The topic of extreme heat – its scientific complexity, its implications for human health and wellbeing, and its connection to corporate value chains – can be overwhelming. This page provides a few starting points, and some tips for digging in as a student researcher.
Since extreme heat is a vast issue, it is important to have some focus, and the focus of the Hot Spots Project is two-fold: on worker exposures that threatens health and wellbeing, and on the corporate supply chains that employ those workers. To that end, there are three sections here:
- an introduction with a few linked resources aimed
- a description of several types or ‘buckets’ of resources, for deeper readers, and a long list of resources, in the same ‘buckets’ or categories
Extreme Heat: the quickest possible (serious) introduction
Acknowledging the impossibility of introducing you to such a complex topic in a few paragraphs, see this as the tip of the iceberg with a few links – and then browse the rest of the iceberg based on your interests and planned research.
If you can read just two short items to start, check out Extreme Heat Pushes More Farmworkers to Harvest at Night, Creating New Risks (Inside Climate News) and How Extreme Heat Affects Workers and the Economy (New York Times). These articles quickly paint the picture of how heat affects millions of vulnerable workers throughout the U.S. If you want more that’s focused on case studies, this article in Time Magazine looks at workers on a watermelon farm, in waste management, at a UPS sorting facility, and more: Extreme Heat Is Endangering America’s Workers—and Its Economy (Time).
More broadly, 2023 was a turning point on extreme heat, in terms of public awareness, press coverage, and even physical events. The New York Times’ “What Extreme Heat Does to Your Body” describes the specific details in gory detail, while this CDC page provides a good general overview and this NIOSH page focuses on heat stress.
NPR’s coverage in Heat kills, but it doesn’t have to: How the government can help reminds us that although the current system is not set up for the challenge, we still have room to take action on extreme heat.
If you have time for a book, Jeff Goodell’s The Heat Will Kill You First (buy it here) is a riveting, moving, and disturbing introduction to the topic with a laser focus on the details affecting people. For those of us with less time, Goodell has also spent time on a few podcasts, with Columbia Energy Exchange and Apple.
Semi-annotated bibliography, in several buckets
This list of resources covers a wide range of topics, areas of focus, and resource types, so it is organized into three main categories:
- General news items:
- Reports, books, or other detailed analyses
- Resources with detailed geographical focus
General news items
The full deluge of heat news from summer 2023 is massive, but even just a few items give a sense of the breadth of the coverage:
- More than 110 million Americans across 29 states on alert for dangerous heat – ABC News
- Heat kills, but it doesn’t have to: How the government can help (NPR)
- Tracking Heat Across the World (New York Times)
The Pulitzer Center leads a broader effort in this area: The Fight To Protect Outdoor Laborers From High Heat
Reports, books, or other detailed analyses
- The Kaiser Family Foundation’s June 2023 report Climate-Related Health Risks Among Workers: Who is at Increased Risk? (KFF) (this release page provides a link to the full report)
- A Grid Collapse Would Make a Heat Wave Far Deadlier (WIRED)
- Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022 (Nature)
- Heat stress threatens agricultural workers’ health as U.S. temperatures rise (provides a link to the full report)
Resources with detailed geographical focus
- London facing 45C days ‘in foreseeable future’, mayor Sadiq Khan warns (Guardian)
- The Inequality of Heat (Washington Post) [focused on India]
- Yuma farmworker and father of 2 dies amid record heat wave (AZ Central)
- ‘The cruelty Olympics’: Texas workers condemn elimination of water breaks (Guardian)
- ‘A horrible way to die’: how extreme heat is killing Italian workers (Guardian)
- Severe heatwave engulfs Asia causing deaths and forcing schools to close (Guardian)