{"id":121064,"date":"2021-09-08T10:14:19","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T10:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/?p=121064"},"modified":"2021-09-08T10:14:19","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T10:14:19","slug":"unchecked-climate-change-will-be-hell-on-outdoor-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/business\/unchecked-climate-change-will-be-hell-on-outdoor-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Unchecked Climate Change Will Be Hell On Outdoor Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

As temperatures in the Pacific Northwest soared above 110 degrees in late June, workers in Oregon <\/span>flooded<\/span> the state\u2019s Occupational Safety and Health Division with safety complaints. In Klamath Falls, roofers worked in blistering heat and thick smoke from nearby wildfires \u201cwith little to no shade and no breaks for a long period of time,\u201d one complaint read. At a job site in Clackamas, workers reportedly installed fencing without access to fresh water and with only a total of 35 minutes of breaks throughout the day.<\/span><\/p>\n

The devastating heat wave, which killed <\/span>more than 100 people<\/span> in Oregon alone, offers a sobering glimpse at what lies ahead for outdoor laborers. Without an aggressive global effort to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, extreme heat will wreak havoc on construction, <\/span>agricultural<\/span>, extraction, delivery and other outdoor sectors, warns a new <\/span>report<\/span> from the Union of Concerned Scientists.<\/span><\/p>\n

The report, published on Tuesday, concludes that <\/span>if climate change continues unchecked, the number of days outdoor workers in the U.S. are exposed to hazardous heat could quadruple by mid-century. Up to $55.4 billion in annual earnings would be put at risk. And it would come with dire inequities \u2015 of the approximately 32 million outdoor workers in the United States, more than 40% are non-white.<\/span><\/p>\n

That U.S. laborers are <\/span>still suffering due to a lack of appropriate protections is nothing short of \u201ccruel,\u201d said Rachel Licker, the report\u2019s lead author and a climate scientist at UCS.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s often the tragedy with these injuries and deaths is that they\u2019re typically preventable,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s about affording people, oftentimes, basic human rights \u2014 access to shade, drinking water, the ability to take a break when they\u2019re on the job \u2014 so they\u2019re not in a position of having to choose between their health and a paycheck.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The report, titled \u201cToo Hot to Work,\u201d builds upon the nonprofit advocacy organization\u2019s 2019 analysis on climate-fueled extreme heat. Combining county-level forecasts of hazardous heat days with U.S. Census data, the organization calculated the number of outdoor workdays and wages that could be lost under different warming scenarios. Southern states, including Louisiana, Florida and Texas, as well as major agricultural producers like California, are forecast to be among the hardest hit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <\/span>recommends<\/span> that employers limit and even halt outdoor work when temperatures reach specific extremes, but those guidelines are not enforceable. The new report advocates for both aggressive climate action as well as workplace safety requirements to protect workers from the risks of heat-related illness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe need, really, a kind of one-two punch on this issue,\u201d Licker said. \u201cOn the one hand, we are taking aggressive action to ramp down heat-trapping emissions so that we can limit the increase in extreme heat days across the country, and the study shows that we can really prevent significant increases if we take action now. At the same time, we need to be enacting mandatory measures to protect workers at the federal and state level.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Along with the report, UCS published an <\/span>interactive mapping tool<\/span> that allows users to explore the impacts of future extreme heat on outdoor laborers at the county level.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is currently no federal standard that protects workers from heat, either indoors or outdoors. Only a few states, including California and Washington, have permanent protections. Oregon adopted temporary requirements following the historic June heatwave.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Asunci\u00f3n Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act, a bill that Democrats introduced in June and that\u2019s named after a California farmworker who died of a heat stroke after picking grapes in 105-degree temperatures, would direct the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to establish and enforce a federal heat standard. UCS supports the legislation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The timely analysis comes on the heels of a <\/span>dire United Nations assessment<\/span> that concluded human-caused climate change is currently affecting weather in \u201cevery region across the globe\u201d and warned that past and future emissions have locked in changes that will prove \u201cirreversible\u201d over centuries to millennia. Heat waves are just one of the many impacts forecast to worsen in the coming years and decades.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA official and current worker health and safety program director for the National Employment Law Project, said OSHA\u2019s small size and inadequate funding, along with industry lobbying during Republican administrations, have prevented the agency from issuing more workforce health standards and better carrying out its mission. The climate threat is compounding the risks of what are already dangerous jobs, making it all the more important for OSHA to prioritize setting basic requirements for all companies to implement during high-heat days, said Berkowitz, who is not involved in the UCS report.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, the majority of these workers are workers of color,\u201d she said. \u201cTheir lives matter too.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dave Jamieson contributed to this report.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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As temperatures in the Pacific Northwest soared above 110 degrees in late June, workers in Oregon flooded the state\u2019s Occupational Safety and Health Division with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nUnchecked Climate Change Will Be Hell On Outdoor Workers - Fin2me<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/business\/unchecked-climate-change-will-be-hell-on-outdoor-workers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unchecked Climate Change Will Be Hell On Outdoor Workers - Fin2me\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As temperatures in the Pacific Northwest soared above 110 degrees in late June, workers in Oregon flooded the state\u2019s Occupational Safety and Health Division with [...]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/business\/unchecked-climate-change-will-be-hell-on-outdoor-workers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fin2me\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-09-08T10:14:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/ZtJtRQiQIspviGDStRJA.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"591\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"394\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/business\/unchecked-climate-change-will-be-hell-on-outdoor-workers\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/business\/unchecked-climate-change-will-be-hell-on-outdoor-workers\/\",\"name\":\"Unchecked Climate Change Will Be Hell On Outdoor Workers - 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