At 02:59 PM 4/4/05 -0500, you wrote: None of the above. It's a fungus! It used to be common on just about anything made of plastic* but must most companies include a fungicide in their formulas to reduce/eliminate it. The plastizer also oozes out of the plastic over time and the item becomes brittle. I don't know of anything to prevent that except perhaps to refrigerate it to reduce the rate of the chemical decomposition. The fungus is feeding off the plasticizer or the plastic itself, I'm not sure which. STP and ArmorAll sell products in the automotive stores that is supposed to reduce the rate of breakdown of plastics and rubber in automobiles. You might try some of those. But I think once the damage is done then there's nothing you can do about it. *Fungus on plastic was a huge problem in WW II in the pacific. The US military finally started adding a powerfull fungicide to their equipment to reduce it. That fungicide is that strong smell that you sometimes smell when you first open military items that have been sealed up for a long time. You still find a lot of military items marked "MRT". That stands for "Mildew Resistance Treatment". Joe