Barcelona introduces heat-monitoring bracelets for its outdoor workers

Heat-monitoring bracelets for Barcelona’s outdoor workers are being introduced as the city responds to extreme summer heat and its health risks. Following successive heatwaves in Spain that led to more than 1,000 excess deaths in June, Barcelona began distributing about 1,400 bracelets to staff including street cleaners, lighting crews, park workers and waste management employees. The device measures body temperature and triggers sound and vibration if a worker is at risk, requiring them to stop working. The rollout, led by parks and gardens prevention coordinator Pep Llimona, follows past fatalities, including a 51-year-old woman who died in June last year when temperatures reached 30.4°C. German and EU-backed scrutiny around climate adaptation grows as Aemet records June as the second-hottest on record, with a second heatwave expected to start over the weekend.