For workers who have to stay on the job outdoors in extreme heat, a few simple measures can decrease the risk of heat stroke. Awareness and education play a big role.
DON GONYEA, HOST:
It is scorching hot in many parts of the country. And while some Americans are enjoying swimming pools and ice cream cones this holiday weekend, others are having to work through the heat. Take UPS drivers – in recent years, there’s been a concerted effort to make those big, brown trucks more hospitable in the heat. NPR labor correspondent Andrea Hsu is here to talk about it. Hi, Andrea.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: Hey, Don.
GONYEA: So the packages don’t stop – right? – just because it’s hot.
HSU: Right.
GONYEA: The UPS drivers are still out there. They’re on the streets. What is the company doing for them?
HSU: Well, yeah, several years ago, during contract negotiations, the Teamsters union, which represents their drivers – they got UPS to commit to including air conditioning in all new delivery vehicles. You know, the vast majority of those brown trucks you see in your neighborhood do not have AC. And then further negotiations led UPS to agree to retrofit 5,000 existing vehicles with air conditioning by next summer, and that work has started. The union put out this video of Karla Schumann, who’s a longtime UPS driver in Phoenix, who chaired the union’s Heat Committee. She is showing what the air conditioning looks like.
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KARLA SCHUMANN: The AC actually comes out above the driver. These blow pretty forcefully across at the drivers. So when the doors are shut, it really makes a difference.
HSU: And so far, UPS has retrofitted 2,000 vehicles with AC but still a long way to go.
GONYEA: OK. So still not a lot of UPS drivers actually enjoying air conditioning – not yet anyway. So what else can they do to stay cool?
HSU: Well, I asked UPS about this, and they directed me to someone they’ve been working with for the past four years. Douglas Casa, he’s a professor and CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut. And he’s an expert in how to prevent problems like dehydration and heatstroke in athletes and workers. And first off, he pointed out that drivers – you know, all drivers face a unique danger.
DOUGLAS CASA: Whether it be UPS, FedEx, Amazon drivers – what’s unique about them is that they have to work by themselves.
GONYEA: And in that case, there’s not another person around who…
HSU: Right.
GONYEA: …Is maybe a coworker to say, hey, you doing OK?
HSU: Yeah. Right, exactly. And so a big part of what Casa has helped UPS with is educating their workers on the importance of some really basic things like having water and ice throughout the day and also cooling gear. You know, there are these cooling hats and gaiters and arm sleeves that you can wet, and they stay cool for a couple hours. UPS says it’s provided more than a million pieces of this kind of gear to employees, along with water, ice and electrolytes. Another part of the training that UPS does is telling workers to pay attention to the color of their urine.
GONYEA: OK, I get that. They need to know what is the normal color range, right? There are those charts that maybe are in restrooms sometimes that’ll provide that guidance.
HSU: Yeah, sometimes in, you know, factory restrooms or locker rooms – and it turns out Casa, you know, back when he was a student at the University of Connecticut in the ’90s, he actually helped with the research that went into that color chart. He told me his professor got hundreds of paint chips from Sherwin Williams, and they figured out what level of dehydration resulted in what color urine.
CASA: If it’s lighter like lemonade, you’re very likely hydrated. If it’s darker like apple juice, you’re very likely dehydrated.
HSU: And again, Don, going back to delivery drivers, this is something they can monitor on their own, although, of course, finding a place for a bathroom break may be the bigger challenge.
GONYEA: So let’s talk more broadly about anyone who works in the heat. In the summer, you sometimes see workers wearing actually pretty heavy clothing, and it’s for protection.
HSU: Right. And Casa brought up all those data centers going up around the country where you have thousands of construction workers, you know, racing to get these data centers built, and they’re wearing long pants, long sleeves, hard hats. So again, there’s that cooling gear that can be worn that I mentioned. But also, Casa says it’s important that these workers acclimatize to the heat. You know, you shouldn’t just be doing a 10- or 12-hour shift on your first day.
CASA: You might do four hours for that first week in the heat. You should (ph) slowly ramp up because the greatest risk of a heatstroke and a heatstroke death is in the first, like, three to five days of the heat exposure.
HSU: And, you know, a handful of states have laws requiring acclimatization plans for new and returning workers. The Biden administration tried to implement a federal rule that include that and other protections for all kinds of workers. But they ran out of time, and it never got finalized.
GONYEA: That’s NPR’s Andrea Hsu. Andrea, thank you.
HSU: You’re welcome.
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