71% of the world’s working people are exposed to serious health risks associated with climate change, particularly excessive heat, which is responsible for 22.8 million work-related injuries, costing 19,000 lives per year and more than two million disability-adjusted life years.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) released new data on Monday showing that the number of workers whose safety and health are threatened by climate change is now at least 5.4 points higher than in 2000.
Based on rising global temperatures, which have been breaking records year after year since 2016, heat stress affects 2.41 billion workers out of a 3.4 billion economically active population to some degree, and causes 26.2 million people to die suffer from kidney disease.
They are also prone to heat stroke, exhaustion, seizures, cardiovascular disease, heat syncope and other problems.
Those most affected are workers in agriculture, natural resource management, construction, waste collection, transport, tourism and sports, that is, those who spend a significant part of their working day outdoors.
The data used to draw these conclusions is from 2020 (the latest year for which complete and global data is available), so it is likely that the actual number of people affected is higher.
Environmental factors
In a report on the need to ensure the safety and health of workers in the face of climate change, the ILO examines other environmental factors that are exacerbated by rising temperatures and have negative impacts on workers.
These include exposure to ultraviolet radiation in the workplace, which is a major factor in the development of skin cancer (other than melanoma), which kills as many people as excessive heat.
An estimated 1.6 billion workers are exposed annually to ultraviolet radiation (increased by the gradual depletion of the ozone layer), which also causes sunburn, skin blistering, acute eye damage, cataracts, and a weakened immune system.
In addition, extreme weather events and natural disasters, also linked to climate change, threaten the well-being of many workers, especially those involved in disaster response, clean-up, medical and rescue operations, the ILO notes.
Climate change also directly or indirectly (for example, through wildfires) increases the concentration of various air pollutants, leading to 860,000 deaths per year from lung cancer, respiratory and other diseases.
The ILO also lists the use of pesticides and other chemicals in agriculture as a risk to workers’ health, where yields are directly dependent on climatic conditions such as rainfall, pests or the lack of nutrients needed for plant growth in the soil.
Of the 870 million highly exposed agricultural workers, it is estimated that more than 300,000 die each year from pesticide poisoning.
#terrible #discoveries #International #Labor #Organization #VIDEO
2024-04-28 06:06:45