Federal health leaders assess protection measures as heat and smoke threaten U.S. farm workers
Health and Human Services leaders plan to meet throughout the spring and summer to help protect farmworkers from heat and wildfire smoke
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra spoke about the risks faced by California farmworker fathers.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc (via Getty Images)
Climate Wire | A group of national health experts plans to meet regularly this spring and summer to better protect farmworkers from extreme heat and wildfire smoke.
The new initiative is the brainchild of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, whose father used to harvest crops in a field in California.
“This is personal to me because my father was a farm worker and he had to campaign in those conditions,” Becerra said at a press conference this week about President Joe Biden's budget proposal. Stated. “No one in America has to die from exposure to heat or smoke, but we are increasingly reaching that point.”
About supporting science journalism
If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting our award-winning journalism. Currently subscribing. By subscribing, you help ensure future generations of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas that shape the world today.
Agricultural workers are particularly vulnerable to the health effects of heat and smoke. Outdoor activities such as digging irrigation canals and harvesting crops increase body temperature and respiratory rate, making workers more susceptible to heat stroke.
According to data kept by the Department of Labor, heat exposure kills an average of 33 workers annually.
Becerra's so-called “Protect Farmworkers from Heat and Wildfire Smoke Initiative” held its first meeting late last week and is scheduled to meet regularly from March 2024 through December 2024. The group includes representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Secretariat. Assistant Secretary of Health, Director of the Office of Strategic Preparedness and Response, Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, Office of Minority Health, and other agencies within the Department.
HHS spokeswoman Kim Seigfried said, “HHS is committed to working with farmworkers, especially given the critical work they do to feed this country through pandemics, storms, and heat waves. “We want to be proactive and ambitious in taking action to protect those families.”
Despite the increasing risks of climate change, there are no federal regulations that specifically protect workers from heat and smoke. California, Oregon, and Washington are the only states that protect workers. These states are also taking measures to combat the heat, as are Colorado and Minnesota.
It is unclear what steps HHS will take to better protect farm workers from heat and wildfire smoke. However, the department has been concerned about worker heat exposure for decades, and in 1975 the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health ordered the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to take heat-specific protective measures for workers. For the first time, it was recommended to create a
The agency has made similar recommendations twice since then, including a 200-page report released in 2016 that looked at how heat stress manifests itself in workers. It also includes new research on The report also expressed concern about the effects of future global warming.
OSHA has not yet accepted these recommendations. For more than two years, the agency has been working on regulations that would require employers to protect workers from the heat. The agency has not set an estimate for when its rulemaking will be completed.
Julie Fulcher, a worker advocate with Public Citizen, said that even without federal regulations in place, HHS can help by training medical professionals and emergency response professionals on the signs of heat stress and how to treat it. He said it would protect workers from the smoke and heat of wildfires.
He also argued that the federal government needs to collect better data on workplace injuries and illnesses caused by heat and smoke. Fulcher said HHS' efforts focused on data collection could help “significantly improve our knowledge of how heat stress affects workers and inform research.” He added that there is.
“They don’t write the regulations, but they can obviously do something of value,” she said.
Reprinted from E&E News Published with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides news that matters to energy and environment professionals.
