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Posted By: Marty CD eating fungus found in Belize - 04/16/14 11:37 AM

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CD rendered useless due to tropical climate

I noticed a few of my CDs suddenly transparent squiggly lines on the surface. In my picture below you an can see how it started at the outer edge and was spreading as it devoured parts of the thin aluminum. I was not interested in any household science experiment involving fungus so I trashed the CD and opted for some research instead.

I Googled the term "CD eating mold" and it brought me right back to Belize. This is not a new phenomenon the articles I read were dated back to 2001, the first one said researchers in Spain discovered a fungus that eats holes in compact discs and corrupts the information stored in them. They went onto say that after visiting Belize in Central America, Victor Cardenes of Madrid's National Museum of Natural Sciences, found one of his CDs discolored, transparent and unreadable. The next one I read was a BBC news article with similar information, citing the fungus which belongs to the common Geotrichum family was brought back from the Central American country of Belize. They also reported many e-mails were sent from Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemala describing similar cases of a strange fungus eating CDs that thrives in tropical heat and humidity.

Click here to read the rest of the article and see more photos on Tacogirl's blog!

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