As temperatures in Baltimore neared 100F earlier this month, 36-year-old sanitation worker Ronald Silver II died after he was found lying on the hood of a car and asking for water.
It’s the kind of tragic workplace heat-related death that advocates say could have been avoided with the right labor protections.
So this week, during what will probably be the US’s hottest summer on record, frontline workers are organizing actions across the country, raising the alarm about workplace heat exposure.
Airport, retail, and agricultural workers are demanding on-the-job heat protections from employers and the federal government as human-caused climate change makes the extreme heat in the workplace an increasingly deadly threat.
During Heat Awareness Week, workers across the nation used collective action to demand safety protections amid this summer’s record-breaking temperatures.
From service workers to care and farm workers, a coordinated set of activities including marches, delegations, town halls, and actions were held from coast to coast, raising the alarm on dangerous heat at work.
Workers organizing with SEIU, the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), Starbucks Workers United and more call on elected officials and corporations to take action to protect workers’ lives and health.
Extreme heat, a significant and growing health threat, is set to affect 512 counties across multiple states this August. These counties include Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, and others, with a total population at risk of 57,774,550.
Approximately 1,220 people in the United States die from extreme heat each year. This figure has been rising steadily, with 1,602 heat-related deaths recorded in 2021, 1,722 in 2022, and 2,302 in 2023. The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme heat events reflect broader climate change trends, as the climate crisis continues largely unabated.
Recent summers have seen record-breaking temperatures, further highlighting the urgency of addressing climate change. Extreme heat poses a range of health risks, including heightened rates of hospitalization for heart disease, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke, which can lead to critical illness or death.
The rising temperatures exacerbate conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) due to elevated ground-level ozone levels. Dehydration, another consequence of extreme heat, can lead to kidney injury and blood pressure issues, with some kidney damage potentially becoming irreversible.
Mental health is also affected, with increased risks of sleep loss, cognitive impairments, and exacerbated psychiatric symptoms. Certain medications, including diuretics, antihistamines, and antipsychotics, can impair the body’s ability to regulate temperature, increasing the risk of heat-related illness.
Those at highest risk in the affected counties include individuals with greater exposure to extreme heat, such as the homeless, emergency responders, and outdoor workers. The elderly, young children, pregnant individuals, and those with chronic health conditions are particularly vulnerable. Socioeconomic factors also play a critical role; those in low-income communities or with limited access to cooling and healthcare face additional risks.
President Joe Biden trumpeted new rules from his administration that aim to protect Americans from extreme heat in July.
“Extreme heat is the No 1 weather-related killer in the United States,” said Biden after the White House unveiled a long-awaited proposal to establish the nation’s first-ever federal workplace standard for extreme heat. “More people die from extreme heat than floods, hurricanes and tornadoes combined.”
If finalized, the rule “will substantially reduce heat injuries, illnesses and deaths for over 36m workers … construction workers, postal workers, manufacturing workers and so much more”, Biden said.
Labor and climate activists celebrated the administration’s new heat stress rule proposal, but finalizing it will be an uphill battle.
It faces potential legal challenges from trade groups, and if disgraced former President Donald Trump wins the November election, his administration would probably refuse to greenlight the measure despite significant numbers of worker fatalities over a long time.
Various states, including highly humid GOP enclaves like Florida and Texas, have passed laws prohibiting cities and counties from enforcing heat protection rules for workers and businesses, with activists saying the health and safety of thousands of outdoor workers are at stake. Such outdoor workers include lifeguards, transportation employees, ironworkers, agricultural workers and letter carriers.
Florida’s House Bill 433 went into effect in July, prohibiting local governments from mandating businesses provide heat protections for outdoor workers such as water breaks and shade. And in 2023, Texas enacted House Bill 2127, a similar piece of legislation restricting local municipalities from adopting any ordinances, orders or rules not already authorized in state law under the agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labor, local government, natural resources, occupations code and property codes.
The reasoning is, “job creators need a baseline of regulatory consistency across the state that allows them to focus their resources on growing their businesses and increasing their economic impact to the betterment of their employees, their communities, and the state, rather than dealing with unnecessary regulatory compliance,” the bill states.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Rob DeSantis did not respond to requests for comment.
Peggy Frank, a 63-year-old mail carrier for the United States Postal Service, died July 6, 2018, from hyperthermia (an abnormally high body temperature) in her non-air-conditioned mail truck on a day that reached 115 degrees.
A decade earlier, in 2008, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a pregnant teen farmworker, died from heat exhaustion after laboring more than nine hours without accessible shade or water.
As climate projections indicate that extreme heat events will become more frequent and severe, the need for effective climate action and public health interventions becomes increasingly urgent.