Fertilising marijuana plants with bat poo kills two men in New York

Two men who were growing marijuana died after they fertilised the cannabis plants with bat poo. The incident happened in Rochester, New York where they decided to add bat guano, or the poo of the animals, on the plants. This led to them contracting a deadly infection from a fungus found in bat poo.

Bat faeces are considered to be highly nutritious for the plants. However, it can sometimes also contain harmful spores from the Histoplasma capsulatum fungus that can be found in bat faeces. It can cause a deadly lung infection called histoplasmosis.

Who were the bat poo victims?

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One of them was a 59-year-old who had been facing breathing issues and weight loss for months. He was also suffering from emphysema and also used to smoke cigarettes and cannabis. He was admitted to the hospital where the doctors found a mass on his larynx.

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Initially, they thought it was cancer. However, further examinations revealed that it was histoplasmosis. He passed away soon after.

His partner, a 64-year-old man, had also lost a lot of weight - around 15.8 kilograms in one month and was also unable to eat. He had also been smoking tobacco and cannabis throughout his life, besides drinking alcohol.

The men picked up bat guano from two places for the marijuana plants. They got some of it online and also gathered bat faeces from the attic following a bat infestation in one of the men's houses.

Unaware that one of the sources contained Histoplasma capsulatum, they had been breathing in the spores for a long time. They were already suffering from poor health, which made things worse after they caught the infection. This led both of them to lose their lives.

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Their deaths are statistically rare. As per reports, Histoplasma infections occur in only around 1 per cent of those exposed to Histoplasma capsulatum fungus. Only around five per cent of them die from that infection.