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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, September 15, 2002

Attack of the Mold Monster? Go lighten up with Clorox

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

There was a time when mold wasn't so serious.

If there was a patch of fuzzy green on your bread, Mom told you just to eat around it. If you made a fuss, she said it would toughen you up, like homemade penicillin.

If your dress-up shoes got furry in the back of the closet because you hadn't gotten dressed up in years, you just brushed them off with an old T-shirt, put them on, and walked fast so that no one could see the mold marks.

If there was mold growing on your ceiling, you cleaned it. If it came back, you cleaned it again. Or maybe you just let it be. You'd look up at it every so often and notice that it was starting to look like Abraham Lincoln, or Alfred Hitchcock in profile, or a friendly bunny.

Those of us who grew up in plantation houses, particularly the latter generations when those houses were old, have a hard time imagining a home without mold. It was everywhere, from the Reader's Digest series books your parents always bugged you to read to the funky cabinet under the sink, not to mention the lovely green limu that sprouted up around the outside wash house. I imagine walking into Kalia Tower, taking a big whiff and thinking, "Aaahh! Smells like small-kid time!"

Mold never used to be a thing to fear. It was, at most, an annoyance, at best, kinda familiar and homey, but always benign.

Now, it's mold mania.

Like we really needed something new to worry about.

There are those who would have you believe that mold is responsible for everything from hay fever to the divorce rate. There is a blossoming mold remediation business, with full-fledged scientists on one end of the spectrum and a guy with a shop vac and a bucket of Clorox on the other. And every week there's another horror story surfacing about a life tainted by mold-related illness. Never mind that you take your life into your hands every time you head out of the house and onto the freeway — what's that black spot in the shower?!

The Hilton Hawaiian Village is planning to throw away everything from the stricken Kalia Tower. Beds, dressers, lampshades, just about the whole works. And they're not planning to offer the stuff cheap at a mold sale, either. The furnishings will be burned or zapped or otherwise totally destroyed. Kinda poho, yeah? I mean, there are lots of families with some pretty mushy furniture at home. Some secondhand Kalia stuff would match the decor.

Of course, the folks at the hotel are playing it very safe, and for that, they should be commended. It's a good thing when a large business takes a health concern so seriously.

But the rest of us need to temper the scary headlines with a dose of practicality. Sure, some susceptible people could be adversely affected by exposure to a certain amount of a certain kind of mold. But for the rest of us, particularly those who spend quality time in mold-friendly places like Manoa, Hilo and Koloa, we're probably going to be OK, especially if we clean house, fix roof and wash curtains every so often.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.