NBC’s Open Channel Blog Documents Chronic Kidney Disease in Sugarcane Workers

NBC’s Open Channel blog has reported “an inexplicable epidemic in Central
America, where more than 16,000 people—mostly sugarcane workers—
have died from incurable chronic kidney disease [CKD].” According to Open
Channel, “hundreds, if not thousands” of people in the sugar-producing city of
Chichigalpa, Nicaragua, have allegedly contracted CKD, which has apparently
increased “five-fold in the last two decades” throughout the region and turned
up in parts of India and Sri Lanka. Citing the Center for Public Integrity (CPI),
NBC’s Kerry Sander and Lisa Riordan summarize the unique profile of CKD in
sugarcane workers who do not exhibit the obesity, diabetes and hypertension
often linked to the disease in developed countries like the United States. “It
affects people who don’t have diabetes or hypertension, which are the usual
risks factors for chronic kidney disease,” one CPI reporter told the blog. “No
one can figure out what it is that’s making all these people sick.”

Meanwhile, researchers with Boston University have evidently associated the disease in Central America with “strenuous labor, dehydration and environmental conditions in which chemicals may play role.” In particular, Open Channel notes that the World Health Organization in June 2012 announced a study identifying the chemicals “thought to be an essential cause of the disease: cadmium and arsenic. Both are heavy metals found in fertilizers and pesticides that can cause an array of health effects, including the type of kidney damage ravaging the communities in Sri Lanka and Nicaragua.” In addition, scientists have purportedly expressed concern over the workers’ practice of chewing raw sugarcane to produce a “sweet sugary liquid” as a “pick-me-up” during harvesting. “We believe high amounts of sugar solutions may not cause much kidney damage,” said one renal disease expert at the University of Colorado, Denver. “But under certain circumstances, such as dehydration, we’re concerned the sugar may actually be toxic in causing damage to the kidney.”

“Whether or not sugar consumption plays a direct role in causing the Central
American form of CKD, activists say it is a thread that connects the disease
to its northern cousin,” conclude Sander and Riordan. “And with recent steep
increases in the price and demand of sugar, more people are working longer
hours in the sugarcane fields of Central America. In 2011, the U.S. imported
330,000 metric tons of raw sugar from Central America, or nearly one-quarter
of the total raw sugar imports that year, according to the United States
Department of Agriculture.”