Due to the continuous rise of global temperatures and heatwaves worldwide as a result of climate change, concerns for the health and safety of working populations have increased. Workers in the food production chain, particularly farmworkers, are especially vulnerable to heat stress due to the strenuous nature of their work, which is performed primarily outdoors under poor working conditions. At the cross-section of climate change and farmworkers' health, a scoping review was undertaken to summarize the existing knowledge regarding the health impacts associated with climate change and heat stress, guide future research toward better understanding current and future climate change risks, and inform policies to protect the health and safety of agricultural workers. A systematic search of 5 electronic databases and gray literature websites was conducted to identify relevant literature published up until December 2021. A total of 9045 records were retrieved from the searches, of which 92 articles were included in the final review. The majority of the reviewed articles focused on heat-related illnesses (n = 57) and kidney diseases (n = 28). The risk factors identified in the reviewed studies included gender, dehydration, heat strain, wearing inappropriate clothing, workload, piece-rate payment, job decision latitude, and hot environmental conditions. On the other hand, various protective and preventive factors were identified including drinking water, changing work hours and schedule of activities, wearing appropriate clothing, reducing soda consumption, taking breaks in shaded or air-conditioned areas, and increasing electrolyte consumption in addition to improving access to medical care. This review also identified various factors that are unique to vulnerable agricultural populations, including migrant and child farmworkers. Our findings call for an urgent need to expand future research on vulnerable agricultural communities including migrant workers so as to develop effective policies and interventions that can protect these communities from the effects of heat stress.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.782811/pdf

Impacts of Climate Change and Heat Stress on Farmworkers' Health: A Scoping Review

Evaluation of mist-spraying environment on thermal sensations, thermal environment, and skin temperature under different operation modes

Outdoor thermal comfort and somatic symptoms among students in a tropical city

Improving the suitability of selected thermal indices for predicting outdoor thermal sensation in Tehran

Comprehensive analysis of thermal stress over northwest India: Climatology, trends and extremes

Human susceptibility to outdoor hot environment

Human heat stress and strain indices have been developed to ascertain the thresholds of human health and wellbeing. This study illustrates the matrices of environmental and behavioural indicators of warmth assessment (human thermal indices), referring to seasonal meteorological trend across the varied climatic regions of India. Effectiveness of the indices were explored using spatial and temporal analysis of regions. Human thermal indices are broadly grouped as direct (climatic, e.g., WBGT), rational (energy balance, e.g., SET*), perception (sensation voting, e.g., PMV) indices and CFD simulations. The warmth classification as regard to the temporal trend evidently differs to a great extent between the indices. Further to the spatial patterns in the studied regions also demonstrate inconsistent gradation. Elaborate derivation of the indices shows large deviations of the relative weightages in different indices, which may partly be attributed to the inconsistencies observed. For example, In case of WBGT, higher weightage is given to relative humidity, resulting in flattening in the climate trend, whereas, the energy balance models cover heat exchange between human body and environment. The rational indices, e.g., SET* and Esk (evaporation through skin) that take into account both meteorological and behavioural dimensions respond more effectively to both temporal and spatial trend analysis.

Effectiveness of human-thermal indices: Spatio–temporal trend of human warmth in tropical India

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Jayashree Sen

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Human susceptibility to outdoor hot environment

Effectiveness of human-thermal indices: Spatio–temporal trend of human warmth in tropical India