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THIRTY-three degrees at nearly four in the afternoon – shew! Why are these men still out here digging a trench, as they’ve been doing right through the day? I can’t believe this. It’s peaked at 36 degrees today. Is their employer nuts?
We’re going to have to rethink the conditions under which hard labour is done as we head into this new world of high temperatures. In the latter half of the 20th century, from 1960 to 1990, the average temperature in Johannesburg through the summer months hovered around 24-25 degrees Celsius, with the highest record temperature at 35. We’ve shot past that several times in recent days.
I did some research on heat and productivity for an article I wrote four years ago, after Professor Tord Kjellstrom spoke at a seminar at the University of Johannesburg. The Swedish Professor (who works part of the time in Australia) has researched the health impacts of climate change, and specifically the effect of heat and hot weather on workplace productivity, for some 20 years.
He claims that it will outstrip even the fallout from rising seas, which is much more exciting and cinematic, and has therefore had prominent coverage in the media. “The greatest health and well-being impacts of climate change in large parts of the highly populated hot world are likely to be due to heat stress and heat exhaustion […]. High heat exposure also increases injury risk…” Kjellstrom and colleagues wrote in this paper.
Labourers are already dying of the effects of higher day-time temperatures, he has been quoted as saying, from heat stroke but also other effects such as kidney damage from inadequate intake of fluids. Those out in the fields and on construction sites, for example, or even in factories which don’t have sufficient climate control, can suffer alarming and even fatal consequences from working through the hottest hours of the day.
Excessive perspiration is one response to heat that can kill. You sweat out salts – electrolytes – which cannot be replaced simply by drinking water. (I remember a family member who scared us by developing an electrolyte imbalance – he landed in hospital in a dazed state, not recognising his family and sounding as though he was hallucinating.)
But even before you reach that stage, you’re in trouble: your muscle tone is decreased (that’s why you feel so tired and apathetic on a very hot day) and your mental performance drops. It’s harder to focus on intensive work.
I saw this well illustrated in this heat wave – a friend who, like me, works from home and thus has no air-con, found herself battling to meet a deadline. “I just can’t hack it,” she complained. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I must be ill.” Yes, you are, I replied, this is heat exhaustion.
Professor Angela Mathee, head of the Medical Research Council’s Environment and Health Research Unit, and colleagues also spoke at the conference back in 2011 on a study they did on outdoor labourers in Johannesburg and Upington.
The groups complained of symptoms like dizziness, headaches, nosebleeds, and of course exhaustion and chronic fatigue. Other symptoms of heat exhaustion include confusion, muscle cramps, pale skin, fainting, darker wee than normal (that’s a symptom of dehydration) and a racing heart.
The original scientific work on heat and labour was actually done here in South Africa. We have the deepest and therefore hottest mines in the world, which means that miners often suffered from symptoms of heat stress.
About 60 years ago, a Dr CH Wyndham studied the impact on young miners, and came up with a protocol (the same concept, essentially, is still in use) for helping them acclimatise to the heat when they first started going underground, or returned to work from a holiday. But even with this protocol, apparently only 29% of the men ever ‘hardened’ enough to cope with really tough manual labour in hot circumstances.
Which brings me back to those men digging the trench. While some of them may cope, some may be stressed to the point of severe health impacts. Employers are going to have to rejig the way they work, as Kjellstrom pointed out at the conference: if your workers suffer from heat stroke or other fallout, you might face some liability.
Kjellstrom described how, in India, some employers had arranged for people to work through the early morning hours, then take five or six hours off and work again in the early evening. This was easy for some, of course, those whose labour came from close by – they could just send them home for a long siesta.
For us, the heirs of apartheid spatial planning, it might need more thought and perhaps investment in infrastructure: sheds or mobile container-style shelters supplied with beds, chairs and the essential air-con, perhaps. Copious cold water on tap. Access to immediate medical care. Rehydration salts on hand at all times. Cold showers and ice packs to help people cool down when symptoms of heat exhaustion crop up. That sort of thing.
Yes, it will add to your costs. Sadly, this is just one price we’re going to have to pay for sailing on as though climate change would never happen, for doing nothing meaningful and effective to arrest the rise in greenhouse gases. #COP21MustLeadToAction.
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on twitter.
