From Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity
While temperatures have rapidly risen in recent years, protections for workers impacted by extreme heat have not kept pace with changing conditions. “Boiling Point,” a new report from Public Citizen, calls for the Occupational and Safety Health Administration (OSHA) to create a long-overdue standard to protect workers from extreme heat. The report details how low-income workers and Black and Brown workers are disproportionately impacted by extreme heat, which results in at least 170,000 work-related injuries each year and as many as 2,000 fatalities. Spotlight spoke recently with the study’s author, Juley Fulcher, a worker health and safety advocate at Public Citizen and coordinator of the National Heat Stress Campaign. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity
