Proposed rule could protect 36 million workers from hazardous heat
If finalized, the safety standard, proposed July 2 by the
Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA),
would require employers to develop plans to address workplace heat hazards and
to put in place requirements for rest breaks and access to shade and drinking
water.
The announcement came as the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) released a new report on
the impacts of climate change on health and the environment in the US,
revealing that almost 1,000 workers died from heat exposure between 1992 and
2022, about one-third of which were construction workers. The report also found
that the average number of heat waves increased from two per year in the 1960s
to six per year in the 2010s and 2020s.
“Workers all over the country are passing out, suffering
heat stroke and dying from heat exposure from just doing their jobs, and
something must be done to protect them,” Doug Parker, Assistant Secretary for
Occupational Safety and Health, said in a press release. The proposal marks “an important next
step in the process to receive public input to craft a ‘win-win’ final rule
that protects workers while being practical and workable for employers,” said
Parker.
The Biden administration also announced that
the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will be awarding almost $1
billion for over 600 projects designed to help communities shield themselves
from the effects of extreme heat and other climate change-fueled hazards,
including storms and flooding. These include a $50 million initiative to
improve a stormwater pump station and address flooding in Philadelphia and
$724,000 to build shaded bus stops in Washington, D.C.
“Ignoring climate change is deadly and dangerous and irresponsible,” said President Biden on Tuesday during his remarks at the DC Emergency Operations Center on the growing threat of extreme weather. “These climate-fueled extreme weather events don’t just affect people’s lives, they also cost money, they hurt the economy, and they have a significant negative psychological effect on people.”
Much of the country has already experienced soaring
temperatures this summer, with extreme heat projected across
most of the US for the Fourth of July holiday. California is
currently in the grips of a monster heat wave that
could be longer and more intense than anything inland parts of the state have
experienced in 18 years, said the National Weather Service’s San Francisco Bay
area office in its July 3 area forecast discussion.
“It cannot be stressed enough that this is an
exceptionally dangerous and lethal situation,” wrote the National Weather
Service, adding that the heat wave exacerbates wildfire risk.
Between June 16-24, almost 5 billion people worldwide
experienced extreme temperatures that were at least three times more likely to
occur due to climate change, according to a report from
Climate Central published June 27.
The US was hit with two heat waves in just two weeks at
the end of June, including one that also killed 125 people in Mexico, according
to the report. Last month at least 1,300 people in Saudia
Arabia died from walking in temperatures that sometimes
exceeded 120°F during the Hajj, an Islamic pilgrimage to the city of Mecca.
More than 40,000 people in India suffered
heatstroke during a heat wave that persisted from March to
mid-June.
“More than a century of burning coal, oil, and natural
gas has given us an increasingly dangerous world,” said Andrew Pershing, vice
president for science at Climate Central, in a statement. “The heat
waves popping up around the world this summer are unnatural disasters that will
become more and more common until carbon pollution stops.”
In another devastating climate change-driven disaster,
Hurricane Beryl, a record-breaking Category 4
storm, is currently barreling through the Caribbean towards Jamaica
and perhaps Texas after wreaking havoc on
islands including the Grenadines, Saint Vincent, and Grenada.