A friend of mine has a couple of boxes of childhood books that he’s hoping to save. They were stored in his parents’ house for ages, and a few years ago the house was flooded and the books got wet. They’re dry now - he says they’ve got staining, but they’re readable.
The problem is that they stink of mould. His wife took a good sniff and ended up in the ER that night with respiratory distress - she has allergies anyway, but he’s a doctor and he thinks there was probably a connection. The point is, the mould has taken over to an extent where the books are no good to him in this condition.
He’d like to pass the books on to his son, but he needs to de-mould them first. He does have a small budget for this, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be a DIY solution. Any ideas?
Unless they are rare books (relatively speaking) or have some sentimental value attached to that specific copy, the cost to repair them is probably more than replacing them.
Unless it’s only foxing–that light rusty mold that seems to be in the paper, I’d toss them. Sure they can be treated, but how much would that cost? And would it succeed?
(Actually, I’d be very interested on what this costs today.)
Thanks - it’s appreciated. I’ll pass it on. I think he’s partly looking for things he can try, and partly looking for reassurance that once he’s tried them he can bin this stuff in the knowledge that he’s done his best.
A trick I learned from a book dealer; not totally honest trick but I’ve used it with some success. Put the book (up to a couple at a time) in a ziplock bag with a couple bars of heavily deodorant soaps. Lever2000 and Irish Spring were my favorites but I’ve used hotel soaps as well. Seal the bag and set it where it gets good sun for several days to a week or so (depending on stink factor). The smell should be gone and not much soap smell left behind; it fades in a few days.
DO NOT use the soap as bath soap after using it for this. It can cause one hell of a rash in sensitive regions for some reason. I usually keep a couple large ziplocks and 4-5 bars of soap just for this purpose and toss them once they stop working.
Open books with the mold to direct sunlight for a few hours so that the UV kills the mold itself (as already said). Some kind of book stand with clamps or clothes pegs to keep the pages open would be helpful. An enclosed porch or similar where it can’t rain onto them, only sunshine, is also good.
Next step: put each book in a ziploc bag and add some baking powder. If you can, open it and sprinkle the powder onto each several pages, if not, just put in the bag. Leave lying for one week and check.
Baking powder (NaHCO3, not the other kinds) is both neutral and activly odour-absorbent (which is why it’s also used for stinky athletic sneakers or put into your socks when your feet smell bad, or in the fridge to absorb smells.
Perfume soaps or similar I would strongly advise against for several reasons:
you don’t know what’s in them - the perfume might damage the paper, esp. if it’s already been affected by the mold
it might go too far in the other direction and the pages smell so strongly of the perfume that this smell makes people sick when trying to read
If after both steps mold still remains, you could try very carefully (with plastic gloves and breathing mask!) and a soft! brush and very dry solution (it sounds like an oxymoron, but you don’t want to get the pages wet) to brush off the mold if it’s on the paper itself.
That depends a lot on the quality of paper to begin with - acidic brittle paper from the 1950s can’t take much mechanical treatment, but rag paper from the early 1800s can stand a lot.
I don’t want to make advertisement, and I don’t know how good their service is, or if they take moldy books at all - but I just read an article about a service that scans your books for you for a small fee.* You send your book in, the spine is cut, the pages fed into a scanner, and you get your scan as PDF. Disadvantage is that you don’t get the book back - but you have the contents. So if they’re not valuable antiques or first editions that might be a good alternative. (If they are very valuable, your local scientific library specializing into it might know a specialist to help because then spending some money is worth it.)
*It started in Japan where in Earthquakes, people were injured or killed when their books collapsed on them, so they decided to use technology instead of paper.