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Essay by Eric Worrall
If only there was a way to avoid dangerous daytime temperature extremes.
WHO, WMO issue new report and guidance to protect workers from increasing heat stress
22 August 2025
Joint News Release
GenevaThe World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have published a new joint report and guidance highlighting the growing global health challenges posed by extreme heat on workers.
As climate change drives more frequent and intense heatwaves, many workers who are regularly exposed to dangerous heat conditions are already feeling the health impacts of rising temperatures, in particular, manual workers in sectors such as agriculture, construction and fisheries. Increasing heat episodes are also leading to health issues for vulnerable populations in developing countries, such as children, older adults and low-income populations.
“Heat stress is already harming the health and livelihoods of billions of workers, especially in the most vulnerable communities,” said Dr Jeremy Farrar, WHO Assistant Director-General, Health Promotion, Disease Prevention and Care. “This new guidance offers practical, evidence-based solutions to protect lives, reduce inequality, and build more resilient workforces in a warming world.”
The new report and technical guidance, entitled Climate change and workplace heat stress draws on five decades of research and evidence, highlighting that the health and productivity of workers are severely impacted by rising temperatures. WMO reports that 2024 was the hottest year on record. Daytime temperatures of more than 40°C and even above 50°C are becoming increasingly common, a clear indication that immediate action is needed to address the worsening impact of heat stress on workers worldwide.
“Occupational heat stress has become a global societal challenge, which is no longer confined to countries located close to equator – as highlighted by the recent heatwave in Europe,” said WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett. “Protection of workers from extreme heat is not just a health imperative but an economic necessity.”
Key findings
The report and guidance outline key issues related with health impacts of extreme heat.
- The frequency and intensity of extreme heat events have risen sharply, increasing risks for both outdoor and indoor workers.
- Worker productivity drops by 2–3% for every degree above 20°C.
- Health risks include heatstroke, dehydration, kidney dysfunction, and neurological disorders, all of which hinder long-term health and economic security.
- Approximately half the global population suffers adverse consequences of high temperatures.
To tackle these challenges, the report calls for the implementation of occupational heat action plans, tailored to specific industries and regions, and developed in collaboration with employers, workers, unions, and public health experts.
Recommended actions
The guidance lays out a clear path for governments, employers, and health authorities to mitigate the growing risks of extreme heat on working populations. The recommended actions include:
- Develop occupational heat-health policies with tailored plans and advisories that consider local weather patterns, specific jobs, and worker vulnerabilities;
- Focus on vulnerable populations with special attention given to middle-aged and older workers, individuals with chronic health conditions, and those with lower physical fitness who can be more susceptible to the effects of heat stress;
- Education and awareness raising for first responders, health professionals, employers, and workers to recognize and properly treat heat stress symptoms, which are often misdiagnosed;
- Engage all stakeholders from workers and trade unions to health experts and local authorities in the co-creation of heat-health strategies that are locally relevant and widely supported.
- Design solutions that are not only effective but also practical, affordable and environmentally sustainable, ensuring policies can be implemented at scale.
- Embrace innovation by adopting technologies that can help safeguard health while maintaining productivity.
- Support further research and evaluation to strengthen the effectiveness of occupational heat-health measures and ensure maximum protection for workers worldwide.
The report and technical guidance by WHO and WMO complement the findings of the recent International Labour Organization (ILO) reports which highlight that more than 2.4 billion workers are exposed to excessive heat globally, resulting in more than 22.85 million occupational injuries each year.
“This report represents a critical milestone in our collective response to the growing threat of extreme heat in the world of work,” said Joaquim Pintado Nunes, ILO’s Chief of Occupational Safety and Health and the Working Environment. “Aligned with the ILO’s mandate to promote safe and healthy working environments as a fundamental right, it offers robust, evidence-based guidance to help governments, employers and workers confront the escalating risks of climate change. Together with WHO and WMO, we call for urgent, coordinated action to safeguard the health, safety and dignity of the more than 2.4 billion workers exposed to excessive heat worldwide.”
Call to action
This guidance serves as a critical resource for policymakers, public health officials, and employers in mitigating the escalating impact of workplace heat stress. It aligns with key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, calling for decisive actions that protect vulnerable workers, reduce poverty, and promote sustainable economic growth. Immediate implementation of policies and programmes that safeguard worker health and productivity in the face of climate change is essential.
In the context of accelerating climate crisis, this guidance serves as a vital tool to help countries respond decisively, protecting lives, livelihoods and economies from the growing threat of extreme heat
Media Contacts
WHO Media Team
World Health Organization
Email: mediainquiries@who.intSource: https://www.who.int/news/item/22-08-2025-who-wmo-issue-new-report-and-guidance-to-protect-workers-from-increasing-heat-stress
WMO Media
World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Email: media@wmo.int
Hilariously the press release page doesn’t appear to contain a link to the report, as of the time of writing this article. But I tracked down a copy on the WMO website.
I flipped through the report, but I won’t bother reproducing any of it here – the report itself seems as nonsensical as the press release. Unusually for a climate report it mentions the possibility of adaption – the report first acknowledges the possibility of working at night on page 42. If you do want to read the report I recommend downloading it and reading it locally on your computer via a button on the bottom left of their reader, their online PDF reader sucks.
Working at night, especially in industries like construction, is routine in the tropics, but there were plenty of other adaptions to excess heat which were developed before modern electric lighting. For example in Spain they have a long standing tradition of an afternoon Siesta, sleeping through the hottest part of the day.
In Australia we also have traditional ways of dealing with the heat.
The following comedy advertisement from a decade ago upholds our proud Aussie tradition of heat adaption, watch it to the end, it isn’t what it seems.
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The key to humanity’s survival was always adaption to the enviroment. That’s why eskimoes never tried to grow tomatoes in the arctic and neandertals didn’t embark in creating governments and bureocratic structures to battle natural climate changes..although I’m not quite shure about the neandertals (sarc)
On this August 23rd, it’s almost noon and I can almost go outside without a light jacket.
You mean it’s not boiling where you are? 🙂
These WHO and WMO CO2-phobes are completely delusional. Everything they say is a distortion of reality. It doesn’t matter how many times their insane climate crisis claims are debunked, they just continue to throw the same thing out to the public.
Nobody seems to be listening to them, except the UK’s Ed Miliband.
It must be pretty frustrating for the WHO and the WMO when they keep sounding the alarm and nothing gets better from their point of view, as more and more CO2 enters the atmosphere.
These people need therapy. They don’t live in the Real World.
im 71 aqnd have lived thru at least 5 earth ending lies
Varg: adaption! That’s it, I’m going full Bushman of the Kalahari. I’m thinking only a loin cloth and some trinkets. Wait for it.
Trinkets? … that an odd description/euphemism 😉
Last summer, I was in Les Sables D’Olonne (France) and noticed that the beachfront drive
was white (or beige?) instead of the usual black tar roads. Probably so that beach goers with bare feet don’t get burned. Since UHI effects are one of the major causes of elevated measured
temperatures, this could certainly help. Would light colored roads, tarmacs or parking lots be so much more expensive … at least compared to “renewables”? Of course tar is black but extremely cheap.
I would not put white down in Wisconsin. One has to consider winter as well as summer.
It has been a very nice August here in east Texas. We have not seen a 100°F day this month. Came close a few times but very moderate for this location. So, no heat stress at my home.
I am in eastern Kansas. We haven’t had a 100 degree day in 2 years, and the rest of this month is expected to be much cooler than normal, so the odds of hitting that this year are low. No heat stress here either.
I’m in Eastern Oklahoma and we haven’t had a 100F temperature yet this year. Usually, we have a lot of days 100F or higher.
It’s the moisture that is keeping our temperatures under 100F. All of our areas have had a lot of rain this year and the humidity is high. My temperatures have been running around 98F or 99F, but not quite 100F, but the heat indexes are up around 105 to 109, which means if there were not the moisture in the air, then the air temperatures would be around 105 to 109.
And the forecast is for cooler weather so I guess this will be a year without 100F.
The meteorologist in Tulsa said Tulsa had nine years since records have been kept which were below 100F. She said the record for 100F+ days during the summer for Tulsa was 25 days, but his year: No days.
I wonder if this is a harbinger of a cooldown on the way, or is it just our region?
Anyway, I’ll take a summer like this every year if given the option. The WHO and the WMO know nothing. They are not describing the world I live in.
Here in central Arkansas, it’s been a mixed summer. June was warm, July was cool and August has been brutal.
Last year was warm and dery, the year before was cool and wet.
In other words, it’s been completely normal.
We have “wet” stress down here.
July had twice the normal rainfall.
August, usually a dry month, has had over 5 times the normal rainfall so far..
(normal meaning long term average) light blue is ‘normal’, darker blue is 2025
June was dry, but its been a very wet 6 months !!
And the local road.. cratersville !
I thought more rain was never a problem?
There are practical limits to everything !! 😉
At least the forecast is fine for the next several days.
Maybe the ground will dry out enough to walk on !
And yet at every airport around you they have “measured” temps far above 100, almost as if they placed temperature measuring devices in the hottest possible locations. Imagine that.
Again to correct the misguided notion about airport weather stations… They are placed on airport grounds for the purpose of aviation safety. This is due to plain physics concerns because aircraft rely on the ability of wings to provide lift and the primary determining factor on amount of lift for a given airfoil shape is the properties of the air it has to fly through. Hotter air is less dense and hence provides less lift. Every airliner does a calculation before even starting the engines on what their maximum payload and how much runway they need, and what the decision speeds are for rejecting takeoff, rotating and safe single engine climb speed based on the current weather information at that airport.. So the location of airport weather stations are critical for flight safety. They are NOT fit for the purpose of general weather or climate analyses. Every airport weather station tends to read higher temps than the surrounding terrain, because they contain so much concrete and asphalt. But every pilot needs to know what the temperature, dewpoint, wind speed and barometric pressure at the airport’s runways for safe operation.
The problem is these have been delivering readings every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for almost a century so are an easy target for weather or climate hacks. But they were never intended for, nor are they fit for the purpose of analyzing weather or climate.
In other words, it is not their data that is a problem, it is how that data is being used by other than their critical primary purpose which is aviation safety.
No, they are placed there to get the highest temps to further the climatard lie. Stop defending climatard lies.
No lies, it was an accurate description of what airport weather stations are truely for.
How does declaring that weather stations are not fit for climate change work, defending the climate change lie?
Does not matter what they are “truly for”, they are being used to perpetuate climatard lies. Thats a fact, Jack. The actual purpose is no longer the point, they are being used to advance the Environista agenda.
“… they are being used…”
Yup.
Someone gave you another ‘negative’ overnight. Guess they didn’t come down to see your follow-up comment.
Crybabies gonna cry. They have bought the environista lies and refuse to accept reality. Oh, well.
Southeast Arizona, at 4,600 feet elevation, Last Wednesday through Friday the National Weather Service predicted daily highs of 96°F, and called it “Extreme Heat”. That’s not ‘extreme’ by any stretch of the imagination. We’re surviving with a swamp cooler. I’ll take heat over cold (snow) any day.
If you noticed, we haven’t heard much about how hot it is in Las Vegas. That’s because it hasn’t been that hot in Las Vegas this year.
Janice Dean, the Fox News Weather Machine, reported on one record high in Arizona so far this year, which was 118F for one day about a month or more ago. Since that day, Janice Dean hasn’t even mentioned Arizona in her weather forecasts. No Continuous High Heat in Arizona this year.
I have noticed lately anything over 100F now gets an Extreme Heat warning on the NWS prediction. I’m in the North Mojave Desert at 2,500′. I start to think it’s getting hot around 112.
This year’s summer in Spain was fairly hot, but unlike previous years temperatures cooled down significantly during the nights. 20K difference is normal between daytime highs and night time lows. Highs also used to drop passed august 15th…this year we’re off by a few days but who cares.
Well since people have evolved in TV brainwashed parrots nobody seems to remember “the good old days”, when houses were made out of thick clay walls and the siesta was common and sacred.
Compare to nowadays modern housing and lifestyle and draw your own conlusions if you so choose. I’m going to have a nice cold beer at the bar 😉
Sorry to hear that, Siesta was a tradition worth hanging on to 🙂
I’m so sick of the constant lies. There’s zero evidence extreme heat is increasing. They’re lied so frequently about this that nobody questions it. Science is completely broken.
The climate nazis assert that they have to lie because we subhumans are preventing them from running a perfect climate planet.
But, according to AI, “for much of the world and particularly over North America, global warming is causing nighttime temperatures to rise faster than daytime temperatures.”
Wot? Yet another reason to distrust AI.
Yeah, that’s the urban heat island effect. Higher low drives all of the alleged signal in average temperature trend.
So nighttime temperatures are still way lower than daytime temperatures. How is this a problem?
By their “logic” glassblowers, who can and do work in ambient air temperatures of 110F, not to mention being exposed to radiant heat from furnaces and the glass itself (which can be 2,000F or more) should all be dead. They adapt. Hydrate including electrolytes. Frequent breaks. It’s just common sense.
“Frequent breaks”
It must be a constant occurrence when working with glass …. (:-))
I’ll get my coat !!
Only on the show Blown Away, where they are really pushing the boundaries. Otherwise, not so much.
I worked in a thermal power plant (coal-fired) years ago. In the summer it was pretty hot, and if you had to go inside a recently shut-down unit for a maintenance issue or inspection, it was really hot. We drank a lot of water then. I don’t recall people having heat related problems; everybody was sensible about it.
Raise you hand if, like me, you have ever started outdoor work early in the morning and stopped about the time the temp got to 90°F (32°C)
“… a new joint report …” by The World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
There needs to be an audit of the UN. How much did it cost to produce this report that says “don’t over heat”, a common knowledge thing found easily on obvious web sites:
https://www.cdc.gov/heat-health/about/index.html
The UN is a worthless parasite.
I had some tree work done several years ago by a very humble handyman outfit. He would hire the ne’re’-do-wells in a nearby town and worked them through the peak of August days. That guy was tough, his helpers, not so much. I had to recuse them a few times, bringing them inside for ice water, and cooler air.
In 2008 I trained through the spring and summer for the Angeles Crest 100 mile ultra. I would run out from the lab building to the top of “B” Mountain and back – 12 miles and 1,300′ gain. I acclimated to the heat pretty well. In the spring the temps were in the 90’s, and I’d get back all sticky and gummy. I’d towel bathe in my back room. By July starting at 10 I would be doing the uphill in the low 100’s. My body adapted – my sweat became thin and watery. I’d dry out really fast once back and I stopped taking my towel baths (I basically worked alone). I drew the line at 110 – on the steep uphills I noticed the world would go grey, didn’t feel bad, but not normal.
rescue!
The USA is projected to give about $210 million to WHO in 2025, which is about 12-15% of their total budget.
I want to know WHY the taxpayers have to give anything to this anti-American organization. Bill Gates is also apparently a large contributor so you know that WHO has largely leftist goals – but at least it’s his own money.
Fake-leftist, phony-socialist goals you mean? Even ai gets it right on him. From perplexity.ai:
Bill Gates is widely considered a capitalist. He co-founded Microsoft, which grew to become one of the world’s leading technology companies through private enterprise, market competition, and profit-driven innovation—core tenets of capitalism.
Well, WHO needs the money to support the Houthies.
Heat stress? Measured where….. the middle of concrete and tar jungles ?
So – an infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second 1/2 a beer, the third 1/4 beer. The bar tender stops them there, pour 2 beers and says “you guys should learn your limits”.
Sorry, it’s just that this is all so predictable, it makes me tired. I thought a joke was appropriate.
The last thing anybody or country needs is advice from an international organization. They are only good for spending other people’s money and irritating you.
In 1969 the US Army had restrictions on physical training guided by wet built temperatures above
~32C (I think). I may be off 1-2 degrees. This is nothing new, although much more research has addressed heat stress and techniques to cool of folks whose core T gets too high (placing hands/forearms and/or feet into 20C water works well, for example. Add hydration and breaks in the shade is important, too. Of course, AC and altered work schedules helps. I think Spain instituted that approach hundreds of years ago.
The UN ignores the reduction in cold fatalities to hype the CO2 “menace.”
The WHO elite funded unelected tyrants are best ignored. All part of the satanic UN, WEF , Davos group of World Government. They are not your friends.
“If only there was a way to avoid dangerous daytime temperature extremes.”
When I was working as a forester (50 years)- during heat waves, I’d be in the forests at the crack of dawn- work as fast as possible and quit by the end of the morning before it got too hot. Then I’d go to a beach or sit by my AC. It’s about adjusting.
20C = 68F
How is that “extreme” heat? 2-3% REDUCTION? I can’t speak for anyone else but that’s too cold for me. What work are they talking about, making ice cream?
This is obviously WHO’s recommended temperature for the office thermostat in the summer.
They want us to set our in home thermostats > +72 F to save energy.