‘New Territory’ for Americans: Deadly Heat in the Workplace
By Coral Davenport and Noah Weiland, The New York Times.
Excerpt: For more than two years, a group of health experts, economists and lawyers in the U.S. government has worked to address a growing public health crisis: people dying on the job from extreme heat. In the coming months, this team of roughly 30 people at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is expected to propose a new rule that would require employers to protect an estimated 50 million people exposed to high temperatures while they work. They include farm laborers and construction workers, but also people who sort packages in warehouses, clean airplane cabins and cook in commercial kitchens. ...Last year was the hottest in recorded history, and researchers are expecting another record-breaking summer, with temperatures already rising sharply across the Sun Belt. The heat index in Miami reached 112 degrees Fahrenheit last weekend, shattering daily records by 11 degrees. ...An estimated 2,300 people in the United States died from heat-related illness in 2023, triple the annual average between 2004 and 2018. Researchers say all those figures are probably undercounts, in part because of how causes of death are reported on death certificates....