- It’s always best to leave bats and their droppings alone — no matter how well they can make weed grow.
If you want your plants to thrive — whether they’re daisies, roses, or weed — they’ll probably need fertilizer. However, you should be careful of what you fertilize them with.
In the worst case, using the wrong stuff could kill you.
These two men from New York found that out the hardest possible way. Both died after acquiring a strange lung infection.
It turned out that the uniting factor between the two cases was cannabis and guano — that is, bat poop. One of them had certainly used guano on his plants, while the other may have only considered it.
Yet, both had been in contact with bat crap. What they didn’t know is that guano may carry an infectious fungus that can cause a serious lung disease called histoplasmosis.
By the time either of the men sought medical attention, their conditions had deteriorated too far. Complications from histoplasmosis kicked in and they both sadly passed away.
The moral of the story is: if you’re growing cannabis, steer clear of guano fertilizers.
Suspected Cancer
Both men’s cases were published in a study printed in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases. In the first one, the patient was a 59-year-old man who was known to be a heavy smoker of both tobacco and cannabis.
He had previously been diagnosed with arthritis and the doctors had discovered a mass in his throat. As such, it probably didn’t shock the doctors when the man was admitted to the Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, for respiratory failure.
Before his health collapsed, the man had developed multiple issues over the preceding six weeks. He’d had a constant sore throat, difficulty swallowing, and significant weight loss.
By the time he arrived at the hospital, the man was very weak and experiencing a general overall infection. The doctors gave him antibiotics, which improved his condition somewhat, but he still had to be put on a ventilator.
Suspecting that he had developed cancer, the doctors took a tissue sample from the man’s lungs. That, however, revealed that he didn’t have cancer.
Instead, his lungs were infected with a fungus consistent with histoplasmosis. When asked if he had been in contact with bats, the man admitted he had used a guano-based fertilizer on his cannabis plants, which he had then smoked.
He was transferred to treatment for histoplasmosis, but unfortunately, he was too far gone. After two weeks, the man again went into respiratory failure and died.
‘Heavy Bat Infestation’
The second case involved a 64-year-old man, also from Rochester. Like the first guy, he wasn’t exactly leading a healthy life — he had circulatory issues, smoked tobacco and cannabis, and drank heavily.
He was admitted to the hospital for fever, a persistent dry cough, and serious malnutrition. His sodium levels were low and he had lost 35 pounds over the past few months.
Examining the man, the doctors found several lesions on his pancreas. The man didn’t allow them to perform a biopsy, but a pee test revealed antigens against histoplasmosis.
The man said there was a “heavy bat infestation” in his attic. He had gone up there, planning to use the bats’ guano to fertilize his cannabis plants, but he claimed he hadn’t yet actually done so.
After receiving histoplasmosis treatment, the man’s lesions started shrinking and he was released from the hospital. However, a month later, he returned with severe abdominal pain.
A CT scan showed his organ lesions had not just returned but spread further into his lungs and intestines. Some time later, the man died from bowel ischemia, a rare condition that hinders blood flow into the bowels.
Getting More Common
These two unfortunate cases highlight the dangers of histoplasmosis. But what is this disease?
Histoplasmosis is an infection caused by the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum. The fungus lives in the soil, but its favorite place to grow is among decomposing bat guano and bird poop.
Disturbing the poop or the soil around may release H. capsulatum spores into the air, that a person might inhale. After a one-to-two-week gestation period, the horror show begins.
As histoplasmosis takes root, the first symptoms begin to appear. However, they are so generic — cough, sore throat, and such — that histoplasmosis is typically first misdiagnosed as pneumonia or another disease. What’s worse, chest X-rays do not reveal the fungus in roughly half the cases.
After some time, the fungus begins spreading from the lungs into other organs. At this point, various other complications kick in, depending on which organs are affected.
Untreated histoplasmosis can be fatal, but the good news is that a majority of patients with normally functioning immune systems recover without any medical treatment. The bad news, however, is that the disease is getting more common.
With the warming climate, bats are spreading into regions where they used to be uncommon, bringing the Histoplasma fungus with them. Additionally, bat guano has become a trendy fertilizer among cannabis growers.
Despite being heavily marketed, the bat crap-based fertilizers are often poorly inspected. As such, they may carry the fungus that can be transferred into the weed and further into your lungs.
So, if you grow your own weed, do yourself a favor and don’t use bat s*** on your plants. And if you’re anybody else, leave bats and their poop alone.