I really didn't need to read this.

The pollen has been heavy this spring, and it's been bothering me in a way that it hasn't in years. I lost my voice - some days completely - for a week. So it's been a matter of slathering Vicks Vapo Rub on my throat before getting in the shower, and popping a daily Claritin.

Bad as the pollen's been, I'm thankful that it's not the chemical railway car spill in Palestine, Ohio. Or the fire in the plastics plant in Richmond, Indiana. 

And thankful that I don't work at the Michigan paper mill where 100 folks have developed something called blastomycosis, thanks to "a rare fungal outbreak."

Rare. Fungal. Outbreak.

That doesn't sound good.

I do have a bit of fungal outbreaking going on up close and personal: a toenail on each foot. 

Fortunately, the anti-fungal stuff I found online does seem to be doing the trick on those bad boys.

But the fungal outbreak, at least until sandal season rolls around, is out of sight, out of mind.

And it's nowhere near my lungs.

So far, there's one death reported, and nearly 100 who've been sickened (12 severely enough to require hospitalization), out of a local workforce of a bit over 800 folks. The plant was temporarily closed "as local and federal investigators try to identify the source" and so that the mill could undergo a deep cleaning. When employees return to work, they'll be offered N95 masks and voluntary testing. 

“Identifying the source can be difficult because the Blastomyces fungus is endemic to the area,” the company said in a statement. “There has never been an industrial outbreak of this nature documented anywhere in the U.S.”

Blastomycosis is an infection associated with the Blastomyces fungus, which grows in moist soil and decomposing matter, such as wood and leaves, and can become airborne if disturbed. (Source: NY Times)

The good news is that most folks who are exposed to Blastomyces spores won't get sick. But when they do, it's ugly and fluish:

Symptoms include a cough (sometimes with blood), fever, chest pain, difficulty breathing, night sweats, fatigue, weight loss, muscle aches and joint pain.

Sounds like the respiratory infection (non-covid: I tested continually) i had last December. And a bit like the current pollen attack. 

Even without this nasty outbreak, I don't imagine that working in a pulp and paper mill is exacting a dream job.

My college roommate's sister was married to a lawyer who worked for a while doing public service law in Berlin, NH, then home of a pulp and paper mill. Joyce and I went to visit them once, and although her sister's family lived out in the woods - we saw a black bear in their back yard - outside of the town of Berlin, you could smell the plant everywhere. And that smell was god-awful.

You could also see the effluent - a thick, roiling yellow-whitish brew - in the Androscoggin River, which flows through Berlin.

There are, of course, a lot worse things in the news. The high school clarinetist who knocked on the wrong door and got shot. The cheerleader who mistook a look-alike car for that of a friend and got shot. The young upstate New York woman who was a passenger in a car that turned into the wrong driveway and got shot. And killed. 

And that's just a few news highlights (lowlights?) that are top of news/top of mind as I'm writing this.

Still, it's awful to think about folks who work in dangerous places, usually for short money, and the risks they take.

I get that it's going to be pretty difficult to ever sensibly regulate guns, but isn't there something the EPA could do to make those who work in plants safer?

Maybe it's because I'm coping with pollen, but I really didn't need to read about blastomycosis. Hope we can put this one on blast.