OSHA Turns Up the Heat

As summer heat bears down across the country construction contractors find themselves potentially in the crosshairs of a renewed Occupational Safety and Health Administration push to keep workers safe from heat-related illness and injury.

In April OSHA rolled out, via its National Emphasis Program (NEP) approach that temporarily targets hazards in high-risk industries, an initiative that empowers agency inspectors to check more aggressively for workplace conditions that could lead to worker harm from exposure to high temperatures. Those new powers could subject employers to citations or admonishments for failing to take steps to protect workers from heat-related injury.

The Outdoor/Indoor Heat-Related Hazards NEP expands the ability and authority of  OSHA inspectors to look for the presence of conditions that put worker health and well-being at risk from exposure to heat. Employers could be subject to heightened scrutiny when OSHA inspectors are on site for other purposes or during pre-planned inspections that can be triggered on OSHA-defined “heat priority days.”

Describing its goal as reducing or eliminating worker exposure to heat-related illness by identifying employers who don’t provide adequate protection through the key mitigation tactics of cool water, rest, cool areas, training and acclimatization, the NEP wording states it will be accomplished through “a combination of enforcement (which includes inspection targeting), outreach to employers and compliance assistance.” For the expected three-year duration of the NEP, OSHA wants heat inspections to be 100% above the baseline average of the last four years.

As telegraphed when OSHA announced a review of its heat illness enforcement in 2021, industry has begun pushing back on the NEP. Through Associated General Contractors (AGC), construction interests are raising concerns about OSHA’s plan, worried that they’re in the dark about what’s expected of them and how exposed they might be.

In a June 8 letter to OSHA’s director of enforcement programs, AGC complains that the NEP does not provide enough clarity and consistency to give employers confidence that they won’t be subject to arbitrary interpretations, enforcement and penalties. It notes that many employers already comply with OSHA’s heat illness prevention guidelines and questions whether the ground is now shifting unnecessarily.

“AGC maintains that OSHA’s new emphasis program for heat illness is vague insofar as it requires construction contractors to demonstrate ‘reasonable care’ to detect, address, and prevent heat-related illness and injuries – but provides OSHA with broad discretion to cite contractors for not doing enough,” the letter states.

Kevin Cannon, AGC senior director of safety, health, and risk management, worries that the NEP (occupying a seeming middle ground between recommended best practices and a formal OSHA heat standard that may yet be coming) might only complicate efforts by members to continue to refine and improve approaches that work best for them. With inspections under the NEP only just now beginning – Cannon says OSHA records put the total across all industries at 43 through late June – the uncertainty is palatable.

“Contractors have been implementing programs for a long time,” he says. “They recognize the potential danger of working in the heat and have developed policies, programs, and protocols to minimize injuries and illnesses from being in the heat. The question now is are the things employers have done to protect workers going to satisfy OSHA during inspections. We don’t now know how to provide any guidance to our members with any degree of certainty.”

Without a formal heat standard that would more clearly describe and define dangerous conditions, remedies, and enforcement guidelines, Cannon says, employers are in a vulnerable position that could cause them to take their eyes off the ball. What’s now needed, he adds, is more clarification from OSHA about what will constitute compliance and a clear path forward for implementing the most rigorous, manageable, and sustainable approaches to worker protections.

Tom Zind is a freelance writer based in Lees Summit, Mo. He can be reached at [email protected].