OPINION: It is dangerously hot out there

Records indicate that June is now hotter than ever before, and hot weather is lingering deeper into September. This is all due to climate change. And there’s no question that these longer durations of extreme hot weather impose health risks. Environmental Protection Agency data shows that over the last seven decades heat waves have grown longer and more frequent and more intense. This is a global phenomenon with record heat waves in North America, Europe, Japan, Mongolia, Russia and western China.

It is well established that in the United States heat is the leading cause of weather-related fatalities, surpassing deaths from hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined. Extreme heat contributes to a significant number of deaths, both directly from heatstroke and indirectly by exacerbating existing health conditions.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration has purged government health experts who work on the effects of deadly temperatures. As Ariel Wittenberg of Politico reports, the heat experts have been fired or placed on leave or forced out at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, an agency within the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. This agency known as NIOSH was the first to sound the alarm and dangers that heat poses to workers. The entire team of scientists who study heat is gone. OSHA, at the Department of Labor, is the agency that was working on finalizing the heat rule. This will be very hard to do without heat experts. “The ability to reach out to experts and work together and solve problems and keep people safe in an efficient manner — that’s not going to be possible when you have an agency turned into Swiss cheese,” said Doug Parker who led OSHA during the Biden administration. Parker added, “that holding a public hearing, and continuing the heat ruling, without NIOSH experts would be like prosecutors trying to convict a murderer without having the testimony of a medical examiner.”

These cuts pose a dire threat to those who work in high-heat jobs like agriculture, warehousing, and construction. Jessica Martinez, the executive director of the nonprofit National Council for Occupational Safety and Health recently said. “We will see more injuries, more heat stroke and more deaths. The workers who feed us, build for us, and care for our families deserve protection not abandonment.”

And that’s not all. The layoffs at the Department of Health Human Services have also effectively dismantled programs that keep people safe from extreme heat in their homes. Wittenberg of Politico stated that the entire staff of a federal program that helps low-income households pay utility bills for air conditioning and heating has been eliminated. There’s no longer any staff that processes the money and sends it to the states to keep air conditioners running through the summer heat. They’re all now terminated or on administrative leave. Amneh Minkara is the deputy director of the Sierra Club Building Electrification Campaign. She said that eliminating these programs means higher deadly impacts for folks who will not be able to safely cool their homes as we enter what is predicted to be another historically hot summer.

This is not the only program cut. As Politico reports, the whole staff of the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice has been axed. That includes people who provide grants to local and state health departments. Even the online tools like HeatRisk tracker that use National Weather Service data and local health data are likely to be affected since the staff who worked on the tool was cut.

The proposed OSHA rule that would have required workers to be provided with cold drinking water, shade and rest breaks once the heat index reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit has been terminated or indefinitely suspended. All this is all not just an attack on science but is also inhumane. It will not make America great again.