As we’ve gone through a number of years that have been deemed the hottest years ever, there’s been a new focus in the news and in government (to a certain degree) on the risks that extreme heat poses in the workplace.
But while incidents like Black lettercarriers dropping dead while working on sweltering hot days are the most extreme examples of the risks, sometimes things look a lot less dramatic in terms of how heat affects workplace safety.
Connecting Heat and Worker Safety
According to a new, first-of-its-kind study on heat and worker safety, even a slight rise in temperature can make working more dangerous. Researchers also found that common-sense protections against extreme heat, currently being considered by the federal government, can make a significant difference.
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The study, published in the journal Environmental Health, compared some 845,000 injuries reported to OSHA in 2023 across sectors to local weather data at the time the injury occurred (and for a control day when the same worker had no injury occur). What the authors found is that “heat exposure increases the overall risk of work injury, an effect consistent across nearly all major industries,” according to the study, including work that’s done both indoors and out.
“It’s very clear that heat causes more than simply heat illness and unfortunately heat fatalities,” David Michaels, one of the coauthors of the study who formerly ran OSHA and now teaches at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, told Grist. “But it also causes thousands of injuries every year. When you’re working in heat, you can much more easily make mistakes.”
The Workers Most at Risk
While the study didn’t consider any demographic data for the workers who were injured, the authors do note that which fields that are exposed to both the highest temperatures have the highest odds of being injured on the job: waste management and remediation services, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and construction. In other words, fields that are often staffed with predominantly Black and Brown workers.
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The authors cite an array of studies that show how increased temperatures lead to declines in both physical and cognitive abilities, but note too that when it comes to these injuries, “few of which are officially classified as ‘heat’ injuries.”
Heat Protections Work — When They Exist
But while they may not be identified as heat injuries, workplace rules to protect against extreme heat seem effective in reducing them. On a day when the temperature hits 105 degrees, the odds of an injury increased by 18% in states with no protections, versus 8% in states that do have mandatory protections in place, like providing water, shade, and breaks.
OSHA is currently in the public-comment period for a proposed heat-protection rule, a process that was started during the Biden Administration. The public comment portal is supposed to be open through the end of October, but due to the current government shutdown, the whole process is likely to become more complicated and delayed, too. But this new research makes it clear that such a rule, if enacted, would offer significant help to workers.