heat stress

By Garrett Bradford, Robert J. Meyer, Joanne Buckle, Philip S. Borba, Sheryl Hou, Rong Yi, and Kailey Adams - Millman, June 27, 2023

Extreme heat events are the largest source of weather-related mortality in the United States, with documented impacts on both workers compensation claims, negative health outcomes, and increased emergency department visits. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), approximately 51 million U.S. workers are at high risk to extreme heat based on their occupation, yet only 9 million live in states with permanent workplace heat standards.

NRDC recently engaged Milliman to study the relationship between workers compensation costs, healthcare services utilization, and excessive heat in North Carolina, a state with no workplace heat standards, where an estimated 1.7 million workers (27% of the workforce) are at high risk to extreme heat.

This report summarizes the research methods and findings, which included a strong correlation between indemnity costs and the heat index of annual hours above static threshold (90°F) for the groups of workers that were studied.

This report was commissioned by NRDC.

Download a copy of this publication here (link).

By Jordan Barab - Confined Space, June 21, 2023

Less than a week after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill that will repeal measures in Austin and Dallas to protect workers against heat related illness, a worker has died in Texas from heat stroke.

Utility lineman dies while helping restore power to Texas residents following storms

MARSHALL, Texas (KLTV/Gray News) – Officials say a utility lineman from West Virginia working to restore power in Texas has died.

KLTV reports that the 35-year-old lineman, whose name was not immediately released, was working with Appalachian Power to restore electricity to the Marshall area after last week’s storms.

According to Harrison County Justice of the Peace John Oswalt, the worker’s death has been attributed to heat-related causes.

Oswalt said the man had been working with his crew in the heat on Monday and told the group that he wasn’t feeling well once they returned to their motel.

Austin and Dallas require rest breaks and water for construction workers to protect them against heat illness. The “Death Star” bill will repeal those protections on September 1 because, according to the bill’s sponsors, Texas businesses are unable to deal with a “hodgepodge” of different requirements in different cities.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 15, 2023

On June 14, the Teamsters and UPS agreed to tentative language to equip UPS vehicles with air conditioning systems, new heat shields, and additional fans, according to a union statement. The agreement will cover the 340,000 UPS workers who are members of the Teamsters union.

NBC News reports that temperature readings taken by workers in UPS trucks in Arizona and Florida have shown temperatures above 150 degrees. At least 145 UPS employees have been hospitalized for heat illnesses since 2015.

“Folks are super excited” about the heat agreement, said Zakk Luttrell, a UPS driver and union shop steward in Norman, Okla. “It’s not just about what’s cost effective and efficient anymore, it’s about keeping people alive.”

Meanwhile, 97% of UPS employees voting authorized a strike to start August 1. Such a strike would be the largest against a single employer in US history.

By Alicia Race - Union of Concerned Scientists, June 15, 2023

What would be the largest single-employer strike in US history may soon be avoided if UPS and the Teamsters union reach an agreement on adding life-saving cooling equipment in more than 90,000 fleet vehicles. UPS is the largest employer here in Louisville, Kentucky, so a strike would have serious implications for the metro region as well as on the entire US economy. UPS workers are asking for protection just as Danger Season has started and the summer is predicted to be hotter than usual. While the cooling equipment is one piece of the worker negotiations, it’s a crucial piece–worker heat protections save lives and are worth fighting like hell for.

My dad often works outdoors in extreme temperatures, so I feel for every single worker and family whose lives have been or could be devastated by preventable heat illness or fatalities.

By Juley Fulcher - Public Citizen, May 25, 2023

Key Findings

• Heat exposure is responsible for as many as 2,000 worker fatalities in the U.S. each year.
• Up to 170,000 workers in the U.S. are injured in heat stress related accidents annually. There is a 1% increase in workplace injuries for every increase of 1° Celsius.
• The failure of employers to implement simple heat safety measures costs the U.S. economy nearly $100 billion every year.
• The dangers of heat stress are overwhelmingly borne by low-income workers. The lowest-paid 20% of workers suffer five times as many heat-related injuries as the highest-paid 20%.
• Worker heat stress tragedies disproportionately strike workers who are low-income, Black or Brown.
• At least 50,000 injuries and illnesses could be avoided in the U.S. each year with an effective OSHA heat standard.
• Employers pay a substantial price for failing to mitigate workplace heat stress including the costs of absenteeism, turnover and overtime due to worker illness or injury, reduced worker productivity, damage to machinery and property from workplace accidents, increased workers’ comp premiums, law suits, and loss of public trust and customers.
• The physical and mental capacity of workers to function drops significantly as heat and humidity increase. Productivity of workers declines approximately 2.6% per degree Celsius above a Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) of 24°C (75.2°F). The WBGT is a measure that combines temperature, relative humidity, radiant heat sources (like direct sunlight or heat-generating machinery) and wind speed.
• There are many simple ways employers can mitigate heat stress in the workplace, like access to cool drinking water and adequate “cool down” breaks in a shaded or air-conditioned space.
• It is essential that OSHA issue an interim rule to immediately prevent heat-related illness, injury and death in indoor and outdoor workers, both to protect workers and to reduce the clear burden on the economy.

The right to a safe workplace is a basic human right. Exposure to excessive heat is one of the most dangerous problems facing workers today. Tens of thousands of workers suffer heat illnesses, injuries and fatalities every year in the U.S. This is a toll disproportionately borne by Black and Brown workers, and low-income workers with limited options for safer employment. This is most clearly demonstrated by the plight of farmworkers, who have the highest rate of heat-related worker deaths, and are overwhelmingly immigrant workers with little power to demand workplace reforms from their employers.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, April 2, 2023

Seventeen years ago California passed one of the nation’s first workplace heat stress rules. Since then California has been inundated with heat waves resulting from global warming. A new study, “Feeling the Heat: How California’s Workplace Heat Standards Can Inform Stronger Protections Nationwide,” finds that the state’s heat stress rule provides some protection, but that its coverage is limited, it is often unenforced, and that penalties are so modest that many employers simply ignore it. The study calls for expanding the rule to all California workers, increasing enforcement, and establishing a federal heat standard for all workers in the US.

The California rule requires employers to provide heat training, free drinking water, and shade to employees. It covers only outdoor workers, but the study identified heat-related cases in 463 different industries outside agriculture and construction, including janitorial services, home health care, museums, and newspaper publishers.

The study found that hundreds of businesses repeatedly violated the rule but avoided the usually higher fines meted out to repeat violators. UPS received 41 citations for violating the heat standard but was issued only one for a repeat violation.

Only Minnesota, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington have similar workplace heat stress rules. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been working for years on a national heat stress standard but none has so far been issued. Rep, Judy Chu and Sen. Alex Padilla of California and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio have introduced legislation to accelerate development of such a standard.

By Alexandra Martinez - Prism, October 6, 2022

Marta Gabriel has been picking tomatoes in Homestead, Florida, since she arrived from Guatemala five years ago. She didn’t know how hot and grueling conditions would be, but the job guaranteed her money that she could use to support her growing family as a mother of young children. However, after she nearly fainted from heat exhaustion and then suffered heatstroke while bending down to cut tomatoes, Gabriel realized her working conditions were not sustainable. She was already a member of WeCount!, a coalition of immigrant workers in southern Florida, and shared her concerns with organizers. 

Hundreds of thousands of other outdoor workers across South Florida share Gabriel’s experience. Starting in 2017, they began telling organizers at WeCount! that heat had become an issue. Now, construction workers, farmworkers, and other outdoor workers across Miami-Dade County are fighting for a countywide heat standard to ensure workers are protected from the deadly rising temperatures on the frontlines of climate change and extreme heat.

As it stands, workers in southern Florida are forced to work outside in the extreme heat without any local, state, or federal heat standards. WeCount!’s “¡Que Calor!” campaign (Spanish for “it’s so hot!”) is hoping to enact a heat standard similar to the one states like California, Washington, or Oregon, have already implemented—one that highlights the need for water, shade, and rest for workers. Led by those most impacted by the problem—farmworkers, plant nursery workers, day laborers, and construction workers—¡Qué Calor! is building a grassroots movement for climate, health, and labor justice. 

By Molly Rosbach - Oregon State University, September 29, 2022

Rates of traumatic injury among workers in the Oregon agricultural and construction sectors are significantly higher during periods of high heat compared with periods of more moderate weather, a recent Oregon State University study found.

The results underscore the importance of providing robust safety protections for outdoor workers, especially as extreme heat events become more common with climate change, researchers said.

“The big take-home message I want people to get from this is that, if the temperature is high and you have workers out there, they’re more likely to be injured, whether it’s due to dehydration, reduction in mental capacity or exhaustion,” said Richie Evoy, lead author on the paper and a recent doctoral graduate from OSU’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences.

The study, published earlier this month, examined Oregon workers’ compensation data from 2009-2018. Researchers looked at nearly 92,000 injury claims in which workers suffered temporary disability, permanent disability or death. They focused on injuries that occurred in the months of April through October because the average heat index was above 55 degrees for that period.

In addition to heat, researchers also investigated the impact of wildfire smoke on worker injury rates.

They matched injury records with meteorological data to estimate heat exposure based on the heat index, which combines the effects of temperature and humidity in the air, along with environmental satellite data to estimate exposure to wildfire smoke.

They found that workers in agricultural and construction jobs were significantly more likely to suffer a traumatic injury on days when the heat index was above 75 degrees, compared with a baseline of 65 degrees or less.

The effect worsened when the heat index climbed to over 90 degrees, with an increased risk of 19-29% over baseline as the index ranged from 90-119 degrees.

“These results support the need for occupational safety practitioners to include protections for workers during extreme heat,” said Laurel Kincl, co-author on the study and an associate professor in OSU’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences. “While our study in based in Oregon, this is true in other states and regions since these conditions will likely become more frequent with climate change."

The impact of wildfire smoke was less clear. When researchers looked at smoke by itself, it was strongly associated with an increased risk of injury, but when they also incorporated heat index data into the analysis, the effect of wildfire smoke was no longer significant.

There are several potential reasons for this, researchers said. It could be that because wildfires happen more frequently in hot conditions, the smoke is coincidental to the heat; but smoke can sometimes also block the sun and reduce overall temperature.

Future studies should obtain more precise smoke exposure data to better understand the potential impact, researchers said. In using satellite imagery and data recorded from each day’s peak smoke exposure by zip code, Evoy said they couldn’t parse out exactly how much wildfire smoke individual workers were exposed to, or what was in that smoke, because of shifting winds and changes in what was burning at any given time.

“The way things stand now, wildfires are only going to increase in frequency and duration in Oregon and in the West, so the more we can do to understand the risks to our outdoor workers who are going to be experiencing these climate effects first, the better off those workers are going to be in protecting their health and staying productive,” Evoy said.

Just this summer, Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health division adopted new standards regarding wildfire and excessive heat stress. Employers are now required by law to provide workers with shade areas when the heat index exceeds 80 degrees, along with access to drinking water, a specific work-rest schedule and several other safety measures. A coalition of Oregon business groups are suing the state over these new rules, which were praised by worker advocacy groups.

Other co-authors on the OSU study included Perry Hystad and Harold Bae, both in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences.

By Gabriela Calugay-Casuga - Rabble, September 7, 2022

After a scorching summer that saw record temperatures in the territories, B.C. and other parts of Canada, the effects of climate change are impossible to ignore. Under the intense heat, labour organizations are not stopping their mobilization to fight for climate justice. 

“Climate justice absolutely is a workers’ issue,” said Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress in an email to rabble.ca. “Labour rights and human rights go hand in hand, and a transition to a net-zero economy must be achieved respecting both labour and human rights.” 

The extreme weather events caused by climate change also have a direct, concrete impact on workers, according to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) National President, Jan Simpson.

“Our members feel the direct impact of climate change every day on the job,” Simpson said. “Working outside and in non-climate-controlled workplaces, our members face big mental and physical health risks from climate change and increasing extreme weather events, like heat waves and forest fires.” 

Heat events have become a growing health and safety concern for workers. Without legislation that lays out the maximum temperature people can work in, workers can suffer from heat related illness that can sometimes be fatal.

By Maximillian Alvarez - The Real News, August 31, 2022