Climate CHIP Publications

Background: Global climate change is already increasing the average temperature and direct heat exposure in many places around the world. Objectives: To assess the potential impact on occupational health and work capacity for people exposed at work to increasing heat due to climate change. Design: A brief review of basic thermal physiology mechanisms, occupational heat exposure guidelines and heat exposure changes in selected cities.

Global climate change is progressing and health impacts have been observed in a number of countries, including Australia. The main health impacts will be due to direct heat exposure, extreme weather, air pollution, reduced local food production, food- and vectorborne infectious diseases and mental stress. The issue is one of major public health importance. Adaptation to reduce the effects of climate change involves many different sectors to minimise negative health outcomes. Wide-scale mitigation is also required, in order to reduce the effects of climate change.

Global climate change will increase outdoor and indoor heat loads, and may impair health and productivity for millions of working people. This study applies physiological evidence about effects of heat, climate guidelines for safe work environments, climate modeling, and global distributions of working populations to estimate the impact of 2 climate scenarios on future labor productivity. In most regions, climate change will decrease labor productivity, under the simple assumption of no specific adaptation.

Air pollution and climate change are often treated as if they were two separate problems, when they actually represent the same scourge. While the former has the most acute impact on human health, and causes economic harm to buildings, vegetation and activities such as tourism, the latter affects lives, property and the natural world in a less direct way, through weather disasters, windstroms, floods, droughts and rising sea levels.