On a sweltering afternoon in July 2020, Belinda Ramones received a call informing her that her brother was in the hospital. The call was from a woman at the Florida landscaping company he had joined that week, Davey Tree Expert Co., Ramones said. When he arrived, he said, “My brother was swollen from his hands to his feet.”
Two days later, his brother, José Leandro-Barrera, died at age 45 of acute kidney failure caused by heat stroke, according to a report from the Hillsborough County medical examiner. His temperature in the ambulance was 108 F, according to the report.
It described the circumstances leading up to his death, as recorded by a nurse. At the workplace, Leandro-Barrera had informed his supervisor that he was not feeling well and the supervisor told him to sit in a vehicle until he felt better. While there, “he urinated, had seizure-like activity” and became unresponsive.
“The employee suffers heat exhaustion while gardening,” an Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation into the incident said. The agency fined Davey Tree Expert Co. $9,639. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Without national regulations to prevent heat-related illnesses and deaths, OSHA generally struggles to protect workers before it’s too late, said Paloma Renteria, a Labor Department spokeswoman.
Workers have suffered as summers have become increasingly hot due to climate change. But health policy and occupational health researchers say worker deaths are not inevitable. Employers can save lives by providing plenty of water and breaks and creating time for new workers to adjust to extreme heat.
This is the logic behind proposed national standards that President Joe Biden launched in 2021, with the goal of protecting some 36 million workers exposed to extreme heat. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts about 480 worker deaths from heat exposure each year, on average. But these are “large underestimates,” according to OSHA, because heat stress is an underlying factor that is often not accounted for in medical records.
The advocacy organization Public Citizen estimates that up to 2,000 American workers die from heat annually, based on extrapolations of heat injury data.
Both estimates are concerning, said Linda McCauley, dean of Emory University’s nursing school and an occupational health researcher. “No one should go to work expecting to die,” he said.
The proposed rules, an OSHA heat standard, reach a milestone on Dec. 30, when the public comment period closes. But it is unlikely to be finalized before Biden leaves office.
Vice President Kamala Harris will likely implement the heat rules if she wins the presidency next month, said Jordan Barab, who was OSHA’s deputy assistant secretary during the Obama administration. Advanced heat regulations in California in 2020.
If Donald Trump were to win, the rules would stagnate, Barab predicts. Republicans have generally opposed workplace safety regulations for the past 20 years, saying they are costly for businesses and consumers. And during the first Trump administration, the number of OSHA inspectors tasked with monitoring workplace safety hit a record low in the agency’s 48-year history. Workplace inspections related to heat stress fell by half during Trump’s presidency, according to an analysis by the National Employment Law Project.
OSHA rules would require employers to provide plenty of fresh drinking water and shade or air conditioning for breaks when temperatures exceed 80 degrees. Above 90 degrees, employers would have to offer 15-minute paid breaks every two hours.
Two additional aspects of the standard address overlooked issues that contribute to workplace heat deaths. More than 70% of workers who die from heat do so during their first week on the job. And delay in medical care is a common issue.
“We need to stop telling people who complain about fainting to sit in the car or take a break,” McCauley said. “Breaks are needed to prevent the problem, but once someone has symptoms, they need help quickly.”
The proposed rules require employers to give new workers time to acclimate to high temperatures and institute protocols, such as a buddy system, so that workers receive prompt medical care as soon as they show signs of heat illnesses, such as dizziness, confusion and cramps.
According to a Department of Labor news release, when an emergency medical team arrived to help a worker in July 2021, he had stopped breathing. A supervisor from the ecological restoration company EarthBalance had seen him earlier that day, she said, and he was “sweating profusely, his hands were shaking, and he seemed confused.” Rest. “Only 30 minutes later, the supervisor returned to the man and found him unconscious.”
That night, Gilberto Macario Giménez died in the hospital, according to a coroner’s report. He noted that “the deceased had overheated” and attributed his death to heart disease and hypertension. Heat can exacerbate these conditions.
OSHA investigated the situation. It fined EarthBalance $9,216 and found that “the employer failed to ensure that a person adequately trained to provide first aid to employees was working in an area where there was no nursing facility.”
EarthBalance did not respond to requests for comment.
OSHA has received at least 12,980 comments on its proposals published in the federal register. One woman wrote about her cousin who died while clearing brush for a rancher in Texas when temperatures exceeded 100 degrees: “He was only 34 years old. “There was no water or breaks.”
After the comment period ends in December, OSHA will hold a public hearing, make changes, and finalize the rule. If Harris is president, Barab said, the agency could finish the process by 2026. For the rule to work, Congress would need to adequately fund OSHA, so it can hire staff to teach employers how to implement the standards, and enough researchers to enforce them.
Several industry groups have opposed the rule. The Associated General Contractors of America called it “unnecessary, unfeasible and impractical.” A single set of rules is not fair when climates and jobs vary widely, as well as workers’ ability to tolerate heat, the group wrote in an online statement.
Some Republican lawmakers have called the rule a government overreach. Rick Roth, a Republican state representative from Florida, told Al Jazeera that workers are pushing for paid breaks because “they don’t want to work as hard.” If they didn’t feel safe, they could change jobs. “Go work for someone else,” he said.
Critics also say the regulations will cost employers. But a UCLA analysis of workers’ compensation claims in California suggests that a national heating standard saves money overall. The study estimated the cost of heat-related injuries at between $750 million and $1.25 billion annually in California alone, including medical bills, lost wages and disability claims.
Because six states have different sets of rules to reduce heat-related illnesses (California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington), researchers and union representatives have been able to see where policies need to be strengthened. One problem with law enforcement is that OSHA relies heavily on employees to report hazards. One study found that only 14% of nearly 600 farmworkers surveyed in California knew about acclimatization and how much water they needed when temperatures were high.
Although Florida has no specific heating regulations, Dominique O’Connor of the Florida Farmworkers Association said the biggest obstacle to ensuring occupational safety is that workers are afraid of being fired for filing a complaint with OSHA.
This is especially true for agricultural workers on H-2A visas, which allow noncitizens to fill temporary jobs. Because these workers depend on their employers not only to remain in the country but also for transportation and housing, employer retaliation would be life-changing. “This summer we talked to H-2A workers who were only given dirty water at work,” he said. “They were told to just pretend it was coffee.”
Leaders of several Republican-led states are likely to reject the federal standard if it is issued. Last April, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that prevents local governments from requiring employers to offer workers water and shade when temperatures rise.
And the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the “Chevron doctrine” this year may encourage employers to question OSHA’s ability to enforce the rules. For decades, the Chevron doctrine had required courts to draw on the expertise of regulatory agencies when interpreting regulations, but the high court ruling put an end to that. “We are in uncharted territory,” Barab said.
Jeremy Young, senior producer of Fault Lines at Al Jazeera English, contributed to this report.
