OSHA has raised the ire of advocacy groups by turning down a petition calling for a heat stress standard, opting instead to use its education and outreach campaign to alert employers and workers to the dangers as heat exposure.
“OSHA lauded the campaign’s ‘success’ without presenting any evidence of how the voluntary, self-enforcing campaign has led to a decrease in injuries or deaths from heat exposure,” charged Public Citizen, a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. The group calls OSHA’s decision “shortsighted,” citing “the searing temperatures we are seeing in the summer and the number of workers who are dying from heat.”