Faculty Member with the Urban Health Collaborative (UHC) and Arthur L. and Joanne B. Frank Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health, Leah Schinasi, PhD, MSPH, was awarded a new grant this September from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD).
Working with fellow UHC faculty member Alina Schnake-Mahl and team, the five-year study, titled “The Ambient Temperature and Occupational Safety and Health Study,” or A-TOSH for short, investigates high heat in the workplace and how this heat can affect those in workplaces who are most exposed to it.
Workers in industries such as construction, agriculture, and manufacturing often face intense and hazardous heat exposures. These health consequences may be severe, ranging from acute cardiovascular and respiratory events to injury or even death.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, heat exposure in the U.S. is associated with over 3,500 workplace injuries and illnesses and 34 deaths annually. However, these figures likely underestimate the true burden due to frequent misclassification of heat-related outcomes. What’s more, heat exposure may have a greater impact on workers without access to healthcare, safe housing, and other resources that support protection or recovery from heat stress. Compounding this, there is a striking lack of empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of workplace safety protocols for protecting workers from heat-associated mortality or morbidity.
This new study will address these critical gaps in knowledge regarding the burden of occupational heat-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths, as well as the effectiveness of workplace heat safety interventions by:
- Quantifying the annual burden of heat-related workplace injuries, illnesses, and fatalities across the U.S.;
- Assessing differences in heat exposure and adverse outcomes by understanding which workers bear the greatest heat burden, based on factors like pay, education, housing, and working conditions;
- Calculating associations between workplace heat safety protocol adoption and rates of heat-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths among laborers.
“I’m grateful to NIMHD for supporting not just occupational health research, but also occupational health research that also considered extreme weather impacts,” Dr. Schinasi went on to say. “I’m also grateful (and excited to work with) my collaborators and co-investigators on this project, Alina Schnake-Mahl, Anneclaire De Roos, Augusta Williams, Atheendar Venkataramani, and Elizabeth Platt. Finally, I’m grateful to the Harvard TH Chan JPB Environmental Health Fellowship Program, which provided funding for important pilot work.”
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