For people pinned in the wreckage after catastrophes like the earthquake in China, a successful rescue often marks the beginning, not the end, of the danger.

Crushed and damaged muscle tissue can flood the bloodstream with toxic substances capable of killing within a few hours. If a person avoids that problem, kidney failure caused by the toxins is often fatal in a few weeks.

"Crush syndrome," the collective name for these problems, is second only to trauma from falling debris as the cause of death in earthquakes.

On Thursday, a team of kidney specialists from the International Society of Nephrology, headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, flew to China to offer expertise, and possibly also equipment and manpower, to rescuers there.

It is the eighth natural disaster the Renal Disaster Relief Task Force has gone out on.

While the numbers vary from disaster to disaster, depending in part on how quickly victims are rescued, it appears that up t...

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