Mold found in Hilton tower
By Mary Vorsino
Honolulu Star Bulletin
The state Department of
Health has been bombarded by calls from residents worried about mold
in their homes, said Jeff Eckerd, an environmental health specialist in the
state Indoor
Air Quality Program.
Since July 24, when the
Hilton Hawaiian Village closed its new Kalia Tower because of mold,
nearly 75 people have called the Indoor Air Quality Program -- more than the
number that call
in a normal month. By the end of the week, Eckerd estimates, the calling tally
will hit 100.
"It's good in a sense that we can raise public awareness," he said.
But for the one-man operation
funded by an Environmental Protection Agency grant, it is taxing.
"I try to get back to them and (ask them) to bear with me."
People have been calling Eckerd about mold under their sinks, on their ceilings and in their drawers.
His standard advice: "Any
mold indoors is unwanted mold." The longer the mold is let to grow,
"the bigger the colony gets" and the more dangerous the situation
can be to health.
Many Hawaii homes and buildings
-- those in wet areas or near the ocean -- are highly susceptible
to mold growth. Controlling standing water or indoor humidity is key to stamping
out widespread
mold growth, Eckerd said.
Generally, said George Wong,
associate professor for botany at the University of Hawaii-Manoa
who specializes in the biology of mold, mold is harmless. Those most at risk
for sickness because
of mold exposure are infants and seniors, because of their low immune systems.
Eckerd said "most normal
healthy human beings" can tolerate minimal amounts of mold exposure.
But mold has been known to kick off allergies and sinus infections in some.
Wong said he has heard of
extreme cases when people have had to move out of their homes
because of mold allergies.
One man, Wong said, had
a planter on his lanai that was so overgrown with mold that he could
not go near it without his allergies acting up. When he had contractors destroy
the planter, they
inadvertently scattered mold particles into the air and around his home, causing
him to move
out to relieve his symptoms.
Wong also cited a number
of examples of out-of-control mold growth on the UH-Manoa campus,
where at the mostly open-air Sinclair Library, there is a constant battle being
waged to save books
and materials from mold infestation.
UH Associate University
Librarian Jean Ehrhorn said controlling the mold in the library's stacks
is an ongoing effort that has employed five student assistants dubbed the "mold
team." The group
monitors books and bookshelves and cleans mold before it grows larger.
Wong said residents should
"use common sense" when attacking mold growth at home. Get rid
of visible mold before it gets to be a widespread problem, he said. And keep
areas prone to
wetness, under sinks or in the bathroom, dry.
Local environmental consulting businesses have also received an influx of calls.
Isle Hilton chief Schall says he learned of tower’s mold June 7
By Tim Ruel
Peter Schall, senior vice
president and managing director of Hilton Hawaiian Village, couldn't
be more steadfast on exactly when he found out the Kalia Tower had a mold infestation.
"June 7 is when it was brought to my attention, and I'm management," Schall said yesterday.
Unionized hotel workers
held a press conference earlier this week to point out that workers had
come across mold at Hilton Hawaiian Village as early as March. The workers told
their managers
and were told in response to clean the mold, which didn't work.
Schall said he didn't find
out until later. "I can't speak for something that I don't know about,
" Schall said.
Hilton last week closed all 453 rooms in the Kalia Tower to investigate the problem.
Eric Gill, leader of the
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 5, has asked Schall
for more information about the mold outbreak and how it could affect the health
of hotel workers.
The union is negotiating
new contracts with Hilton and other hotels. On July 22 a union committee
authorized an Aug. 13 strike vote that will cover 1,500 workers at Hilton, as
well as workers at
Sheraton. Hilton disclosed the mold problem on July 24.
Hilton has hired a Utah
health consultant, who arrived in Waikiki this week, to distribute a survey
of questions to Hilton workers. The consultant, Joseph Jarvis, is not performing
clinical evaluations
of the workers at this time, and is scheduled to leave Honolulu today, Schall
said.
Meanwhile, Hilton continues
to probe the cause of high humidity in the Kalia Tower, which was
responsible for the large amounts of mold found on furniture in the rooms.
The $95 million tower, opened
in May 2001, houses 13 percent of Hilton Hawaiian Village's
3,432 rooms. Hilton began relocating some of its guests to other hotels Saturday,
Schall said.
More guests will be moved, most likely on Monday, he said.
On Saturday, a six-day annual
convention of the National Medical Association kicks off at the
Hawai'i Convention Center, bringing some 8,000 attendees to Waikiki and filling
up hotel rooms.
Schall declined to specify how many Hilton visitors are being sent to other hotels.
Hilton has estimated the mold removal will cost $10 million.
Cleaning mold cost $5.5 million at the Army's Hale Koa Hotel seven years ago.
In a pattern similar to
Hilton's Kalia Tower, the Hale Koa opened its 396-room Maile Tower in
1995, and soon found a mold problem.
The Army brought in a new
general contractor to clean the rooms, Incentive Design Builders Inc.
of Campbell Industrial Park. Mildew was trapped in wall cavities under vinyl
covering, causing
a smell, so Incentive Design tackled half a floor at a time, ripping out wallpaper,
carpeting, studs
and drywall, said Kyle Dong, president of Incentive Design.
Each section was contained
in plastic, and bad air was sucked out by machines. "They wanted
to make sure it was totally cleaned. They're the federal government," Dong
said.
As the contractors moved
from floor to floor, guests were moved from the floor above and the floor
below. All other rooms in the 13-story tower remained open while work took place.
Each section took about
10 days, and the whole project took several months. As with the Hilton's
Kalia Tower, high humidity caused the mold.
Hilton mold sounds rare but is really quite common
Sick-building experts from
the mainland have identified the mold in the Hilton Hawaiian Village's
Kalia Tower as eurotium, a kind of aspergillus.
Despite the unfamiliarity of both words to the general public, the diagnosis,
if correct, means a
very common mold has taken hold in the Kalia Tower.
The American Industrial
Hygiene Association's Field Guide for the Determination of Biological
Contaminants in Environmental Samples says eurotium is a very common mold found
on bread,
cheese and decayed fruit.
A University of Toronto
Web site on molds says, "Species of eurotium grow best in dry situations
and are usually cultivated on media high in sucrose or glycerine. They are common
in homes,
stored grains, and rodent dwellings."
"Eurotium suggests,
among other things, carpets with accumulations of dry skin scales and dust,
" one industrial air sampling firm suggests.
But that bit of information
may be more useful to people fighting mold at home than in hotels,
where carpets are vacuumed daily. And the Kalia Tower has only been open for
a year.
Sick-building experts are less likely to look at the carpeting than at the ventilation
system.
Up to 30 percent of so-called
"sick-building" cases are blamed on indoor fungal or bacterial
contamination, says Wally Kowalski of Penn State. "Mold growth can occur
from water damage,
condensation, leaks, or even the mere presence of high humidity (i.e. more than
90 percent)
because nutrient and temperature conditions are invariably satisfied indoors,"
Kowalski says.
He calls aspergillus one
of the more hazardous fungi and notes that its eurotium form seems
to like gypsum-based finishes.
Gypsum is found in wallboard.
"Aspergillus is a group
of molds which is found everywhere worldwide," says Javier Vilar, an
infectious diseases specialist at Britain's University of Manchester. "Only
a few of these molds
can cause illness in humans and animals. Most people are naturally immune."
But Dr. Vilar says up to
1 in 5 asthmatics may suffer allergic reactions to aspergillus mold at
some time in their lives. And more serious problems can be caused when a previous
lung disease
has left cavities in the lung where mold can grow. An aspergillus sinusitis
has also been reported.
"There is probably
no other genus of fungi so useful to humans that is also so harmful to humans,
" a University of Wisconsin mold information site says of aspergillus in
general. "Members of this
genus produce many industrially useful enzymes, chemicals, and foods. Yet others
produce deadly
carcinogenic toxins, and some may even grow through a person's lungs as if it
were a loaf of bread."
Because of the cost of getting
citrus acid from citrus fruits, most of the citric acid in cola drinks
comes from one kind of fermented aspergillus. Another kind is used to make authentic
soy sauce
and is used in misu soup. But a third kind produces aflatoxin, which can cause
cancer or lung
disease. These are not the strains found at the Hilton, if the environmental
consultants are correct.