Impact of Animal Causing Air and Water Pollution on the Incidence of Chronic Kidney Disease in Urban Populations

Abstract

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a growing international health problem, whose occurrence is exacerbated in thriving urban centers. The renal pathology is becoming associated with a host of environmental hazards, especially air and water pollution, which are chronically present in the urban population. This paper presents a combined, quantitative evaluation of the association between long-term environmental exposure and the incidence of CKD among a particular urban cohort. We employed a cross-sectional study design; whereby anonymized medical records of patients and CKD diagnosis were correlated to 5 years of high-resolution environmental monitoring performance. The analysis was based on indicators of air pollution (PM 2.5, NO2) and water quality parameters (major and minor metals, and contaminants) of the patient-living areas. A multivariate logistic regression model was used using the Fuzzy Logic Inference Model to adjust socio-demographic and conventional clinical confounders to enable the isolated identification of environmental risk. The results indicate that both air and water contaminants have a statistically significant and synergistic relationship: a high chronic exposure to both air and water contaminants significantly increases the likelihood of getting CKD. In particular, the overall exposure impact was observed to be higher than the aggregate risk of individual pollutants. Furthermore, the role of animals in contributing to both air and water pollution, through mechanisms such as waste and agriculture-related runoff, adds another layer of environmental concern for urban populations. These animal-related environmental factors exacerbate nephrotoxic effects, leading to an increased CKD burden in areas where animal waste management is inadequate. These findings highlight the dire need to incorporate urban environmental policy and people's health interventions to reduce the nephrotoxic exposures and the growing CKD epidemic in urban environments. The research recommends that routine environmental risk evaluation should be practiced in clinical nephrology.