Climate change is turning dehydration into a deadly epidemic
mosaicscience.com
mosaicscience.com
'...rehydration with sugary drinks. Frequently, not trusting the quality of local drinking water, workers drink sodas and soft drinks, and experimental evidence suggests that doing so can lead to even more kidney damage'.
"Instead of his usual fare of nephrology and diabetes papers, Johnson began to pore over global maps of climate and solar radiation. The rise in average temperatures over the last few years in Central America had been incremental, but the number of extreme events had gone up disproportionately. “And, by gosh, the areas that have the highest solar radiation and heatwaves are overlapping the places right where the epidemics are.”"
You might not agree with what they are saying, but they are clearly arguing that climate change is a factor in the epidemic.
Yes, because they're failing to even ask the question of why there is no clean water supply in the first place. That's not a climate problem. If it's not OK now when the temperatures are a degree or so warmer, it wasn't OK before either.
"Frequently, not trusting the quality of local drinking water, workers drink sodas and soft drinks, and experimental evidence suggests that doing so can lead to even more kidney damage."
I find it hard to believe that someone who has access to soft drinks doesn't have access to clean water. The way I read the above statement, is that the workers don't trust the local water (i.e. well water or streams, it's not clear), so they bring their own hydration, but unfortunately they are bringing soft drinks instead of bottled water.
So if you want to change the title, the alternate title would be 'Coca-Cola is turning dehydration into a deadly epidemic". But still, this is not quite right, because Coca-Cola has been in the global market place for decades, so I would presume workers drinking soft drinks in these areas is nothing new. But what is new is climate change, hence the original title.
Yes, and it doesn't even ask they question why the workers don't trust the quality of local drinking water. Which, as I said, is not a problem caused by climate change.
> The way I read the above statement, is that the workers don't trust the local water (i.e. well water or streams, it's not clear), so they bring their own hydration, but unfortunately they are bringing soft drinks instead of bottled water.
Which is, again, not a problem caused by climate change.
> I would presume workers drinking soft drinks in these areas is nothing new.
Neither is the kidney disease problem. It's been going on for at least 20 years, according to the article (which says that one of the doctors interviewed started in 1998 and saw the problem then). It's gotten worse over time because more people are working under these conditions, because the population has grown and more food is needed.
It is entirely fair to suggest that the increase in heat waves that are likely caused by climate change may be causing an increase in kidney disease related deaths. There are certainly other issues at play, and in the grand scheme of things, this is probably not a difficult problem to solve compared to other climate related issues, but this issue is interesting precisely because it was unexpected. We are still struggling to get a good idea of what the impacts of climate change will be, and this finding helps inform that effort.
Which still doesn't address the issue of why the obvious remedy--access to clean water--is not in place.
> this issue is interesting precisely because it was unexpected.
Oh, please. It's been going on for more than 20 years. Unexpected?
To me, this is just sensationalist journalism that would rather post clickbait headlines than actually dig into the real problem.
But this problem isn't even an impact of climate change unless you think that not having access to clean water, causing kidney disease, was OK 20 years ago, and only became not OK when the temperature got a bit warmer.
In other words, by blaming it on "climate change", you're letting off the hook the people who are actually responsible--the governments and agribusinesses that have been making these workers work in the heat without giving them reliable access to clean water, thereby causing them to get kidney disease, for at least 20 years now. The way to fix that is to hold those people accountable, regardless of what the climate is doing.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4120672/
This is the study refereneced about mice developing chronic kidney issues from delayed hydration (even given the same amount of water overall). No sugary drinks involved.
Also, since PubMed doesn't have a PDF of the one you mentioned for some reason, here is a pdf link for that one:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ramon_Garcia-Trabanino/...
So that we are able to contain mysterious virus and other such outbreaks.
Why wait till more people lose their life?
Alot of people are dying right now, and the funding situation for aid is depressingly bad. An app isnt going to solve these issues, funding and geopolitics are a much bigger factor
Then other people on the internet would have suggested theories and some might even have got more evidence.
Why researchers keep this detective work to themselves? Why not take inputs from internet?