Extreme heat isn’t just making it harder to enjoy summer vacation. It’s also making work more dangerous than ever, a labor report found.
The International Labour Organization reported that workers are increasingly exposed to extreme heat worldwide to the degree that occupational safety and health protections can’t keep up. In addition to jeopardizing workers, the heat “undermines the resilience of economies,” the agency said.
“While climate-related mitigation efforts will necessitate concerted action over time, workers are being injured and dying now, and therefore heat stress preventative measures should be implemented as a matter of urgency,” the report found.
Over 26 million people globally suffer from chronic kidney disease tied to occupational heat stress, and the vast majority of excessive heat exposure and heat-related injuries occur outside of a heatwave, the report said.
The Americas have seen the highest and most rapid surge in occupational injuries from extreme heat, rising by over 33% since 2000, the report said. Meanwhile, workers in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Arab states are most often exposed to excessive heat.
The ILO urged countries to make sure laws about workers in excessive heat reflected the “intensifying climate change-related dangers many workers face daily.”
President Joe Biden’s administration recently proposed the first national standards to protect American workers during excessive heat. If approved, the standards could impact some 35 million workers in the construction, agriculture, delivery, and landscaping industries, as well as workers in factories and other businesses without air conditioning.
It comes amid news that global warming and extreme heat could raise inflation, including food inflation. One study found that extreme heat cost the global economy an average of $16 trillion from 1993 to 2023.
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