6 ms·

A mysterious kidney disease has arrived in Texas

96 points by johntfella 28d ago

doc_ick 28d ago
Don’t worry, raw milk will save the day *they said crying
- zahlman 27d ago
  What are you even talking about?
  - deleted 27d ago
    [deleted]
  - doc_ick 27d ago
    Just the lack of regulation becoming an issue
ggm 28d ago
A disease which targets latinx? seems more likely its field workers, inadequate hydration and bad fluid hygene overall. Could be culturally diet influenced as well. My urologist after I had my first oxalate kidney stone said "you can drink a litre of water a day, or you can pay for my yacht upgrade. It's your choice" -but the main thing was to limit oxalate rich foods or take adequate citric acid alongside/soon after. Obv there are many kinds of kidney disease aside from stones, but the commonality here about 'use it or lose it' with heat, fluids, work strikes me.
- tptacek 28d ago
  Hard to imagine a diet of cultural significance that would put people into lifelong dialysis, at an epidemic scale.
  - nine_k 28d ago
    A diet that makes a particular infection easier to take root is very imaginable.
    - bawolff 28d ago
      sure, but not if we are just suddenly seeing it now. Most cultural based diets have a long history.
      - masklinn 28d ago
        They do, but it does not take much for economic pressure to make one seemingly small change with wide ramifications e.g. a plant or two which are not economically viable, get substituted, and turn out to be critical, then leading to chronic deficiencies (iirc the British navy got scurvy back after they switched from lemons to cheaper limes, or maybe between two kinds of limes and one had significantly lower levels of vit c). It could also be interactions between the cultural diets and new products historically unavailable to that culture, which are either improperly processed (maize caused a lot of pellagra in europe) or has problematic interactions with components of the cultural diet (I don’t have an example for that, but grapefruit is famous for its medical interactions so nutritional interactions don’t seem impossible). I don’t think it should be the first thread of investigation but it certainly should not be dismissed out of hand if nothing else bears fruit. That is how you get scurvy.
      - deleted 28d ago
        [deleted]
      - Someone 27d ago
        > but not if we are just suddenly seeing it now FTA: “Fischer and her collaborators combed through the medical records of patients who had received emergency dialysis between 2012 and 2015 at any Harris Health hospital. Out of the 346 cases of kidney failure in uninsured or undocumented patients, 17 percent had no readily identifiable cause. That percentage was staggering to the researchers. It suggested that thousands of emergency-dialysis visits in Texas annually may be attributable to CKDu“ ⇒ it seems (part of) the reason we suddenly started seeing this is that we recently started looking for it.
- card_zero 28d ago
  What's the popular food that contains lots of oxalates? I don't see anyone binging on sorrel or star fruit or parsley.
  - thelastgallon 28d ago
    Spinach. Maybe other leafy vegetables.
    - 4lx87 28d ago
      Spinach is very high per serving, but all sorts of foods can have high oxalates per serving. Sweet potato, Swiss chard, almonds, beets, chocolate. You'd have to consult the content per serving for all foods you consume if you're trying to avoid them.
  - christophilus 28d ago
    It’s in loads of things. Peanuts, spinach, beans, chocolate, avocados, corn, soy… the list is endless. If someone is really sensitive, they can have problems with high oxalate foods. Some people seem to accumulate oxalates, meaning their problems compound, where others have no problem at all. Biology is weird.
    - randcraw 27d ago
      It turns out that some foods counteract the formation of kidney stones. If you drink milk when you eat oxalates, the oxalates will not fuse into stones and will be excreted normally in your urine. Oxalates are present in tea too, though not coffee, IIRC.
  - jrootabega 28d ago
    Spinach and almonds.
    - card_zero 28d ago
      I'm frequenting clinics 'Cos I eats my spinach, I've kidney the failure, man
- phyzome 28d ago
  For your explanation to be correct, you'd have to explain why this doesn't affect field workers of other genetic background all around the world.
  - throwup238 28d ago
    It does. This article is about Latino workers but there are well known hotspots for CKDu in Sri Lanka and India. There’s other reports of it in the rest of Asia, Middle East, and Africa but its not as well known of an issue and under reported.
- kulahan 28d ago
  I feel like this is the medical equivalent of saying "I can't believe these guys didn't try turning it off and on again". Like, "maybe the people whose job is to consider the cause and spread of disease never considered diet and hydration!"
  - ggm 28d ago
    Yes, that occurred to me after I posted. Obviously they believe strongly there's some novel causes at play. Soil borne bacteria, fungi/mould, pesticide, genetics. They wouldn't publish otherwise. And, given climatic shifts we're already seening effects like zoolnotic disease movement so it could be parasite migration too. We've had odd pockets of diseases cropping up like malaria at European airports because of surviving mozzie infestations on inbound flights, and zika happened.
    - ggm 28d ago
      In my defence this from TFA: Much like public debates over climate change, discussions about the role of heat stress in CKDu can be contentious. Some close observers, such as Glaser, have argued that heat alone is sufficient to cause CKDu. His stance has been bolstered by the success of interventions that encourage sugarcane cutters to rest more often in the shade and stay hydrated. Such measures have slashed rates of kidney injury among workers. Yet other experts, including Fischer, aren’t convinced. Fischer doesn’t doubt that heat is involved, only that it’s the sole cause. She cites findings from studies that were unable to conclusively rule out pesticides, heavy metals, and other environmental conditions as factors. And some of the highest rates of CKDu in Central America are among shrimp farmers, for whom heat stress is far less of an issue than it is for sugarcane cutters. She says high temperatures and dehydration likely amplify kidney damage from other contributors. “I think the role of heat is a complicating factor. It complicates whatever the disease pathology or physiology is,” she says. “I don’t think it’s a disease initiator.”
- WhereIsTheTruth 28d ago
  > A disease which targets latinx? seems more likely its field workers, inadequate hydration and bad fluid hygene overall. "has arrived" Did working condition worsen over time? if yes, then maybe If not, then COVID proved that we are past the idea of a theoretical biowar, it is already happening
  - orwin 28d ago
    > Did working condition worsen over time? if yes, then maybe I've read in this thread that Texas removed provisions for a mandatory hydration/sunscreen break after 4 hours of work.
- GaryBluto 28d ago
  >latinx Is the LatinX the new release after the Latin8?
  - Cthulhu_ 28d ago
    It's white people virtue signaling and forcing ungendered words into a gendered language, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx > Latinx does not adhere to conventional grammatical gender rules in Spanish, is difficult to pronounce for Spanish speakers, and is criticized as showing disrespect towards the Spanish language as a whole.[1] In Latin America, terms such as Latine and Latin@ have been used to indicate gender-neutrality
- Hnrobert42 28d ago
  I appreciate the attempt to be gender neutral, but it turns out that Latinos themselves generally do not prefer the term Latinx. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
  - mapotofu 27d ago
    I think you’re being generous because I find this behavior quite disrespectful. Presumably they did so to signal and then talk about themselves.
- bsagdiyev 27d ago
  Please do not refer to us as "latinx". That's disgusting.
profsummergig 28d ago
are these the same workers who pluck vegetables while they're being sprayed with pesticides and herbicides?
- b112 28d ago
  I hope not, as every pesticide spray I know cannot be used near harvest time.
  - soulofmischief 28d ago
    I worked on a small organic farm and I can attest that glyphosate was sprayed irregardless of season, because technically an adjacent unused field isn't the same field being harvested. However I can also attest to strong winds that easily carry nebulized particles across fields. I also fondly remember being provided no PPE and breathing in clouds of that shit and getting it all over my skin frequently.
    - b112 28d ago
      That seems... unpleasant, and a good poit to make.
    - doc_ick 22d ago
      I’m sure that wasn’t healthy and left some kind of mark.
bamboozled 28d ago
I wonder if this is what regulations were for?
EA-3167 28d ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11093537/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11093537/ The best guesses are both chronic rather than single acute injuries. High heat, dehydration, hard work, exposure to nitrites and who knows what else. It’s mysterious because the specific etiology is unclear and therefore hard to prevent, since telling field workers not to work in the heat will be ignored by all involved.
- junofan 28d ago
  Check the references. They’re weak, almost ouroboric. I found this: (2010) Positive association of renal insufficiency with agriculture employment and unregulated alcohol consumption in Nicaragua https://doi.org/10.3109/0886022X.2010.494333 https://doi.org/10.3109/0886022X.2010.494333 Essentially moonshine consumption. Interestingly drinking more water was associated with worse outcomes. I would hesitate to point to dehydration without evidence, as a harmful remedy is worse than doing nothing. Moonshine consumption could probably be investigated further as it carries explanatory power.
bawolff 28d ago
Did these people never have a blood test/urine test prior to this? Normal Kidney disease should show up on tests long before the stage of collapsing. I'm not a doctor, but if its sudden onset, all in a similar socio-economic-cultutal group, i would assume there was some sort of toxin they were all exposed to, perhaps at work.
- trentor 28d ago
  I get doing a blood panel once a year or so if you are not scraping by but never heard of doing a urine test without indication.
  - thaeli 28d ago
    A routine urinalysis has always been part of my normal annual physicals.
    - cratermoon 28d ago
      Bold of you to think undocumented workers making subsistence wages under a brutal system have access to annual physicals, much less the sort of continuously documented medical history needed to spot and address abnormalities before they become life-threatening emergencies.
- TranquilMarmot 28d ago
  I assume that they do not have regular access to medical care, especially if they are immigrant workers. Anecdotally, I have chronic kidney disease that would not have shown up on routine bloodwork / urinalysis. Only after multiple acute episodes did I get a biopsy for a diagnosis, and even that took a year of bouncing between specialists in a big city with good healthcare.
- stevenwoo 28d ago
  It’s mentioned in the article it’s been documented in Central America for more than ten years in manual laborers but with few clues - possibly genetic predisposition combined with heat and physical exertion. It’s different types of manual labor so toxin exposure seems unlikely unless it turns out all of them got poisoned doing the same type of manual labor at one point and I would speculate they would have figured it out by now in Central America if it was toxin exposure. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/26/753834371/whatever-happened-to-the-mysterious-kidney-disease-striking-central-america https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/26/7538343...
anenefan 28d ago
I wasn't able to beat the bot wall, but I assume story close to [1] The thing of it is I'm aware of something very much the same - heat related kidney damage - something when I got a casual job with construction back in 2005, within the first couple of weeks I was warned rather pointedly by another worker who'd spent most of his working life around concreting and construction, of the dangers of long hours spend slouched over working on the concrete slabs. He had known many who'd got very ill despite following good hydration protocols [2], and knew working in the heat out on the slab came with this real risk. I being a new chum was dressed in heavy full length clothing, he generally wore cooler clothing - light shorts and short sleeved shirt which wasn't protocol for the job. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davereddick_mysterious-kidney-disease-has-arrived-activity-7501234767816757248-LVvE https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davereddick_mysterious-kidney... [2] Most labouring job sites I've been at in the 00s at least always had a very prominent chart regarding urine colour and the dangers of dehydration, and heat stroke. As such most workers at various sites I've worked at being much more aware of urine colour regarding dehydration than most of the medical staff I encountered at the hospital my Mum died in. Edit: Forgot to mention my locale is North Queensland Australia - it gets fairly hot though summers.
- paulcole 28d ago
  > I wasn't able to beat the bot wall Most people have access to at least one 16-digit code that will do the trick.
  - anenefan 28d ago
    Well what that 16 digit code might be I am unaware. I used to be able to unpick java based stuff to bypass walls but these days I really just don't try too hard, typically a site these days isn't a single site but uses other external services - I have many such services denied for scraping PII needlessly. I could try a different browser - but in the time I wait for the site to decide if I'm not a bot, if I'm that invested, I've already done a quick search of topic heading and ...
    - Terr_ 28d ago
sleepyguy 28d ago
Most of the roofers today in Texas are pretty damn young (16 - 30 tops). You don't really make it past that age because you're already worn out. The crew (10 guys) that showed up to roof my house went through at least 5 cases of Gatorade, I have a fridge in the garage that I filled with drinks. I told them to help themselves after seeing them pull a hot bottle of water from one of the trucks. These guys didn't even have a cooler with cold water. I suppose at some point water/hydration isn't good enough, they need salt and electrolytes to balance things out. They think wearing long pants and shirts acts as an insulator from the heat but in my opinion it's nuts, they need to cover up but, in the lightest possible clothing they can wear that breaths. The same goes for the landscapers who work outside all day. It wouldn't surprise me if they are dying from the heat, it is merciless here in the summer. Even the birds fly away....
- Brybry 28d ago
  OSHA has a proposed heat injury prevention rule that would make 80F (heat index) and 90F (optionally 95F, heat index) as initial and high heat trigger temperatures. With the initial heat temperature, workers would need to be provided water and a break area that's shaded or air conditioned (it can also have a fan but employers must evaluate that the fan is used at the appropriate temperature and humidity and not cooking or dehydrating people). Interestingly the CDC warns not to use fans above 90F, which is much lower than the ~102F limit OSHA suggests. [1][2][3] With high heat temperature, 15 minute breaks in the cooling area are required every 2 hours along with some buddy system/monitoring requirements. [4] The notice of proposed rulemaking has a wealth of interesting study citations for risks (including kidney health issues) and risk reduction but it's a lot to even skim through. I think a systematic review they cited suggested "hats; loose fitting, light/brightly colored/reflective, breathable, clothing; ventilation patches in PPE" for optimal clothing. But I do wonder if optimal clothing might vary based on temperature and humidity. As a Louisianian, I don't know how the roofers do it. Sometimes it's so hot and humid it's rough to breathe outside just standing doing nothing. [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-2907 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-2907 [2] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-596 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-596 [3] https://www.cdc.gov/heat-health/about/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/heat-health/about/index.html [4] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-2932 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-2932
creativeSlumber 28d ago
> Researchers had found signs of CKDu outside Central America, including in Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal. But it had never been documented in the United States. I searched a bit more and found this interesting bit from an article talking about a similar epidemic in Sri Lanka. > An analysis showed that trace metal ions such as calcium and magnesium that naturally occur in the hard water reacted with glyphosate. This meant that, instead of breaking down rapidly, glyphosate was able to persist in the environment for up to seven years in water and twenty-two years in soil. https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/mysterious-kidney-illness-rising-among-sri-lankan-farmers https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/mysterious-kidney-...
- declan_roberts 28d ago
  We should be seeing it all over America in that case.
- cyberax 28d ago
  > This meant that, instead of breaking down rapidly, glyphosate was able to persist in the environment for up to seven years in water and twenty-two years in soil. Bulllshiiiitttt. There are no reputable studies that show anything like this.
  - anenefan 27d ago
    The tl;dr - even if there were reputable studies, what do the results mean or imply exactly? There is a study [1] which was via information from the link from the parent comment. Interpretation of results though is the issue. From their method of study, to myself it's clear that storing heavy mineralised ground water in a used Glyphosate spray tank or product drum, is a not a very good idea given the results of the study. It is though a different story for the groundwater given that degradation in soil [2] [3] is measured in half lives and depends on many factors. As for detection - there may well be some complex of Glyphosate that has resisted breaking down a couple decades later, but one would expect the amount would probably be far less that the allowable or typical amount of Glyphosate found in food from crops that have been sprayed with it prior to harvest. The other question is what breakdown complexes are they measuring for detecting Glyphosate. For years roundup was though to be still be at higher levels of use than it should have been after it was phased out in some European countries ... based on levels detected in rivers. [4] [5] and the preprint via [6] indicate that some detergents were to blame for the higher detection level. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41580968/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41580968/ [2] https://pdf.benchchem.com/1263/Glyphosate_s_Fate_An_In_depth_Technical_Guide_to_its_Degradation_Pathways_in_Soil_and_Water.pdf https://pdf.benchchem.com/1263/Glyphosate_s_Fate_An_In_depth... [pdf] [3] https://greenfieldesg.com/how-long-does-roundup-last-in-the-soil/ https://greenfieldesg.com/how-long-does-roundup-last-in-the-... [4] https://phys.org/news/2024-07-glyphosate-european-rivers-farming.html https://phys.org/news/2024-07-glyphosate-european-rivers-far... [5]https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/university/news-and-publications/press-releases/press-releases/article/most-of-the-glyphosate-in-our-rivers-may-not-come-from-farming/ https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/university/news-and-publications... [6] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378883530_Glyphosate_contamination_in_European_rivers_not_from_herbicide_application https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378883530_Glyphosat... -> [Preprint] https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3917957/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3917957/v1
0xDEAFBEAD 27d ago
"His bosses severely limited water breaks, even on the hottest days. He didn’t complain. He simply lived with constant fatigue." How stupid can you be, forcing your employees to work while tired? Give them a break to drink water, they'll have more energy and get more stuff done. Maybe someone needs to buy these businesses and run them in a more efficient and humane way.
deleted 27d ago
[deleted]

96 points by johntfella 28d ago

doc_ick 28d ago

Don’t worry, raw milk will save the day *they said crying

zahlman 27d ago
What are you even talking about?
- deleted 27d ago
  [deleted]
- doc_ick 27d ago
  Just the lack of regulation becoming an issue

ggm 28d ago

A disease which targets latinx? seems more likely its field workers, inadequate hydration and bad fluid hygene overall. Could be culturally diet influenced as well. My urologist after I had my first oxalate kidney stone said "you can drink a litre of water a day, or you can pay for my yacht upgrade. It's your choice" -but the main thing was to limit oxalate rich foods or take adequate citric acid alongside/soon after. Obv there are many kinds of kidney disease aside from stones, but the commonality here about 'use it or lose it' with heat, fluids, work strikes me.

tptacek 28d ago
Hard to imagine a diet of cultural significance that would put people into lifelong dialysis, at an epidemic scale.
- nine_k 28d ago
  A diet that makes a particular infection easier to take root is very imaginable.
  - bawolff 28d ago
    sure, but not if we are just suddenly seeing it now. Most cultural based diets have a long history.
    - masklinn 28d ago
      They do, but it does not take much for economic pressure to make one seemingly small change with wide ramifications e.g. a plant or two which are not economically viable, get substituted, and turn out to be critical, then leading to chronic deficiencies (iirc the British navy got scurvy back after they switched from lemons to cheaper limes, or maybe between two kinds of limes and one had significantly lower levels of vit c). It could also be interactions between the cultural diets and new products historically unavailable to that culture, which are either improperly processed (maize caused a lot of pellagra in europe) or has problematic interactions with components of the cultural diet (I don’t have an example for that, but grapefruit is famous for its medical interactions so nutritional interactions don’t seem impossible). I don’t think it should be the first thread of investigation but it certainly should not be dismissed out of hand if nothing else bears fruit. That is how you get scurvy.
    - deleted 28d ago
      [deleted]
    - Someone 27d ago
      > but not if we are just suddenly seeing it now FTA: “Fischer and her collaborators combed through the medical records of patients who had received emergency dialysis between 2012 and 2015 at any Harris Health hospital. Out of the 346 cases of kidney failure in uninsured or undocumented patients, 17 percent had no readily identifiable cause. That percentage was staggering to the researchers. It suggested that thousands of emergency-dialysis visits in Texas annually may be attributable to CKDu“ ⇒ it seems (part of) the reason we suddenly started seeing this is that we recently started looking for it.
card_zero 28d ago
What's the popular food that contains lots of oxalates? I don't see anyone binging on sorrel or star fruit or parsley.
- thelastgallon 28d ago
  Spinach. Maybe other leafy vegetables.
  - 4lx87 28d ago
    Spinach is very high per serving, but all sorts of foods can have high oxalates per serving. Sweet potato, Swiss chard, almonds, beets, chocolate. You'd have to consult the content per serving for all foods you consume if you're trying to avoid them.
- christophilus 28d ago
  It’s in loads of things. Peanuts, spinach, beans, chocolate, avocados, corn, soy… the list is endless. If someone is really sensitive, they can have problems with high oxalate foods. Some people seem to accumulate oxalates, meaning their problems compound, where others have no problem at all. Biology is weird.
  - randcraw 27d ago
    It turns out that some foods counteract the formation of kidney stones. If you drink milk when you eat oxalates, the oxalates will not fuse into stones and will be excreted normally in your urine. Oxalates are present in tea too, though not coffee, IIRC.
- jrootabega 28d ago
  Spinach and almonds.
  - card_zero 28d ago
    I'm frequenting clinics 'Cos I eats my spinach, I've kidney the failure, man
phyzome 28d ago
For your explanation to be correct, you'd have to explain why this doesn't affect field workers of other genetic background all around the world.
- throwup238 28d ago
  It does. This article is about Latino workers but there are well known hotspots for CKDu in Sri Lanka and India. There’s other reports of it in the rest of Asia, Middle East, and Africa but its not as well known of an issue and under reported.
kulahan 28d ago
I feel like this is the medical equivalent of saying "I can't believe these guys didn't try turning it off and on again". Like, "maybe the people whose job is to consider the cause and spread of disease never considered diet and hydration!"
- ggm 28d ago
  Yes, that occurred to me after I posted. Obviously they believe strongly there's some novel causes at play. Soil borne bacteria, fungi/mould, pesticide, genetics. They wouldn't publish otherwise. And, given climatic shifts we're already seening effects like zoolnotic disease movement so it could be parasite migration too. We've had odd pockets of diseases cropping up like malaria at European airports because of surviving mozzie infestations on inbound flights, and zika happened.
  - ggm 28d ago
    In my defence this from TFA: Much like public debates over climate change, discussions about the role of heat stress in CKDu can be contentious. Some close observers, such as Glaser, have argued that heat alone is sufficient to cause CKDu. His stance has been bolstered by the success of interventions that encourage sugarcane cutters to rest more often in the shade and stay hydrated. Such measures have slashed rates of kidney injury among workers. Yet other experts, including Fischer, aren’t convinced. Fischer doesn’t doubt that heat is involved, only that it’s the sole cause. She cites findings from studies that were unable to conclusively rule out pesticides, heavy metals, and other environmental conditions as factors. And some of the highest rates of CKDu in Central America are among shrimp farmers, for whom heat stress is far less of an issue than it is for sugarcane cutters. She says high temperatures and dehydration likely amplify kidney damage from other contributors. “I think the role of heat is a complicating factor. It complicates whatever the disease pathology or physiology is,” she says. “I don’t think it’s a disease initiator.”
WhereIsTheTruth 28d ago
> A disease which targets latinx? seems more likely its field workers, inadequate hydration and bad fluid hygene overall. "has arrived" Did working condition worsen over time? if yes, then maybe If not, then COVID proved that we are past the idea of a theoretical biowar, it is already happening
- orwin 28d ago
  > Did working condition worsen over time? if yes, then maybe I've read in this thread that Texas removed provisions for a mandatory hydration/sunscreen break after 4 hours of work.
GaryBluto 28d ago
>latinx Is the LatinX the new release after the Latin8?
- Cthulhu_ 28d ago
  It's white people virtue signaling and forcing ungendered words into a gendered language, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx > Latinx does not adhere to conventional grammatical gender rules in Spanish, is difficult to pronounce for Spanish speakers, and is criticized as showing disrespect towards the Spanish language as a whole.[1] In Latin America, terms such as Latine and Latin@ have been used to indicate gender-neutrality
Hnrobert42 28d ago
I appreciate the attempt to be gender neutral, but it turns out that Latinos themselves generally do not prefer the term Latinx. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
- mapotofu 27d ago
  I think you’re being generous because I find this behavior quite disrespectful. Presumably they did so to signal and then talk about themselves.
bsagdiyev 27d ago
Please do not refer to us as "latinx". That's disgusting.

profsummergig 28d ago

are these the same workers who pluck vegetables while they're being sprayed with pesticides and herbicides?

b112 28d ago
I hope not, as every pesticide spray I know cannot be used near harvest time.
- soulofmischief 28d ago
  I worked on a small organic farm and I can attest that glyphosate was sprayed irregardless of season, because technically an adjacent unused field isn't the same field being harvested. However I can also attest to strong winds that easily carry nebulized particles across fields. I also fondly remember being provided no PPE and breathing in clouds of that shit and getting it all over my skin frequently.
  - b112 28d ago
    That seems... unpleasant, and a good poit to make.
  - doc_ick 22d ago
    I’m sure that wasn’t healthy and left some kind of mark.

bamboozled 28d ago

I wonder if this is what regulations were for?

EA-3167 28d ago

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11093537/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11093537/ The best guesses are both chronic rather than single acute injuries. High heat, dehydration, hard work, exposure to nitrites and who knows what else. It’s mysterious because the specific etiology is unclear and therefore hard to prevent, since telling field workers not to work in the heat will be ignored by all involved.

junofan 28d ago
Check the references. They’re weak, almost ouroboric. I found this: (2010) Positive association of renal insufficiency with agriculture employment and unregulated alcohol consumption in Nicaragua https://doi.org/10.3109/0886022X.2010.494333 https://doi.org/10.3109/0886022X.2010.494333 Essentially moonshine consumption. Interestingly drinking more water was associated with worse outcomes. I would hesitate to point to dehydration without evidence, as a harmful remedy is worse than doing nothing. Moonshine consumption could probably be investigated further as it carries explanatory power.

bawolff 28d ago

Did these people never have a blood test/urine test prior to this? Normal Kidney disease should show up on tests long before the stage of collapsing. I'm not a doctor, but if its sudden onset, all in a similar socio-economic-cultutal group, i would assume there was some sort of toxin they were all exposed to, perhaps at work.

trentor 28d ago
I get doing a blood panel once a year or so if you are not scraping by but never heard of doing a urine test without indication.
- thaeli 28d ago
  A routine urinalysis has always been part of my normal annual physicals.
  - cratermoon 28d ago
    Bold of you to think undocumented workers making subsistence wages under a brutal system have access to annual physicals, much less the sort of continuously documented medical history needed to spot and address abnormalities before they become life-threatening emergencies.
TranquilMarmot 28d ago
I assume that they do not have regular access to medical care, especially if they are immigrant workers. Anecdotally, I have chronic kidney disease that would not have shown up on routine bloodwork / urinalysis. Only after multiple acute episodes did I get a biopsy for a diagnosis, and even that took a year of bouncing between specialists in a big city with good healthcare.
stevenwoo 28d ago
It’s mentioned in the article it’s been documented in Central America for more than ten years in manual laborers but with few clues - possibly genetic predisposition combined with heat and physical exertion. It’s different types of manual labor so toxin exposure seems unlikely unless it turns out all of them got poisoned doing the same type of manual labor at one point and I would speculate they would have figured it out by now in Central America if it was toxin exposure. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/26/753834371/whatever-happened-to-the-mysterious-kidney-disease-striking-central-america https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/26/7538343...

anenefan 28d ago

I wasn't able to beat the bot wall, but I assume story close to [1] The thing of it is I'm aware of something very much the same - heat related kidney damage - something when I got a casual job with construction back in 2005, within the first couple of weeks I was warned rather pointedly by another worker who'd spent most of his working life around concreting and construction, of the dangers of long hours spend slouched over working on the concrete slabs. He had known many who'd got very ill despite following good hydration protocols [2], and knew working in the heat out on the slab came with this real risk. I being a new chum was dressed in heavy full length clothing, he generally wore cooler clothing - light shorts and short sleeved shirt which wasn't protocol for the job. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davereddick_mysterious-kidney-disease-has-arrived-activity-7501234767816757248-LVvE https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davereddick_mysterious-kidney... [2] Most labouring job sites I've been at in the 00s at least always had a very prominent chart regarding urine colour and the dangers of dehydration, and heat stroke. As such most workers at various sites I've worked at being much more aware of urine colour regarding dehydration than most of the medical staff I encountered at the hospital my Mum died in. Edit: Forgot to mention my locale is North Queensland Australia - it gets fairly hot though summers.

paulcole 28d ago
> I wasn't able to beat the bot wall Most people have access to at least one 16-digit code that will do the trick.
- anenefan 28d ago
  Well what that 16 digit code might be I am unaware. I used to be able to unpick java based stuff to bypass walls but these days I really just don't try too hard, typically a site these days isn't a single site but uses other external services - I have many such services denied for scraping PII needlessly. I could try a different browser - but in the time I wait for the site to decide if I'm not a bot, if I'm that invested, I've already done a quick search of topic heading and ...
  - Terr_ 28d ago

sleepyguy 28d ago

Most of the roofers today in Texas are pretty damn young (16 - 30 tops). You don't really make it past that age because you're already worn out. The crew (10 guys) that showed up to roof my house went through at least 5 cases of Gatorade, I have a fridge in the garage that I filled with drinks. I told them to help themselves after seeing them pull a hot bottle of water from one of the trucks. These guys didn't even have a cooler with cold water. I suppose at some point water/hydration isn't good enough, they need salt and electrolytes to balance things out. They think wearing long pants and shirts acts as an insulator from the heat but in my opinion it's nuts, they need to cover up but, in the lightest possible clothing they can wear that breaths. The same goes for the landscapers who work outside all day. It wouldn't surprise me if they are dying from the heat, it is merciless here in the summer. Even the birds fly away....

Brybry 28d ago
OSHA has a proposed heat injury prevention rule that would make 80F (heat index) and 90F (optionally 95F, heat index) as initial and high heat trigger temperatures. With the initial heat temperature, workers would need to be provided water and a break area that's shaded or air conditioned (it can also have a fan but employers must evaluate that the fan is used at the appropriate temperature and humidity and not cooking or dehydrating people). Interestingly the CDC warns not to use fans above 90F, which is much lower than the ~102F limit OSHA suggests. [1][2][3] With high heat temperature, 15 minute breaks in the cooling area are required every 2 hours along with some buddy system/monitoring requirements. [4] The notice of proposed rulemaking has a wealth of interesting study citations for risks (including kidney health issues) and risk reduction but it's a lot to even skim through. I think a systematic review they cited suggested "hats; loose fitting, light/brightly colored/reflective, breathable, clothing; ventilation patches in PPE" for optimal clothing. But I do wonder if optimal clothing might vary based on temperature and humidity. As a Louisianian, I don't know how the roofers do it. Sometimes it's so hot and humid it's rough to breathe outside just standing doing nothing. [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-2907 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-2907 [2] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-596 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-596 [3] https://www.cdc.gov/heat-health/about/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/heat-health/about/index.html [4] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-2932 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-2932

creativeSlumber 28d ago

> Researchers had found signs of CKDu outside Central America, including in Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal. But it had never been documented in the United States. I searched a bit more and found this interesting bit from an article talking about a similar epidemic in Sri Lanka. > An analysis showed that trace metal ions such as calcium and magnesium that naturally occur in the hard water reacted with glyphosate. This meant that, instead of breaking down rapidly, glyphosate was able to persist in the environment for up to seven years in water and twenty-two years in soil. https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/mysterious-kidney-illness-rising-among-sri-lankan-farmers https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/mysterious-kidney-...

declan_roberts 28d ago
We should be seeing it all over America in that case.
cyberax 28d ago
> This meant that, instead of breaking down rapidly, glyphosate was able to persist in the environment for up to seven years in water and twenty-two years in soil. Bulllshiiiitttt. There are no reputable studies that show anything like this.
- anenefan 27d ago
  The tl;dr - even if there were reputable studies, what do the results mean or imply exactly? There is a study [1] which was via information from the link from the parent comment. Interpretation of results though is the issue. From their method of study, to myself it's clear that storing heavy mineralised ground water in a used Glyphosate spray tank or product drum, is a not a very good idea given the results of the study. It is though a different story for the groundwater given that degradation in soil [2] [3] is measured in half lives and depends on many factors. As for detection - there may well be some complex of Glyphosate that has resisted breaking down a couple decades later, but one would expect the amount would probably be far less that the allowable or typical amount of Glyphosate found in food from crops that have been sprayed with it prior to harvest. The other question is what breakdown complexes are they measuring for detecting Glyphosate. For years roundup was though to be still be at higher levels of use than it should have been after it was phased out in some European countries ... based on levels detected in rivers. [4] [5] and the preprint via [6] indicate that some detergents were to blame for the higher detection level. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41580968/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41580968/ [2] https://pdf.benchchem.com/1263/Glyphosate_s_Fate_An_In_depth_Technical_Guide_to_its_Degradation_Pathways_in_Soil_and_Water.pdf https://pdf.benchchem.com/1263/Glyphosate_s_Fate_An_In_depth... [pdf] [3] https://greenfieldesg.com/how-long-does-roundup-last-in-the-soil/ https://greenfieldesg.com/how-long-does-roundup-last-in-the-... [4] https://phys.org/news/2024-07-glyphosate-european-rivers-farming.html https://phys.org/news/2024-07-glyphosate-european-rivers-far... [5]https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/university/news-and-publications/press-releases/press-releases/article/most-of-the-glyphosate-in-our-rivers-may-not-come-from-farming/ https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/university/news-and-publications... [6] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378883530_Glyphosate_contamination_in_European_rivers_not_from_herbicide_application https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378883530_Glyphosat... -> [Preprint] https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3917957/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3917957/v1

0xDEAFBEAD 27d ago

"His bosses severely limited water breaks, even on the hottest days. He didn’t complain. He simply lived with constant fatigue." How stupid can you be, forcing your employees to work while tired? Give them a break to drink water, they'll have more energy and get more stuff done. Maybe someone needs to buy these businesses and run them in a more efficient and humane way.

deleted 27d ago

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