Heat Stress in India’s Garment Factories: A Growing Health Crisis
However, factory-level safeguards to address heat stress remained severely inadequate. Nearly 60 per cent of the surveyed factories did not have any medical clinic or doctor on site. Only six of the 15 units had an on-site clinic and medical officer, and even among these, one in five did not have a full-time doctor. Instead, most factories said they relied on informally training workers to respond to medical emergencies.
Infrastructure gaps further compounded the risks. Eleven out of 15 factories — 73.3 per cent — had roofs made of metal or asbestos, materials known to trap and intensify heat.
A detailed ground-level account by Down To Earth in 2024 had underscored how unbearable heat inside “hellfire” factories plays out in workers’ daily lives. Visits to textile and boiler plants found temperatures near furnaces often soaring well above 40°C with high humidity, forcing workers to spend long hours in suffocating conditions with minimal ventilation or cooling, wiping sweat constantly and taking only short breaks outside before returning to stifling interiors.
Women bear the brunt of heat
The burden of heat stress was not evenly distributed. Women recorded a significantly higher average HSI score of 61.5 compared to 18.6 for men, underscoring the disproportionate physiological and occupational strain they face in garment factories.
Overall, the findings pointed to alarming physical consequences, especially for women workers, highlighting how rising heat interacts with long working hours, factory abuse, and gendered power dynamics on the production floor. Nearly 96.8 per cent of women workers reported burning sensations during urination — a likely sign of dehydration — and 92.6 per cent said their menstrual cycles were disrupted.
“When we ask for fans, or even to use the toilet more often, we are criticised,” the report quoted Jothi, a garment worker from Tirupur, as saying.
“Most management and owners are men, so there is no one to recognise heat stress as a real labour issue for women. Only when women trainers or organisers genuinely ask us do we feel safe enough to speak. For many of us in manufacturing, our heat problems are treated as unimportant because they are not seen as affecting business, but they affect our health and dignity every day,” she said.
Heat stress as business risk
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) India could lose the equivalent of 35 million full-time jobs and face a 4.5 per cent decline in GDP by 2030 due to heat stress if urgent action was not taken.
The textile and garment sector — one of the country’s largest employers — was particularly exposed. The industry employs around 45 million people and exported textiles and apparel worth roughly US$35 billion in FY 2023-24, the report noted.
With dense factory settings, long working hours and intense production pressures driven by global supply chains and fast fashion timelines, the sector was especially vulnerable to rising temperatures.
Arguing that protecting workers from heat stress was inseparable from business responsibility and long-term economic sustainability, the report recommended expanding the definition of what is a heatwave using a graded classification system and comprehensive temperature thresholds like WBGT (which also takes into account humidity along with temperature) or Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) to address heat stress among indoor workers who work in high temperatures.
It also urged to recognise heat stress and heat morbidity as occupational diseases and including heat stress in the Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948 and extend coverage under the Employees’ Compensation Act, 1923.
Policy gaps
The report concludes that India’s climate policy architecture remains largely disconnected from the realities of the workplace. National frameworks such as the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), State Action Plans on Climate Change (SAPCCs) and City Climate Action Plans (CCAPs) focussed primarily on sectoral priorities such as energy, agriculture and rural resilience. However, they lack detailed vulnerability assessments or enforceable safeguards to address extreme heat in indoor workplaces and informal urban labour settings.
At the same time, the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment, which is responsible for worker safety and conditions, remained largely absent from climate action planning. Without stronger coordination between climate and labour authorities, the report warned, millions of workers will continue to face escalating heat risks without formal recognition, protection or accountability, even as temperatures and economic stakes continued to rise.
