Who Has AC and Who Dies in Heat Waves

Sep 15, 2025

As we shop for fruits and vegetables in air-conditioned stores, we might consider who is picking the strawberries or almonds.

The highest value of farm products is from California, which has at least half a million farm laborers, mostly from Mexico and not all here with the “right” papers. Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Florida also sell huge amounts of food products, again with most laborers coming from Spanish-speaking countries.

So, it is not a surprise that Arizona, Texas and Nevada have the highest number of heat-related deaths; the workers who are outdoors in high heat are most at risk, that is, agricultural workers, construction workers, and the workers who pick up trash and repair the road and sewer mains. And whether politicians agree with reality or not, the entire world is experiencing higher temperatures than seen in the past, thanks mostly to the burning of fossil fuels.

For those who must work outside — often workers! — their health is determined by what the politicians in their states agree to. As of August 2025, Texas employers are not allowed to offer water breaks for those working outside, although the ruling is before the courts. In California, thanks to hard-won organizing of unions among agricultural workers, some of them get breaks with water and shade. In blue state Maryland, considered a rich and liberal state, a trash worker died of heat last summer in Baltimore.

Heat exposure has also been linked in scientific studies to a lower life expectancy; in other words, workers will die at a younger age due to heat exposure in their work.

Just like a thousand other matters in everyday life, the results working people get are not the results richer people get, no matter how hard we work.