A woman who works near Ohio State and takes lunchtime walks across campus was diagnosed and treated in June 2008 for histoplasmosis, the fungal disease that has infected two employees of the College of Engineering and one student.

Johanna Woehrle, 52, works at Battelle Memorial Institute, which is just south of the OSU campus. About two years ago she started taking walks on campus, she said.

“My theory is that I caught the histo in my daily walks at lunchtime which I normally took through campus buildings and down along the Olentangy River,” Woehrle said in an e-mail. “I can’t help but think that there is a source of histo outside.”

Woehrle said she only recently became aware that others connected to OSU had contracted the disease.

“I have a Google alert set up for anything that comes up with histoplasmosis,” Woehrle said in an interview with The Lantern.

“What are the odds that the first thing really major that came up was a mile away from me?”

In June 2008 Woehrle, a desktop publisher at Battelle, had a lung nodule that was suspected to be cancer removed at OSU Medical Center. She was relieved to find out that it was not cancer but histoplasmosis, a fungal disease that primarily affects the lungs but can be fatal if it spreads to other organs, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

She said she wasn’t feeling ill but she had developed an irregular heart pattern. She went to the hospital and had a chest X-ray. Lung cancer runs in her family, so she was terrified when the nodule was discovered.

After the surgery, Woehrle was on antifungal medication for three months. She said she feels fine now but is worried that it could recur.

Woehrle still takes her lunchtime walks on campus but is considering changing her route just in case.

“I feel like walking around with a mask on all the time for all the things that are out there,” she said.

The fungus that causes histoplasmosis grows in soil and material contaminated with bat or bird droppings. When the soil is disturbed, the spores become airborne and breathing them in causes the infection. One activity associated with increased risk is remodeling and demolishing old buildings, according to the CDC.

“There’s always a lot of construction going on around campus,” Woehrle said. “And on campus, you walk everywhere.”

In recent years OSU embarked on an ambitious construction and demolition program.

Even though the three other women who have contracted histoplasmosis either work or spend a lot of time in Hitchcock Hall,

Woehrle doesn’t believe the building is the cause of their illness. Instead, she thinks it is the fact that the women are walking around campus.

A recent test by the environmental consulting firm Environmental Health & Engineering showed that the fungus was not detected in the air, in dust samples from the office suite where the two employees worked or in the ceiling tiles of Hitchcock Hall.

It was detected, however, in a swab of a mixing box (the section of ductwork where outside air and air returning to the outside are blended), according to a report that the firm delivered to the College of Engineering last week.

“It’s not inside,” Woehrle said. “It’s outside.”