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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

It’s shaping up to be another hot Florida summer. Among the most vulnerable are those with the least resources for dealing with the heat: underserved communities and communities of color, who often are excluded from environmental and climate protections.

That includes the state’s more than 150,000 farmworkers, who are responsible for raising the food that nourishes us. Jeannie Economos is a pesticide safety environmental health project coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida. Her work focuses on pesticide protections for farmworkers, as pesticide exposure can lead to illness and birth defects.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

AMY GREEN: How hot is it this summer for Florida’s farmworkers?

JEANNIE ECONOMOS: Workers that have been doing farmwork for a long time will tell us that even though they’re used to the heat because they work in Florida, that every year the heat feels different. And it feels hotter. And it feels like it’s scorching, and almost like it’s attacking rather than just being hot. There’s a different quality to the heat that they haven’t experienced before, and it’s really rough.

Florida Ban on Protections for Outdoor Workers Goes Into Effect Amid Record Heat

How does heat affect the body, especially for Florida’s farmworkers?

It affects all aspects of the body. One of the main concerns that we have is dehydration, because not only can dehydration make you thirsty and make you tired and make you weak. But chronic dehydration and even acute dehydration can affect your other organs, including your kidney and your heart and your brain and your liver because your blood flow is different throughout your body.........

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