It’s too hot: High temps put workers at risk
Last month, on a day that was sweltering even by Phoenix standards, Filiberto Lares knew he wasn’t well. An airline caterer, he said he had spent hours moving between the scalding tarmac and a truck with no air conditioning.
Lares, 51, was dehydrated and fell ill with a fever that would keep him out of work for four unpaid days. It wasn’t the first time this had happened.
“Honestly, I never imagined I would live a situation like this in the United States, especially not in an industry as valued as the airlines,” he said in Spanish.
It’s a scene that plays out on airport
tarmacs, in farm fields and on construction sites across the country: workers falling ill after laboring in hot or humid conditions for long hours without enough water and rest. Over the past decade, more than 350 workers nationwide have died from heatrelated illness, according to data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Tens of thousands have had heat-related illnesses serious enough that they missed at least one day of work.
For years, labor leaders have called on the federal government to create national regulations laying out steps employers must take to keep workers safe when it’s hot outside. On Wednesday, U.S. Reps. Judy Chu, D-Calif., and Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., introduced legislation that for the first time would require the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to create heatrelated workplace standards.
Currently, just three states have heat-related labor standards: California and Washington, which protect outdoor workers; and Minnesota, which protects indoor workers.
California’s regulations – developed more than a decade ago in response to a spate of farmworker deaths – are broadly considered the gold standard, and experts said the state’s experience is instructive in terms of what it would take for a national law to prevent thousands of injuries that occur each year.
“(Heat) is not an inconvenience or a nuisance,” said Marc Schenker, a professor at the University of CaliforniaDavis who researches the health effects of farm work. “It’s very real, with consequences that can range from minor to fatal.”
On the federal level, heat-related stress is regulated only by the general standard that employers must create safe working conditions. In the absence of specific regulations, that standard is difficult to enforce. In Lares’ case, he said his employer has a policy on the books that calls for a 10-minute break every two hours when temperatures rise above 95 degrees, and that trucks without air conditioning should not count as shade. But raising questions about enforcement with managers earned him only citations, he said, and his union had to step in to keep him from being fired.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has recommendations for addressing workplace heat stress – but no mechanism for enforcement. The principles are fairly simple: Provide sufficient shade and rest when it’s hot (what’s considered hot depends on how hard the work is), as well as enough water to drink.
Because the majority of heat-related illnesses occur during the first few days on the job, employers should let workers acclimate and train them to spot signs of heat stress, according to the recommendations.
That might have prevented the death of Miguel Angel Guzman Chavez, who died of heatstroke while picking tomatoes in Georgia last year, just days after arriving in the United States.
California developed its heat standards in 2005, after 10 laborers, including four farmworkers, died from excessive heat exposure in a matter of months. The legislation requires water, rest and shade for outdoor workers, as well as education.
At first, the state did little to enforce the law, said Leydy Rangel, a spokeswoman for the United Farm Workers Foundation. It wasn’t until several more farmworkers died, including a pregnant teen, and multiple lawsuits were filed that state regulators stepped up oversight, she said.
This story was produced by Kaiser Health News (KHN), which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.