Admire Stewart takes a deep breath and sits still while a breeze hits her face. Her gallon-sized water bottle is by her side.
“Right now I have a migraine because of the heat yesterday and I have heat hives,” she said as she pointed to the bumps on her arms. She’s trained herself not to scratch them, which only makes it worse.
Stewart works inside Ellicott Hall, one of the unairconditioned dormitories on University of Maryland’s College Park campus.
When students are gone for the summer, she is one of dozens of housekeepers who clean every inch of the building — that includes doing laundry, waxing floors, and pushing a vacuum through student bedrooms. Just the day before, in early June, temperatures inside swelled close to 90 degrees.
“I really didn't finish my assignment yet because I've been really slowing myself down a little bit more than usual,” said Stewart.
Climate change is helping to fuel higher temperatures every summer, with 2023 being the hottest year on record since global record keeping began in 1850. As heat advisories and watches get issued across the state, workers continue on the job. The Maryland Department of Labor is set to pass a proposed heat standard to keep them safer, but it may not come until the worst of summer heat has passed.
New standards for a warmer world
Stewart feels generally supported by her employer to take the measures she needs to keep herself from getting too sick — like slowing down, stopping for water or just leaving work undone until the worst part of the heat passes.
But many are not so lucky.
Thirty-six US workers died from heat sickness in 2021, the last year in which complete data is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the decade from 2011-2020 there were 34,000 work-related heat injuries and illnesses severe enough that workers had to take time away from the job. That’s likely a vast undercount, according to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) because states have varying definitions for heat sickness and most data comes from self-reporting.
There is no federal heat standard set by OSHA. Heat illness would fall under the administration’s General Duty Clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which requires workplaces to be free of “hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm”; it is notoriously difficult to issue citations under that clause because of the high standards the agency requires to meet it.
Just a handful of states have heat standards, and Maryland will be the first on the east coast. Meanwhile, states like Florida have made it illegal for municipalities to pass their own heat standard.
Many of what Maryland will require from employers when the standards are finalized are things that the housekeeping team at UMD have implemented after the university came to negotiations with their union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 3 Local 1072, during the throes of the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers wearing face masks in temperatures above 90 had escalated asthma symptoms; some felt compelled to take their own sick leave rather than work in dangerous temperatures.
Now, housekeeping lead Margie Rodriguez is never far from her thermometer.
“90 or less lower — basic heat safety and planning,” explained Rodriguez, pulling out a tablet where she uses a color-code to track the temperatures that she takes in the morning and again in the afternoon. “If we get into orange, it's more precaution and heightened awareness. We don't want to get in the red, because in the red, we shouldn't be working.” Red indicates a temperature greater than 100 degrees.
Maryland will require employers to have a written heat safety plan for any work done when the heat index, including humidity, is at 80 degrees or above. That goes for indoor and outdoor work. Additional protocols, like paid mandatory cooled and shaded breaks every two hours, are triggered when temperatures reach ninety degrees.
“They will take more breaks, keep hydrated… we try to open up the window when we're able to to get that air going in there too,” said Rodriguez.
Training on those standards must be conducted in a language that workers understand which among Maryland communities can include Spanish, Haitian Creole and a number of Indigenous South American languages. The proposed Maryland standard also has an acclimatization scale employers must use to determine if a worker is adequately conditioned for the heat environment.
Experts in labor policy agree that Maryland has one of the strongest proposed heat standards in the country, and could be used as an example for other states and even a federal policy.
“What's great about Maryland doing indoor and outdoor at the same time, is they're able to take the analysis that many people in many places have done about the dangers for outdoor workers who tend to be workers of color… but expand the analysis to cover indoor workers as well,” explained Anastasia Christman, a senior policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project. “That may also include more women, white workers, disabled workers… Workers from all kinds of different demographics.”
A long road
Maryland’s standard has been years in the making. In 2020, a bill from Del. Lorig Charkoudian (D-Montgomery), requiring the state Department of Labor to create a worker heat standard, passed through the General Assembly.
“We are facing serious impacts from climate change, and it plays out in many ways, harming usually, the most vulnerable communities first, and in this case, really putting workers at great risk, workers who work in heat at great risk,” said Charkoudian.
The original plans released by former Governor Larry Hogan’s administration in 2022 were scratched after advocates and lawmakers said they were basically useless. The process has now been completely restarted under Governor Wes Moore’s administration.
The new proposals have received pushback, particularly from the construction industry, where association leaders like Steve Sohasky with Creative Risk Management Solutions said things like mandatory breaks aren’t practical.
“If people need breaks, they take breaks… we have that flexibility in the job. But there's certain times where, say it's a roofing company, and there's weather forecasted in the afternoon, there could be liability, and there could be safety issues, because you're not getting stuff done. And now all of a sudden, you've got thunder and lightning,” said Sohasky, explaining that in that situation, workers wouldn’t be able to stop for the mandatory 10 or 15 minute breaks, depending on heat index.
Construction workers generally account for over one-third of yearly heat deaths. Some of the industries with the highest rates of heat illness, like agriculture and construction, are also dominated by workers of color.
Christman, the policy analyst from the NELP points out that heat, which can cause tiredness or confusion, can be the underlying cause of other incidents like a forklift collision or a car accident on the commute home.
“I think it will be very interesting to see whether or not we see not only a decrease in straight up heat illness, but also a decrease in all these other kinds of injuries. And if in fact, the workplace just starts to become exponentially safer.”
A representative from the department wrote that initial publication of the standards is set to appear in the Maryland Register by the end of summer.
“The standard will not be effective until after both the notice and comment process is complete and, following that process, final publication in the Register,” the statement also said that violations may not be cited until after these steps are complete.