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What is spelunkers?

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Anonymous

12y ago
Updated: 11/16/2022

Spelunkers lung, is a lung disease caused by cave exploration where bat excrement is present. The excrement may contain a fungus. This fungus' spores are inhaled into the lungs causeing inflammation. Also see: Acute Symptomatic Pulmonary Histoplasmosis.

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It's associated more with caves in tropical / sub-tropical regions, and holding very large bat colonies.

I have never seen the name "spelunkers' lung" in any serious report - it's always called simply 'Histoplasmosis'. "Spelunker" is an old-fashioned term concocted by two American cavers in the 1930s(?), and after a decade or so of normal use, though only in the US, it became a term of derision among American cavers themselves, and is now rarely if ever used in caving literature.

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