Reacción a "A WHO-WMO report warns that extreme heat increases the risk of neurological disorders and other illnesses among workers"

The new joint report by the WHO and WMO on work-related heat stress and climate change analyses the role of this risk in the health of the working population in a context of rising temperatures due to anthropogenic climate change. The report is particularly important because it reflects the WHO's clear commitment to the issue of work-related heat stress, an area that until now had been mainly in the hands of the ILO (together with international occupational health and safety agencies such as EU-OSHA in Europe). Prepared in collaboration with the WMO, it also constitutes an unequivocal statement of intent by highlighting the link between climate, health and work.

The WHO, like the ILO and the WMO, is a specialised UN agency responsible for these three areas, which are linked to the specific problem of heat stress at work. The publication of this report therefore marks the beginning of the WHO and WMO's public involvement in the prevention of this occupational risk, which is both necessary and urgent in order to effectively address this challenge, which will undoubtedly continue to grow in the coming years.

That said, it is a fairly comprehensive report, scientifically informed and up to date with the latest scientific evidence. Despite its global focus, the preventive and adaptive measures it proposes are valid for the Kingdom of Spain, one of the European countries most affected by climate change and where several fatal accidents at work are recorded each year due to the lack of preventive measures against high temperatures.

Specifically, the report deals with:

1. The relationship between climate change and health.
2. Estimating the overall burden of this risk on the population.
3. Designing preventive plans and measures to reduce the impact.
4. The management of heat stress in the workplace.

These last two sections make the report a practical document, a kind of guide with basic guidelines on how to adapt companies to the new climate reality, which joins other recent publications on this subject at the national and European level. It is worth highlighting the comprehensive perspective it takes in proposing collective and individual, organisational and technical solutions aimed at companies, workers and public administration.

The report emphasises the vulnerability of immigrant workers who are not acclimatised and whose occupations are generally more exposed than those of the native population, but it does not emphasise another axis of inequality, largely overlapping with the first, and equally key to describing the problem, namely social and occupational class. Nor does it reflect the role of labour relations, the limited capacity of public authorities to enforce regulations or the obstacles to implementing truly effective preventive and protective measures against heat. This is because in this type of report from specialised international bodies, the power relations present in productive activity are not clearly reflected. This is undoubtedly the main shortcoming of the document.