Abstract
Workplace heat is an important occupational health hazard. It has attracted new attention in recent years due to ongoing climate change and projections of future increases of heat in most parts of the world. This chapter provides an overview of the physiological basis for this occupational health hazard and related serious health and social effects that may develop. While outdoor jobs in the sun create particular risks, many millions of workers in factories in tropical areas are also exposed to excessive heat because effective air-conditioning cooling systems are not installed. Excessive heat exposure in workplaces can cause heat exhaustion and heat stroke unless the worker is able to take action to reduce thermal strain, such as by reducing work intensity or taking frequent breaks. These protective actions reduce health risk and affect hourly productivity and the economic output from the work done.
The social and economic factors that contribute to health risks include social norms and attitudes concerning basic low-skill work that is particularly risky in hot situations. Gender-based employment also has implications for occupational heat-health risk given sex-based differences in vulnerability to heat. For instance, some physically intensive jobs are traditionally very male-focused, and mass production garment works in hot factories of tropical areas are very female-focused. In some ways women are more sensitive to heat, and pregnancy is a period of particular heat exposure risks. The workforce in many countries is ageing, and older people are more vulnerable to heat than younger people. Another risk group is migrant workers who often are provided with little occupational health protection. The increased risk of health impacts also has important social and economic impacts, such as reduced daily income, when heat slows work output. At the community level, the increasing heat due to climate change can also undermine traditional customs and degrade social well-being. Our analysis indicates the need to develop policies that limit the ongoing heat increase due to climate change and to implement protection in situations of excessive heat.
Keywords
- Heat
- Health risks
- Productivity loss
- Economic loss
- Community impact
- Climate change
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Acknowledgment
Financial support for this work was provided by the HEAT-SHIELD Project (European Commission HORIZON 2020, research and innovation program under the grant agreement 668786), and a grant from the Global Asia Institute at the National University of Singapore (NIHA-2019-001). The maps in Fig. 2 were prepared by Dr. Bruno Lemke and Matthias Otto, Nelson-Marlborough Institute of Technology, Nelson, New Zealand.
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Kjellstrom, T., Oppermann, E., Lee, J.K.W. (2020). Climate Change, Occupational Heat Stress, Human Health, and Socioeconomic Factors. In: Theorell, T. (eds) Handbook of Socioeconomic Determinants of Occupational Health. Handbook Series in Occupational Health Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31438-5_37
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