ORLANDO, Fla. — As temperatures in Central Florida trend upward and the number of extremely hot days per year also increase, one group will be particularly affected: outdoor workers. 


What You Need To Know

  • This summer was the second-hottest in Orlando’s recorded history, according to Spectrum News 13 weather experts

  • Instances of heat-related illness rose in July, according to AdventHealth Centra Care — with many outdoor workers affected

  • A federal push for investigations into heat related illness at the workplace resulted in a Florida citation in August after one agricultural worker died on the job


“The temperatures are just unbearable,” said Noel Wolfgramm, a longtime roofer and landscaper.

His father started a landscaping business in the 1970s, and Wolfgramm followed a similar path, later expanding into roofing and opening a company of his own — Stax Roofing.

Wolfgramm has long known the dangers of working outdoors in extreme temperatures and the precautions necessary to stay safe in the heat.

In the last decade, Wolfgramm said he has noticed the heat more acutely.

“It’s actually gotten worse,” he said. “It seems like the heat, the climate’s gotten more extreme.”

Climate trends in the area reflect Wolfgramm’s concern: This summer ranked among the hottest on record for Central Florida, according to Spectrum News 13 weather experts. Among the hottest cities in the region was Orlando, which has not witnessed higher temperatures during any summer since 1903.

Temperature rise represents an important aspect of climate change in Central Florida. But experts also point to the increasing share of extremely hot days in the year as an area of concern for outdoor workers.

“What we’re seeing are more days of heat indices that affect human health,” said Shauna Junco, a pharmacist specializing in infectious diseases and a member of Florida Clinicians for Climate Action. “We’re definitely seeing more days of higher temperatures, but we’re also seeing higher humidity, and that makes it harder for our body to regulate its core temperature. And when our body has trouble regulating its core temperature, we start to see significant impacts, including heat-related diseases, the worst of which is heat stroke, which can cause death.”

A 2021 study by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found an unsurprising correlation between heat waves and higher numbers of heat-related deaths in data collected between 1979 and 2018. Even during those extreme weather events, though, the EPA noted that heat-related deaths often go undercounted. Sometimes, medical examiners misclassify heat-related deaths, a phenomenon so pervasive the agency wrote it is “difficult to determine whether the United States has experienced a meaningful increase or decrease” in heat-related deaths.

An August 2022 study by First Street Foundation, a climate research group, predicts that by 2053, Florida will experience over 30 more days a year when the heat index passes 100 degrees.

During the summer months, Wolfgramm said he and his crew take breaks throughout the day — seeking shade and water to fight off the heat. Between late afternoon thunderstorms and the stress of high temperatures during the day, Wolfgramm said they take “between double and triple the time it would take us in every other season.”

Junco noted that seniors and the very young are more likely to experience heat-related illnesses but explained that when the heat reaches above a certain point, everyone suffers.

“We’re already seeing an increased number of days with a heat index of over 90 degrees and that’s when outdoor workers are affected, and they can’t do their jobs as well because their bodies just can’t regulate the heat exposure,” Junco said. “They need frequent water breaks. They need access to cool spaces.”

That’s a pattern that Dr. Timothy Hendrix, AdventHealth Centra Care’s senior medical director, is familiar with. He reported an uptick in heat-related illnesses in July from previous years, and about a third of those patients were outdoor workers.

“With higher temperatures [and] longer hours when the heat’s up and there’s not as much cloud cover, even experienced outdoor workers can suffer from the heat,” Hendrix said.

Climate advocates have pushed for programs and reforms to mitigate extreme temperatures at the local, state and federal levels, to varying degrees of success. In July, the Biden administration launched Heat.gov, an online clearinghouse for information on extreme heat. The website includes resources for workers and guidelines for employers to maintain safer workplaces. In April, the administration also directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to expand investigations into workplaces with potentially dangerous levels of heat.

Following one such inspection, the Department of Labor announced on Aug. 24 that it had cited Citrus Harvesting, Inc., after a worker employed by the company died in Manatee County because of heat-related illness.

OSHA has also launched a rule-making process to set a safety standard for employers to protect workers in extreme heat.

At the local level, Miami-Dade County has addressed the heat crisis by hiring a “heat officer,” who is tasked with leading the county’s response to extreme temperatures. It’s a position that advocates like Junco say could be exported to places like Orlando, to mitigate the dangerous effects of the heat.

Such reforms, at all levels of government, are hard won. The bipartisan Heat Illness Prevention bill, proposed by Republican Florida State Senator Ana Maria Rodríguez, died in committee in April. The bill would have established modest requirements for employers to protect their workers, like requiring employers to keep water near the worksite and monitor employees showing signs of heat illness. But trade associations lobbied against the bill.