Assessment of Climate Change Related Heat Stress Among Workers in Upper Egypt : Impact of Intervention Program on Physiological Responses

Climate change has a significant impact on human health and productivity at work. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations, climate change is one of the most significant global challenges of the 21st century. It is defined by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as "a change in climate that is directly or indirectly attributable to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to the natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods".

Climate change has led to a significant increase in global average temperatures; temperatures on average have increased by about 1.1°C since pre-industrial times . In addition, the intensity, frequency, and duration of heatwaves have been rapidly increasing around the globe . Nineteen out of the 20 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000.

Occupational exposure associated with rising temperatures and climate change has become a concern to the health and safety, productivity, and social well-being of the world's diversified workforce. As a result, the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are focused on ensuring healthy lifestyles, promoting wellbeing, ensuring decent employment and work capacity, and combating the effects of climate change on all sectors of development. Climate change continues to pose an immediate and long-term threat to human survival around the world; hence, the global agenda to promote humanity's well-being by combating rising temperatures and the impacts of climate change, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 13).

In tropical regions in low-and middle-income countries, rural populations often work in hot climates, live in dwellings that are not thermally efficient, and are unable to access fans or air conditioners. Laboring in high heat increases the risk of heat-related injuries and illnesses. Egypt is especially vulnerable to climate change due to its geographic location and reliance on climate sensitive economic sectors.

Exposure to heat can cause a range of adverse health effects including damage to major organs and even death if the core temperature of the body exceeds 42 °C .

Working people's exposure to hot environments to heat-related health effects such respiratory, heart, and renal illnesses. Even in healthy people, heat stress has the potential to produce acute kidney damage through volume depletion. Numerous heat-related symptoms, including exhaustion, headaches, muscle cramps, weakness, nausea, vomiting, tachycardia, hyperventilation, and chest pain that may be mild or severe depending on severity, ataxia, hypotension, syncope, and momentary changes in mental status, can all be signs of heat stress.

It is possible that in some cases the asymptomatic rise in serum creatinine levels represents a dehydration-related decrease in renal perfusion without structural injury or that the rise in the creatinine level does not represent a true fall in the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). However, there is concern that changes in the creatinine level during the work shift may represent injury to the kidneys, which, if repetitive, could confer a predisposition to chronic kidney disease