heat-related illness
cmonforton | May 9, 2017The southern U.S.’s construction boom is not translating into better wages and working conditions for construction workers. Those are the results of a survey of 1,435 construction workers from six southern U.S. cities: Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Nashville. The survey, which was administered during July and August 2016, was a collaboration between the Texas-based Workers Defense Project, the Partnership for Working Families, and Nik Theodore, PhD with the University of Chicago's Department of Urban Planning and Policy. Their report, Build a Better South, was released…
cmonforton | August 13, 2014Failing to get the time to acclimate to a hot work environment can be deadly. That’s the message I took away from an item in last week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
“Heat illness and deaths among workers --- U.S. 2012-2013” reports on 13 occupational heat-related fatalities investigated by federal OSHA. Nine of the 13 incidents (69 percent) involved an individual who was working in their hot job for three or fewer days. Among the cases examined by the authors, none of the employers had acclimation programs, and only five of the 13 had provided access to a cool or shaded…