Too Hot for Work?

With temperatures breaking records every summer, we’re already living through climate change’s fallout. But some communities are experiencing more effects than others, especially when it comes to working conditions: Dirty air strafes our lungs on our daily commutes, power plants pump smog into downwind neighborhoods, and farm laborers are getting roasted alive.

Construction workers on day in downtown Los Angeles
 with record-breaking temperatures, July 6, 2018.

In the United States, heat-related death and illness poses one of the most immediate and widespread risks linked to global-warming trends. In July alone last year, according to Public Citizen, “An average of 1.1 million agriculture and construction workers labored in extreme conditions each day.” A study on hospitalizations in Los Angeles from 2005 to 2010 found that heat-related emergency-room visits grew by about 8 percent with each percentage increase in residents working in construction, and by 11 percent for every comparable rise in the farming, forestry, and related outdoor sectors.

Read the story by Michelle Chen from The Nation - “Too Hot for Work?”