Potentially spurious claims about a 'Hanta-like virus' aside, Hanta virus itself can be transmitted from diseased rats to humans through rat droppings that have dried and become airborne. Hanta virus mimics the symptoms of flu, and can cause death through respiratory failure.
 

Similarly, Leptospirosis is a potentially fatal disease that can be passed to humans via the urine or dried faeces of diseased animals, such as rats, pigs snakes, horses and dogs. In its most common form Leptospirosis causes aches, pains and fever. In extreme cases, perhaps 1 in 10, it can lead to jaundice, meningitis, kidney failure and death. It can be treated with antibiotics, if it is diagnosed at an early stage.
 

These diseases are well-documented and outbreaks are monitored carefully by organisations such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
 

The e-mail itself acknowledges that an outbreak of a disease such as the one described as having struck down a hapless stock clerk in Maui, would be notified to the CDC. Intriguingly enough -- and no great surprise to some -- the CDC reports it is unaware of any such outbreak in Maui, nor has it been approached to analyse tissue samples from such a fatality.
 

It probably also comes as no surprise that news sources are bare of any coverage of such a fatality -- despite the fact that an occurrence of this nature would cause, at the very least, a product recall of any items stored in the warehouse where our stock clerk allegedly contracted his disease.
 

Neither of these diseases is evident in epidemic proportions. The CDC reports that since 1993 there have been 22 fatalities in the United States attributed to Hanta virus. Leptospirosis is diagnosed at an average of 100 to 200 cases a year -- most interestingly, half of these cases, reports the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society, occur in Hawaii.
 

The San Fernando Valley Folklore Society also raises an interesting objection to this chain e-mail's details -- if our stock clerk contracted his disease on Maui, why does it describe him as being treated in St. Francis Hospital, which is in Honolulu on the island of Oahu, some 75 miles away across water? Why wasn't he being treated on Maui itself?