Earth Today | Heat stress: An invisible killer
Published:Thursday | August 8, 2024 | 12:07 AM
AS TEMPERATURES continue to soar, the need to treat excessive heat and heatwaves as occupational safety and health hazards has been cited among the key lessons learnt from a global review of the science, policy and practice environments related to heat.
“Heat stress is an invisible killer. It can immediately impact workers on the job, by leading to illnesses such as heat exhaustion, heatstroke, and even death, as has already been witnessed in many regions of the world,” reads a recent report on the subject from the International Labour Organization (ILO).
According to the report, titled Heat at Work: Implications for Safety and Health – A Global Review of the Science, Policy and Practice, “in the longer term, workers are developing serious and debilitating chronic diseases, impacting the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, as well as the kidneys”.
“The mental health impacts must also be considered, as well the numerous accidents and injuries occurring due to reduced cognitive performance, slippery and heated surfaces, and unsuitable personal protective equipment (PPE),” the report noted.
“While workers in all sectors may be adversely affected, some face unique exposure situations, placing them at higher risk, including migrant and informal workers, pregnant women, indoor workers in unventilated environments, and those working outdoors in physically demanding roles,” it explained.
In the Caribbean and globally, temperatures continue to reach alarming, record highs as the climate changes, fuelled by human consumption of fossil fuels such as oil and gas, which produce greenhouse gases that trigger the warming and a range of other impacts.
Those impacts include extreme weather events, notably extreme hurricanes, the likes of Hurricane Beryl, which devastated parts of the Caribbean last month; as well as sea level rise and coastal erosion – all of which have implications for water and food security and public health.
The report, meanwhile, has also noted among the lessons learnt from the review the need for strengthened prevention and control strategies for heat stress in the working environment, and for this to be tackled as a matter of urgency.
“Existing strategies to combat heat stress are proving inadequate, especially in the context of rising temperatures and changing weather patterns. Despite the presence of laws and regulations aimed at safeguarding workers from heat stress, many of these provisions were established in the past, often with basic requirements that fail to address the complexities of contemporary heat stress challenges,” it said.
“Workplace-level risk assessments and preventive and control strategies should explicitly incorporate heat stress considerations and require direct input from workers,” the report said further.
It is necessary, too, the ILO publication noted, that the safety and health of workers be protected during all periods of excessive heat, “not only during heatwaves”.
“A rights-based approach for workers is needed, which includes the fundamental right to a safe and healthy working environment, the right to know about heat stress, and the right to remove themselves from dangerous situations,” it explained.
The sharing of the lessons learnt come against the background of stunning data related to health and public health, also shared by the 2024 report.
The data include that “the Africa and Americas regions have the greatest proportion of occupational injuries attributable to excessive heat, at 7.2 per cent and 6.7 per cent of all occupational injuries, respectively”; and that “the Americas, along with the Europe and Central Asia regions, were found to have the most rapidly increasing proportion of heat-related occupational injuries since the year 2000, with increases of 33.3 per cent and 16.4 per cent, respectively”.