Health burden of sugarcane burning on agricultural workers and nearby communities

Abstract

Sugarcane is the most widely cultivated crop in the world, with equatorial developing nations performing most of this agriculture. Burning sugarcane is a common practice to facilitate harvest, producing extremely high volumes of respirable particulate matter in the process. These emissions are known to have deleterious effects on agricultural workers and nearby communities, but the extent of this exposure and potential toxicity remain poorly characterized. As the epidemicof chronic kidney disease of an unknown etiology (CKDu) and its associated mortality continue to increase along with respiratory distress, there is an urgent need to investigate the causes, determine viable interventions to mitigate disease andimprove outcomes for groups experiencing disproportionate impact. The goal of this review is to establish the state of available literature, summarize what is known in terms of human health risk, and provide recommendations for what areas should be prioritized in research.

Keywords: CKDu; Particulate matter; biomass burning; chronic kidney disease; climate; environmental health; mesoamerican nephropathy; silica.

Figure 1.

FAOSTAT Estimation of global sugarcane crop biomass burned each year measuredaskilo tons of dry matter.

Figure 2.

Photograph of burnt cane harvesters in Nicaragua demonstrating the high potential for ash inhalation.

Figure 3.

TEM images of particles demonstrate the highly uniform nature of pristine manufactured SiNPs compared to the much more heterogeneous structure of environmentally relevant SiNPs derived from sugarcane ash

Figure 4.

Potential exposure routes of silica nanoparticles and observed health effects.

Figure 5.

Hypothesized mechanism of SiNP-mediated kidney disease.