I hired a contractor to place a vapor barrier in our 1950s house that never had one. The thought had not occured to me to have the crawlspace cleaned out first from years of dust, mice, etc.

i was crawling around down there to fix something for a few hours, and noticed a musty smell after distrurbing the area.

Should I rip the barrier out , clean, and install a new one? Or will all of that stuff quickly decay underneath the barrier?