page_title: Urban exploration
section_title: Safety and legality
hierarchical_section_title: Urban exploration / Safety and legality
caption_attribution_description: English: A junky's heroin kit in a Jack Daniels tin at an abandoned house in East Texas
context_page_description: Urban exploration is the exploration of manmade structures, usually abandoned ruins or hidden components of the manmade environment. Photography and historical interest/documentation are heavily featured in the hobby and it sometimes involves trespassing onto private property. Urban exploration is also called draining, urban spelunking, urban rock climbing, urban caving, building hacking, or mousing.
  The activity presents various risks, including both physical danger and, if done illegally and/or without permission, the possibility of arrest and punishment. Some activities associated with urban exploration violate local or regional laws and certain broadly interpreted anti-terrorism laws, or can be considered trespassing or invasion of privacy.
context_section_description: Urban exploration comes with a number of inherent dangers. For example, storm drains are not designed with human access as their primary use. They can be subject to flash flooding and bad air. There have been a number of deaths in storm water drains, but these are usually during floods, and the victims are normally not urban explorers.
  Many abandoned structures have hazards such as unstable structures, unsafe floors, broken glass, stray voltage, entrapment hazards, or unknown chemicals and other harmful substances (most notably asbestos). Other risks include freely roaming guard dogs and hostile squatters. Some abandoned locations may be heavily guarded by motion detectors and active security patrols, while others are more easily accessible and carry less risk of discovery.
  Asbestos is a long-term health risk for urban explorers, along with contaminants from dried bird feces, which can cause pigeon-breeder's lung, a form of hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Urban explorers may use dust masks and respirators to mitigate this danger. Some sites are occasionally used by substance abusers for recreation or waste disposal, and there may be used or infected syringes en route, such as those commonly used for heroin injection.
  The activity's growing popularity has resulted in increased attention not just from explorers but also from vandals and law enforcement. The illicit aspects of urban exploring, which may include trespassing and breaking and entering, have had critical attention in mainstream newspapers.
  In Australia, lawyers for the Roads and Traffic Authority of New South Wales shut down the Sydney Cave Clan's website after they raised concerns that the portal could "risk human safety and threaten the security of its infrastructure". Another website belonging to the Bangor Explorers Guild was criticized by the Maine State Police for encouraging behavior that "could get someone hurt or killed". The Toronto Transit Commission has used the Internet to crimp subway tunnel explorations, going as far as to send investigators to various explorers' homes.
  Jeff Chapman, who authored Infiltration, writes that genuine urban explorers "never vandalize, steal or damage anything". The thrill comes from "discovery and a few nice pictures". Some explorers also request permission for entry in advance.
caption: A heroin addict's injection kit in a Jack Daniels tin, found in an abandoned house in East Texas
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