Extreme Heat Affects US Outdoor Workers, Risking Their Health and Reducing Yearly Income

In the few decades to come, Americans working outdoors could discover to an increasing extent that it is extremely hot to do their work without risking their health.

Almost 60% of outdoor workers including emergency responders, construction workers, and farmworkers could experience not less than one week of workdays when excessive heat makes it very dangerous for them to work. 

(Photo : Getty Images)

Extreme Temperature

This is in a case where little or even nothing is done to lower emissions. Currently, below 10% of outdoor workers lose some days of work to extreme temperatures.

Kristina Dahl, Co-author of a new report which the Union of Concerned Scientists published on the 17th of August said: "If we don't reduce our heat-trapping emissions, millions of outdoor workers are going to be increasingly exposed to dangerous levels of heat between now and the middle of the century." 

Notably, almost one out of five outdoor workers would feel not less than a month of these extremely hot days. Close to a fifth of U.S workers or 32 million individuals currently have outdoor jobs where they spend a greater part of their day.

Also Read: Extreme Heat is Blanketing US, Putting Over 81 Million Residents Under Heat Warning

Heat-safety Standards

Outdoor workers in America experience up to 35 times the risk of losing their lives because of heat exposure than the general population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest employers lower work schedules when the heat index responsible for heat and humidity gets from 38C (100F) to 42C (108F).

Currently, there are no federal heat-safety standards that safeguard outdoor workers when there is extreme heat, and California and Washington is the only state that has permanent heat standards for the safety of outdoor workers.

Remaining at home on hot days would eventually make an average outdoor worker lose about $1,700 annually -  adding up to $55bn yearly for all outdoor workers.

(Photo : Getty Images)

Impacts of the Heat on Outdoor Workers

The most affected people will be the construction and extraction workers in areas such as mining, who are at the risk of losing $14.4bn in earnings yearly, after that follows installation, maintenance and repair jobs, who could lose around $10.8bn.

The states that will experience the largest number of days when outdoor working is all but won't be possible are southern states. For instance, workers already lose close to $1,000 in wages because they couldn't work on days that are too hot. That amount could rise to almost $5,000 because of the 34 days worth of lost work time yearly.

The extreme heat will hit people of color very hard. People who identify as Black, African American, Hispanic or Latino are overly represented in work that requires staying outside, comprising around 40% of the outdoor workers in spite of making up just 32% of the US population in general.

Related Article: Millions of Poor Household in US Suffer More From Effects of Extreme Heat

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