It was 100 degrees in Baltimore when Ronald Silver II died at work last summer. He had already taken a break from his sanitary job this week to recover from body cramps, a symptom of a heat-related diseases recognized by the US Army and the federal authorities. But he was worried about getting into difficulties with the superiors, a report by the city inspector of the city, so on August 2, he went back to work to make 1,153 garbage disposal during another long day.
Baltimore's garbage trolleys have “insufficient air conditioning”, which numerous employees have told the General Inspector, if they have it, and exhaust vapors can make the area behind the truck 20 degrees hotter than the outside temperature. Silver suffered from these conditions for hours on the last day of his life, and the IG report describes a crescendo of need. His vision was blurred; He was exhausted and disoriented. He fought to walk at 11 a.m. He fell to the ground around 4 p.m. Water was no help. He stopped breathing. CPR has revived him enough to hand over. He spoke of leg pain, cramps, chest pain. Paramedics arrived at 4:21 p.m. and took him to the hospital. He was gone at 5:05 p.m. Silver was 35.
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Deaths such as Silvers could be avoided with a federal heat standard that the occupational safety authority (Osha) proposed last year under the bidden administration. The rule would require employers to protect workers in extreme heat with cooled protection, water and extreme heat and obligatory breaks.
However, the Trump government has not indicated whether it will complete the process of the regulation. Throughout the entire June and early July, Osha held informal hearings about the proposal, which made more than 50,000 comments. One day, a strong demonstration of the overheating provided: a hearing was delayed because the air conditioning at the location in the department for work buildings broke.
But Osha has been silent since then, said Advocates. The typical process at this point would be to take all comments into account and use them to adopt a final standard with an implementation date. But the regulation can take up to two years, and there is no guarantee that Trumps Osha will complete the rule at all. Even in the best case, employees can expect at least one more summer under overheated conditions, with some bad consequences being faced. And we have not seen many scenarios in the past six months. The spokesman for Osha did not answer a request for statement.
Heat is the weather -related killerTaking dozens of workers into account deaths and thousands of injuries every year. Average 34 employees died of environmental heat every year between 1992 and 2022, as data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show. Average 3,389 workers were injured or sick due to heat between 2011 and 2020.
The Osha heating standard proposed last year has mainly bound its requirements for the heat index, which describes how the heat actually feels when temperature and humidity are combined. With a heat index of 80 degrees, employers are covered under the rule, including those who would be obliged to give the workers of cold water and a place to cool down the temperature in all general industrial and agricultural work in all general industrial, construction, sea and agricultural sectors in which the OSHA is responsible. Heat index 90 degrees is reached, including 15-minute obligatory breaks every two hours and observations for symptoms of a heat-related disease.
The measures are sensible and supported by research as life -saving, said lawyers. If you are implemented, you would affect around 36 million employees.
Only the proposed rule of 2024 was a fight, said Anastasia Christman, Senior Policy Analyst at the National Employment Law Project. “Heat exposure was one of the problems in the workplace, about which Osha was spoken in the debates. So we knew that this has been a problem for a long time,” she said.
The administration reduced the organization's 1,400-independent workforce, which promotes and develops research to support the OSHA rules.
Bidens was “the only administration that did something about it,” she said. However, the Trump administration has not yet shown the same commitment to the further development of new standards for the security of employees, combating climate change and the effects of climate change.
Some supporters were cheered on by the fact that the Osha heating standard was not on a list of 63 job regulations that the Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-Deremer sworn, and to be revised and that the hearings were at least stopped. But federal financing and layoffs, Christman noted, are a dark sign.
The administration last month has drastically reduced the 1,400-member workforce of the organization, which financed and developed research to support the OSHA rules. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health now has fewer than 150 employees. According to the lawyers, this loss will only worsen chronic underfunding and undermining at Osha, and it makes it much more difficult to take the stipulated steps to conclude the agency rules.
There is also the question of the new administrator of Osha, David Keeling, who like the Outlook Recently, the job security program at UPS and Amazon, in which both workers have in the past due to extreme heating conditions have been carried out in vans and bearings.
Five states have their own heat standards. California was the first to implement an outdoor worker in 2006. Last summer, regulation for internal workers was issued. The standards of Colorado and Oregon also cover both indoor and outdoor workers. Minnesota covers Indoor construction sites; Washington covers outdoor locations.
Further states are considering joining the group, including Maryland and New Jersey, who proposed standards last year to cover both indoor and outdoor workers. The legislation in New Jersey remained after the legislator's break, said Nedia Morsy, director of Make the Road New Jersey. Therefore, their organization began to visit different cities throughout the state every week this summer to tell employees the need for a heating standard.
“People are really surprised when they hear that there is no adequate protection for working in the heat,” she said. A federal standard would strengthen the position of employees against heat and bosses who refuse to protect them, said lawyers. The need for regulation at the state level is urgent because the “Federal Government is neither able to protect employees”.
Christman was encouraged that some states quickly passed heat standards. “There could be a dozen countries that have this protection,” she said. “But that doesn't help the employees without these protective measures.”
Morsy described the reaction of employers in states who viewed heat standards as “mixed bags”, some of them prefer to ignore the problem or to say that it will violate the economy to force them to protect workers. “The frustration is that people will die,” said Morsy. “How will you have an economy if people are uncomfortable and insecure in their workplace?”
It is also a struggle to get bosses to adhere to heat standards in which you are available. In California, for example, there is no way to monitor the 60,000 farms to ensure that employees receive mandatory access to water, shadow and calm, said Teresa Romero, President of United Farm Workers.
“Although we have these regulations, the majority of employers do not follow them,” she said. “The laws in the books are not the laws in this area.”
The establishment of power to win the heat regulations was for organizers, especially in the case of a migration background, which is a large part of agriculture, a large part of agriculture, meat packaging, construction and other industries in which workers are particularly susceptible to warmth, a large part of agriculture that is warmth. Mory said that some workers who have come to make the street are nervous to talk about the heat because the mass deportation of the Trump government could possibly make it easier for her boss to simply get rid of her: “Even if the employer has not made this threat”.
While workers work outside Are mostly exposed to the most obvious harmful temperatures, and in the interior indoors, like Sarah Hager, are also exposed to heat injuries, which teaches at the Cleveland Middle School in New Mexico Art (which it refers to the “best subject”).
Even with a swamp cooler, Hager's classroom becomes so hot that her students cannot concentrate. She made her classroom inviting with fairy lights that change the colors, posters and a wall that is devoted to the work of the students. “Children look around and say:” Oh my god “when they come through the door and see the room full of color and natural light.” They love it. “
But when the Albuquerque heat drives the temperature in its classroom to 85 degrees, their students have difficulty concentrating, especially if they come from a lunch break that run out of the open. Sometimes they feel so uncomfortable that they ask the nurse who later says that the child “was only hot. They needed a glass of water. They needed ice cream on the neck,” said Hager. “I am glad that children feel that they can ask about it, but they shouldn't have to.” The heat also affects her and makes her so sweat that she has to run cover with a joke.
“I started dealing with the fact that I would say:” Hey, guys, I'm sweating very hard right now, “said Hager, 41.
The original proposal for heat standards determines several studies on the negative effects of heat on mental power, including the test results of the students. But Hager said that it may not be obvious to most people that their own children are in schools where this is a problem, because their reference point is how the school felt for them years ago. Working in the 60-year-old school, which she went into as a child herself, has illustrated how much the climate has changed and how poorly the buildings are prepared to deal with it.
“I have no memories that it is unpleasant,” said Hager, “and that shows you how much the climate has changed.”