Tag: heat wave
Work, Sweat, Die: The Price Of The Hottest Jobs

Work, Sweat, Die: The Price Of The Hottest Jobs


It was a hell of a hot summer, exploding the tops off thermometers with deadly triple-digit readings across the country, including in far northern regions that've almost never seen such extremes. As we're learning, week after week of debilitating heat intensifies wildfires, causes electric grids to fail, kills millions of wild animals (including fish), burns up crops, and concentrates toxic air.

But there's another impact that draws little notice: Heat kills workers. Indeed, those searing days of 95, 100, 110 degrees kill and injure more U.S. workers each year than all the floods, hurricanes and tornadoes combined. Those toiling outdoors — including farmworkers, roofers and carpenters, airport ground crews, landscapers, road and street repairers, letter carriers and trash collectors — are in the direct line of fire for this invisible, insidious killer. But indoors is no better if there's no air conditioning, for sprawling warehouse and manufacturing plants made of metal and stone become ovens.

Then, welcome to climate change — 20 of the last 21 years gave us the hottest temperatures on record. Unsurprisingly, the yearly number of worker heat deaths doubled over that period. Also, researchers have determined that extreme workplace heat is causing about 170,000 people a year to suffer injuries on the job.

The impact of heat is poorly understood, even by workers. Sudden heatstroke is not the only worry, for rising body temperatures can quickly cloud the mind, weaken muscles and numb concentration. So, workers fall; their hands get caught in machinery; they touch the wrong wire; they get hit by a front-end loader.

Sitting in climate-controlled executive suites, distant legislative chambers and comfortable editorial offices, America's power elites literally don't feel the intensity of this heat, so the richest country in the history of the world continues to subject millions of its people to senseless suffering and death, not even talking about this embarrassment, much less stopping it.

America's corporate acolytes and right-wing moralists preach that an uncomplaining, nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic is what gives dignity to laboring stiffs.

Of course, that's "dignity" as defined and controlled by corporate elites, not by workers, and the reward for it frequently includes on-the-job injuries ... and death. Not that CEOs and well-heeled investors intentionally sicken, maim and kill thousands of laborers every year — but they certainly do put them in positions to experience such unhappy results. For example, they require that farmworkers spend hours picking crops on 105-degree California days, or that construction crews toil in the muggy dog days of Florida summers tarring the roofs of condos. Low-paid, powerless workers die, but no one in the corporate hierarchy did the deed — heat was the killer.

But wait, not only are aloof bosses back at air-cooled headquarters the ones who knowingly subject subordinates to that deadly heat, but they're also the ones who hire squads of lobbyists and lawyers to kill regulations that could prevent these deaths. Proposed solutions are not exactly high-tech or even expensive: Require ample water at work sites; ensure paid rest breaks in cool spaces; train on-site managers and employees to detect and react to signs of heat stress; require good ventilation and proper clothing; establish emergency response procedures; foster a safety-first environment; and impose serious punishments for violators.

Such sensible steps have repeatedly been proposed as official workplace policy for at least the last 50 years — but intense industry opposition has killed the adoption of any such standards of prevention. Instead, the U.S. "protects" workers with a voluntary awareness campaign that essentially consists of posters urging employees to beware of heat, saying to them, "goodbye and good luck."

But at last, a real proposal has been put on the table by more than 110 grassroots groups. See it — and join it — by contacting Public Citizen at Citizen.org.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com

Pakistan Heatwave Toll Crosses 1,000

Pakistan Heatwave Toll Crosses 1,000

By Deutsche Presse-Agentur (TNS)

ISLAMABAD — More than 1,000 people have died from a recent heatwave in southern Pakistan with thousands still being treated as temperatures started to ease, officials said on Thursday.

Karachi, capital of Sindh province, and several other districts are in the grip of soaring temperatures since the start of Ramadan on Friday.

“More than 950 people have died in Karachi and over 50 in [the] rest of the province,” an official at Jinnah Hospital said.

More than 40,000 people have suffered heatstroke and over 8,000 were treated at the facility, he said on condition of anonymity.

The temperature in Karachi, which had reached 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) over the weekend, dipped to 37 (98 Fahrenheit) on Thursday, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department.

The government has set up 100 heatstroke centers in Karachi, while an influential religious scholar on Wednesday issued an edict that sick and frail people can skip fasting in the holy month of Ramadan.

Photo: Jacksoncam via Flickr

Heat Wave In India Kills More Than 2,200

Heat Wave In India Kills More Than 2,200

By dpa (TNS)

NEW DELHI –– A searing heat wave in India has killed more than 2,200 people.

Most died in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana after temperatures in the past week soared to their highest sustained levels in 12 years.

The total death toll in both states stood at 2,177, after about 200 more deaths were reported between Friday and Saturday, disaster management officials said. Andhra Pradesh recorded 1,636 deaths while Telangana accounted for 541.

More than 60 deaths were reported from Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat states, and the national capital, New Delhi, local reports said.

The heat wave in India is the fifth deadliest in the world and second deadliest in India, according to Emergency Events Database.

The database, maintained by the Brussels-based Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters, the deadliest heatwave on record in India was in 1998, killing 2,541 people. The most lethal heatwave in the world was the one that hit Europe in 2003, killing more than 71,000 people.

Temperatures at many places in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana hovered between 104 and 113 degrees. Isolated showers provided no relief.
Most of the victims were poor or elderly.

In a radio address Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Indians not only to drink plenty of water and keep their bodies covered to avoid sunstroke, but also to care for birds, animal and cattle, by providing them water.

Forecasters said the heat wave could continue for the next few days.

(c)2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: AFP/File / Sanjay Kanojia

Massive Heat Wave Even Effects Cold States

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In the land of giant ice castles, where auto makers test their vehicles against extreme cold and people play hockey year-round, it’s not uncommon to hear some griping about the weather.

The Upper Midwest is accustomed to extreme temperatures. Just not in the current direction.

Parts of the region are suffering through the worst heat wave in more than a decade, leaving residents who usually eagerly await a too-short summer longing for a taste of December. The heat index topped 119 degrees Tuesday in Minneapolis. And it felt like 105 degrees in Madison, Wis.

Even at the Minnesota Zoo, known for displaying northern-latitude animals, workers say the heat can make some animals — like people — “really crabby.” But they’re keeping thick-furred tigers happy with “bloodsicles.”

“It’s kind of gross, but they like it,” said Diana Weinhardt, who supervises the Northern Trails exhibit. She spent 15 years at the zoo in Houston, and admitted the heat was even rough on her.

“This is very, very Texas-esque weather and it’s hard, especially if you’re not used to it. In Texas we all kind of grew hardened to it, but here — ugh.”

In Minneapolis, some employees of The Olsen Fish Company — which bills itself as the world’s largest producer of the Scandinavian delicacy lutefisk — have refused to go outside on break. Instead, they’re hanging out in the 44-degree room where pickled herring is processed, company president Chris Dorff said.

When they do venture outside, they get plenty of space on the commuter train home because “when you work in a herring and lutefisk facility, you have this, this odor,” Dorff said.

Lutefisk is dried cod soaked in lye, rinsed and boiled, and mix those scents with a little sun and sweat, and “we all leave a little more odiferous, that’s for sure,” he said.

Generations of Bachman’s Floral Gifts and Gardens employees have worked to protect the company’s plants from the winter, but this week they’re trying to keep the Christmas crop of poinsettias from baking. Their greenhouses south of Minneapolis run 10 to 15 degrees warmer than the outside air, and the heat has threatened to wilt both workers and the young plants trying to grow roots.

“They are just trying to survive, I guess, like we are,” said Jack Geyan, Bachman’s production manager who admits the heat is making him nostalgic for winter. “Some guys in the nursery asked me if I would rather have 30 below or this temperature. And I said, ‘well, 30 below is a little cold, but maybe 20 below.'”

University of Minnesota meteorologist Mark Seeley said the number of days with temperatures in the high 90s or 100s hasn’t really increased, but the amount of days with soaring humidity have.

“We have had far more dew point-driven heat waves in recent decades than any time in the past,” he said.

It’s been at least 12 years since Minnesota has seen such heat indexes, day after day, like those this week.

The brutal heat in Wisconsin forced Josh Martinez, operations manager of All-State Roofing in Madison, to pull in his crews this week. “It’s a whole lot better and safer for us just to not do a job,” he said. “We figure it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

In Minnesota, where hockey players venture to indoor rinks when the lakes thaw, one indoor rink struggling to keep its ice intact fired up cooling equipment for the first time in a decade — and is expecting a $10,000 spike in this month’s utility bill.

“There’s equipment that we haven’t run in 10 years, we actually turned it on, just so we could stay ahead of the heat,” said Andy Baltgalvis, manager of the Bloomington Ice Garden south of Minneapolis.

It hasn’t just been people struggling in the heat.

The Minnesota Zoo, in a suburb south of Minneapolis, prides itself on displaying caribou, musk oxen, moose and other northern animals who have been kept cool this week with extra water and fans.

Zookeepers do what they can for animals with thick fur. The Amur tigers from north Asia at being treated to the frozen runoff from meat fed to the zoo’s carnivores. Weinhardt said it’s a hot-weather tool that seems to work.

“Just like us, some animals can get really crabby in hot weather,” Weinhardt said.

Fly reported from Milwaukee.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.