Hilton mold possible risk

By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer

Mold growing in guest rooms at Hilton Hawaiian Village's Kalia Tower has been confirmed as potentially dangerous, and a Utah medical expert is being flown here to test about 50 employees who would have had the greatest exposure to the fungi.

Hilton officials and mold experts discussed the Kalia Tower mold problems via video link with Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis yesterday during a news conference at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

The extent of mold growth in the guest rooms and the specific cause of the problem are still largely unknown, and will keep Kalia's 453 rooms closed for an undetermined period during the busy summer season that often fills every one of the 3,432 rooms at Hilton's Waikiki six-tower hotel complex.

Dr. Joseph Jarvis, a private occupational and environmental health expert hired by Hilton, said yesterday from Salt Lake City that he believes action was taken early enough at Kalia Tower to prevent the onset of any allergic disease, given growth-rate estimates of the mold first discovered by a housekeeper June 7.

Peter Schall, Hilton Hawaiian Village's managing director, said rooms in the tower were removed from service as mold was discovered mostly on the underside of drawer bottoms. As of two weeks ago, more than 200 rooms had quietly been closed. Hilton on Wednesday announced publicly that it had shut up all guest rooms in the year-old tower.

Some guests like Washington, D.C., resident Kevin Keaveney, who said he stayed in Kalia Tower from June 13 to 22, worried about potential exposure to dangerous spores.

"If this situation with the mold was known for some time, then (I want to know) why they placed my family in the Kalia Tower and may have jeopardized our health," Keaveney wrote in an e-mail.

Schall said Hilton took appropriate action. "From the onset, the safety of our employees and team members were foremost and obviously also that of our guests, and that's why we made the decision to close those rooms," he said.

"We are not experts in mold," he said. "When we found mold that we thought was more than what we should see, we immediately brought in the experts to assist us,"

Hilton has encouraged anyone who thinks they may have been affected by mold in Kalia Tower to see a physician.

Jarvis said he plans to be in town as early as next week to begin evaluating employees for exposure by interviewing them and comparing results with Hilton employees working in other towers where mold has not been found.

Hilton previously said no guests or employees reported any health problems related to mold exposure, except for one housekeeper who first found the mold and reported that her hand was briefly irritated by touching it.

Schall yesterday said more employees have reported having allergic symptoms. He declined to say how many employees said they don't feel well or what specific ailments they say they have.

George Wong, a University of Hawai'i at Manoa mycologist, or fungi specialist, said the strength of a person's immune system, or whether they have allergies, will affect their susceptibility to mold.

"If your immune system is working fine that day, it's probably not going to bother you," he said. "If your immune system is not up to par — say you haven't had a lot of sleep, you're stressed out or something — that same fungus is going to affect you."

Jarvis said it takes a certain amount of exposure to Eurotium growing indoors to receive a high-enough dose to cause respiratory disease — a threshold he said existed at Kalia Tower.

However, he said people affected would more likely exhibit symptoms only at the time they were exposed to the mold. Given the known circumstances at Kalia Tower, Jarvis said he does not believe anyone will develop more permanent respiratory illness.

Still, whether mold exists in places investigators cannot easily see, such as behind wallpaper or under carpets, has not yet been checked.

"There's a lot of work to do," said Bryan Ligman, director of building consulting for Air Quality Sciences Inc., an Atlanta firm that has four experts here investigating the mold problem for Hilton.

Ligman said team members arrived about two weeks ago and began testing Sunday. The mold was identified immediately, but only as to the genus, or group, according to Elliott Horner, Air Quality's microbial laboratory director.

Horner said he hasn't had an opportunity to identify the species, which would tell more about potential health concerns.

Wong said some species of Aspergillus are used to make the popular Japanese food paste miso. Others can kill livestock. "It's very variable," he said. "Unless you get it down to species, you don't know."

The mold is known by two names, Wong said, depending on which of two reproductive cycles the mold is in. He said the mold likely began as Aspergillus to grow rapidly, and now is in more of a survival stage as Eurotium.

Ligman said corridor areas of Hilton's Lagoon Tower are the only other parts of Hilton Hawaiian Village where visual inspections have found abnormal levels of mold.

The mold in the Lagoon Tower is not in guest rooms, which are used for time-share and hotel use, but is isolated on corridor ceilings.

Ligman said it could take a week or a month to identify the source of the problem. "It's hard to put a time frame on that," he said.