New research shows there’s a simple way to protect workers. Is OSHA listening?
A new study confirms that commonsense workplace protections from extreme heat — water, shade, breaks — help save workers from being injured on the job. The finding — something labor and climate advocates have long known and pushed for in public policy — comes just as the federal government shutdown may have suspended the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s lengthy rulemaking process to create the U.S.’s first-ever nationwide heat standard for workers.
Some experts now fear that the agency, which ordinarily takes about seven years on average to establish new rules, will face further delays.
In order to calculate the risk of injury on hot days, researchers from the public health schools at Harvard University and George Washington University utilized OSHA’s database for workplace injuries, pulling nearly 900,000 cases from 2023. They found that 28,000 injuries were attributable to heat, and …
