Captain Red Eye
Well-known member
Welp. cross licking a bat's ass off my bucket list now. 
Histoplasmosis likely was the cause. Guano can be used if composed with less risk from what i understand. Yeah have to be careful mixing soil. Have a well ventilated environment. Working with it indoors may be dangerous. Thanks for the information!
washed our hands and arms with leaded gas as long as it was available. you'd die of old age tring to get the oil/grease/grime off with soap after working on a car all day. brakes, transmission, clutch, whatever. first gasoline, then Tide powder. rough on you, but mom would let us in to eat supper then... 'you do what you gotta do"I suspect that's at least partly why I am who I am.
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I have a mask/respirator that I should use anytime I'm messing with any of the dusty dry amendments, but I'm usually lazy and just try not to breathe it in anymore. If it's going to get super dusty I'll definitely wear it. You'll feel it a little in your lungs if you inhale some of that crap. I like my guano though. I've got a shitload, pun intended,researchers almost ALWAYS have masks/supplied air when entering caves with bat populations/guano covered floors. nasty stuff hiding in there.
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some of the woods i work with are nasty, and i wear a mask too. purpleheart is a known danger, and walnut doesn't make many friends when sanding it either.If it's going to get super dusty I'll definitely wear it.
took down a barn a few months back that pre-dated the Civil War. all main timbers held together with oak dowels. ALL of the boards at ground level could be identified by smell alone. soaked in urine and coated with cow shit for all of that time. wood was nearly all still good, though, which surprised me... figured it would be rotten as hell.all the nasty barn dust and shit accumulated over the 200 plus years.
There is a common occurence of people opening tombs and dying of a a range of illnesses years later. The "tombs curse" if you will. I cant remember the details but once around half of an expedition team died from different health problems years later, all caused by a specific fungus that had been sealed in the tomb when it was first used! This has happened with other excavations, leading to the old superstition of curses and demons being released by disturbing burials...compost, soil, etc ALL harbor bacteria, fungus and other pathogen. some are helpful and some are dangerous, even to humans. People some times die just from mixing soil bare handed. All it takes is a tiny cut on your hand, or inhaling particles of whatever and your at risk. Of course all the do gooders want to blackball guano etc because... it has pathogens!!! ............
I wonder how many people die mining this stuff for us? Ohh I'm sure they are all wearing safety equipment...