An emerging area of scholarship in occupational health and
safety (OHS) is the impact of climate change on workplace safety. I ran across
two articles that touched upon this recently.
“Climate change and occupational safety and health: Establishing a preliminary framework” summarizes the
research from 1988 to 2008 to identify seven categories of climate-related OHS
hazards. While no new or climate-unique hazards were identified, the article
nicely explains how climate change may intensify or expand existing hazards.
Overall, a solid grounding in the topic.
More relevant for Canadian readers is “Climate change and occupational health and safety in a temperate climate: Potential impacts and research priorities in Quebec, Canada”. This article identifies five major
areas of potential interaction: heat waves/temperature increases, air
pollutants, UV radiation, extreme weather events, and vector-borne disease.
These hazards are most likely to affect “outdoor” industries (construction,
agriculture, forestry, fishing, transport, outside municipal workers). There
was also some suggestion that climate change might affect workplace physical
plants negatively, thereby creating hazards through degradation.
A useful website this topic is Working in a warmer world: What do we need to know?
-- Bob Barnetson
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