Why it is difficult to identify deaths from heat at work

For 48 fatal heat-related work accidents officially recorded by Public Health France since 2018, how many go under the radar? “The number of deaths is clearly underestimated, admits Guillaume Boulanger, head of the quality of living and working environments and population health unit within the agency. The cases identified are only the tip of the iceberg. »

To establish this annual count, the agency is, in fact, entirely dependent on the figures transmitted by the general labor directorate of the Ministry of Labor, which itself relies on feedback from the medical labor inspection (IMT) . After each fatal accident, whatever the cause, a labor inspector is dispatched to the field for an investigation. This is when officers may note a connection to heat, based on their observations: high temperatures, medical symptoms in the victim, obvious safety lapses on the part of the employer (such as absence of water nearby), etc.

These readings are transmitted to the IMT, which analyzes and completes them to determine which accidents can be attributed to climatic conditions. The age of the victim, the nature of the tasks and their arduousness, the workplace, its level of sunlight and temperature, as well as the time of day and season are taken into account.

“Just a subjective feeling”

However, according to Guillaume Boulanger, labor inspectors do not always make the link between heat and deaths. In the report forms, that The World was able to obtain, several control agents admit their limitations: “Regarding the link with extreme heat, it remains unresolved but cannot be ruled out as it stands. writes one of them, concerned about the death of a cleaning lady, in August 2020. When I was able to enter the bungalow (…) the atmosphere inside was very confined, but that is just a subjective feeling. » The labor inspectorate also suffers from chronic understaffing, with a vacancy rate of 18% in the 2,048 sections of the territory, in 2022, according to the Court of Auditors.

Surprisingly, in 2021, when the summer was announced as the hottest ever recorded in Europe, no victims of fatal heat-related work accidents were identified, compared to eight to twelve per year in other years. Certain deaths are also the subject of debate within the work medical inspection, and it is not always easy to distinguish what leads to their inclusion or exclusion from the census. In June 2019, a 56-year-old trimmer died of illness in a steel foundry in Hauts-de-France. “Possibly linked to heat linked to the workplace, but probably not to outside heat”notes the inspector. The IMT decided to remove it from the count, considering that the heat of the victim's working environment was not unusual, and noting that the department was not then subject to a heatwave alert.

You have 40.88% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.