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- Hacker News
- Don’t worry, raw milk will save the day
*they said crying
by doc_ick - What are you even talking about?by zahlman
- I wonder if this is what regulations were for?by bamboozled
- are these the same workers who pluck vegetables while they're being sprayed with pesticides and herbicides?
- I hope not, as every pesticide spray I know cannot be used near harvest time.by b112
- 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.
by bawolff - 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/2019/08/26/7538343...
by stevenwoo - 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.by trentor
- 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.
- 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.
by EA-3167 - 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
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.
by junofan - "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.
by 0xDEAFBEAD - 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.
by ggm - >latinx
Is the LatinX the new release after the Latin8?
by GaryBluto - Please do not refer to us as "latinx". That's disgusting.by bsagdiyev
- > 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
- What's the popular food that contains lots of oxalates? I don't see anyone binging on sorrel or star fruit or parsley.by card_zero
- 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.by phyzome
- 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!"
by kulahan - Hard to imagine a diet of cultural significance that would put people into lifelong dialysis, at an epidemic scale.by tptacek
- I appreciate the attempt to be gender neutral, but it turns out that Latinos themselves generally do not prefer the term Latinx.by Hnrobert42
- 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....
by sleepyguy - 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
[2] https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-14824/p-596
by Brybry - > 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-...
- > 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.
by cyberax - We should be seeing it all over America in that case.
- 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...
[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.
by anenefan - > 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.
by paulcole - p_wall byp_ss link: https://archive.ph/h66Jg
I am not sure whether any recent restrictions against this site here.
by newtwentysix - by gdevenyi