Safety+Health: OSHA is seeking comment on a proposed rule aimed at protecting indoor and outdoor workers from heat-related illnesses.
According to a notice of proposed rulemaking published Aug. 30, employers would have to formulate and implement a heat-related illness and injury prevention plan for each worksite. That plan would need to be in writing if the employer has more than 10 employees.
2 comments:
This is great, but I’m surprised such a guideline from OSHA didn’t exist before. I suppose some sort of red tape has delayed this and similar rules. The ‘initial heat trigger’ and ‘high heat trigger’ seem completely reasonable for an employer to enact with their employees. The article states some of the processes to get these rules approved, mainly regarding the federal government - that unanimously approved it anyway - but I wonder who (and accordingly, why) would disapprove of such a proposal unless something was grandfathered in. Anyway, this proposal was approved in May and seems to be planned to be solidified by December. There was another article linked below this one, discussing a much longer comment period in 2021 on OSHA’s initial efforts to combat heat-related fatalities and injuries in the workplace. I suppose such efforts to increase workplace safety have to go through studies to determine the best path forward by the statistics.
I think that making new guideline around this issue is incredibly smart and I'm honestly surprised that one hasn't been made sooner. Heatstroke is a huge problem and can end up with people hospitalized or even dead. The heat is also only going to get worse in the future due to global warming. The earlier we can get in a guideline and start getting people used to having safety guidelines around intense heat the better. I think that it is really smart that they are going to use an additional measurement system to heat index that takes into account more than simply the temperature, but also the humidity and other factors. It is also good that employers would be required to provide water to employees as opposed to just requiring that employees have water bottles. I am curious to see if anyone reacts negatively to the new guideline and requests a hearing against it. If someone were to do that, I don't think they would succeed because of the simple yet extremely beneficial rules this guideline puts in place.
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