Players of wind instruments need to clean them regularly, doctors explaining a bagpipe player’s death warn.
An article published Monday in the British Medical Journal, described a 61-year-old British bagpiper’s slow seven-year struggle with a mysterious lung infection that left him short of breath, puzzled his doctors and reduced his mobility to 10 metres.
“Despite his severe restriction in lung function, he continued to play the bagpipes daily,” the article’s five authors, all doctors based in England, wrote.
There was no obvious cause for his lung problems: he was a lifelong non-smoker, and his house had no sign of water damage or mould.
His doctors missed a chance to solve the case in 2011, when he spent three months in Australia, leaving his bagpipes at home, and immediately got better. But on his return “his breathing deteriorated rapidly.”
Only a few weeks before his death in October of 2014 from hypersensitivity pneumonitis, an inflammatory lung disease, did his doctors take a serious look at his bagpipes. Testing found seven different kinds of fungus.
“The moist environment of bagpipes promotes yeast and mould contamination,” the authors warn.
“Wind instrument players need to be aware of the importance of regularly cleaning their instruments.”
Expert Scottish piper John Shone was luckier in 2013 – stricken with a nearly fatal lung infection contracted from his pipes, he survived, but spent a month in hospital.
The BMJ article described cases of trombone and saxophone players getting hypersensitivity pneumonitis from their instruments. The trombone player’s problems disappeared after he started cleaning his trombone with rubbing alcohol.
“Wind instruments of any type could be contaminated with yeasts and moulds that act as a potential trigger for (hypersensitivity pneumonitis),” and doctors treating mysterious lung infections should look at musical instruments as a possible cause, the BMJ authors write.
A 2014 study of high school brass and wind instruments found them “heavily, heavily contaminated with molds, yeasts, and bacteria, all of which have the potential to cause disease.”
WATCH BELOW: A Canadian family with rich military connections has kept their musical history alive by playing the bagpipes. Global Halifax’s Alexa MacLean spoke with one women whose grandfather played the bagpipes in WW2, the pipes her mother still plays today.
“I’ve never heard of any issues from people getting sick from their pipes,” says Peter Campbell, who works at William Glen and Son, a Toronto store that sells bagpipe supplies.
“I did have a colleague that used Dettol to rinse out his pipe bag and kill anything that might be in there.”
Many pipers wash out the bag with warm, soapy water, he explains.
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