Epidemic Of Kidney Failure In Nepalese Workers In ME Previews What A Hotter Future Means

[hatrack]

Head nurse Rani Jha circled around her busy kidney ward, reeling off the list of patients who were too young, too sick, too many to count. There, lying against the far wall, was Tilak Kumar Shah, who had worked in construction for seven years in the Persian Gulf before collapsing. The next bed had belonged to Mohan Yadav, who had labored in Qatar — until he died two weeks earlier. Next to Jha’s cubicle, huddling quietly under a blanket, was another typical case: Suraj Thapa Magar, a shy 28-year-old who had left his mud hut in Nepal to install windows on skyscrapers in Kuwait, often dangling by a rope in the scorching, 120-degree purgatory between the sun and the desert.

Jha ran her finger through a large notebook filled with names written neatly in ink. About 20 percent of the dialysis patients at the Second Provincial Hospital in southern Nepal were healthy young men before they went abroad to work, she estimated. Why did they keep getting sick and ending up back here? “Heat,” she said.

In recent years, scientists and groups including the International Labor Organization have increasingly warned about the deadly, yet often overlooked, link between exposure to extreme heat and chronic kidney disease. Exactly how heat scars and cripples the microscopic tubes in the organs is still debated, researchers say, but the correlation is clear. That link has been observed among workers toiling in rice fields in Sri Lanka and steamy factories in Malaysia, from Central America to the Persian Gulf. As the world grows hotter and climate change ushers in more frequent and extreme heat waves, public health experts fear kidney disease cases will soar among laborers who have no choice but to work outdoors.

“These epidemics of chronic kidney disease that have surfaced … [are] just the beginning,” said Richard Johnson, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado who is studying pockets of kidney disease globally. “As it gets hotter, we expect to see these diseases emerge elsewhere.” In an April statement on climate change, the American Society of Nephrology warned that “the confluence of socioeconomic, geographic, and climate change risk factors may increase the incidence of kidney disease.” The association of kidney specialists noted that global surface temperatures are expected to rise by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by mid-century, and pointed to one population of particular concern: the global poor who must work “in an increasingly hostile outdoor environment.”

EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/06/climate-change-heat-kidney-disease/

[aggiesal]

1. Constant dehydration n/t

[usaf-vet]

7. Agreed, that would seem to me to be the most likely explanation of a significant contributing factor

I would bet that not every worker is being supplied with a CamelBak Hydration Pack and an adequate supply of fresh water.

The U.S. military issues them to everyone in extreme temperature zones.

[Marthe48]

2. My daughter is a renal dietitian

and my best friend lived with kidney disease for years before she got a transplant. Any kind of kidney disease is difficult to live with, and requires high maintenance and attention to details. Even if you are lucky enough to get a transplant, you get another kind of maintenance with the new kidney.

Humans weren't built to work in extremes, and yet, the employers insist on things getting done, and employees comply. Even individuals working for themeselves, or their families do more work than they should given harsh conditions.

Maybe frequent breaks out of the heat, rotating employees during the day shifts, lots of water, lots of toilet breaks, lower salt and phospherous in the diet would head some of the cases off.

[markodochartaigh]

3. Lethal wet bulb temperature

was previously thought to be 35 C, but recently studies have shown that it can be as low as 31 C. Our bodies were meant to function within certain parameters and increasingly these parameters are being breached.
https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/humans-cant-endure-temperatures-and-humidities-high-previously-thought/

[Botany]

4. This is happening all over the world. 20,000 excess deaths in Europe last summer and early fall

https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/europes-heatwave-may-have-caused-more-than-20000-excess-deaths-2022-11-24/

Nov 24 (Reuters) - Summer heatwaves in France, Germany, Spain and Britain led to more than 20,000 "excess" deaths, a report compiling official figures said on Thursday.

Temperatures hit nearly 40 degrees Celsius or above from Paris to London in 2022 and climate scientists from the World Weather Attribution group found that such high temperatures would have been "virtually impossible" without climate change.

snip

Heat can kill by inducing heatstroke, which damages the brain, kidneys and other organs, but it can also trigger other conditions such as a heart attack or breathing problems.

The World Meteorological Organization said this month that Europe had warmed more than twice as much as the rest of the world over the past three decades, while the Copernicus Climate Change Service said summer 2022 was the hottest on record.

***********

[Farmer-Rick]

5. There is something much worse causing kidney disease

It's Round Up.

"kidney damage was observed to occur following the regular use of Roundup in a group of people in Sri Lanka who were growing rice."

It's the combination of Round Up, high heat and hard water that is a deadly cocktail for your kidneys. This combination is also seen in the American South.

"Kidney disease was first reported in Sri Lanka workers who had been using Roundup in 1990 when several hundreds of individuals were diagnosed with kidney failure, even though none had the common trigger factors of diabetes or high blood pressure. The majority of the people who experienced kidney failure were male farmers between the ages of 30 and 60."

"Sarath Gunatilake and Channa Jayasumana, both scientists from Sri Lanka, had "faced death threats and claims of research misconduct while working to determine the cause of a kidney disease epidemic that has claimed tens of thousands of lives in their home country of Sri Lanka and around the world.""

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.atraxialaw.com/news/roundup-serious-kidney-liver-problems/amp/

The filthy rich corporate elite who have taken over the agriculture business would like you to think it isn't caused by Round Up.

Blame it on the heat instead. And the excessive heat on our only planet is caused by another group of filthy rich corporate elites....the Koch Bros and their oil and gas monopolies.

[NickB79]

8. Except it's happening not just in farmers. The OP talked about city and factory workers

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/26/753834371/whatever-happened-to-the-mysterious-kidney-disease-striking-central-america

The first person named in the article in the OP was a window installer in Kuwait. Last I checked, Kuwait doesn't have fields of Roundup-Ready corn and soy.

The only way it could be caused by agricultural chemicals is if the water sources for entire cities was heavily contaminated, to explain non-farm labor being afflicted. And there are some soil-present heavy metals that could explain that. But we have much heavier glyphosate loads throughout much of the US without a similar spate of unexplained kidney failure, even in the Deep South.

It's also worth noting that, 7 years after glyphosate being banned, CKDu rates didn't fall in Sri Lanka, despite the use of reverse osmosis systems to purify water sources.

[jaxexpat]

6. This will continue to be problematic until engineers are directed toward costly efforts of redesign.

Prefabrication and compartmentalized installation can eliminate the need for workers to be outside of climate-controlled conditions. The problem is that the bottom-line cost of building will probably double, at least initially, until the method becomes standard practice. In the world of lenders, investors and developers that means "prohibitively expensive". Meanwhile, there's no motivation to make the least change so long as slave labor is available and so long as the wealthy are allowed to exist.

How badly does Kuwait need that skyscraper? Can the world tolerate the conditions wherein people ruin their health to construct a building they'll NEVER be allowed to even enter?

The most "luxurious" project I personally worked on was a Hilton Garden Inn. It is by no means an unattainable dream to stay there for most. While it was going up, the utter unfairness sickened me as I knew those Nicaraguans and Romanians covered in the mud, sweat and dust of their trade could never afford such accommodations without financial ruin. I made their foremen have them take shade breaks at least twice per day in addition to their lunch time. It stunned them a little for the first few days. Otherwise, they'd work 10-12 hrs. with only a few minutes to choke down a taco from the "roach" wagon.