Earth Today | New ILO report calls attention to heat-vulnerable workers
Published:Thursday | August 1, 2024 | 12:06 AM
CITING NOT only the risks to workers’ health, but also the resilience of economies, a new report from the International Labour Organization (ILO) has championed the need to appropriately plan for the intensification of excessive heat associated with climate change.
This comes against the background of data which reveals that the Americas, along with the Europe and Central Asia regions, have been found to have “the most rapidly increasing proportion of heat-related occupational injuries since the year 2000, with increases of 33.3 per cent and 16.4 per cent, respectively”.
The July 2024 report, titled Heat at Work: Implications for safety and health, also reveals that some nine of 10 worker exposures to excessive heat, and eight out of 10 occupational injures linked to excessive heat, occur outside of a heatwave. This is while, globally, a reported 26.2 million people are living with chronic kidney disease attributable to heat stress at work.
“The cases attributed to heat exposure at work constitute about three per cent of all chronic kidney disease cases, ranging from 3.34 per cent in Africa to 1.8 per cent in the Americas,” the report explained.
Given these realities and the ongoing increases in temperatures due to human-induced climate change associated with fossil fuel consumption, the ILO report said occupational safety and health measures are needed to prevent injuries associated with excessive heat.
It noted that some common existing workplace-level measures include the identification of, and targeted strategies for, indoor and outdoor worker groups at high risk; hydration strategies, including adequate sanitation facilities, especially for female workers; and rest, breaks or modified work schedules to limit or avoid exposure to excessive heat, including the ability to self-pace.
It has also, from its analysis, championed interventions such as the provision of cool, shaded and ventilated rest areas; the provision of personal protective equipment to protect workers from heat stress; as well as routine health monitoring.
For its part, the report has championed the creation of heat action plans and public health campaigns to integrate occupational safety and health protections; sector-specific strategies for indoor and outdoor workers; social dialogue; in addition to cross-sectoral, global collaboration.
“Collaboration between governments, employers and workers’ organisations, international organisations, occupational safety and health networks and non-governmental organisations is essential to share knowledge, resources and best practices addressing workplace heat stress,” it said.
“Policy coherence should be ensured on heat stress-related issues that concern the world of work, especially between ministries of Labour, ministries of Health, ministries of Environment and ministries of Climate Change, as they begin to become established,” the report added.
Also important, it said, is “targeted empirical research” and knowledge sharing.
“There are pressing needs at the national level, including the monitoring and evaluation of policies, and at the workplace level, to assess the effectiveness of practical and low-cost interventions. Strengthened global collaboration among experts on heat stress and occupational safety and health is necessary to avoid ad hoc and isolated assessment methodologies and interventions. Experts can then work together to propose harmonised and evidence-informed heat stress assessment, and intervention models and protocols. Such a coordinated effort will serve to enhance the science-policy interface and recommendations,” the report said.