Experts are calling on federal regulators to adopt standards protecting outdoor workers from worsening air quality, potentially modeled after the few states that have such standards, including Cali…
By Caitlin Dewey, Stateline.org
Cities across the Northeast and Midwest broke longtime records for air pollution last month, prompting a wide range of employer reactions. In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the U.S. Postal Service pulled some mail carriers from their routes as conditions worsened. In Minneapolis, construction workers finished out their shifts even after reporting fatigue and asthma symptoms.
“Workplace hazards are becoming suddenly and rapidly more threatening because of the very alarming growth in the climate crisis,” David Michaels, the former assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said in an interview with Stateline.North American wildfires have grown steadily larger and more intense since at least the 1980s, worsened by drought, early snowmelt, extreme heat and other effects of climate change.
Breathing wildfire smoke also can expose people to assorted microbes and carcinogens, depending on the materials that burned, said Nellie Brown, an industrial hygienist and the director of Workplace Health and Safety Programs at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Those recommendations are advisory, however: Employers do not have to follow them. In fact, there is no specific federal standard to protect outdoor workers from wildfire smoke, said Arden Rowell, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law who has studied respiratory safety regulations. Only three states — California, Oregon and Washington, which is in the process of finalizing its rules — have developed their own enforceable standards on worker safety and wildfire smoke.
In jobs where employees cannot be rescheduled or moved indoors, state rules mandate that employers provide high-quality masks, such as N95 respirators — and then, at higher pollution levels, require employees to wear them.Like all worker protections, these rules aren’t foolproof: Both labor and business groups have criticized aspects of their implementation.
French firefighters battle fires north from the city of Chibugamau, Quebec, in Canada on June 12, 2023. Quebec has deployed hundreds of firefighters, with help from France and the United States as Canada is hit hard by unprecedented wildfires that have ravaged the country. Some experts argue these types of debates underscore the need for further action by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA — the federal agency charged with regulating and enforcing workplace safety. Most states defer to OSHA rules, though 22 states and territories operate separate health and safety plans that can be stricter or wider-reaching than OSHA’s.
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