New report connects kidney disease with climate change

Insight

New report connects kidney disease with climate change

Experts said climate change could make the heat waves more intense and more frequent.

A new study argued extreme heat and climate change may be contributing to epidemics of chronic kidney disease.

CCTV’s Hendrik Sybrandy has insight on the study’s findings from Colorado.

Dr. Richard Johnson of University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus indicated that a recent heatwave took a heavy toll on workers in sugar cane fields in Central America, where more than 20,000 people died of chronic kidney disease between 2002 and 2015.

INSIGHT STATISTICS

“These are populations that have to be outdoors. They don’t have the option of working from an air-conditioned place or air-conditioned structure,” Balaji Rajagopalan from University of Colorado Boulder said.

Their new study, published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, argued heat stress, dehydration, and chronic kidney disease, or CKD, were related.

“The disease is most common in the areas where it’s extremely hot and people are working outside,” Dr. Johnson said.

The authors said workers’ reliance on sugary drinks to hydrate rather than water didn’t help the situation.

There are some possible solutions to the problem. More water stations and shelters from the sun. Some workers in El Salvador have been given CamelBak hydration packs to cope with the heat.

It’s the first time climate change has been tied to a specific health condition, CKD, which already affects one in ten people globally.


Dr. Arthur Caplan discusses climate change’s impact on health

For more on the health concerns, CCTV America’s Mike Walter spoke to Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of Division of Medical Ethics from New York University’s Langone Medical Center.