Families could lose treasured memories as home movies stored on VHS tapes come under attack by mould.

Video restoration experts and the British Library Sound Archive say that a “tape mould”, which has grown from the wet summers of the past three years, is ruining thousands of audio and video tape.

Jim Allison from Transfer Video told Computeractive: “We are seeing a lot more cases of mouldy videos since the weather became damp. More and more videos storing people’s memories are coming in everyday.”

Chris Frear, who runs video restoration company Precious Voices, agreed: "We used to get around one or two cases a year, and now about a yenth of all the work that is sent to us is mouldy.

However, it’s not just the damp weather that can be blamed. Mr Allison said the mould is also caused by mothballs, which live behind a fridge or a freezer.

The fungal growth feeds on the cellulose – naturally found in plants - which the video or audio tape is made from before being coated with ferric oxide.

But it’s not all bad news. “Some video tapes can be fixed but this depends on how badly they have been infected,” he said.

Nigel Bewley, head sound engineer at the British Library Sound Archive agreed; “We do see tapes with fungal growth, and if we catch it early enough we can often save the recording.”

This is done by baking the tape to dry out the mould and then taking it off. “'We use a quarantine room and send a mouldy tape away to be sterilised first, often through a process of irradiation. The danger is that live spores could reach the rest of our collection,” said Mr Bewley.

He recommended that people wash their hands after touching the infected tape so the mould doesn’t spread. Mr Allison also advised people to store their tapes in a drawer on their side and away from newer tapes.