NPR’s A Martinez talks to Doug Parker, head of the Occupational Security and Well being Administration, about climate-related hazards — corresponding to employees going through smoke-filled air from wildfires.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Local weather change is presenting new challenges in our on a regular basis lives and in addition within the office. A type of challenges is the rising menace of wildfires. Harmful smoke-filled air, the type East Coasters just lately skilled as a consequence of wildfires in Canada, is a significant hazard for employees – particularly these with outside jobs. So how ought to employers deal with that? I spoke earlier with Doug Parker, assistant secretary of labor for occupational security and well being and director of OSHA.
So for individuals who work open air, say on a farm or a building web site, which can be susceptible to harmful air high quality, what are employers required to do to maintain these specific folks protected?
DOUG PARKER: Each employer has an obligation to offer a protected and healthful office for his or her staff. With respect to wildfire smoke hazards, that is one thing that, on the West Coast, employees and employers have fairly a little bit of expertise with. And a few of the states on the market have carried out guidelines associated to defending employees from wildfire smoke. As we see from the occasions in Canada, that is turning into a extra widespread challenge that may have an effect on a lot bigger elements of the nation. And so our focus proper now could be offering steerage to employers to ensure that they’re doing what they’ll to guard employees from these wildfire occasions. That features issues like shifting employees indoors, delaying work vital, being conscious of the tempo of labor. And we’re additionally recommending that employers put together for and plan to scale back exposures to smoke utilizing issues like voluntary respirator applications.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Now, are these suggestions, Doug, or are they necessities from OSHA?
PARKER: On the federal stage, we don’t have laws which can be particular to wildfire smoke. This isn’t one thing that has been regulated on a nationwide stage.
MARTÍNEZ: In the intervening time, OSHA actually does not have a lot they’ll do to an employer if a employee is saying, look. I am not protected, and I am not wholesome, and it is my employer’s fault. They are not doing something.
PARKER: In very excessive smoke publicity conditions the place the air high quality is extraordinarily hazardous, we might have some authority to behave, however that is actually a comparatively new space the place our authority actually hasn’t been examined. And consequently, we actually have taken strategy that we expect is more practical given these uncertainties, which is that we’re encouraging folks to do the precise factor and shield employees from smoke. Our instruments are restricted proper now.
MARTÍNEZ: Did the fires and the smoke within the East Coast from these fires in Canada – was {that a} little bit of a wake-up name for the whole nation to grasp that this isn’t going to be a regional challenge that for much longer?
PARKER: Effectively, I am afraid we expect so, sure. And that is why we put out a press launch, an alert, to the regulated public that we would like employers to be ready. We weren’t asking them to react to that wildfire occasion, however we had been asking them to be ready for future wildfire occasions by having methods in place, plans in place, to guard their employees, whether or not that’s having extra flexibility about when work will be executed, whether or not that’s having a respirator program and that they’re utilizing filtration techniques, if that is possible, lowering ranges of bodily exercise, particularly strenuous and heavy work, and simply making lodging for folks with issues like air filters and HVA techniques and different issues.
MARTÍNEZ: Doug Parker is assistant secretary of labor for occupational security and well being and director of OSHA. Doug, thanks.
PARKER: You are very welcome.
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