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tv   Infernal Heat  Deutsche Welle  March 25, 2024 4:15pm-5:00pm CET

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6 hours, the, i sorry, so one on 6 times to increase the current t more people than ever on the move worldwide in such an one. great timing question is very hard to say very difficult to find out about time on storing info migrants the beneath the scorching sun. 2 peasants take a break while working
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a field. it's hard talking work. the test oral setting makes an obvious point. eat and work never did mix well. the win vanco painted this work in 1889. the world had already unconsciously started a new climate age the the age of unprecedented global warming. the most recent years have been the warmest that have ever been on record. the climate change is threatening the health of millions of workers who are directly exposed to the heat. what's more, it produces their productivity and brings into question the conventional model of growth. to always put,
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use more faster. the warming climate is reaching an insurmountable limit. the balance set by the human body. can we keep working as we always have in a hotter world? and at what price? the summer temperatures and contacts are regularly higher than 45 degrees celsius. in recent decades, the countries climate as heated up at
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a rate almost twice the global average. at the same time, the enter it is undergoing unprecedented development has gone from a country with a small capital to a place that has in less than a decade created itself as a global destination for sports and culture construction and pop out it is that the technological cutting edge it is some of the most sophisticated, innovative, and vicious construction and design anywhere in the world. the whole country is a construction site and many businesses to help their technical mastery. building ever higher and quicker. under extreme conditions, the cuts are relies on migrant workers to realize these lofty plants. the
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94 percent of the country's workers are for us, most come from the indian subcontinent, se asia and africa, the low wage workers, who despite the em are its recent reforms, are still treated poorly by their employers. and workers were referred to by managers and others as not just on scale, but for quality and just bodies. natasha is calendar is one of the few independent researchers who received approval to visit guitar to construction sites for almost a year. the professor of urban planned and closely observed the daily life of the construction workers. i asked workers consistently, what was the most difficult part of their job because they never described
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a delay in the payment of wages. they didn't refer to long hours. they didn't refer to degrading behavior by their supervisors uniform, late to a man. they spoke about, she being the most difficult part of their jobs. men described it as a feeling of drowning that you are drowning in the air that the, the sky was mounting and you couldn't breathe or that the sky was pressing down on them. it was for workers, the most difficult, dangerous, and disempowering challenge that they felt at the work site bar, not the but the way it acts on the body is often very difficult to discern
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the highest the heat stress levels you actually get, have direct effects on. so on the brain, so the workers cannot think here is a normally and that increases the risk of accidents and they might fall off of building and die even because of the effect on the brain. the
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when fi consol quarter returned home. he couldn't say anything about the working conditions and co tar. neither did his lifeless body betray what he was forced to bear in the heat the every day in the hall. another village, more is the tragic death of one of these voiceless migrant workers. the discipline and complex father works for a construction company doing different types of jobs. sometimes carpentry, sometimes plumbing. the things that he ended up doing all sorts of work and some of the,
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sometimes on the end of the day. but the bottom of the material is that is when he called and told us about the working conditions. he always complained about the sheet. me, i noticed that he often told me about this on the phone and they said how hard the heat was on him. deal for the the fee concept for went to go to are to earn money to pay for his daughter's wedding. and his sons education. he will never get to see his children grow up the the atlanta i mean that co worker of his called me and said, your father is dead. he tells me that he was working high up now and then he had to repair a pipe. and then he fell off. i'm glad i left you a blank,
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but nobody was there when the accident happened in the middle. like download it and the love yet and some colleagues came a few minutes later and found them unconscious on the ground floor. it's okay. you can't down by the time you, they took him to the hospital, but at that that'd be less than that where he was pronounced the let's be done on the database. so you go to of the, the, the only official information fee cons family has or a few words on his death certificate. the cause of death, acute respiratory failure. nothing indicates what might have caused him to stop reading. although they were told there would be further investigations. the family has heard nothing since something that has become sadly
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a standard for guest workers from nepal. the during the last decade, the ingo fair square estimates that more than $3000.00 net police migrant workers have died in the gulf states. the one of every 2 cases remains unexplained. the officially it's called acute respiratory or heart failure on paper, a natural cause of death. the, nobody knows like, what natural fits actually ease, you know, our understanding of that sort of, that is like, you know, when you are all these and when you're dying necessarily, that should be the natural that. but then or 25 years for the guy who's like magically certified by the government of nipple as a, you know, uh as a healthy and a fit can do that for like doing all sort of a manual jobs in the countries like gloss, you know,
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like suddenly dies and nobody knows the reason this is a suspicious that we need to like investigate that in the every day. 1500 and they finally, mike and workers to leave this country from countries like golfing militia, to find appropriate jobs for themselves individualized for the family. members of the same international airport welcomes the dead party off the migrant workers. birth date in everett as you know, wrapped in the wooden boxes, the
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default victim to the extreme climate in the gulf states was the real cause of death. extreme heat, the ford guest room is a leading expert on huge stress in 2019, we contributed to a study about suspicious depths of net police workers and contacts they actually looked at every month. because if you look at to do just that testing some of the houses here and you have cooling months, you have hot months and you actually can see the difference between the different parts of this vehicle and show. and this i said that during the hottest moms the card you of asked or the heart disease this, but it's $8.00 to $4.00 times higher then during the coolest miles. and this could not be expected to happen from any of the race. and then the extreme heat that the workers were working in during the hot months.
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the for several years, the curve of fatalities was nearly parallel to the seasonal temperature curves. the higher the temperature, the more fatalities there were. each winter things improved. but then in the spring, the numbers of death throes again, the a response to criticism cutoff pass the law to protect workers from the heat, the up on no, not for the government to talk about the has decided to forbid working outdoors sometimes if died during the summer months possible, i made a walk for the admin fee, the hot tub. the law
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states that from june to september, it's forbidden to work outside from 10 am to 3 30 pm at 10 am sharp to work on the construction side of this company, and they want to show us they are in compliance with the rules. employers are now required to have and implemented prevention plan to combat the risks of heat stress. now during the very high heat times, we have the black, black, which means is the old words and the other one is the safety 1st. and then if you have the red flag, which is a precaution thing that'd be, are in the physical area which is $39.00 to $53.00 degrees it be is we need to make a 10 minute dress for all. and then we have the yellow flag, which is $32.00 to $38.00 degrees, which is 7 minutes per hour. and then the green flag, which is to,
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instead of $31.00 degrees, it's the normal working out today on the disk on the issue. you have the red flag on this the company recommends their workers take regular short breaks, but it's not a legal requirement. to tory authorities require employers to use a v g t. for whitfield, clothing for a moment are showing more than just the temperature. it supplies precise data to specifically show with the heat stress that will work or is being exposed to that monitors air, temperature, humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation. according to international standards at $28.00 degrees and upwards on a v g t. there was a health risk for even moderate physical activity. and at about $32.00 degrees w g, b t, the risk of death increases sharply. with right now 3070 this conditions.
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and when it reaches 30 points, what that raises level, the size. so i shop down, so when all the labels are allowed to work, you know, off on september 15th, at 10 o. 5 am. the heat and costs are still poses a deadly threat to people working outdoors. even though the summer work regulations are soon coming to an end in the mornings, companies can let their employees work outside without breaks. as long as the v g t limit of 32 point one degrees isn't exceeded the but the day is far from over. for the workers, they have to wait and this air conditioned the cafeteria until work starts again. in 5 and a half hours. it is in some ways, one of the most protective examples of heat legislation anywhere in the world.
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however, the legislation, as is today, does not fully protect workers. it does not take into account that workers do not have the autonomy to sell pace. they cannot exercise their rights to rest as needed to cool down as needed. that time pressures to complete this work are intensive, and the supervisory pressures to work at an accelerated pace. how workers experience heat, how they're able to protect themselves from heat, and how they suffer. harm from heat is absolutely a matter of power dynamics. on the work side and this goes beyond whether or not companies are offering enough water points or cooling stations. it goes beyond that,
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[000:00:00;00] the, even with the most limited time of change by the end of the century. that of a 100000000 people living in the areas with such faith as to hop this then at least at the moment. and if we assume that the temperature increase would continue at the right that we are currently increasing it. that would be $700000000.00 people in the hottest areas, the if the planet warns by 2 degrees celsius. and 15 times more people worldwide will be exposed to extreme heat and humidity
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the it's really hot in nicaragua, between march and may. during these months, the sugarcane harvest is in full swing. most men in this region work for the sugar industry. so as for us to live, at least for a few decades now, in academic has been ravaging the ranks of outdoor workers. it could be the 1st occupational disease caused by climate change. the village of lot, east lock is surrounded by sugarcane fields. it's known as the island of widows.
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the more than $300.00 women have lost their husbands. here. they all died of the same mysterious illness or let them yeah, we didn't have any other choice. i mean, which was the only job when i saw how many people were dying of this disease. me and so i knew one day this would be my turn to way ahead of the other ones that answer your question the most definitely let's definitely relatives have it to me and my brothers are also sick. our, my younger brother has to have dialysis, like we met at the back only way and most of them are on the cane. feels lemme unit . but at the see, we all worked hard there. the thought though, the ones that i have and i can is that a she just been born then there's a yoke that's me and that's my daughter financial aid, and this is the family made it 38 year old and then so
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martinez survived. he suffers from chronic renal failure. 6 3 dialysis sessions each week have left their marks on his arm, but they keep him alive. now you really counsel me. i will not, not let me down. we didn't have any pre guy or even any works or how about like a nice of switching the whole time because i pulled my shorts, was soaking through my trousers to i wouldn't say everything. how i guess he hung up or download the boat as a pressure to resume and say, are young, don't stop and keep going out. and so we can work like that. no, yeah, king my best they want to come by after i saw how many co workers coming to town got fevers i threw up and then when they were in the field in a way that i had, i think then one day the company said get, does it yeah, you come to work here anymore and we are not allowed in 1st to save away and then
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you're nothing to them is ending up one second. all the sudden would die within a few days without the dialysis and this treatment will extend his life by 15 years at best. the others in the region didn't get the treatment at all. in the neighboring town of gigi got it all over half of men's debts have been attributed to chronic renal failure. the residents have long since become used to the side of the hearse. just as they are of the trucks that take sugarcane to the sugar plant of industry, giants, san antonio, the they produced close to half of nicaragua, in sugar,
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and also the world famous rum florida. can you, the son, antonio, is the biggest employer in town, in 2007 jason glass or witnessed a human tragedy at the gates of the company and to, to kind of by the glass are, comes from the us. you originally came to make a documentary about the banana industry, the. this is the, this is a situation here. yeah. yeah. but this feels about right as long as the 1st encounter, there was a protest cancel banana workers in front of the national assembly. and they had told us to talk the sugarcane workers that were there. who told us we came, workers were dying,
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you have to get up there. it's kenny disease. we think it's pesticides, we think you know something is killing us. please check it out. so we came up here to check it out and we came across this completely here is theme. let us don't. these are the picket lines that the king field workers, a protest group in front of the gates, a line of national police in front of the gates. there clearly been a scuffle that somebody faces and some unhappiness going on. the on the, on the name of what the law set up an association for years and on one of the 460 men of isabel group has died. this is a higher risk busy. so the toaster, the trees already fly over bumps. you might have to build a 2nd while again, phone numbers on the phone. all right, kyle said ok. yeah. wow. bottom model. what's my problem? what's the problem?
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fire and so the cost, it turned out the car information gave it to a private company security. and the private company called their p. r. firm in miami 1st, and our seller and burst them our seller called us in nicaragua and told us there's nothing to see here. you said, move on your way youngsters. and we were like, there's clearly something the senior jason glass or state interest you qualify for several months and documented the devastating extent of the illness. and it was so on the present at that point, the disease that is no exaggeration to say that every single day there were one or more people. and you start really wondering like, well, what can i do like i can't just go home, you know, so we have to do something the
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jason left his career as a documentary filmmaker so he could work to protect harvest, labors. he established in n g o. not you slot, got a masters degree and epidemiology, and gathered a team of researchers together. assign yourself at all. how many years have you been working with pesticides? so the 5 years just i can't remember her name for 5 years down there, probably in, in that one piece of mind when you get to your drinking water near enough, away from your settings, you go from your own. well for they puzzle. i drink the discipline water, sewage light came on separate. you sent me the next person, please left. the funds that people would say is from pesticides, some or besides, it was from existing ground toxins. it might be the volcano, the volcano, that only affected young working age man, us. it was in the water, but the water only affected young working age man. um,
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it was about looking through happen to be logical data. physiological studies anecdotal reports what seems to be the through line and the commonality with who's affected and how severely they are affected. and the all became very clear that the occupational setting was the main issue. those doing the heaviest jobs where the 2nd the heat doesn't just come from the sun, but from the bodies of the cutters as well. their muscles are working at full speed . they produce their own more on top of the ambient temperature. working outside increases thermal stress, which in turn further increases the difficulty of the work. the cutters take few breaks to drink and rest in the shade. so they are paid by how much they can cut the pressure to work at top speed means the risk of renal damage is 12 times as high as it is for their overseers, for subject to the same climatic conditions. professionally pernicious because your
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body is desperately telling you to relax, to calm down, but you have to survive. you have to provide for your family. so you'll override all those signals and animal will take a break. human being pushes on through this, these antiquated labor systems that are fundamentally based on slavery that have not a fault with the protections we expect in other settings and sectors. the still existing colonial system has ignored these climate conditions. instead, it pushes the widespread misconceptions that he causes one to be lazy. and there are 2 ways to deal with laziness, either with the carrot or the stick. the more than 3 decades ago, a neighboring el salvador,
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a dr. sounded the alarm because of the extent of the epidemic bodies because we've got more than 6000 dialysis patients in the country and we believe for each one kind of positive to 10 to 15, people are in other stages of greenland sufficiency. if you do the math, that's a norm us. what to become way through and the ricardo leave. i medi no isn't nephrologist and a senior doctor at the nurse through non real scientists hospital in salvador city . he was one of the 1st doctors to take a closer look at the illness and wanted to let the minute go. so the for me that and then is that the display diabetes at the is the most common cause of the chronic renal in sufficiency, worldwide of united, followed by high blood pressure inputs, and we'll get to the end of the 1990. so when we saw a more and more young mild patients came from farming regions in the call time,
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yes, it was once found in these places. yeah. now the crump, the sugar guided, i mean, it seemed like i knew yes. ok. they didn't phase in the international input, the me a logical profile, or you're not gonna lie a bit of feet in the middle of the community yet because of it's a typical profile. the disease was named chronic kidney disease of non traditional origin. but the patients here call it creating that's because korea mean clearance is the blood test value that shows whether your kidneys are working or not. but my know seems to me, but these patients don't have symptoms for many years and only come to the hospital when they're in the phone stages and being practically when they're at the point of needing dialysis. we cannot kid. once that regular sufficiency becomes chronic, remember like what is when i left the you, the name gets placed effect on of
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a series lower because the risk factors such as repeated he struck over what i assumed the hydration saying it was minus the damage to the kidneys that goes on notice, you know, that these people are likely used to hard run at the end. don't immediately notice what it's doing to the health. no. okay. then when that was your email yet, but when they're in these conditions of a many, yes for that, then that could be what's causing this disease minus the cause of it. and it's estimated the epidemic has killed tens of thousands of people in the last 2 decades. during the last 15 years, it's been observed in all central american countries above all in regents with the highest temperatures and humidity levels. right, so the interesting thing about this map is you see the correlation between the disease and the hot regions and the lowlands. whether it's the most intense of labor. so if you look at the blue dots,
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this is where you have like the really high intensive and dense cane production. so this isn't like somewhere it doesn't on far and then where you see the red and yellow, this is kind of the relative kidney disease burden on the health system of these countries. you do not see it in the highlands where there's intensive labor where it's cool and you don't see it, where there's less intensive work in the hot owens. so it's just that intersection of extremely heavy labor and extremely high temperatures. the epidemic coincides with the expansion of intensive agriculture in central america, which is being driven by rising global demand for agricultural products. at the same time, the climate has warmed by more than one degree celsius and the number of days of extreme heat during the harvest as tripled. but as we expanded the network, as we increase the studies and we move to different countries,
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we began to see that really anywhere that was too hot and the work was too heavy. and there were no protection to solve this. the . here's a database that we have. one person is a 33 year old male. yeah. and the other person is 36 year old males and like young, we don't know how long they have been on dialysis or like how they both left healthy. yes. yeah. and i have older jason glass or has gone to nepal to do more research a pc, or is migrant workers from nepal, who have gone to work in the extreme heat of the gulf. states also have kidney damage. his net police research colleagues,
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sweet tech corolla and shy lando sharma share his concerns. service active this week is to try to assess what the situation is in depaul. i mean what the situation seems to be. we know people have not come back to died abroad, but also seems that many workers who have come back are sick with kidney disease and they're healthy before they left. a many of them face conditions, very similar in terms of heavy work and high see like what we've seen in central america. and our goal is to kind of characterize what's going on in the clinical level, but also in the population level in the communities, but also really understand what the burden is on the health system. because no country can afford a provider. and so if you dial says patients unbelievably expensive, certainly not in the fall. the point in was once a migrant worker in the gulf states,
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the installed air conditioners into by the 5 years ago, he suddenly returned to nepal due to chronic kidney in sufficiency, the city i went and i'm going to mind any model and then i'm going to have the 1 am and i could have given you problems. give me the because the one they don't make. so uh do by this was doing his regular screening. they found he had a pretty thorough examination and they found his blood pressure was high, and the, and the physician who was screening him, prescribed him some blood pressure medications and didn't tell him much. so he went back to work. and later in the day, he got a phone call and kind of back and forth, back and forth, and he will cause physicians telling him over the phone that you have to come because your kidneys are feeling when they told him that his gives you a feeling like he knew what that meant. they also added that you need to go back to the phone. right? that's what, right? yeah. like you're no good to us anymore. you're going home as of monday morning
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because it was like the story of like someone not realizing until they felt tired or like around and check for the class and there and stay as 5 or at best for like this is a story like every sugar cane work or unless they're getting scammed, it's just awful like us again and again what we see. so it's very similar. it's like out disturbing, like similar the exporting labor to more more countries is a key pillar of natal, is economy more than a quarter of its gross domestic product can be traced to the money workers earned in places like the gulf states and malaysia. migrant labor brings in money, but it comes at
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a higher price. the doctor, re she costly is enough for ologist. during recent years, the beds that his hospital had been filling up with the young man who returned from warmer countries with kidney failure, the commission became a guy that accounts get more equipment, nothing stuff from technicians on such short notice. i give you some patients. there's not even room for the new toner bony. the net police government recently said it was prepared to take over the costs of dialysis for all patients without means. but it's on certain whether the country can afford it last night. i must have yeah, listen to it. and when i talk to these people, why you don't quit your when you weren't even sure. yeah. you raise your
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so you, when a healthy a don't want isn't me, is via you will be going to take became sick means the incidence will fit kid off you too much. why the ease williams is limited to goes. why he's a redone without anything. why this? because do not be this is, this is what i don't understand why the gulf states are very rich countries have and then these people get sick and they send them back and it's the poor country. and the 4 people that shoulder, the burden of their development can be what he's doing, leavings, it's better than treatment when something's better than to have what is the premium some way these premium so? so this really is a pandemic. this is a global disease. and again, it's affecting the people on the bottom rung that do the most necessary jobs, and they've always been viewed as disposable.
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the higher the failures less? oh yeah, i don't know. i filed the after new years of denial and resistance. the san antonio company opens at the door for jason and his team the sugar processing plant. finally, it meets the working conditions harm. it's labors now with the n g o lot useless. the company is working out or research and prevention programs to combat heat stress. the
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always hit hardest or harvest workers who cut brent of sugar cane. burning the crop makes it easier to cut, but the ground is still hot. this further increases the stress on the workers. the strategies for protecting them are as effective as they are simple. the stress save addressing, but the really important part of it is that the rest are mandated so you can be completely hydrated, start the hypothermic music, meaning too much heat in your body, and still have damage. and that's what people really didn't understand. they were conflicting that for years, so to have the mandated breaks to make sure that core temperature gets down. and you can keep an average over the work day, that's more reasonable. the cutters take up to 20 minute breaks per hour and go
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home at noon. the strictly regulated working temple was inspired by athletic training 3 years ago when we were just assessing it about 10 percent of these guys are going to the hospital every harvest. and we've brought that down to like point 5 or point one like almost completely eliminated. hospitalized secure can injury. so we know that if you can stop, as you can answer, you can stop and this is hopefully most tracks. so rest said water was this epidemic preventable? good, simple breaks and sufficient hydration have done the job. not useless research results to support this, but they also show that millions of workers worldwide are exposed to the same threat. in a warming world, people see a lot of risk and that's understandable. there is a lot of risk,
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but there's also an enormous amount of opportunity to, to change how we organize, work to change how we value people. we can actually save both industry and government a ton of money by making sure people don't get sick. what will be the place of workers to work indispensable to our economy and the new climate age? will they be valued less because heat makes them less productive and who will pay the price of protecting them? what is clear is their situation depends more than ever. on how well we take care of our planet,
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the thinking as a network thing, as one show about vision res. i'm bed project challenges that can be tackled together for a future. living, working for a more united 1230 minutes on the w. when detecting to become a way of life,
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