US farmworkers face extreme heat risks

Reports of farmworkers dying from heat-related effects in the United States this summer have renewed attention on the health risks facing laborers on the front lines of climate change.

In July, a 28-year-old farmworker in Florida and a 26-year-old worker in Arizona died while working in the fields. Last month, another worker, 59, died when harvesting crops in California.

On the day they died, temperatures exceeded 100 F, according to local media reports. This summer, heat advisories and excessive heat warnings rolled out across much of the country, with some places reporting record-breaking heat.

Farmworkers' advocates said the laborers' deaths were related to heat stress, which was worsened by climate change. They are pushing for a national heat standard to protect agricultural workers.

Heat stress affects farmhands because they do demanding work in direct sunlight and wear layers of clothing to guard against insects, farm chemicals and sunburn.

"US farmworkers — invaluable, often unrecognized contributors to food production and the trillion-dollar agricultural economy — are at exceptionally high risk for heat-related health consequences," said a report released by the Environmental Defense Fund and La Isla Network last month.

The report found that the average US agricultural worker is currently exposed to an estimated 21 unsafe working days due to heat from May to September. Crop workers are also 20 times more likely to die from heat-stress-related illness.

The average number of days farmworkers spend working in unsafe conditions will double by midcentury, according to a 2020 study led by Michelle Tigchelaar, a research scientist at the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions.

If without mitigation, the number of unsafe days will triple by the end of the century, the study warned.

Farmworkers have long been vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat in the workplace; however, few regulations exist in the US to protect laborers from extreme heat.

Advocates said the most effective measures for protecting farmworkers from heat include providing water, rest and shade sufficiently throughout work hours.

However, without widespread enforceable standards, the preventative measures oftentimes can't be implemented, said the advocates.

"Farmworkers are at the front lines of climate change as extreme heat continues to expose them to more danger," said United Farm Workers Foundation CEO Diana Tellefson Torres in a statement when the organization launched a campaign for a federal heat standard in July.

"We must prevent heat-related deaths and we can do so by establishing a permanent heat standard that provides workers access to shade, paid rest breaks, training and water," she said.

In California, reports of work-related heat illness tripled in the past 20 years, with farmworkers among the highest-risk groups, according to the 2022 report by the California Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

California is one of the few states that has adopted its own standards — a temperature of 80 F triggers regulations for heat stress measures and remedies, including access to water and shade.

But a survey of more than 1,200 farmworkers last year found "substantial non-compliance" with the California heat standard.