'We just want to survive it.”
Mily Trevino-Sauceda was 9 when her mother fell as she worked to move irrigation pipes along rows of potato and alfalfa on an Idaho farm. Mily’s 10-year-old brother splashed water over their mother’s face and body while her children looked on, scared and crying. Their mother had fainted from the heat, and could never again work as fast or as long in the sun.
Edgar Franks describes working on farms in the heat as “a matter of life and death.” Like Trevino-Sauceda, he has lifelong memories of being hot and uncomfortable in the fields where he and his family worked, first growing up in Texas while working on citrus and watermelon, and later in Washington state in fields of cauliflower, cucumbers, raspberries and blueberries.
Climate change makes extreme heat more likely and more intense. Farm work is particularly dangerous because workers raise their internal body temperature by moving, lifting and walking at the same time they’re exposed to high heat and humidity, said Dr. Jonathan Patz, chair of health and the environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If workers don’t take breaks to get out of the sun, drink water and rest, they can experience nausea, vomiting, dehydration, muscle cramps and more — all the symptoms of a fever without any infection, said Roxana Chicas, an assistant professor in the nursing school at Emory University in Atlanta.
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