PSA: Another Big Reason You Should Clean Your Horn

In the first paragraph of an NPR article we learn “One musician in Connecticut learned the hard way about the dangers of not cleaning his horn — after he developed a condition that’s being called ‘trombone players’ lung.’” The article is “Think Music Heals? Trombone Player Begs To Differ” by Diane Orson and it should be must read material for all Horn Matters readers.

You know that you need to play with a clean horn and mouthpiece as it just will work better acoustically. But also the stuff inside the instrument may be impacting your health too. The NPR article tells the whole story but in short there is bad stuff growing in there which you potentially can be allergic to. This is a key section of the article.

Mold and bacteria could grow in any brass instrument. And for most players, it wouldn’t matter much, except maybe aesthetically. But for a subset of people who react to these organisms, it’s no joke. Metersky set out to see how common a problem it was. He asked several professional musicians if he could culture the insides of their trombones and trumpets for a pilot study.

“Things plopped out,” Metersky says. “It was disgusting. Imagine the worst thing you’ve found in your refrigerator in food that you’ve left for a few months, and that was coming out of these instruments.”

Metersky stopped testing after 10 instruments, because they all were contaminated.

They were all contaminated! What they found were molds and bacterias and

This stuff inside the trombone was causing an allergic reaction, which led to hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a severe inflammation of the lungs. Microscopic organisms were breaking off and getting into Bean’s lungs each time he inhaled.

Hello! Check out the full article and get to cleaning your horns!

The thumbnail in this article was created by Bruce Hembd for his Halloween Frightmares series. For the full image see his original article.

UPDATE: Also see this recent article for more on this topic.