Climate Change vs. Worker Health: Identifying At-Risk Workers and Work Activities (Part 1)
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August 12, 2022 - Extreme weather and weather-related disasters that are triggered by climate change now routinely affect most states, such as wildfires in the west, hurricanes in the south, and flooding in the northeast. With longer, hotter summers, climate change has also affected the safety of those working under these more routine extreme conditions, including workers in construction, utilities, landscaping, refineries, agriculture, and emergency services and law enforcement.
The CDC reports that more than 67,000 individuals visit the emergency room and more than 700 people die from heat-related health issues each year, making heat the nation’s leading weather-related killer. Meanwhile, a joint report by NPR and Columbia Journalism Investigations found that at least 384 workers in the last decade died from heat-related exposure.
According to The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), “between 2015 and 2019, environmental heat cases resulted in an average of 35 fatalities per year and an average of 2,700 cases with days away from work. However, the total number of heat-related fatalities may be underreported and/or improperly diagnosed. The cause of death is often listed as a heart attack when the actual cause or aggravating cause may have been exposure to a heat-related hazard. Heat-related illnesses (symptoms) range from heat cramps to heat stroke, which can potentially lead to death.”
These statistics are rising alongside surging temperatures, as much of the U.S. is expected to see a hotter than typical summer in 2022, particularly from the Rockies and plains into the Midwest.
After several states such as California, Washington, and Oregon instituted their own heat illness prevention regulations, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has followed suit by a notice of proposed rulemaking in October 2021 for a Federal OSHA standard for heat illness prevention for indoor and outdoor environments. Although the Federal OSHA standard for heat illness prevention is in its early stages of review and comment. A 3-year National Emphasis Program (announced this Spring) on preventing heat-related illness to further safeguard workers’ health is now underway with the objective of immediately increasing risk management efforts through, particularly for higher risk industries and operations. What’s new with this National Emphasis Program is that industries with indoor operations are also included in the focus for heat illness prevention along with typical outdoor operations.
If you have employees who work outdoors or in hot conditions indoors, implementing a three-step, risk based approach for managing heat illness at your place of work will help your organization better mitigate risks. Here we’ll cover step 1.
Step 1: Identify “At-Risk” Workers and Work Activities
Managers, supervisors, and safety personnel must first develop an attunement to their employees’ working conditions by directly engaging with stakeholders. Currently, a communication gap exists between workers and managers, as they often do not experience the sweltering conditions in the same way as their employees. For example, if workers are performing strenuous labor in direct sunlight and must wear heavy clothing or PPE, even mild temperatures can make them vulnerable to heat illness.
Organizations and their employees should work together to perform heat stress risk assessments of work activities for both indoor and outdoor settings. An at-risk screening checklist, such as the HSE UK (United Kingdom’s version of OSHA) “Heat Stress Observation Checklist,” helps identify and prioritize heat-illness prevention efforts.
The American Conference of Governmental Hygienists, an independent organization that produces guidelines for occupational health and safety, offers the 2021 Threshold Limit Values guide that takes a quantitative approach to assessing heat stress risk. If companies ask their employees to assess heat-related hazards, it will serve to better identify latent risks and contribute to mitigation measures while also grasping the challenges that rising temperatures pose regular or specific work duties.
Follow along with Xavier Alcaraz’s series Climate Change vs. Worker Health for Part 2 and 3 for further insights on the current state of our climate crisis and understanding the challenges of heat-illness prevention.
This series was originally published online by Occupational Health & Safety Magazine on September 24, 2021 under the title: Climate Change vs. Worker Health: How Companies can Protect Employees amid Rising Climate Temperatures and Comply with New OSHA Directive on Heat Illness Prevention. The content has been updated for this blog series.
