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Magdalena has been migrating to Ohio from Texas for the harvest season for 45 years. It’s a difficult life. While gathering crops, the 61-year-old has suffered from headaches, dizziness, rashes, vomiting, weakness and fatigue — and her episodes of heat stress have become more frequent over the years.
“After long days with high temperatures, there’s a lot of effects that your body goes through, and it’s every day,” she says. “It’s normal for us.” But, even when she feels ill, Magdalena often continues working as, otherwise, her pay — whether by the hour or by the bucket — will be affected.
Magdalena’s experience is an example of a global problem. Global climate change means that farmworkers are more at risk from extreme weather. Regulators and employers are paying attention, but it is too late to some workers. A report by Investigate MidwestThe non-profit news agency focusing on agribusiness found that at least 65 farmworkers died from heat-related causes in the US between 2002 and 2021.
“Agricultural workers are performing very physically demanding jobs in conditions of high heat and humidity for much of the year,” says Mayra Reiter, project director of occupational safety and health at the campaign group Farmworker Justice. “We know that these can lead to serious health problems including kidney problems . . . heat stroke, and even death.”
According to Climate Change, these risks are amplified.There are many studies.. Data from the EU’s Earth monitoring programme recently showed that the past seven years have been the The modern record for hottest.
“[The problem]Large parts of the population are affected. [US],” says Reiter. “There is no region of the country that’s not going to be affected as climate change accelerates.” A 2020 study in the journal Environmental Research Letters estimated that, on current trends, the average number of unsafe working days in each summer of the US growing season will double by mid-century — and triple by 2100.
Other regions will face worse. The International Labour Organization identified western Africa and southern Asia as the most likely regions to be the most affected. most affectedBy global warming.
Already the effects are being felt. “We have seen the impact of climate change on workers,” says Rangeeta Guwala, 32, a tea plantation worker in Assam, India. “Because of heat stress, our bodies are becoming weaker and we are facing more health problems.”
During picking season she spends every shift directly under the sun. She doesn’t have access to enough water. “When it’s really hot, we do see very frequently every day there are cases of people fainting from dehydration,” she says. In an attempt to tackle this, Guwala helped form a Women’s Water Sanitation and Health Committee, which has mapped access to facilities and submitted a proposal to management to negotiate for more taps.
Many countries and regions have passed laws. heat protection legislation, with California adopting the US’s first Heat illness standard for outdoor workers in 2005 — a measure that has since been strengthened.
“California is a pioneer in the kind of regulations to protect the workers,” says Teresa Andrews, education and outreach specialist at the Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety at the University of California, Davis.
The Center — which receives federal funding from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — offers training for supervisors and workplaces to prevent heat illness and to reduce the health risks from wildfire smoke. The most important recommendations to counter heat stress include adequate rest breaks, water, shade, and water.
Measures that farms have implemented include using tractors to transport shade-providing structures around the fields, bringing forward shift times to avoid the hottest part of the day, and reminding workers to drink water — by having supervisors blow blasts on a whistle, for example. Employers can also set up a buddy system so that coworkers are aware of any signs of heat illness.
“I think there is more awareness on the side of the worker and also more practical solutions on the side of the growers,” Andrews says. She believes that the introduction of state regulation has made a significant difference. California’s heat fatalities are on the rise The number of people who have lost their jobs has dropped significantly since 2005 — though some farmworkers, worried about job security or their immigration status, are still afraid to raise concerns with employers.
A lot more protection could be offered to workers in the US. President Biden’s administration said last September that it would Increase effortsTo combat workplace heat hazards, we started the Rulesmaking processFor a federal standard on heat risk to workers.
Campaigners warn that while such actions may help reduce deaths, they may not stop the cumulative harm high temperatures cause. Advocates such as the Farmworker Association of Florida warn that doctors may not recognize or be aware of the potential dangers of long hours in the heat.
A 2018 studyThe Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine reported that one-third of Florida’s agricultural workers had suffered from acute kidney injury during at least one of their workdays in the summers of 2015 and 2016.
“This is a case of injustice on some of the people doing the hardest work in our country, and work that feeds the nation,” says Jeannie Economos, FWAF’s pesticide safety and environmental health programme co-ordinator.
“There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands . . . [of] farmworkers that have long-term health consequences from chronic exposure to extreme heat.”
