Oh sure, discovering radium and polonium was pretty cool, but I’d rather have figured out how to get rid of mildew stains.
— Marie Curie after a couple of anisettes,
as overheard at the 1903 Nobel Awards Banquet
Dear Suzy,
Please help! The ravages of mildew and fungus are blackening my concrete floor! I know this sounds pedestrian, but the floor belongs to a beautiful stone house which was recently flooded by Lake Travis. Before the flood, the concrete had been stained with an attractive green tint, but now the floor is covered with black splotches which will not come up. I assume this is a form of mildew, but undiluted Clorox, power washing, scrubbing, and a fungicide designed for removing mildew from wood have not done any good. Any suggestions?
— Gail
Dear Gail,
How about moving? Well, don’t move to my house because I have the same problem in my office, which was unwittingly built (by me, I take full responsibility) in the drainage easement for all of north Hays County. I had this goofy little crate-like cabinet I made back in my Eurostyle days sitting in the puddle along my baseboard that would appear and dry up during last spring’s rains. When I finally moved the cabinet (chasing a scorpion that stung me), I found it had left four black stripes of mildew on my floor. I recently learned some forms of mildew aren’t just ugly, they’re deadly. Nine babies, from all walks of life, died of respiratory arrest in Chicago, I think, before they discovered this deadly mildew was growing in the basement near the central heat unit of each house and the spores were blown throughout the house in the duct work. Just one more modern-day terror.
So in the name of helping humanity and furthering man’s knowledge of the nefarious black furry plague, I donned my lab coat and commenced experimenting, mumbling to myself throughout the procedure, like any good scientist:
Ahh, I’ll start first with water… universal solvent… hmm, my ass it is… a little elbow grease, scrub brush, steel wool, sand paper… nope, nope, nope… let’s dig around in the laundry room pantry… La France Whitener/Brightener?… scrub more… nope… Bon Ami?… nope… what am I doing using all these Frenchie-sounding products… I’ll call the janitorial supply… Yikes, acid-based bowl cleaners? Maybe Gail will experiment with those if she gets a grant from the NIH…. No way for me… but what if I make a paste with this Bon Ami and a little Clorox… I hate dioxins, sure, but this is science… wet the floor, scrub in the paste with a toothbrush (Richard’s)… just let it sit a couple hours…and Eureka! Almost all the stripes are gone! I can hear the roar of the Nobel prize committee from here… or are those the screams of dying fungi?
This article appears in September 5 • 1997 and September 5 • 1997 (Cover).