Construction workers take objects and materials from a cable and load them on Thursday in a pickup in the city center of Phoenix to a pickup. Few workers have legal protective measures to protect them from the humid heat. (Photo by Truitt Robinson/Cronkite News)
Washington – the temperatures have already exceeded 110 degrees in Arizona this summer. For another season, most workers have few legal protective measures to protect them from the humid heat.
The federal and health authority of the federal government has no heat-resistant regulations. It started to create such rules according to President Joe Biden. However, Osha is one of the agencies under President Donald Trump to scrap 10 existing regulations for every new one.
As a result, the workers' representatives are pessimistic, even if long sections of extreme heat are more common.
“The US government should be the model employer when it comes to the security of her employees,” said Eric Gregorovic, President of the Arizona State Association of Letter Carrier, during his lunch break on Wednesday when he delivered mail in Phoenix.
It was sunny and 106 degrees with a warming index of 114 and worse in his US post -Service truck -so much worse that he often happens, he said and added that three carriers were hospitalized this week.
“I'm just watching a thermometer in my truck. It's 140 degrees,” he said. “Some of these vehicles are 30, 40 years old.”
The Arizona Act has no formal heat standards for the workplace.
A number of proposals have died in legislation, including three session submitted by Democrats in the session just ended.
According to the defense of the Natural Resource, more than 1 million arizonans work in high -risk industry.
According to the Federal Occupational Safety Safety and Health Administration, construction, agricultural and landscape construction workers are exposed to heat and sunlight. So the employees of the delivery and energy sector are.
“I have a few members who had heat sickness (or) heating lift, and as soon as they get it, they simply cannot return to the outside and be normal again,” said Jason Sangster, the managing director of Ironworkers Local 75, who represents around 1,000 employees and pensioners in Arizona.
But people who work outdoors are not the only ones who are exposed to dangerously high temperatures.
Many chefs and shop assistants are exposed to dangerous conditions due to the lack of air conditioning or limited air movement, as well as people who work in camps, production, bakeries, laundry, electricity suppliers and steel mills.
In a report in June by researchers at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, it was found that 40% of the people who work inside – “Historically exuberant from heat standards and regulations” – routinely withstand the 80 -degree heat.
The National Institute of Security and Health of Health Health, part of the centers for the control and prevention of diseases, recommends that OSHA have been creating heat exposure standards since 1972.
The Trump government has decimated Niosh. About two thirds of the staff were released as part of the cost reduction efforts until recently Elon Musk, including the entire team of heat experts.
Osha rules are probably stalled
Construction workers do their best to endure the heat while working on Thursday on a building in downtown Phoenix. (Photo by Truitt Robinson/Cronkite News)
Under Biden, Osha published a proposed rule on August 30 and the officials said last year that they wanted to complete them by early 2026.
The proposal would have to require employers to provide water, to break areas with cooling measures and acclimatization protocols when the temperatures reached 80 degrees. At 90 degrees, the workers had breaks every two hours with 15 minutes.
The public commentary period ended on Wednesday.
A resident of Scottsdale, which felt strong enough to make a comment, was Elizabeth Enight, 81.
“It's not far enough, but it's a start,” she said by phone.
The prospects for this Osha proposal fell when Trump took up his office and asked for regulations to make room for a new one.
The supporters of workers are also concerned because his choice, Osha, David Keeling, who was a health and security manager for UPS and Amazon when these companies were cited for inadequate thermal insulation.
Osha pursues even without tailor -made heat regulation. And it exhibits quotes, whereby a general service clause is used in the law that the agency has created, which means that the jobs “are free of recognized dangers that lead to death or severe physical damage”.
From April 2022 to December 2024, the Osha carried out about 7,000 heat-related inspections nationwide, issued 60 heat quotes and 1,392 Hazard alarm letters.
Some of them have involved postal employees.
In Dallas, a 51-year-old postman died on his delivery route on June 25 when the temperature reached 90 degrees.
That was almost exactly two years after another postal employee from Dallas had died at the workplace on a day on which the Heat Index 110 exceeded.
Weeks later, a postman in Mesa collapsed the delivery and was hospitalized. It was 118 degrees that day, in the middle of the brutal summer 2023. On August 11, Governor Katie Hobbs explained an emergency in Maricopa, Coconino and Pinal after 30 consecutive days.
“I am concerned about construction workers and people who have to work outside,” said Patrick Dihel, 78, a resident of Tucson who also submitted a comment to support Osha heating standards.
“I see that our US post -unlawful service provider rises – as far as I can't see with anything that they keep cool and that they drive around and roast in their little vehicles for hours under the sun,” he said.
In 2024, the hottest year worldwide, Arizona had 113 days with temperatures over 100 degrees.
According to the serious injury database, OSHA has issued 207 quotes against USPs nationwide for heat -related injuries.
The judges of the administrative law dismissed five such quotes in 2020 because the Osha could not prove that a specific requirement was violated.
State and local regulations
Colorado has heat safety standards for agricultural workers. Washington State covers all workers outdoors. Minnesota has standards for indoor jobs. Four other states cover both indoor and outdoor workers: California, Nevada, Oregon and Maryland.
Arizona has no heat standard that is written in state law.
“We are far back,” said Sangster, the Ironworker's Union officer.
Senator Catherine Miranda, D-Laveen, a main sponsor of one of the legislative memorials who died this year, how important the fluid intake is in the heat in Arizona.
“I wanted to make sure that the construction sites have enough water and protection for the employees,” she said. “I'm just trying to create laws that all covers during our summer.”
In 2023, Hobbs created a state focus that aims to reduce heat injuries in the workplace. Without direct enforcement authority, the program aims to raise awareness, collect data and to refer dangerous conditions for potential examinations to the OSHA.
In May, Hobbs created a task force for heat security in the workplace and instructed it to remove recommended employer guidelines.
The Arizona Department of Occupational Safety and Health or Adosh, part of the Arizona industrial commission, will check the recommendations. Hobbs wants those who are implemented before the next summer.
“Here in Arizona it is an issue that is very and close to our hearts with the heat that we experience every summer,” said a member of the Task Force, Rick Murray, President and CEO of the Arizona chapter of the National Safety Council.
The Task Force has not yet met, but Murray said she planned to set her first meeting soon.
Some cities in Arizona tried to close the gap.
Phoenix, Temples and Tucson have heat regulations at the workplace where employers have a heat safety plan, access to cold drinking water, regular breaks, access to shadow or air conditioning and time for the provision of new employees.
The non -observance triggers a report to Osha or Adosh. In Phoenix, violations could also lose the right to do business with the city government.
Two other governors from Sunbelt, the Republicans Greg Abbott from Texas and Ron Desantis from Florida, have signed laws that prevent cities from adopting thermal insulation for workers.
Sangster, who also works in Hobbs' new Task Force, said that people who work with air conditioning indoors have no idea how difficult it is to work outdoors all day in Arizona.
“Put on your belt for eight hours and go outside and set a good eight hours of work in the sun,” he said. “You will drink water every 10 minutes.”