Mold found on high school library books

Chapel Hill High School’s library books are moldy, but not because students aren’t reading them.

The school found mold in some of its books after this summer’s heavy flooding, according to a statement from Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. School staff discovered and reported that mold had grown on the spines of leather-bound books in the library.

Jeff Nash, the district’s spokesman, said staff acted quickly to alert administrators about the mold, but were also thinking about how to prevent the same problem from happening in the future.

“I think the long-term (plan) wasn’t so much the cleaning process as it was trying to maintain a system where we do not foster more mold in the future,” Nash said.

The district will hire an experienced professional contractor to clean the books and shelves during non-school hours and seal doors and vents with plastic to filter air.

Temporarily, the school is also running boilers and air conditioning to keep the humidity levels low.

But Nash said that is not a sufficient long-term plan, so the school is discussing other ways to avoid mold in the future.

Nash said the library building’s age makes it vulnerable to issues like mold growth.

“It is 47 years old — it has a lot of challenges. We would rather have a better air system in there,” he said.

He also says the building, along with many others in the school system, has similar issues with structure because of its age.

“This is a building that has draining issues, needs lighting, needs exterior (work),” Nash said. “We do have quite a few older buldings within the 20 schools in our school system.”

Nash said although it was ideal to build a new building for the school’s library, it was not a simple task.

“You can’t just tear out a building in the middle of the school year and build it immediately,” he said.

Other local libraries have also experienced issues because of the recent high humidity levels, though not as serious as Chapel Hill High School’s.

Erin Sapienza, the director of the Carrboro branch of the Orange County Public Library, said mold did not grow in books there, but she did discover some damp books.

The Carrboro library wasn’t flooded this summer. Instead, Sapienza said the main source of her library’s damaged books was returns from flooded homes.

“We certainly did notice we had, I guess, more dampness in books from some books that had been returned in the book return box outside,” Sapienza said. “They weren’t wet, they were just a little damp.”

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