Alcalá, Spain makes 400 street cleaners wear anti-heat wristbands

Alcalá makes the anti-heat wristband mandatory for 400 workers: health or business?

Does a wristband actually keep a street sweeper from dying of heat? Alcalá de Henares, in Spain, is about to find out on the ground. More than 400 cleaning and urban maintenance workers are required to wear these smart devices throughout the summer. The measure, presented as a technological breakthrough for the early detection of extreme heat effects, has drawn skepticism ranging from irony to political denunciation.

The number is no small thing: laborers, drivers and street-blowing crews, all with the device on. The official justification is that it adds to existing legal occupational risk prevention obligations when temperatures exceed the health threshold. But the memory of serious episodes, such as the street sweeper who died of heatstroke in Madrid or a worker fainting in June, hangs over a controversy mixing safety, cost and posturing.

This is where positions split. Some argue that if you're thirsty and drink water, you don't need a wristband that probably costs public money. Others point straight at the industry: "What would the manufacturer sell if there were no wristbands to sell?" And there's no shortage of political readings: some accuse the PP (Spain's conservative party) of sending street cleaners out into the heat; the others reply that under the PSOE (the socialists), Alcalá's summers never topped 25 degrees. The latter camp's conclusion is that the workers themselves brought the measure on.

Meanwhile, Alcalá's workers will wear their wristbands, do their jobs and hope the technology warns them before their bodies say enough. And if not, there's always water. As for the gravy train, let it sign up too.

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