Admire Stewart and Margie Rodriguez hold bottles of water that Rodriguez bought for housekeepers at the University of Maryland. Staying hydrated is a challenge when housekeepers work long hours in dorms with no air conditioning across campus.
Emily Hofstaedter/WYPR
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Emily Hofstaedter/WYPR
Admire Stewart took a deep breath and sat still as a breeze blew across her face. Her gallon-sized water bottle was beside her.
“I have a migraine now because it was so hot yesterday and I have a heat rash,” she said, pointing to the bumps on her arms. She has trained herself not to scratch them, which only makes them worse.
Stewart works inside Ellicott Hall, one of the non-air-conditioned dormitories on the University of Maryland’s College Park campus.
President Joe Biden has set a professional standard for workers in extreme heat conditions, but it could take years to take effect. Meanwhile, states like California, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington has passed the protection when workers work hard in extreme heat conditions.
Maryland is prepare to perfect its thermal standards later this summer, becoming the first state to do so on the East Coast.
When students leave for the summer, Stewart is one of dozens of housekeepers who clean every inch of the building — doing laundry, polishing floors and vacuuming student bedrooms.
When she spoke to a reporter in early June, she said the temperature in the building had swollen almost ninety degrees
“I actually haven’t finished my workout yet because I slowed myself down a bit. [more] more than usual,” she said.
Stewart often felt supported by the company to take necessary measures to avoid becoming unduly ill — such as slowing down, stopping to drink water or simply leaving work unfinished until the worst of the heat had passed.
But many people are not so lucky.
Thirty-six US workers die of heatstroke in 2021, final completion year for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides data. That number has increased over the past decade and according to independenceinvestigateThose numbers may not even be counted.
In the decade from 2011-2020, there were 34,000 heat-related jobs. hurt and illnesses so severe that workers have to take time off work. It’s possible those numbers are also undercounted, according to to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) because states have different definitions of heatstroke and most data comes from self-reporting.
State Rep. Lorig Charkoudian, a Democrat, has proposed a bill to establish Maryland’s temperature standards by 2020.
“We are facing serious impacts from climate change and it is playing out in many ways, often harming the most vulnerable communities first,” said Charkoudian.
Maryland is about to enact one of the most comprehensive standards yet, occupational safety experts say.
Under the rules, employers would have to post protective measures in workers’ native languages and provide acclimatization time for workers to adjust to the heat. Workplaces would have to have a written heat safety plan for any work performed when the heat index, including humidity, is 80 degrees or higher. That applies to both indoor and outdoor work. Additional protocols, such as mandatory paid breaks in cool, shaded conditions every two hours, would be triggered when temperatures reach ninety degrees.
The upcoming standards have received opposition from some industry groups.
Steve Sohasky, a consultant to construction companies at Creative Risk Management Solutions, said the standard was too strict and that workers and companies could adjust it themselves.
“If people need time off, they’ll take time off, you know, we have flexibility in the workplace,” Sohasky said after a meeting with stakeholders at the Maryland Department of Labor.
Construction workers make up about 6% of the workforce, but according to one National Institutes of Health Research accounts for more than a third of all heat-related deaths each year. Workers of color and immigrants tend to have jobs that put them at the highest risk of heatstroke.
Adele Abrams, a Maryland-based labor attorney, said the dangers of working in hot weather should not be overlooked.
“I represent employers but I’m not going to sugarcoat it: people die from heat illness. I’ve dealt with deaths where I know the weather conditions were a contributing factor,” she said.
Industry advocates have expressed concerns about the feasibility of setting up cooling and shade stations, especially on jobs where crews are constantly on the move. But Abrams said some solutions require planning and creativity. Low-cost options include having crews sit in air-conditioned trucks or setting up a cooling trailer.
Abrams expressed concern about the patchwork of state protections as the federal government slowly sets its own standards.
“How many times can [employers] reinvent the wheel and redo their programs?” Abrams said. “That’s part of what drove employers crazy when COVID regulations came out… it seemed like every two months we had to reorganize because there was new information or old information was found to be incorrect.”
Anastasia Christman, a policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project, said Congress is often slow to update laws for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
“The public comment period can be very long, and the cost-benefit analysis is very difficult in the case of OSHA, because how do you put a value on injuries that won’t happen? You have to take into account something negative,” Christman said.
Meanwhile, states like Texas and Florida made it illegal for cities to to pass their own temperature ordinances.
Christman points out that high temperatures, which can cause fatigue or confusion, can be an underlying cause of other incidents such as forklift crashes or car accidents on the way home.
“I think it will be interesting to see if we see not only a reduction in direct heat illness but also a reduction in all other types of injuries. And if that is the case, the workplace just starts to become exponentially safer,” she said.
Even if the federal standard goes into effect, enforcement will still be a challenge, experts say. OSHA Have Fewer than 2,000 inspectors are responsible for nearly eight million construction sites.
