Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Exton company touts new disinfectant
Mold N’ More touts the benefits of a solution that it says cleans and disinfects much better than bleach
Mold N’ More touts the benefits of a solution that it says cleans and disinfects much better than bleach.
WEST WHITELAND » Claims of miracle cleaning solutions are nothing new. Infomercial pitchmen have been shouting them for years.
But executives of a local company are confident they in fact have a solution that will clean and treat the hardest cases – from mold in buildings to firefighter uniforms to meth labs and many things in between.
The local company, Mold N’ More Decontamination LLC, based in the Clover Mill Business Park, specializes in mold remediation and air quality control issues.
Founded in 2005 by former Lower Merion police officer and teacher Bill Young, Mold N’ More covers the Mid-Atlantic states. Run with Young’s two sons and a nephew, the company’s customer base has been in private real estate. But it is starting to branch out into the government sector where for years concerns about mold have cropped up in schools.
Young, 67, of East Fallowfield, is often called on to appear as an expert witness in cases throughout the Philadelphia region.
“I’m tied in with the Suburban West Realtor School and mold has become a big issue,” Young said during a recent interview at the company’s Jeffers Circle headquarters. “More and more clients are buyers asking for mold inspections. What they have are moisture issues, not mold issues.”
During a business trip to Colorado, Young was using a copier when he happened to see next to it a brochure for a product called EasyDECON, which is sold now under the names of Crystal Clean and Turnout Clear.
Being in the mold remediation business, he contacted the company that is the only manufacturer of the product developed by the federal government, Intelagard Inc. of Lafayette, Colorado.
Soon, he became the worldwide technical adviser, master distributor and a training center for Intelagard.
The distribution part of the business received a major boost when VWR, the Radnor-based worldwide supplier of laboratory equipment, started in September to offer it to its customers in biopharma, university and government research.
Adrian Scioli, federal contracts administrator for VWR, said the solution is superior to bleach, which many labs use for cleaning.
The higher cost of EasyDECON is justified because it takes fewer applications to permanently disinfect work spaces, he added.
“I believe very quickly the market is going to see the value
“I believe very quickly the market is going to see the value of the product.” – Adrian Scioli, federal contracts administrator for VWR
of the product,” said Scioli, who researched the product’s effectiveness for VWR. “I’m a person that really looks for solutions ... This is a product that will sell itself.”
EasyDECON has a long and fascinating history with roots in the fight against terrorism, according to background information provided by John Aberle, a business consultant to Mold N’More and Intelagard.
It was developed in the late 1990s at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense by Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in response to the March 20, 1995, Tokyo subway attack when the chemical agent Sarin killed 13 people and injured over 5,000.
Since then it has been used during the 2001 Anthrax scare in Washington, D.C., New York City and West Palm Beach, Florida. It also was used during the Ebola Virus Panic in Dallas, Texas during the fall of 2014 and after the Boston Marathon bombings.
It is now used by U.S. Special Operations/Special Forces throughout the military, Aberle said, as well as to destroy biological and chemical weapons worldwide. The FBI and several other government law enforcement agencies use EasyDECON as their go-to product for any decontamination, he added.
In the last three years Young has discovered two more uses for EasyDECON. It helps to reduce cancer in firefighters by cleaning and disinfecting their turnout coats/bunker gear; and it is the only known decontaminant/disinfectant that can take just about any facility that has been used as a clandestine laboratory/meth-lab and rehabilitate it to where it is entirely habitable and usable once again, Aberle said.
“Bill and I have stuck with this for 2½ years,” Aberle said. “It’s about to hit big. There’s nothing else out there like this.”
Young said he thinks work with firefighters and schools present the biggest potential markets for EasyDECON.
Firefighters have a 9 percent higher risk of being diagnosed with cancer and a 14 percent higher risk of dying from cancer than the general U.S. population, according to research by the CDC/National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH). The cancers mostly responsible for this higher risk were respiratory (lung, mesothelioma), GI (oral cavity, esophageal, large intestine), and kidney.
“Because it’s worldwide, that would have the biggest market potential,” said Young. “Profits are important, sure, but our emphasis will be to protect firefighters, especially volunteers.”
Schools, meanwhile, are increasingly using artificial turf fields. Keeping those and gym areas free from disease-bearing germs is potentially a huge market, he said, along with hospitals, prisons and any institutional setting.
On the Web: http://moldnmoredecon.com/