The Tall Grass Called Sugar Cane

Abstract

Seventy-five percent of the world's sugar supply is produced from sugar cane, Saccharum officinale. Of the latter, 13,746,000 tons were produced in the United States in 1970, with a per capita consumption of sugar of 102.5 lb per year. Besides the candy industry, sugar is used as a table sweetening and flavoring agent in foods, pharmaceuticals and beverages and as a fermenting agent in certain alcoholic drinks. It is an ingredient of a variety of insecticides, hair tonics, plastics, photographic materials, shoe polishes and explosives. Too, sugar is used in tanning leather, silvering mirrors, in adhesives and as a core binder in casting metals. Oddly, chemical combination of sugar and acetic acid anhydride results in a very bitter substance which is used for denaturing alcohol. In the refining process, molasses is separated from sugar. Also, sugar cane yields a valuable wax, and cellulose which is used in paper making and in synthetic fiber manufacturing. Moreover, it contains aconitic acid useful in making plastics. Bagasse is the fibrous residue of sugar cane after juice extraction. The word bagasse is derived from the French bagage and originally meant rubbish, trash or worthless. Bagasse has been used as fuel at sugar mills, for gardening mulch and cattle feed, in the manufacturing of paper, plastics, dyes, acoustic, sound-absorbing boards and refractory brick. The plant from which sugar cane originated was a native of Southeast Asia. It reached China in 100 B C. Columbus brought it to San Domingo in 1493. It is being cultivated in every tropical and semitropical country and in the southern United States. Workers who are exposed to massive amounts of bagasse dust in connection with handling, shipping and manufacturing processes may develop bagassosis. The length of exposure sufficient to cause pulmonary involvement varies from three weeks to many months. Hargrave and Pepys (Lancet 1:619, 1968) reported a case of bagassosis that developed four to five hours after exposure to moldy bagasse. Usually, dyspnea is the chief complaint. It may be associated with chills, fever, retrosternal pain, and cough. The sputum is scanty and mucoid, occasionally blood-streaked. Symptoms persist from a few days to two to three months. X-ray reveals widely scattered miliary nodules in both lungs, unilateral or bilateral patchy infiltrations in the upper lobes, or increased hilar densities extending toward the bases. Earlier erroneous concepts relative to its etiology have been replaced by authoritative, precise knowledge as formulated by Buechner (personal communication, February 23, 1972). “There is no evidence to support viruses, toxic contaminants, mechanical irritation or silica as playing a role in the pathogenesis of this disease. It is now well established that bagassosis is a manifestation of hypersensitivity to thermophilic actinomycetes and is not a fungus infection. The principle organism which produces the hypersensitivity reaction is Thermoactinomyces sacchari (formerly known as Microspora vulgaris) but other thermophilic actinomycetes such as Thermoactinomyces vulgaris and Micropolyspora faeni (formerly known as Thermopolyspora polyspora) are probably also involved.” Hearn and Holford-Stevens (Brit J Ind Med 25:283, 1968) observed that inhalation of extracts of thermophilic Actinomyces vulgaris produced late systemic reactions typical of a precipitin-mediated hypersensitivity response in 12 of 15 subjects who had had bagassosis.