Escalating environmental summer heat exposure—a future threat for the European workforce

Ana Casanueva*, Sven Kotlarski, Andreas M. Fischer, Andreas D. Flouris, Tord Kjellstrom, Bruno Lemke, Lars Nybo, Cornelia Schwierz, Mark A. Liniger

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    46 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Heat exposure constitutes a major threat for European workers, with significant impacts on the workers’ health and productivity. Climate projections over the next decades show a continuous and accelerated warming over Europe together with longer, more intense and more frequent heatwaves on regional and local scales. In this work, we assess the increased risk in future occupational heat stress levels using the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), an index adopted by the International Standards Organization as regulatory index to measure the heat exposure of working people. Our results show that, in large parts of Europe, future heat exposure will indeed exceed critical levels for physically active humans far more often than in today’s climate, and labour productivity might be largely reduced in southern Europe. European industries should adapt to the projected changes to prevent major consequences for the workers’ health and to preserve economic productivity.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number40
    JournalRegional Environmental Change
    Volume20
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2020

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