Biden administration, workers grapple with health threats posed by climate change and heat

Surging temperatures across the West Coast this summer are exposing another way that the changing climate threatens the country’s future: the danger it poses to workers, particularly those who work outside and in warehouses.

The issue has become such a concern that the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has put a new heat illness rule on a list of agenda items for the Biden administration to consider, calling it a top priority. Right now, there is no specific federal policy that governs heat-related workplace safety, leaving states to set their own approach.