Rising temperatures pose biggest health risk to farmworkers, but many lack safety options

As the world faces an increase in the duration, frequency and intensity of heat waves, a panel of Stanford scholars and other experts recently analyzed the risk of extreme heat for farmworkers in a climate resilience webinar.

The average number of days U.S. farmworkers will spend working in unsafe conditions will double by the middle of the century, according to a 2020 study by a now-research scientist at Stanford. Paired with a lack of federal protections, extreme heat can be deadly for the farmworkers exposed outside all day, said the panelists.