Mold
is school health risk
By Jennifer
Hiller -
Advertiser Education Writer
No children can
enter the library at Hau'ula Elementary School. It's not safe.
Mold has spiraled
out of control, forcing school officials to close the facility as a
health risk.
Splotches of
yellowish-brown, black and white dot the books' well-worn pages,
showing up most prominently on the covers and title pages. Mold crawls
up the library door frames, entwined with dust and thick as felt. It
infests the air-conditioning ducts and creeps from book spine to book
spine. Its musty, dank odor fills the air.
Mold plagues
libraries throughout the state, but it is particularly bad at Hau'ula
Elementary, across from the beach on Kamehameha Highway. Trade winds
blow in daily rainshowers and the constant force of damp ocean air.
As many as half of
the 12,000 books at the school library may be lost. Meanwhile, parents
have to drive their children five miles to Kahuku to check out books.
After six months
without a library, volunteering parents and the librarian are trying
to save books and eventually reopen the library.
They are donning
what they call "Ghostbusters outfits," vacuuming the books
with special filters and taking the collection, box by box, to Brigham
Young University-Hawai'i so they can be freeze-dried to stop the mold.
The process is expected to take months.
Hawai'i's
moderate, humid climate means school libraries are battling an
environment that is perfect for breeding mold. The Department of
Education's library specialists are trying to put together a team of
trainers to teach librarians, custodians and others how to identify
and react immediately to mold. And the Hawai'i Association of School
Librarians will discuss at its spring conference Saturday how to cope
with bugs, mold and mildew, which can cause serious health problems as
well as damage library materials.
"Virtually
everything here is moldy," said school library services
specialist Sally Roggia. "You don't want to give it a strong
foothold. Mold is a horrendous problem for everybody."
Nicky Vivas, a
parent representative on Hau'ula's School and Community Based
Management Committee, drives her five children the 15 minutes to the
Kahuku library once a week, but she said it's not a good solution.
"Not everyone has a car," Vivas noted. "Not everyone
can do that."
Her second-grade
daughter, Destani, pokes her head into the school library daily to see
if it's all right to come inside and look at the books.
So far, the answer
has been no.
Slow process
Vivas now
volunteers in the library, suiting up in the "Ghostbusters
outfit" that is supposed to protect from asthma attacks and other
mold-related respiratory problems: a white hooded suit with goggles,
blue latex gloves, a mask that squashes her nose and a special vacuum
cleaner that sweeps up tiny spores.
Vivas, Zane and
other volunteers vacuum the books and load them into a box lined with
plastic. BYUH has offered free use of its library's freeze-dryer to
help stop the spread of mold and save the books. Fifteen boxes of
books were taken to the university this week to start the process.
It's a saving
grace, but could take months to vacuum and sort the entire collection,
said school librarian Natalie Zane.
Many of the books
are too old and damaged to bother, and several library shelves are
down to a third of their original size. "It's so hard to throw
(away) a book, but they're so spotted and so damaged that there's
nothing that can be done," said Zane. "It's really
sad."
Education and
health officials have said the higher humidity at Hau'ula needs to be
combated with more steady use of air conditioning, dehumidifiers and
complete cleaning of the library shelves. But there has been no new
state money to help.
Vivas got a sore
throat from the work Monday, which she shrugs off. "The faster we
do this, the sooner my kids can get back in here," she said.
Rick Williams,
librarian at Kainalu Elementary School in Kailua, saw his library
closed for the greater part of a year because of mold.
Air tests showed
23 different types of spores. Students had to resort to weekly visits
by the Bookmobile. After pressure from former Principal Frances Wong,
the Department of Accounting and General Services contracted with a
company that came in and cleaned up the library, Williams said.
The carpet was
torn out, the air ducts replaced and 4,500 books — about a third of
the collection — could not be saved. The state spent $190,000 on the
cleanup, but no money was provided to replace the lost books.
Dehumidifiers and
air conditioning make the library noisier, but less susceptible to
mold and bugs.
Book triage
"The really
simple solution is to put dehumidifiers in before there's a
problem," Williams said.
State Librarian
Virginia Lowell said mold and bugs are a problem for libraries across
the state. Because of a budget shortfall that has lasted the better
part of a decade, most libraries can spend money either replacing
materials or trying to control humidity, but not both, Lowell said.
"You know the
old story about bookworms," Lowell said. "They're attracted
to the glue in the binding of books. Some of the older books are made
from rice paper or rag paper, which is made from animal fibers. It's a
combination of the materials used to make the book and the
environment."
Mold is a bigger
problem for schools than for public libraries, which often change
their collections, Lowell said, while universities and schools tend to
hold on to their collections longer. "For the great bulk of the
regular public libraries, we keep changing them and getting rid of the
old things and replacing them with new things."
At the State
Library, with its extensive Hawaiiana and Pacific collection,
librarians use acid-free paper and boxes to store sensitive materials.
They also try to keep dust from collecting, which can become a
breeding ground for mold. But the air conditioner is shut off at night
and on weekends, Lowell said.
The University of
Hawai'i's Hamilton Library is one of several Hawai'i libraries that
keeps air conditioning on around the clock, said Lynn Davis, head of
the library's preservation department.
"We still
have mold problems. I mean, we're in Manoa. It's the wettest place on
the island," Davis said.
A group of student
workers known as the Pest Team regularly makes the rounds of the
library stacks, vacuuming books and checking for evidence of bugs and
mold. Anything that isn't a brand-new book from a publisher is
freeze-dried before going onto the shelves.
Computers help
Davis does see one
sign of hope: With more computer labs going into libraries, school
administrators seem more willing to install dehumidifiers and leave
air conditioners on to protect terminals. "The books can sort of
ride along," Davis said. "I don't ignore any strategy that
might work."
When her campus
had to cut back on air conditioning in the library a few years ago,
the mold flared up. At Kainalu Elementary, an air conditioner that
broke down for a time could have been to blame for that campus' sudden
severe mold problem, Williams said.
Zane said the
discarded books are silent victims of the state's budget cuts. There
are 34 piles of them stacked on wooden tables on topics ranging from
Leonardo da Vinci to Charles Dickens. Even Newberry medalists, the
elite of library collections, have the telltale yellowish spots.
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