LACLxS WORK IN PROGRESS SEMINAR: Environmental Challenges in Latin America

Description

The Program in Latin America, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (LACLxS) is excited to present works-in-progress by:

• Grant Tore, doctoral candidate in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering
• Julia da Costa, doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology

Grant Tore: "Exposure to Pesticides and Acute Kidney Injury Among Chilean Agricultural Workers in the Maule Cohort Study"

Globally, growing evidence suggests that occupational pesticide exposures are linked to chronic kidney disease among agricultural workers. Here, we examine associations between pesticide exposures and acute kidney injury in a nested cross-sectional study of 43 male agricultural workers from the Maule Cohort study in Chile. Findings provide suggestive evidence of how pesticide exposures contribute to the development of kidney disease through acute injury and will inform future epidemiologic investigations of kidney disease among agricultural workers.

Julia da Costa: "Reproduction of Life and Precarious Production: An Attempt to Farm Octopus Vulgaris at South America's Largest Aquarium"

This presentation draws on both my master's thesis and preliminary fieldwork from my doctoral research, addressing the question of scale in the commercial captive breeding of the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) and corals within the context of climate change. Divided into two parts, the first section examines the attempted captive breeding of the common octopus at the Rio de Janeiro Aquarium—a species critical to global fisheries yet, until then, never successfully bred in captivity. Against a backdrop of scientific precariousness and unstable labor conditions, I argue that developing a scalable octopus breeding method was perceived as an escape from instability for biologists, who occupied a dual role as both scientists and manual workers. The second part expands the discussion to conservation, demonstrating how scalability and species (re)production challenges emerge in coral conservation efforts—specifically, a project at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Unlike the octopus case, the central challenge here lies in achieving scalable genetic diversity through assisted coral reproduction, particularly under the pressures of ocean warming.

The LACLxS Work-in-Progress Seminar series is run by graduate students Bruno Franco (Modern Languages and Literatures) and Matheus Mendoça (Sociology), where students and Johns Hopkins faculty will present their current projects.