Projection of heat-related occupational injuries under climate change and demographic scenarios in Italian cities

High temperatures have been associated with occupational injuries (OIs). However, studies projecting future OIs under climate change scenarios are scarce, particularly in Europe. To fill this gap, we estimated projected heat-related OIs in 87 Italian cities under climate and demographic scenarios.

OIs occurring from 2014 to 2019 were collected from the Italian national archive. Daily counts of OIs in each city were merged with ERA5-land Copernicus mean temperatures. City-specific exposure-response functions were estimated using a time-series analysis with distributed lag non-linear model (dlnm) and then meta-analysed to obtain a national estimate. This estimate was applied to project heat-attributable OIs from 2015 to 2100 using downscaled daily temperatures from 19 general circulation models, under three European Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios (SSP1-2.6; SSP2-4.5; SSP3-7.0), including demographic projections. Adaptation scenarios were also considered by applying risk attenuation.

Under the lowest mitigation scenario (SSP3-7.0), an increase in the attributable number of OIs is foreseen, with 537 (95% CI 365-709) additional cases in 2070-2079 compared with the baseline decade 2010-2019, corresponding to an attributable relative fraction of 0.38% (95% CI 0.26-0.5). Under the intermediate scenario (SSP2-4.5), 464 (95%CI 312-616) additional cases are projected compared with baseline. Agriculture showed high vulnerability with attributable fraction of 1.20% (95% CI 0.99-1.41) under SSP3-7.0 scenario in 2070-2079.

Heat-related OIs are predicted to increase under future climatic conditions. Workplace mitigation measures and public health actions are recommended to reduce heat-attributable OIs.