Heat Hazards on the Job

This tool offers selected stories of heat-related deaths, hospitalizations, and nonhospitalized injuries by state, city, economic sector, and unsafe practice. The stories frequently refer to the following conditions: 

• Heat stress is a nonspecific term for a heat-related illness, ranging from mild cramping to heatstroke.  
• Heat exhaustion is a serious but typically not life-threatening illness that occurs when someone is overheated and dehydrated. 
• Heatstroke is a medical emergency that occurs when the body’s natural cooling mechanisms fail. Heatstroke typically has a high mortality rate but can also cause permanent disability in survivors.  
• Heat-related muscle injury, otherwise known as rhabdomyolysis, is the disintegration of muscle tissue that in turn can damage kidneys. 
• Heart and lung problems can result when heat stress decreases blood pressure and blood volume, increases heart rate, damages lung tissue, and more.  

The main Unsafe Practices tab allows you to explore examples of specific gaps in workplace heat protections. Hovering over a square provides one story of a worker harmed by heat in that state.  

The main Economic Sector tab gives you a sense of the scope of industries and job duties that are affected by heat. Consistent data gaps on the national maps may indicate where state OSHAs aren’t reporting data to federal OSHA or where there are very few heat-related inspections. (See data limitations below.)  

Zooming in to the State Maps allows you to explore the same data by city. You can also find policy information that contextualizes the level of OSHA activity within a given state and explore indoor versus outdoor heat exposures on the job.   

Finally, click on the Downloadable Table button to get a copy of the entire dataset.  

NOTE: This tool is best viewed on a desktop/laptop/tablet; on mobile, it is best viewed in Chrome.

This data visualization has three important limitations: 

1. It doesn’t capture the true toll of heat on workers. OSHA has been understaffed and under-resourced throughout its history, meaning that the agency can inspect only a tiny fraction of workplaces with possible heat hazards. Furthermore, some industries receive exemptions from OSHA inspections. For instance, we found relatively few inspections related to agriculture, even though research has consistently shown that farmworkers are among the most vulnerable populations to heat-related harms. That’s partly because Congress includes an annual rider in OSHA’s funding that prevents the agency from inspecting small agricultural operations without labor camps in the previous 12 months. Finally, data gaps forced us to leave out state and local government workers, even though they make up about 13 percent of the U.S. workforce. 
2. It isn’t a complete picture of heat-related enforcement activity by state or federal investigators. For example, Nevada OSHA’s Heat Complaints Dashboard (Screen 4) says the agency conducted 149 heat-related inspections in 2024 alone. We were unable to find any of those inspections using our methods.  
3. It isn’t suitable for apples-to-apples comparisons between states or economic sectors, due to jurisdictional differences, state and regional inspection priorities, the adoption of heat emphasis programs, and even union density. For instance, complaints by workers are a major trigger of OSHA inspections. Unionized workers are better protected from retaliation by employers and so are more likely to lodge complaints than workers in more precarious employment. 

• Every U.S. state but Alaska had at least one heat-related incident. Most of the cases came from historically hot states such as California, Florida, and Texas. But even historically cold states such as Maine and Wyoming had reports of heat deaths or hospitalizations, although not all reports resulted in inspections or citations.  
• Every major sector of the economy had at least one heat-related incident. Construction and other sectors that involve strenuous outdoor work appeared most frequently in OSHA’s heat-related enforcement data. However, we also found cases in entertainment (e.g., baseball stadiums), health care (e.g., hospitals), retail (e.g., grocery stores), and other sectors with underappreciated heat hazards. Note that the education, utility, and public administration sectors are heavily populated by state and local government workers, which we didn’t include in this tool. 
• Heat-related hospitalizations and deaths were not restricted to those in strenuous jobs. Heat-related harms were more common among workers engaged in strenuous activities such as digging holes, roofing, and moving furniture. If it’s hot enough, however, even workers engaged in sedentary or light-activity jobs can leave work in an ambulance. The records included heat-related incidents among people working at cash registers and customer service counters, standing relatively still in parking lots, and sorting cocoa beans.  
• Workers of all ages were affected by heat. We had age data for just above 800 of the records. Most of the affected workers in those records were in their mid-twenties to mid-fifties. However, the youngest was a 15-year-old girl who received first aid after working in the heat as a lifeguard. The oldest, an 82-year-old man working at a car dealership, was hospitalized after he fainted in the heat and sustained a concussion.  
• Heat hazards were a problem indoors too. Although outdoor heat accounted for most of the enforcement records, nearly 2 in 10 incidents involved indoor heat exposure. Locales included factories, kitchens, and other workplaces with heat-generating equipment; buildings without functional air-conditioning; and large workplaces, such as warehouses or retail stores with “hot spots.” 
• Extreme heat increased the risk of accidents and injuries. We encountered dozens of stories about workers who got into traffic accidents or incurred traumatic injuries due to heat exposure. Examples included a 67-year-old oil and gas worker who collapsed in the heat and died from a fractured skull; an 18-year-old roofer who slipped on hot tar paper and needed surgery to fix fractures of his hip, wrist, and knees; and a 44-year-old HVAC technician who blacked out and gashed his arm on a piece of sheet metal.  
• Worker deaths and hospitalizations often stemmed from systemic failures rather than one unsafe practice. In many of the most severe cases, workers died or were hospitalized because of a series of unsafe choices by employers. Examples included a 24-year-old construction worker who didn’t have enough shade, was given a less strenuous task instead of a cooldown break after reporting symptoms, and who then did not receive timely care because his supervisor instructed coworkers to call the police instead of an ambulance. 
• States with their own heat standards were more likely to prevent incidents from happening. Without the benefit of a specific, enforceable state heat standard, OSHA inspectors rely on the General Duty Clause. This is a short, broadly worded section in federal law that provides blanket protection for any hazard not specifically regulated by OSHA. Unfortunately, there are strict requirements that make it difficult for OSHA to use the General Duty Clause for minor violations. California OSHA (Cal/OSHA), on the other hand, can use the state’s specific heat standard to rectify small infractions before they result in a serious hospitalization or death. Cal/OSHA investigated as many nonhospitalized heat injuries as hospitalized heat injuries.  
• Far more workers were likely affected by heat than those who died or were hospitalized. When OSHA investigators issue a citation to employers, it estimates the number of workers exposed to each cited hazard. At some of the larger employers investigated by OSHA, many hundreds of workers were exposed to potential harm during specific heat incidents. This included individual citations issued in California (3,000 workers), Missouri (1,831 workers), Texas (1,600 workers), and Florida (450 workers). It’s likely that many of those other workers experienced at least mild heat-related symptoms and losses in productivity, although we can’t know that for sure, given the available data.