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When a man with painful cystic acne came to dermatologist Eva Rawlings Parker for help in a Nashville clinic, she couldn’t prescribe him doxycycline or minocycline, two medications she’d typically use to treat this condition. This is because the man was a roofer, says Parker, and these medications would have impacted his ability to tolerate heat.

Parker’s patient was far from alone. Other common medications for physical health, like beta blockers, can impact people’s ability to handle heat. Many medications for mental health do, too.

Conventional wisdom tells people with conditions that make them unusually vulnerable to the sun, like the autoimmune disorder lupus, or are on medications that lead to heat sensitivity, to avoid staying outside when the sun is at its strongest.

“We know that workers have been dying because of chronic conditions that accumulate through heat stress over many years and decades that lead to shorter life spans.”

But for the one-third of US workers who must spend regular time outdoors, that advice bursts into flames. For some, such as farmworkers, hours and hours of heat exposure, with minimal or no reprieve, are just part of the job. Increasing heat waves and more frequent wildfires point to the need to find real solutions for outdoor workers—and highlight how labor and climate change are intertwined.

Alongside heat waves getting worse and longer, which can trigger mental health episodes, more and more people are taking antipsychotic medications or antidepressants like SSRIs. Even before the toll of the Covid pandemic, the CDC estimated that more than one in eight adults took antidepressants. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, SSRI prescriptions for adolescents and young adults has increased by 63........

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