Chronic kidney disease on the rise among workers exposed to extreme temperatures: the climate crisis is increasingly a global health issue.
The negotiations of the Conference of the Parties on Climate (COP30) which will be held in Belém (Brazil) from 10 to 27 November do not only concern, generically, the health of the Planet. They also concretely affect ours, and in somewhat unexpected ways.
In fact, if the spread of parasites such as mosquitoes, favored by increasingly tropical climates, is almost no longer newsworthy, the situation is different for what could be the first chronic disease attributable to the climate crisis. Which? Chronic kidney disease, the progressive loss of kidney function, which is said to be on a worrying increase among young workers exposed to extreme temperatures for a long time.
The topic is at the center of an article published on Undarkand is made even more current by a report published in Lancet on November 7, which described chronic kidney disease as the ninth leading cause of death in the world: mainly due to the growth and aging of the world population, cases have in fact gone from 378 million in 1990 to 788 million in 2023.
A new occupational disease
Scientific research on how extreme temperatures affect the human body is still immature, but since the early 2000s we have begun to notice a peak in kidney diseases among otherwise healthy young people, without previous pathologies and with a common characteristic: that of having been exposed, for work reasons, to very high temperatures all day and for many years.
Agricultural labourers, construction workers, gardeners, workers employed in salt pans, brick kilns and stone quarries are the surprising new victims of the chronic loss of kidney function, which traditionally affects people with previous diseases such as obesity, autoimmune conditions, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and which for about twenty years has been becoming increasingly common, for example, among workers in rural areas in middle- and low-income countries, or among workers on construction sites outdoors.
Because heat damages the kidneys
Chronic kidney disease can have various causes, but excessively high temperatures, combined with strenuous work that makes you sweat a lot, would seem to be one of the newest and most unexplored ones. The kidneys are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat because when the body sweats profusely, they filter less blood to conserve fluid and prevent dehydration. They temporarily reduce their functionality, and if this happens repeatedly over time, acute kidney damage can occur.
Impaired kidneys are a cause of death in themselves and can increase the risk of heart and lung problems. Complete loss of kidney function makes it necessary to resort to dialysis (a therapy that replaces the role of the kidneys, removing waste and excess fluids) or a kidney transplant. Initially without recognizable symptoms, chronic kidney disease diagnosed at an advanced stage can reduce a person’s life expectancy by 15-20 years, compromise their immune and circulatory systems, and open the door to depression, due to the drastic decline in quality of life.
The connection with the heat and the (simple) precautions
Studies conducted in the USA show that on extremely hot days users are 30% more likely to need to go to the emergency room due to kidney disease. According to the International Labor Organization, at least 26.2 million people worldwide suffer from chronic kidney disease attributable to heat stress, although a large portion of those affected by the condition do not know they have it and do not appear in the statistics.
Still, precautions would be at hand: frequent hydration, cool breaks and suitable clothing for workers exposed to scorching heat are a good starting point. A program aimed at labor workers in sugarcane fields in Central America showed that mandatory breaks, shaded tents to rest in, and access to electrolyte-enriched water reduced acute kidney injury by 94%; the same easy interventions also increased productivity by up to 20%.
