LOS ANGELES, CA – During the COVID-19 pandemic, essential workers took the spotlight as they served households across the United States. However, essential workers today work in conditions that threaten their health. With the increasing frequency of hot days, essential workers can fall vulnerable to heat stress, heat strokes, dehydration, even death. And as an added burden, farmworkers endure inhaling contaminants and smoke from wildfires, and warehouse workers are exposed to air contaminants made more potent by extreme heat.

In releasing Exhausted! Workers Confront Extreme Heat and Wildfire Smoke in California, Climate Resolve places the spotlight back on essential workers and how climate change is affecting their lives.

The authors review the laws and regulations designed to protect workers – as well as the latest research on the economic, physical, and psychological impacts of working in extreme conditions.

Climate Resolve discovered profound gaps in the social systems intended to protect workers. The authors also made 18 recommendations for immediate action. These include:

Protecting both indoor and outdoor workers:

1. Create new insurance products for hazard pay and unworkable conditions
2. Design and build large-scale cooling projects in the built environment
3. Make home a safe haven
4. State agencies must coordinate their approach on extreme heat
5. Cal/OSHA must be sufficiently resourced in both funds and technical support
6. Improve communication on drinking-water
7. Expand independent monitoring
8. Fix Cal/OSHA’s communications problem
9. Environmental organizations must prioritize worker health and safety
10. Develop a Cal/OSHA database on heat-related workplace incidents
11. Improve air quality monitoring at the workplace
12. Fund organizations to assist workers

Specifically protecting outdoor workers:

1. Provide clean air refuges during wildfire smoke events
2. Make growers liable

Specifically protecting indoor workers:

1. Prioritize adoption of the Indoor Heat Illness Prevention Standard
2. Update the California Building Code to protect warehouse workers
3. Update international standards to include real-time indoor temperature and humidity monitoring
4. Prioritize research into worker productivity and absenteeism

“The best approach to ensuring worker health is to take the whole person into account. While it’s essential to improve conditions at the workplace, it is also vital to consider the worker’s home and community,” said David Eisenman M.D., Professor of Medicine and Public Health Director at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters. “People recover from extreme heat days at night. Workers need to be able to cool down their bodies overnight before returning to work the following day.”

In researching Exhausted! Workers Confront Extreme Heat and Wildfire Smoke in California, the authors interviewed the Warehouse Workers Resource Center and California Rural Legal Assistance, and workers themselves, who told story after story about employers who failed to help employees adapt to severe weather.

“We heard anecdotes of employers placing water far away and failing to provide adequate shade or cooling,” said Natalie Delgado of Climate Resolve. “Unfortunately, many employers have failed to comply with the law by failing to provide adequate shade or cooling.”

“Workers must have access to cool environments, water to stay hydrated, proper ventilation, and other safety measures if we want goods delivered and food to remain accessible in the United States,” said Marc Futernick M.D., Managing Editor of The Journal of Climate Change and Health.

The report was underwritten by Resilient Cities Catalyst and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation through the California Resilience Partnership.

About Climate Resolve
Climate Resolve (www.climateresolve.org) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that builds collaborations to champion equitable climate solutions. We connect communities, organizations and policymakers to address a global problem with local action. We inclusively develop practical initiatives that reduce climate pollution and prepare for climate impacts. Using our collective power to tackle climate change, we are creating a thriving California and inspiring others to act. Our purpose is a just and resilient future.

WASHINGTON, D.C. –  The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued what some are calling an unbelievable warning on Monday that links the current worldwide outbreak of monkeypox to sexual encounters between same-sex human males.

Currently, there are approximately 200 confirmed cases of monkeypox throughout North America and Europe – with the initial two cases of 2022 outside of Africa confirmed in the United Kingdom – which the WHO said can be possibly linked to homosexual sex.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued an alert to gay and bisexual men, saying that monkeypox appears to be spreading in the community globally and urging individuals to take precautions and to be on the lookout for symptoms.

CDC official Dr. John Brooks said that monkeypox can be spread by individuals of any sexual orientation, but noted that the majority of infections globally seems to be afflicting the gay and bisexual communities.

“We want to help people make the best informed decisions to protect their health and the health of their community from monkeypox,” Brooks said.

The United States and Canada each have recorded five cases of monkeypox apiece thus far, but the outbreak has been far more prevalent in Europe, representing the largest spread of the disease on the continent in history.

While monkeypox is not transmitted sexually, it can be spread via “close physical contact” with either a person who has been infected, or by contact with any blankets or sheets that they have used, WHO adviser Andy Seale said.

“Many diseases can be spread through sexual contact,” he said. “You could get a cough or a cold through sexual contact, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a sexually transmitted disease.”

Monkeypox symptoms typically appear similar to the flu, including fever, headache, muscle aches, chills, exhaustion and swollen lymph nodes. Later symptoms include rashes on the face, hands, feet, eyes, mouth or genitals that eventually can become blisters.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – A new Bluetooth-enabled digital coronavirus test, known as “Cue,” is being touted as a fast and efficient way for individuals to test themselves for the virus on a regular basis, as experts are predicting that COVID-19 – despite the current lull in overall infections compared to this period of time last year – is most likely to be here to stay.

Advertising for Cue facetiously shows the device utilizing its Bluetooth connectivity to “communicate” with other smart devices in a person’s home, such as the Amazon Echo and Google Nest; eventually, a young boy who is awaiting his results is shown to be relieved when he tests negative for COVID.

Cue’s website notes that it produces “reliable, easy-to-use COVID-19 tests with PCR-quality results delivered right to your mobile device in 20 minutes. No lab visits. No lines. No second guessing your results.”

However, after Cue administers its molecular COVID-19 test, it will then transmit the results – positive or negative – directly to several state and federal government agencies for record-keeping purposes, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which many of the device’s users may not be aware of.

The “Fact Sheet For Healthcare Professionals” that is included in the Cue’s packaging – which most people probably don’t bother to read – states that “The Cue Health Mobile Application (Cue Health App) automatically reports test results according to the reporting guidelines of the appropriate public health authorities.”

Likewise, Cue’s privacy policy notes that the unit will report a user’s personal information “to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other federal agency and/or state government agencies as required for public health surveillance and related purposes.”

But – being a fully-digital platform – Cue also possesses serious potential security vulnerabilities; in April, a researcher discovered one that could allow the recorded tests results to be altered prior to being transmitted; this issue has since been discovered and rectified, but additional problems with securing individual’s private medical records could nonetheless exist.