Two men in New York state have died of a rare fungal lung infection that they caught from bat poop — specifically, poop they were using or planned to use as fertilizer to grow cannabis.
Both men, based in Rochester, shared a love of “Mary Jane” and cultivated their own cannabis plants for personal use. They each developed a condition called histoplasmosis after breathing in spores of a harmful fungus known as Histoplasma capsulatum from bat poop, or guano.
The first man, who was 59-years-old, had purchased guano online to use as fertilizer for his cannabis plants. The other man, 64, was intending to fertilize his cannabis plants with guano he’d found in his attic following a “heavy” bat infestation.
The men developed an array of symptoms from their infections, including fever, chronic cough, extensive weight loss, blood poisoning and respiratory failure. Despite being hospitalized and treated with antifungal medication, both men died of their illnesses, according to a report of their cases, published Dec. 4 in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases.
The doctors who treated them said that their deaths should serve as a warning about the potential dangers of using bat guano as a fertilizer for any plants. This may be a particular issue for cannabis growers.
“Given the recent legalization and an expected increase in home cultivation of cannabis, along with the promotion of bat guano for this purpose, it is important to raise public awareness about the potential risk of using bat guano as fertilizer,” the case report authors wrote. The authors added that they found numerous articles calling bat guano a “natural superfood” for cannabis plants due to its high concentration of nitrogen and phosphorus.
These recent deadly cases also “emphasize the need for protective measures, such as wearing masks when handling it,” the authors added.
Histoplasmosis is a type of pneumonia caused by breathing in spores of H. capsulatum, a fungus found in soil and bird and bat droppings. In the lungs, H. capsulatum spores transform into mature yeast that can spread to other regions of the body via the bloodstream. However, the disease cannot spread between people or between people and their pets.
H/T: www.livescience.com
