7 A.M.: COPELAND FARMS, ROCHELLE, GA.
Just after dawn on a recent July day in Rochelle, Ga., Silvia Moreno Ayala steps into a pair of sturdy work pants, slips on a long-sleeved shirt, and slathers her face and hands with sunscreen. She drapes a flowered scarf over her wide-brimmed hat to protect her neck and back from the punishing rays of the sun. There isn’t much she can do about the humidity, however. Morning is supposed to be the coolest part of the day, but sweat is already pooling in her rubber boots. She drinks deeply from a plastic water bottle, then squeezes out the air until it is flattened enough to tuck into her back pocket, so she can keep her hands free while working the fields. On some days, it might be hours before she makes it back to the drinks-filled cooler that Moreno, a 41-year-old farmworker who came to the U.S. from Mexico as a teen, has left at the field’s edge. And she’s heard the horror stories of farmworkers dying because they didn’t stay hydrated.
Moreno accepts headaches, nausea, muscle cramps, and dizzy spells—signs of severe heat stress—as an inevitable part of her summer workday, but by sipping a little tepid water as she goes, she hopes to stave off a worse outcome. “I know people who work watermelons and get so hot they end up in the hospital,” she says. Her doctor warns that she might too one day. He says her kidneys, already damaged by years of working in hot conditions, won’t be able to take much more.
Dozens of workers have likely already died from heat exposure this year, shaping up to be the hottest in U.S. history. The death toll started on New Year’s Day in Florida when a 28-year-old laborer working on a bell-pepper farm died from heatstroke. On June 16, with temperatures hovering around 100°F, construction worker Felipe Pascual overheated and died at his worksite near Houston. On June 19, a 35-year-old power lineman in East Texas succumbed to heat exposure on a 96°F day. A day later, 66-year-old postal worker Eugene Gates Jr.
