My mother was recently diagnosed with MAC disease. I'm curious about the hobbies such as gardening or working in soil quite often or working in an area were there were many pollutant facilities such as Monsanto, grain processing plans, power companies, etc. She is a 69 year old white female and very thin. She's never smoked a cigarette in her life, she is very active, and she has not been diagnosed with any other diseases. She simply went in for an outpatient surgery and was required to have a chest X-ray before getting surgery and that's when they discovered it. She had a sputum test last week, and we are waiting 2 weeks for the doctor to explain the results to us. They said they wanted to delay her appointment, so they can let the culture sit a bit longer before they can determine what course of antibioics she should take. We are just trying to figure out what may have caused this as she Was a distance runner and worked for 20 years in a very polluted area of the Midwest Where several companies have been fined billions of dollars were such. We are also concern that she may have obtained it from gardening her entire life and working with soil. Thank you so much for your feedback. It's greatly appreciated.