Using Ozone on Musty Dana Girls Books

On March 6 on Facebook, I wrote:

I have another bulk lot of musty books.  This time the books are tweed Dana Girls books with dust jackets.  These books have a moderate musty odor.  The odor is not the worst I've smelled, but it is fairly strong.  I use an ozone generator in a closed box on the porch of an outbuilding.

I had a deadline of the next evening for finishing up with the ozone treatment because of incoming rain.  I also had to work. 

I got the books set up in the box with the ozone generator and started it at around 7 PM on March 6.  The ozone generator has a three-hour timer, and I reset it at around 10 PM.  The next morning, I started it again for the third round before I left for work.  When I got home that day, I started it on the fourth round and then a fifth round.  I then got the books inside before the rain moved in.

The books were treated to ozone for 15 hours total, and I knew that I overdid it a bit.  The books smelled extremely strong of ozone, so much so that I couldn't tell if they were still musty.  Logically, I knew that they weren't still musty, but the ozone odor was so strong that I couldn't distinguish exactly what I was smelling.

I moved the books to the garage, which is mostly climate-controlled.  The books would be fine.

I cleared enough space on shelves to get the books fanned open.  I checked on them a week later, and they still smelled unpleasant.  I periodically checked on them, noticing that the odor was improving.  

April was a terrible month, so I didn't check on them.  Today, I finally did.

As of now, the odor is soft and is a pleasant remnant ozone odor.  The books have no musty odor.  The ozone odor will continue to fade, but it's now down to what people would perceive to be similar to a "new book" smell.  

If I had treated the books to ozone for a shorter period of time, it wouldn't have taken as long for the ozone to fade.

For more information, view this post:

Using an Ozone Generator to Remove Musty Odor