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A new study finds there are a lot more workplace injuries when it's hot outside. The results come as the federal government is considering new regulations to protect workers from heat. Here's NPR's Alejandra Borunda.
ALEJANDRA BORUNDA, BYLINE: There's currently no national rule requiring employers to offer heat protections to workers like water, shade and rest breaks. And hot weather puts workers at risk from heat illness or heatstroke, but that's not all.
BARRAK ALAHMAD: There are also cognitive effects - hand-eye coordination, your attention, your memory, and even judgment or risk-taking or irritation.
BORUNDA: That's Barrak Alahmad. He's a researcher at Harvard and the lead author of a new study published in the journal Environmental Health. His team wondered how those cognitive effects from heat played out in the workplace.
ALAHMAD: So there should be a connection between being exposed to extreme hot temperatures or just hot temperatures and the risk of injury at the workplace.
BORUNDA: His team used a new database from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. It tracked all reported workplace injuries for 2023. That's the first full year of data. By connecting those reports to local weather at those locations, they found a clear pattern. The number of workplace injuries rose with the heat index.
ALAHMAD: At around 80 to 85, it starts to increase. And anything above 90, it really escalates.
BORUNDA: Overall, the team estimated there were 28,000 workplace injuries in 2023 linked to hot conditions. They also looked at states with and without heat protections. States like California and Oregon, which do require water, shade and rest above certain temperatures, have fewer heat-related injuries than states without such rules. But they couldn't yet pinpoint which heat protection rules were the most effective and why. June Spector is a researcher focused on workers' health and safety at the University of Washington.
JUNE SPECTOR: What is it about the rules, the way they're implemented, that is going to be most beneficial?
BORUNDA: She says that's a key question for regulators and for companies trying to protect their employees without sacrificing productivity.
SPECTOR: I think employers really appreciate ideas for how to make that practical.
BORUNDA: Federal regulators held hearings for a proposed national rule this summer, but it's unclear if OSHA will move forward with the rule or what it would look like. And some staff working on the rule were eliminated by the Trump administration's cuts to the federal workforce.
Alejandra Borunda, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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