Essential workers under threat from extreme heat and wildfire; new report illuminates breakthrough protective measures
Climate Resolve releases Exhausted! Workers Confront Extreme Heat and Wildfire Smoke in California, with key recommendations to protect California’s most vulnerable workers from the impacts of extreme heat and wildfire smoke
Los Angeles – During the COVID-19 pandemic, essential workers took the spotlight as they served households across the United States. However, essential workers today work in conditions that threaten their health. WIth the increasing frequency of hot days, essential workers can fall vulnerable to heat stress, heat strokes, dehydration, even death. And as an added burden, farmworkers endure inhaling contaminants and smoke from wildfires, and warehouse workers are exposed to air contaminants made more potent by extreme heat.
In releasing Exhausted! Workers Confront Extreme Heat and Wildfire Smoke in California, Climate Resolve places the spotlight back on essential workers and how climate change is affecting their lives.
The authors review the laws and regulations designed to protect workers – as well as the latest research on the economic, physical, and psychological impacts of working in extreme conditions.
Climate Resolve discovered profound gaps in the social systems intended to protect workers. The authors also made 18 recommendations for immediate action. These include:
Protecting both indoor and outdoor workers
1. Create new insurance products for hazard pay and unworkable conditions
2. Design and build large-scale cooling projects in the built environment
3. Make home a safe haven
4. State agencies must coordinate their approach on extreme heat
5. Cal/OSHA must be sufficiently resourced in both funds and technical support
6. Improve communication on drinking-water
7. Expand independent monitoring
8. Fix Cal/OSHA’s communications problem
9. Environmental organizations must prioritize worker health and safety
10. Develop a Cal/OSHA database on heat-related workplace incidents
11. Improve air quality monitoring at the workplace
12. Fund organizations to assist workers
Specifically protecting outdoor workers
13. Provide clean air refuges during wildfire smoke events
14. Make growers liable
Specifically protecting indoor worker
15. Prioritize adoption of the Indoor Heat Illness Prevention Standard
16. Update the California Building Code to protect warehouse workers
17. Update international standards to include real-time indoor temperature and humidity monitoring
18. Prioritize research into worker productivity and absenteeism
