not like it also comes from any particular item in the home because we would do a lot of home tests and we'd often find CO2 is high and people would think, oh is that from my stove? They're thinking of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide mostly comes from us. We're speaking, we're breathing.

At nighttime we're breathing, we're respiring, and CO2 is going into the airspace. That's the only thing we're really producing at that time. So we are often the main kind of source of CO2 and the CO2 is acting as like a tracer gas for, again, how well the home is ventilated.

A lot of people, what they'll do like they'll close their door at night for their bedroom. Then they're inadvertently increasing their CO2 by a huge amount. CO2 is one of those things where if it's very high, you can get, the fatigue, the brain fog kind of sluggishness, just general tiredness.

Makes sense. Yeah. And people don't often piece it together, but it's, that CO2 is a big one and it's so easy to test with a little monitor. So that's definitely one that, that we highly recommend. CO2 and humidity. Yeah. 

[00:42:40] Christa Biegler, RD: Thanks. Thanks for making the distinction between carbon dioxide monitor and carbon monoxide monitor, because it would be so easy to be like, oh, that's what he's talking about.

Because I was thinking that also with like propane gases would be picked up by carbon monoxide, monitor typically. Is that correct?

[00:42:55] Justin Liberman: Possibly. Unless, it's hard to say for sure. 'cause there are we've seen some monitors that are more like general gas ones, like they can actually do like multiple compounds.

But I think a lot of times a co monitor is likely gonna be just for carbon monoxide specifically. 

[00:43:09] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. All right. So I just think that this is good to have something that's not lost on me and something as we. Yeah, continue to discuss the mold conversation and how common it is.

And actually maybe we'll have a 32nd detour here to just talk about how were you guys testing mold back then, because there's such a big spectrum. And I always advise people against hiring someone for $300 to go do two air samples. 'cause it's not a very big, radius. And again, we've done multiple things around this, but along, you were testing a while ago.

You, you've maybe been outta that space for a bit of time. What were you guys doing? Were you guys using water meters, thermal guns? Like how were you doing it? 

[00:43:50] Justin Liberman: Yeah, so yeah, definitely with mold, the more thorough you are, the better for sure. And it was the same thing. I'm glad you mentioned that.

We would definitely try to encourage, like if you're gonna look at mold, you really want to go more of a broad scope than just like. Two samples, for example. So there were a number of things. The air sampling is a big one. That's where you would take, air samples throughout the home.

Bedrooms, kitchen, maybe a bathroom, basement, whatever it might be. Outdoor sample as well, which is generally for your reference point. And basically these samples are being sent to the laboratory under microscope. They can tell you, what kind of species, what kind of concentrations.

So you'd use the outdoor sample as like your control or your baseline to verify if you have elevations inside. But aside from that. We would also do bulk sampling. So if we saw a material like maybe some carpet or insulation that looked like it might have been affected, we could take a piece of that.

Even like a, sometimes a small piece of drywall. We could do cavity samples where we'd actually, you'd poke a small hole in drywall. Usually this is if you, if they knew they had or suspected a leak behind a certain area, we could, do there without, of course opening up the entire wall.

And that's where you sample the wall cavity directly. Tape samples, that's or a swab. It's where you'd see if there was like potential growth or discoloration, you can swab it to actually verify is it mold growth? If, so again, how much is growing? What species, what's the concentration?

Thermal imaging for sure. So that's with a, a thermal gun. Do a full sweep. Look for any areas that are darker discolored because it's measuring by temperature. If you have an unusually dark spot, in a random area of the wall or the ceiling that could indicate there's a possible leak there.

And also the important thing is to make sure to distinguish between, pipes and such versus an actual possible leak area. 'cause it, if it looks outta place, it might be, moisture meters too. So we could check to see moisture content within, drywall, carpet, insulation, whatever it may have been.

And then of course, the eye test. Just do a full visual, our eyes are. You get pretty good at identifying what might be mold growth, what might be something else, 

[00:45:45] Christa Biegler, RD: grab 

[00:45:45] Justin Liberman: a flashlight, but all yeah, exactly light. But all of that put together would give you a pretty thorough analysis of what's going on.

And it's definitely a time you want to be thorough to really identify if if there's mold or not. 

[00:45:57] Christa Biegler, RD: With hvac, did you do swabs internally or more air right next to it? 

[00:46:01] Justin Liberman: Sometimes, sometimes we'd open up the HVAC and go in for a little bit to do a swab. We even actually had as well, like a borescope so we could snake a camera into some of the vents if there was a suspected just, see if there is, looks like there might be moisture or mold within there so you can get pretty, intrusive with the testing if you really want to be. 

[00:46:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I think this is interesting. Working with people in health things I see. Naturally I see so many different things. Just like when you were working in home spaces or commercial spaces, you see so many different things and it really gets me thinking about all this stuff that we don't know we should know.

And I don't mean that in some scarcity way, but it's I am getting into the age where I'm enjoying talking to people about home, improve. Like I was. Standing next to someone this weekend at an event, and she was talking and her son worked at an HVAC company and she was talking about her neighbor getting a new HVAC system.

And so she decided to have someone come over and look at theirs and the flames were coming out of it. Her son's yeah, you probably would've died in your sleep from this thing that's falling. And there's just like a time span or a lifespan to different things, right? Water heaters eventually break down and sometimes start to leak, et cetera.

I'm starting to take a lot more inventory of okay, I'm gonna put a little cheap water meter near this thing, right? Because I've had flooding in this room multiple times that I've had to correct and quickly dry out this space overall. So anyway, I just try to think about this and I wonder.

If you have any insight on this, but I think since ventilation is a really common denominator, I wonder who is a trusted person to assess ventilation in the home in different places. Other than I, I guess it would be a contractor, but there's quite a spectrum there as well. Do you have any insight on that?

[00:47:35] Justin Liberman: Yeah, so one possibility is if you find an environmental consultant, 'cause that's ultimately what we were, was environmental consultants. If you find one that can do, pretty specialized work, not just for mold but other kind of contaminants, they might be able to look into ventilation.

Carbon dioxide would be a part of that. Like they should at the very, least take those as some baseline readings there. But in a general sense, it's gonna be likely an HVAC specialist. They can actually do things as well like a blower test where they can see how the air is moving in the home.

For example, if you even have a leaky like air leaks around windows or your door, like underneath your door, and they can see where the air is moving, the pattern. So that's a good test to check. They can do an air balancing test too, where they can measure.

Basically the air coming out of the different vents in your home and see sometimes you may have a random spot where the air just blows a lot stronger and then some vents where like it feels like it's barely coming out. And they can actually help adjust that. That would be like basically air balancing your HVAC system.

They would also be able to often install the systems to help with exchanging your air, which are usually either an HRV or an ERV. HRV is a heat recovery ventilation unit. ERV is energy recovery ventilation. They more or less do the same thing. It's just depending what climate you're in, what part of the country it's gonna be one or the other.

'cause sometimes you do need to preserve heat and humidity a little bit more. Or help to remove it. But ultimately these devices are actually built into the HVAC system. They directly help bring in fresh air from the outside and help remove stale air and built up, that's your CO2, that stagnant air.

So that's a very important part of a healthy home system. If you have one of those, and a lot of people have them without realizing it. Definitely use it if you don't. It is one of those things that we do highly recommend. I can say cost-wise they, they can be a few thousand, but if you're gonna be in this home for a long time, I think it's a no-brainer to have one of these.

'cause it's a really important part of the health of the home. But yeah, basically all ties to there are specialized HVAC professionals that can for sure look into ventilation. Air balancing, all that kind of stuff. 

[00:49:35] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. This is funny. I just had the HVAC company bring up to more bring up to code that same cabin, everything installed incorrectly over time.

It's like awesome. You get to learn that through experience. I know this is rapid fire, but the last thing I wanna ask you is about air scrubbing and what is actually, when I think of air. Filtration and we can, you can differentiate between air scrubbing. You brought up the thing with formaldehyde with this carbon filter, which I think is what the same as what Jaspr uses, and it's an air scrubber, so it's five times what a filter is.

But with some of these gases specifically, does an air scrubber actually work with gases or is it more particulate matter like mold? And again, you can't just. Filter your way out of mold. We can say that as well. 'Cause you can't like eliminate matter. It has to be caught somewhere and it's gonna be continuous.

But you can filter like VOCs or particulates or mold or things like that. But can you really filter? Can an air scrubber really help with gases or is it really more ventilation in that scenario? 

[00:50:33] Justin Liberman: Yeah. Great. Great question. And it is important to set the expectation of what can and can't be done.

So gases and by that proxy, like that would be VOCs as well. Carbon filters can help with that, but it is gonna be ventilation by far that will do the most, that will give you the most benefit particulates solid material, whether it is in a mold or a small particle, whatever that might be.

That's where a HEPA filter is gonna be designed to capture those. And certainly you're correct that, Yeah. When it comes to something like, for example, mold it doesn't evaporate into nothing. You have to capture it. And then that, that removes it from the airspace, removes it from circulation.

But those kind of physical items are for a HEPA filter. Carbon filter would be yes. VOCs, odors, gases do get. Pulled into them. It's a process called absorption. Not absorption, but ad absorption. But in general yes, ventilation is gonna be the best way to help remove those items directly. So that's why if, again, if you have good air exchange and good ventilation, often these houses, just from an air quality perspective, much healthier, less CO2, less mold, less particulates, less dust because the home is having a way to pull them out in a very.

Sort of distinct pathway. It's not just like random cracks and leaks and stuff might come in and out. It's a way that is very actively removing it from the airspace. So that's a very important part of, keeping the home healthy there. 

[00:51:52] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Okay. So last thing I'll just mention, so Justin, you work with Mike from Jaspr.

I interviewed Mike A. Little over a year ago, and but it took me a while to buy a Jaspr just because I already had so many other air filters. I did eventually buy a couple this fall on sale, and so I've been enjoying it for the last few months. I gave one to my in-laws as well, and it's actually so much fun because as I'm cooking and the stuff isn't, I don't know if I'd, I would call it VOCs also in the air as I'm cooking, 

[00:52:21] Justin Liberman: there or something else there probably would. There would probably be some VOCs. It's also gonna be just a lot of particulate matter in, in general. 

[00:52:27] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Yeah. It's fun to see this increase, decrease. And I'm loving my Jaspr, so I'm gonna get another one or two for different areas of the house, which is a testament because I already had a lot of air filters, but I have a lot of opinions about how well they work and there's a lot of other good ones, but an air scrubber is different and what really?

Converted me Was your internal testing around mold clearance in different rooms? After a few hours. You're a little bit of like a industry of one, I would say really the only commercial grade air scrubber made for, residential type use. Is that correct?

Almost e 

[00:52:57] Justin Liberman: Exactly, yes. And that's really where we like to distinguish ourselves is that, we refer to ourselves more as an air scrubber than like an air purifier. Air purifiers, you often see, there's a lot of different types. So often see them on Amazon, for 99 bucks or 150 bucks.

We just need to be realistic. Those don't do a whole lot for cleaning the airspace Jaspr, we call an air scrubber because it's much more akin to those sort of commercial industrial units that move a lot of air. Main difference though is that the Jaspr is a lot more sleek. It's quiet.

It's not like running super loud all the time, which a scrubber typically tends to do and it's something that you can, nicely have in your living room or your kitchen space. It's not like an eyesore. 'cause those conventional air scrubbers are often very ugly, unfortunately. And they do a good job of fleeing the air, but.

They're not practical for a homeowner to use every single day. So the Jaspr, it's really just the size of the device. The filter is obviously very large, very robust, mainly HEPA filter, but it does have a carbon layer as well for, for your odors, your chemicals and such when you're cooking.

So probably what you're describing is when you're cooking something on the stove and the jaspr is the fan is ramping up by itself. 'cause it's basically, there's a sensor in there for PM 2.5. So that is going to be your fine particulates, which, often if you have like a. Something on high heat that will create small amounts of particles that are, similar to what you have in a fire.

So that's where that sensor is picking up on them. And then by that proxy, the fan is ramping up because the Jaspr wants to cycle the air more quickly to then bring the pollutant levels back down, and then it will, the fan will drop down once it's cleared out. So it's a smart way of being able to clear the airspace and give you like a exact indicator of what's going on.

You don't really have to think about it. Should I change the speed manually? It does all of that for you.

[00:54:35] Christa Biegler, RD: It's been very fun. So I mostly, I've tried it in a few spaces. It lives mostly in the living room, which is why other rooms are now going to get one as well as the basement, because I do think it's like very high quality.

Most of it, it covers a fairly large space overall. So I'm enjoying it and I would not say that if I was not, and I've already owned so many other air filters, so thanks for making a great product and, yeah, it's awesome. So we have a coupon code as well. It's less stressed for Jaspr 'cause I really do Jaspr if someone is looking for one.

And they've had an incredible sale the last couple of months, so maybe it'll still be on when this comes out. Maybe not. Still a good discount code. Anyway, 

[00:55:13] Justin Liberman: we'll make sure it's still active for for the listeners for sure. 

[00:55:15] Christa Biegler, RD: Cool. Anything else you wanna leave people with today? Justin, thank you so much for this rapid fire also, I, I.

Drilled you. 

[00:55:22] Justin Liberman: Yeah, no, I like this kind of style. It's a lot of fun. I think we've really covered a lot of stuff, Christa, and I would just say that kind of as a closing it's really, what we love to see at Jaspr is when people become what we call air aware.

It doesn't even mean that you gotta buy a bunch of units or anything like that. It's just become more conscious of what's happening in your airspace. Look into your ventilation, look into reducing your humidity, run your. Bathroom fan longer. Make sure your fan's not going into the attic space.

Run your rain shut when you're cooking. Try to get direct air exchange and ventilation. Maybe look into radar testing if you haven't already. And especially if you're in a more of a low lying area. There's a lot of things you can look into, but. Ultimately the more knowledge you give yourself, it's not a very intuitive space to be in.

Yeah. And so you can really give yourself a very rapid learning curve, which is very cool. You quickly become aware of a lot of stuff and it's it's important knowledge to have. 

[00:56:11] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on today, Justin. 

[00:56:13] Justin Liberman: My pleasure.