Men Use Bat Poop To Grow Cannabis, Both Die Due To This Medical Condition

They both suffered from symptoms including fever, chronic cough, significant weight loss, blood poisoning, and eventually, respiratory failure.

Doctors treating the men said their deaths should serve as a warning about the potential dangers of using bat guano as a fertilizer.

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Two men have died of a rare fungal lung infection after they used bat poop as fertiliser for cannabis in New York city. The men, aged 59 and 64, shared a love of "Mary Jane" and cultivated their own cannabis plants for personal use, Live Science reported. Both of them developed a condition called histoplasmosis after breathing in spores of a harmful fungus known as Histoplasma capsulatum from bat poop.

The 59-year-old man had purchased guano online to use as fertilizer for his cannabis plants, while the 64-year-old intended to fertilize his cannabis plants with guano he had found in his attic. They both suffered from symptoms including fever, chronic cough, significant weight loss, blood poisoning, and eventually, respiratory failure.

Doctors treating the men said their deaths should serve as a warning about the potential dangers of using bat guano as a fertilizer for any plants.

What Is Histoplasmosis?

Histoplasmosis is a type of pneumonia caused by breathing in spores of Histoplasma capsulatum, a fungus found in soil and bird and bat droppings. These spores transform into mature yeast in the lungs and can spread to other regions of the body via the bloodstream. However, the disease cannot spread between people or between people and their pets, the Live Science report said.

People who have had a lung disease prior to being infected and those with weakened immune systems are more likely to develop severe forms of histoplasmosis, which can last for months or longer, and be deadly. Between 5% and 7% of patients hospitalized with histoplasmosis die as a result of their infection.

The two men who died had other existing diseases when they caught histoplasmosis, which may have worsened their infections. The first, for instance, had a condition known as emphysema, where the air sacs in the lungs are damaged, which restricts breathing. And both patients had histories of tobacco use, in addition to smoking marijuana.