Collins Conference Room
Seminar
  US Mountain Time

Our campus is closed to the public for this event.

Rhitu Chatterjee (SFI Journalism Fellow)

Abstract.  A mysterious kidney disease is killing thousands of people in Sri Lanka’s North Central Province. It’s a chronic disease with no cure, but it is different from the usual chronic kidney disease caused by high blood pressure and diabetes. Scientists in Sri Lanka have named it Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology (CKDu). People affected are mostly farmers or members of farming communities. In 2011, the World Health Organization and the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health released a report blaming farm chemicals for CKDu. More specifically, the report pinpointed cadmium and arsenic, which are found in fertilizers and pesticides respectively. The report offered little data and raised more questions than it answered. Was it cadmium, or arsenic that was the trouble maker? Or were the two working together? We’re increasingly surrounded by a soup of environmental chemicals, and scientists still don’t know how these chemical mixtures affect our health, if at all. How do science journalist tell stories about environmental health that are accurate, nuanced and stay clear of fear mongering when there’s little data to hold on to? In this talk, I will explain how my colleagues and I tackled these questions while investigating Sri Lanka’s mysterious epidemic.

Purpose: 
Research Collaboration
SFI Host: 
John German

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