Humidity and work-related accidents

Analyzing almost 2.3 million work-related injuries in Italy, we estimate that higher humidity levels significantly increase the number of workplace accidents. Using dew point temperature to capture the moisture content of the atmosphere, our results confirm that a 1 degrees C increase in the dew point temperature raises the number of accidents by 0.7%. Allowing for non-linear effects of humidity, we uncover a U-shaped relationship highlighting that both low and high humidity levels are associated with a higher number of accidents relative to intermediate conditions.