Editor’s note: Chase Hunter’s reporting on environmental health inequity was funded for the Index-Tribune by a USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism 2023 California Health Equity Impact Fund Grant. This is the second in a three-part series.
On a street two miles north of the tasting rooms that dot the Sonoma Plaza, the sidewalk crumbles into dirt paths and mustard weeds that force pedestrians to the asphalt shared by passing cars. Boyes Boulevard, the namesake street of Boyes Hot Springs, offers a spectrum of wealth in Sonoma Valley from the luxurious Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn to the modest pueblo homes of residents like Marta Maria Farias, 59, and Ruomaldo Argota, 70.
Their living room feels like a budding fever on this stifling June afternoon in a home where three generations of their family — 10 people total — live with little respite from the heat of summer. A portrait of the Virgin de Guadalupe hangs from an exposed brick wall next to a broken air conditioning unit.
“That’s fine, it keeps the electricity costs down,” Argota said, wiping sweat from his low, thick brow.
Yet despite more intense and regular heatwaves, low-income residents and outdoor workers remain unprepared for new extremes which threaten their health. Air conditioning in Sonoma County, once thought of as a luxury, is becoming a necessity as temperatures break new highs, displaying an uncomfortable inequity between those who can afford to cool down, and those who can’t. It threatens to exacerbate heat-related illnesses in low-income communities and the workforces who support the wine, tourism and hospitality industries of Sonoma County.
For Farias and Argota, “You just deal with it,” Farias said.
The Bay Area has mostly been insulated from the deadly heatwaves that have struck across the globe. But the combination of global warming and extreme weather systems like El Niño create the potential for a deadly heatwave in Sonoma County, according to environmental experts. When it comes to heat-related illnesses and fatalities, elderly residents, low-income communities and outdoor workers are most at risk.
“As I get older, after all the years that I’ve worked in the fields — plus when I was in Mexico I worked outside. It's just getting to me,” Argota said. “It's just catching up.”
In the fields
Outdoor workers, exposed to the sun and elements, face the most intense health impacts of heatwaves. Vineyards offer little respite from the sun during months of pruning and picking. And grape growing businesses are reluctant to hire back the people most at risk in heatwaves, particularly elderly workers like Argota and Farias. They feel forced to choose between their health and their livelihood.
“It's difficult to think of not being able to work because everything is so expensive,” Farias said. “Paying other bills might be a little easier to avoid, but rent is unacceptable.”
Farias and Argota are two of Sonoma County’s 10,000 farmworkers, of which, an unknown number are undocumented like them. These workers are most likely to end up in harsh working conditions, as lax safety regulations offer little protection.
In July, Sonoma County vineyard Mauritson Farms agreed to pay $328,077 to settle a labor dispute with 21 farmworkers who alleged “failure to give breaks and lunches, lack of shade and abuse by supervisors.”
“There's a long history of work studying the impact of extreme temperatures on farmworkers, and they tend to be one of the most vulnerable populations in terms of extreme heat,” Stanford University researcher Sam Heft-Neal said. “Any population that has to be outside is vulnerable, and that would include farmworkers and the unhoused.”
Due to his age and health, Argota is especially vulnerable, plagued by anemia which leaves him at greater risk of heat-related illnesses. He experienced the effects of extreme heat firsthand while working in vineyards last summer.
“I was out in the fields and I was feeling faint, I was feeling weak,” Argota said. “And that’s when I found out I had anemia.”
Outdoor workers and seniors will be the demographics most impacted by heatwaves in coming years, susceptible to “hyperventilation, dyspnea, dehydration, as well as cardiovascular events” after prolonged exposure, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology.
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