Three Ideas to Beat the Heat, and the People Who Made Them Happen

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By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: An app that helps people find relief from the heat. A tiny insurance policy that pays working women when temperatures soar. Local laws that help outdoor workers get water and shade on sweltering days. As dangerous heat becomes impossible to ignore, an array of practical innovations are emerging around the world to protect people most vulnerable to its hazards. ...The World Meteorological Organization has said that heat now kills more people than any other extreme-weather hazard.... ...Iphigenia Keramitsoglou is an atmospheric physicist who ...led a team that built a cellphone app to give users real-time information about how to stay cool. Put your location into Extrema Global and it will show the outside temperature, air quality and color-coded levels of heat risk. It will populate a map with places to cool down: parks, pools, fountains and air-conditioned public buildings like libraries. Tell the app where you want to go — say, from an apartment to a museum — and it will offer three options: the fastest route, the coolest route and the coolest route with places to rest. ...Greece has been on the front lines of heat and wildfire for the past several years. This month, as temperatures soared past 100 degrees Fahrenheit ...several tourists around the country are thought to have died from heat-related causes. In Athens, the authorities closed the Acropolis, a tourist magnet, out of caution. ...Edgar Franks ...organized farmworkers to press Washington State to put in place new rules to protect farmworkers’ health. When temperatures reach 80 degrees Fahrenheit, farmworkers are entitled by law to ask for shade, water and paid breaks. ...Washington is one of only five states in the country to have outdoor worker protection rules in place.... 


See also San Francisco Chronicle article, 'She nearly made it out': Calif. hiker dies during heat wave. 

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