"The story of a heat death: David went to work in his new job on a French building site. By the end of the day he was dead"

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In June 2022, David signed up with Sovitrat, a major temp agency. As he was filling in the application forms and going to interviews, extreme heat swept across Europe ... France was one of the worst-affected countries, with temperatures of 40-43C recorded in some places. The heat briefly let up, returning to summer averages as David got the good news: Sovitrat had found him a job in Clermont-Ferrand, working for the construction giant Eiffage ...

.... France’s public health authority operates a colour-coded warning system for heatwaves: on 9 July 2022, they issued a red alert in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the region in which Clermont-Ferrand is situated. David’s first day of work was 11 July ...

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Clermont-Ferrand is home to a large Michelin tyre factory, and David was working on the construction of a new truck depot, pouring a large concrete slab as a base. He worked in direct sunlight. Temperatures in Clermont-Ferrand soared to around 35C....

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...."He said he was only a temporary employee and didn’t dare say no because he wanted to keep the job.”

Eiffage, the construction company running the site, disputes [David's sister] Anne-Marie’s account of the day David died, and says the site manager immediately took care of David, placing him in a lateral safety position and contacting emergency services. A spokesperson says: “All the preventive measures necessary to prevent heat-related risks were in place, in particular the provision of water on the site and the installation of a cooler on a generator as close as possible to the work area.”

Anne-Marie says she later found out that David had first felt unwell and fainted at 10.30am, over an hour before anyone on site called her, and nearly two hours before the emergency responders arrived. In hospital, he had a second cardiac arrest...

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... across Europe, people are dying in large numbers from the heat every summer. those with no choice but to be outside – homeless people, agricultural or construction workers – are also in more danger than the general population. ....The public health advice to stay indoors where possible, keep out of the midday sun, and avoid physical exertion is impossible for most labourers to follow.

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“Fundamentally, illness related to heat is incredibly preventable. All you have to do is not overexpose someone and allow them to recover,” says Cora Roelofs, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, who studies worker safety and the environment ...

A week after David’s death, José Antonio González, a street sweeper in Madrid, died of heatstroke after collapsing at work. He was 60, and like David was working on a temporary contract and determined to prove himself. His son told the Spanish newspaper El País: “I am convinced that he did not stop cleaning that street until he fainted. He thought his contract was not going to be renewed and he was giving his all to prove himself.”

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In her research on heat death in the US, Roelofs has found that it is common for workers to die in their first few days on the job, not just because of the physiological adjustment to heat exposure, but social factors.

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Safeguards for workers are a major frontier in climate policy. Spain introduced a raft of new protections after the outcry that followed the death of González, including a requirement for employers to specifically risk assess for heat, prohibiting certain tasks in high temperatures, and making it mandatory to adapt work during a heatwave, with measures such as reducing or modifying work hours. But not all countries have taken such steps: in France, a “bad weather fund” is available for workers affected by storms or other adverse conditions, but it does not currently cover heatwaves.

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... Sovitrat, the temp agency, sent the family flowers, but Eiffage, the construction company he had been working for, sent nothing. (When asked why, a spokesperson said: “Our teams were not aware of the family’s wishes, ahead of the funeral organised very quickly.”) A week after David’s death, Anne-Marie received paperwork from Eiffage. In it, the company denied any link between David’s death and his work on the construction site. Later, in an email to Sovitrat, Eiffage reiterated this, writing that David’s collapse and subsequent death were “simply the manifestation of a health problem totally independent of work”.

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That August, the French public health insurer l’Assurance Maladie conducted an administrative investigation, interviewing the site managers and Anne-Marie. The report concluded that David’s death should be deemed a workplace accident – not put down to a totally unrelated illness. Eiffage did not accept the finding. In March 2023, Anne-Marie’s lawyer filed a manslaughter case with the French public prosecutor against multiple parties, and followed this up in January 2024 with a complaint in Clermont-Ferrand. To date, they have heard nothing. Eiffage says they are still awaiting the insurer’s position on “which accidental event was the cause of Mr Azevedo’s discomfort”, and that they will comply if the prosecutor decides to open an investigation.

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