Climate change and occupational health and safety. Risk of injuries, productivity loss and the co-benefits perspective.

BACKGROUND

Climate change is a fundamental threat to human health and outdoor workers are one of the most vulnerable population subgroups. Increasing heat stress and heatwaves are directly associated with the health and safety of workers for a large spectrum of occupations. Heat stress negatively affects labour supply, productivity, and workability.

OBJECTIVES

The aims of this study are to estimate the risk of work-related injuries for extreme temperature outdoor exposure in Italy, to evaluate the loss in productivity and the associated insurance costs for supporting the co-benefits analysis of the adaptation measures.

METHODS

The relationship between air temperature and occupational injuries (in the period 2014-19) was evaluated using a time-series approach, by means of a specific over-dispersed Poisson generalized linear regression model, applied to compensation data. To assess the effect of temperature on workability, the wet bulb global temperature (WBGT) was estimated by different levels of humidity and vapor pressure. The costs of injuries have been estimated according to the potential consequences in terms of paid insurance premium and including all management and human resources costs.

RESULTS

We estimated 25,632 (95%CI 22,353-28,862) occupational injuries in Italy attributed to heat (between 75° and 99° percentiles) in the period 2014-2019, which corresponds to an average of 4272 cases for year. A decrease in productivity of about 6.5% was estimated for workers engaged in physical activities requiring high metabolic rates for every unit degree increase in temperature between 19.6 C° and 31.8 C°. The overall compensation costs associated to extreme heat exposure have been estimated to more than 292 million euros between 2014 and 2019, almost equal to 49 million euros per year.

DISCUSSION

Prevention measures and adaptation strategies for contrasting the occupational exposure to extreme temperatures can help contain both the risk of injury and, productivity loss, in a co-benefits perspective.