Mon. Sept. 2, 2024
More than a billion people work in agriculture, construction, and other outdoor jobs in tropical regions around the world.
Parsons: “These are areas that are hot and humid either year-round or for many, many months out of the year.”
Luke Parsons is an applied climate scientist at the Nature Conservancy. He says doing heavy labor in very hot, humid conditions can cause illness or even death.
His team recently studied how often conditions in the tropics are hazardous for outdoor workers.
They found that, on average, the combination of heat and humidity makes it unsafe for heavy outdoor labor for almost 20% of all hours in a year.
That number would increase to almost 30% of all hours if global temperatures warm another 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Parsons: “And so we’re taking places that are already hot and we’re going to make them even hotter for more hours out of the day … taking some of the people who are the most vulnerable and the highest risk and really impacting them the most.”
Workers often lack the power to demand protections – like mandatory water breaks or the ability to shift their hours to work when it’s coolest.
So he says it’s important for governments and companies to create guidelines and implement policies that can help keep people safe.
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media
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