During Workers’ Memorial Week (April 22- 28), Public Citizen joined with organizations across the country to remember fallen workers and fight for safer workplaces, including for employees exposed to the growing dangers of climate change and rising temperatures in the workplace.

According to the AFL-CIO, nearly 5,200 workers were killed on the job in the United States in 2017 alone, and millions more were injured or maimed. Heat stress killed 815 U.S. workers and seriously injured more than 70,000 workers from 1992 through 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Notwithstanding these alarming figures, many deaths – including heat-related fatalities – go underreported.

A broad coalition of advocacy groups and experts have mounted a campaign to pressure the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to establish protections for workers who are subject to extreme heat. In the summer of 2018, Public Citizen and a network of more than 130 labor, environment and public health organizations petitioned OSHA to issue a national heat stress standard. This petition marked the launch of a national campaign to win that standard and raise awareness about the impacts of climate change and rising temperatures on the health and safety of outdoor and indoor workers.

This Workers’ Memorial Week, more than 100 organizations submitted a joint letter to United States Department of Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor Loren Sweatt. The letter calls for swift action from the Labor Department to enact protective policies to shield workers from the growing dangers of climate change and rising temperatures in the workplace.

The language of the letter also memorializes some of the workers we have lost from heat-related fatalities, “Behind the statistics are individual workers who will never return home after a hard day’s work, or who will be forever changed from irreversible injuries and illnesses.” Last year, Peggy Frank, a 63-year-old mail carrier for the United States Postal Service, died from hyperthermia (an abnormally high body temperature) in her non-air-conditioned mail truck on a day that reached 115 degrees. A decade earlier, in 2008, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a pregnant teen farmworker, died from heat exhaustion after laboring more than nine hours without accessible shade or water. These are just two of the countless workers who have died or suffered because of extreme heat exposure.

For Workers’ Memorial Week, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health also highlighted preventable heat-related fatalities in its Dirty Dozen 2019 Report, which identifies companies that put workers and communities at risk. The report detailed how Miguel Angel Guzman Chavez, an immigrant farmworker, died from heat exhaustion on a Georgia tomato farm during his first week on the job. OSHA fined Beiza Brothers Harvesting for exposing Chavez to “hazards of high ambient temperatures and working in direct sunlight.” And at the warehouse XPO, one worker died and six women have suffered miscarriages under overheated, high-stress working conditions. After an exposé and a union organizing drive, XPO closed the warehouse.

Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the U.S., and climate change is resulting in more frequent and more intense days of extreme heat. Heat stress dramatically increases the risk for workers who labor in hot conditions, whether outdoors or in warehouses, kitchens or confined spaces. As record-breaking summer temperatures become the norm – 18 of the past 19 years have been the hottest on record – workers are at increased risk for heat illnesses.

Public Citizen published a report showing that during the July 4, 2018, holiday week, an average of more than 2.2 million construction and farm workers labored in extreme heat each day. Another report by Public Citizen, Farmworker Association of Florida and an Emory University researcher showed that extreme heat in Florida put construction and farmworkers at risk of illness, injury and death in 2016. According to climate change forecasts, heat will continue to climb in years moving forward.

Workplace safety and oversight hearings are a top priority for leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives. In response to the growing heat risks to workers nationwide, U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) said she plans to introduce legislation this year to protect workers from heat. Public Citizen and its partners support the introduction of bicameral legislation to protect outdoor and indoor workers from heat this Congress as we continue to push OSHA to act under its authority.

During Workers’ Memorial Week, it’s important to remember those workers who have died on the job, and for OSHA and Congress to advance workplace protections to prevent future tragedies. In the absence of strong rights and enforcement, we endanger our workforce and make another generation of workers vulnerable to the harms of climate change.

You can take action in support of workers, by joining our grassroots petition to OSHA for national heat protections. No more workers should die from this preventable situation.

This Sunshine Week, whistleblowers within the scientific community deserve special recognition. The Trump administration has been relentless with its attacks on scientific integrity, from efforts to censor climate change research and the stonewalling of scientific advisory boards, to the appointment of industry representatives to lead environmental agencies, and attempts to silence the brave employees who challenge government misconduct. Whistleblowers, the eyes and ears to abuses of power that betray the public trust, risk their professional and personal security to shed light on these matters. Regardless of who is in power, we have always relied on courageous civil servants as the lifeline to warn the public about illegal government actions. Several events throughout this week magnified this truth.

Working with Whistleblowers to Safely Blow the Whistle

The 2019 Sunshine Week event Science and Transparency in the Trump Era, organized by several of our allies from the Make It Safe Coalition, was an instructive discussion on the ways in which science and science professionals have been under relentless assault by the current administration, obstructing both the public’s right to know and Congress’s duty to conduct effective oversight. It provided practical tips and resources to help public interest organizations, employees, policymakers and journalists “promote accountability, protect scientific integrity, and restore public trust in government.”

In the spirit of last year’s Sunshine week event that Public Citizen cosponsored, Working with Whistleblowers: A Sunshine Week Training for Public Interest Advocates, the Government Accountability Project provided highlights from updated whistleblower guides, including “Speaking up for Science: A Guide to Whistleblowing for Federal Employees and Contractors,” which provides a roadmap of available whistleblower protections and survival tips for reporting wrongdoing safely and effectively. For instance, the Whistleblower Protection Act – the primary federal whistleblower law that was strengthened unanimously by Congress in 2012 – prohibits retaliation against government scientists who challenge censorship or make disclosures related to the integrity of the scientific process.

This year’s event recognized several scientific truth-tellers spanning several administrations. Joel Clement, a top-level Policy Advisory to the Secretary of the Interior Department, blew the whistle on the dangers of climate change impacts on Alaskan native communities. After resigning from the Trump administration, Clement now works as a Senior Fellow for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Larry Criscione, an engineer and risk analyst with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, disclosed to Congress in 2012 that his agency was failing to heed warnings that nearly a quarter of the nation’s nuclear plants could not withstand an upstream dam break. Clement and Criscione were both recipients of the Joe A. Calloway Award for Civic Courage.

Exposing Toxic Chemicals in the Workplace

During Sunshine Week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee held a hearing on “Mismanaging Chemical Risks: EPA’s Failure to Protect Workers.” The hearing developed a powerful record on how the EPA is systematically ignoring worker risks in its implementation of the 2016 Frank. R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, which provided much needed updates to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) but is not being applied effectively. Witnesses detailed the ways in which their employers knowingly exposed them and other workers to dangerous chemicals and known carcinogens – from asbestos to chlorinated solvents, flame retardants and pesticides – while misleading them about the associated health risks, and the EPA’s failure to use its newfound authority under TSCA to protect workers and others.

Public Citizen submitted written testimony that examines worker health impacts from exposure to the chemical dispersant Corexit used during the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster response. A whistleblower investigation exposed that when this product is mixed with oil, a deadly synergy occurs that poses greater threats than oil alone. The only so-­‐called advantage of Corexit is the false impression that the oil disappears – in reality, the more toxic chemical mixture spreads throughout the environment, exposing workers and communities, or settles on the seafloor.

The whistleblowers involved in the dispersant investigation provided clear warnings and practical solutions that could have greatly reduced the negative impact caused by the disaster “clean-up” from the toxic dispersant brew. They began by warning not to treat chemicals with chemicals, a premise that was ignored. As we approach the 9^th anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, the Trump administration has aggressively worked to expand offshore drilling while simultaneously rolling back related safety regulations. It is both unfortunate and inevitable that future major offshore oil disasters will occur, triggering bipartisan opposition to the current efforts to expand of offshore drilling. Congress should be equally alarmed about the continued use of dispersants. This hearing began to lay the groundwork needed to end the use of Corexit and other dangerous chemicals.

Just as we cannot afford to take clean air, lifesaving medicines and safe workplaces for granted, we must honor the whistleblowers who take great personal risks to uphold scientific integrity. We thank these brave individuals for pulling back the curtain and shining light on dangerous practices.