Please tell me how to get rid of a weird, green, powdery mold ??????

[Tom Driscoll]

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On
Behalf Of gordon stelter
Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2004 11:46 PM
To: DeanMay@PianoRebuilders.com; Pianotech
Subject: Please tell me how to get rid of a weird, green, powdery mold
??????

I have a piano that was externally covered with a 
bizarre-smelling, bright green powdery organism. I
wiped as much as I could off with alcohol, but it
still smells weird and sort of dangerous. ( How
dangerous is it ??? )
     How can I get rid of this ? All I have been able
to think of is putting a plastic tent over the piano,
and pouring a gallon of lacquer thinner 
- or something- into a pot under the tent, in hopes
that the fumes will kill the spores ? I might take
some of them to the University, too, to try to
identify them.
    The strange thing about this is that the piano was
not in a very humid environment, but the powdery mold
grew 1/16 inch deep in places on the case. 
     Thump
	
	
Hey thump,
For once you've stumbled in your own inimitable way on something that is
truly dangerous.
	This is probably Paris Green, a powder used to combat insects
that is loaded with arsenic.
	I worked for a piano store in Texas many years ago and quite a
few old pianos from out in the "country" had this stuff on the key beds.
	Careful my friend 
	

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition.  2001. 
  
Paris green 
  
  
also called Schweinfurt green, an extremely poisonous, bright green
powder that was formerly used extensively as a pigment (e.g., in
wallpaper) and that is sometimes used as an insecticide or to kill plant
fungi; it must be used with great caution because of its poisonous
nature. Chemically it is a copper acetoarsenite that may be prepared
from arsenic trioxide and copper acetate. 
  
__________________________________
Tom Driscoll RPT