Two men died after fertilising cannabis plants with bat poo

Two men have died after fertilising cannabis plants with bat poo and contracting a deadly infection.

It occurred when the two men, who were growing marijuana plants in Rochester, New York, used bat guano, essentially their poo, on the plants.

The product is high in nutrients and can act as a superfood for plants. But, bat guano can also contain harmful spores from the Histoplasma capsulatum fungus that is found in bat faeces and can cause a lung infection called histoplasmosis.

One of the men, aged 59, had been suffering from emphysema and was also a life-long cigarette and cannabis smoker. For months, he had been struggling to breathe and starting to lose weight.

After admission to the hospital, doctors discovered a mass on his larynx. While initially thought to be cancer, investigations revealed it was actually histoplasmosis. He died soon after, despite the doctors’ best efforts to treat him.

The second man was 64, and similarly lost 35 pounds (two-and-a-half stone/15.8 kilograms) in one month. He was having trouble eating and was also a life-long tobacco and cannabis smoker, as well as drinking alcohol.

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The men added two sources of bat guano to their plants – one sourced online and another gathered from the bat faeces in one of the men’s attics from a bat infestation.

Due to one of the sources containing Histoplasma capsulatum, the men had been breathing in the spores for an undetermined length of time. Because of their poor health to begin with, the subsequent infection caused them both to lose their lives.

Histoplasma infections are relatively rare. It is thought only around 1 per cent of those exposed to Histoplasma capsulatum fungus will develop a histoplasma infection. Of those, around five per cent will die from that infection.

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