State and federal governments have long implemented federal procedures for environmental risks exacerbated by climate change, namely drought, flood and wildfires.
But extreme heat protections have generally lagged with “no owner” in state and federal governments, said Ladd Keith, an assistant professor of planning at Arizona State University.
“What’s unsafe isn’t always clear,” said Juanita Constible, a senior advocate from the National Resources Defense Council who tracks extreme heat policy. “Without a specific heat standard, it makes it more challenging for regulators to decide, ‘OK, this employer’s breaking the law or not.’” Federal experts have recommended extreme heat protections since 1972, but it wasn’t until 1997 and 2006, respectively, that Minnesota and California adopted the first statewide protections. For a long time, those states were the exception, with only a scattering of others joining them throughout the early 2000s.“There are a lot of positive movements that give me some hope,” Keith said.
The measure faltered even after the temperature threshold for those protections was increased from 95 degrees Fahrenheit to 105 . Democratic lawmakers in Nevada are now trying to pass those protections through a regulatory process before next summer. “The first version is the employer that makes sure that their workers do have access to water, shade and rest,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter. “And the second type of employer is the kind who threatens workers with consequences for asking for those kinds of preventative measures.”
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