Peat Free Compost

The Telegraph is running a story today about how bags of potting compost will have to bear warnings in future that potting plants could cause Legionnaire’s Disease.

Apparently a 67-year old man was admitted to hospital and was discovered to have Legionnaire’s disease. While scratching their heads as to where he might have caught it, doctors discovered that he’d lacerated his finger and then handled potting compost with his bare hands. (The victim in this case went on to make a full recovery.)

“We presumed that this cut was the site of entry of the organism.”

That’s it, then. Must have been the naughty compost. There’s no possibility that someone coughed on him on the bus or something. And now, despite the fact that “the risk of contracting the disease was very low” we all have to be treated like idiots and reminded to wear gloves while handling compost if we have exposed wounds.

Personally, I would put something along the lines of “Caution: Dirt Can Be Dirty!”.

You may remember that the same paper brought us a similar story two years ago, Gardener killed by fungus in his compost.

On that occasion, the gentleman in question “seems to have inhaled a huge amount of these (aspergillus) spores, which penetrated deep into his lungs.”

“From what his partner described, he had been surrounded by a cloud of dust when he opened several bags of compost that he had prepared from his garden to use.”

So he made compost, stored it in the ideal conditions for aspergillus (a decomposer) to flourish and then took a big lungful of spores when he opened the bag.

“Cases of the fungus causing death through inhalation into the lungs are thought to be rare in this country”.

There are lots of nasty things in our environment (both natural and man-made) that are no risk to us when they stay on the outside. When you’re handling compost, or digging around in the dirt, make sure any open wounds are covered. If you have an immune deficiency of any description then wear gloves all the time. And don’t breathe in clouds of things! At the very least you’re going to get fungus gnats up your nose.