San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Danger heating up again
As mercury rises, a worried OSHA trying to educate workers about heatstroke
In late June, a 59-year-old bricklayer at a Rockport construction site found a shady spot to sit down for a break from the afternoon heat.
He closed his eyes. He never woke up.
He was one of at least 355 Texans who died last year of heat-related illnesses as higher temperatures arrive earlier and stay longer. At least 76 people have died in Bexar County from the heat since 1999.
When the bricklayer took his break from handling cinder blocks at 5:30 p.m. June 27, the temperature was nearly 100 degrees in the Corpus Christi area. Co-workers found him unresponsive a short time later.
The stress of the heat and a preexisting condition caused his heart to give out, said Roosevelt Shavers, the Corpus Christi-area director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which investigates workplace deaths. It happened despite the worksite having done what it was supposed to do to protect workers. There was a shaded rest area, he said, and plenty of water.
With temperatures rising sooner
than ever before, though, that’s sometimes not enough, a fact illustrated by state data. The number of heat deaths last year was the highest recorded in Texas since at least 1989, according to the Department of State Health Services.
Shavers is concerned the numbers will continue to rise.
“We don’t want our fatalities to increase because we have seen, with respect to the heat, it has been getting hotter, sooner, each year in the last couple of years,” he said.
Hotter, earlier
In San Antonio, the first tripledigit day of the year comes a week earlier than it did 20 years ago, now arriving about June 24. The period when extreme heat first kicks up also is increasingly a high-risk period for workers who haven’t had time to acclimatize to the rapid temperature increases.
On June 23, 2022, a young San Antonio construction worker died during his first week on the job. And last summer, a Dallas mail carrier died June 20 during an early heat wave.
The rising temperatures pose mounting risks to all Texans but especially those who make their living working outside.
A mix of factors can be at play: underlying health conditions, an individual’s acclimation to the heat and the ever-lengthening span of scorching Texas days. For example, San Antonio last summer recorded its highest number ever of 100degrees and higher days on record at 75 days — 23 of which were consecutive.
According to a San Antonio Express-News analysis of OSHA data, 31 local heat injuries among