Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Malt Worker's Lung. Sounds like a cool disease, doesn't it?
And a cool
job. "Oh, me? I'm a malt worker. And you? An accountant. How interesting."
It turns out to be more properly called:
Extrinsic allergic alveolitis

From http://www.agius.com/hew/resource/lung.htm
"Extrinsic allergic alveolitis can be caused by sensitisation to many organic dusts mainly fungal spores, e.g. farmer's lung and malt worker's lung. It tends to affect the respiratory units of the lung rather than the conducting airways and may have 'flu' like symptoms in addition. In some respects it is similar to humidifier fever which might be caused by sensitisation to amoebae or algae.
Inhalation of oil mists may cause asthma, airways irritation, lipid pneumonia or other conditions depending on their composition."
So yeah, kind of serious actually. Sorry, dudes.