Question from JimK
I enjoy reading books from India, but they often have a distinctive moldy smell. Most of them are stored in warehouses, and due to the Indian climate there is a lot of mold everywhere there. Can you think of a good way to get rid of mold on the books? There are often over a thousand pages in a volume, and so it’s not practical to go page by page.
Debra’s Answer
I don’t know a way to remove mold from books other than opening them page by page and putting them in the sun. Very slow method,
Readers, any ideas?
We had a bunch of books with a moldy odor. We put them in a sealed tote with baking soda. Some the books responded better than others, if you can leave ample space between the books and add more baking soda that might assist with larger tomes. For the backing soda, we took paper lunch bags and put backing soda in each and left the bags open. The baking soda boxes that have the exposed sides might also be a good option.
This mold is likely a type of Aspergillus mold that forms golden tan spots.
It is the hardest mold to clean off surfaces in my experience because it adheres so strongly to surfaces it grows on. It will likely never come off.