Heat-Related Work Injuries: Your Rights in Summer Workplace Accidents
Every year, thousands of employees in the US suffer heat-related work injuries, and the risk increases significantly during the summer months. High temperatures and humidity, contact with hot objects, and strenuous physical labor without adequate hydration and cool down periods lead to heat exhaustion, heatstroke, severe rashes, organ damage, and more. Employees who sustain heat-related work injuries or illnesses are entitled to workers’ compensation benefits.
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What Causes Heat-Related Work Injuries?
Heat-related work injuries are typically the result of prolonged exposure to environmental and physical conditions that overwhelm the body’s ability to regulate its internal temperature. When this balance is disrupted, the risk of serious illness—or even fatal injury—increases significantly.
Several factors commonly contribute to heat stress injuries in the workplace:
- Extreme Temperatures: Working outdoors during high heat indexes or in indoor environments without adequate ventilation (such as factories, kitchens, or warehouses) can raise body temperature quickly.
- High Humidity Levels: Humidity interferes with the body’s natural cooling system—sweating. When sweat can’t evaporate efficiently, internal temperatures rise faster and stay elevated longer.
- Radiant Heat and Hot Surfaces: Direct exposure to hot machinery, asphalt, roofing materials, or metal surfaces can amplify the effects of ambient heat, especially when workers are in close contact with these heat sources throughout the day.
- Lack of Hydration: Dehydration makes it harder for the body to cool itself, and it increases the risk of heat exhaustion, cramps, and heat stroke. Workers who don’t have regular access to clean drinking water—or aren’t encouraged to hydrate—are at higher risk.
- Insufficient Rest and Shade: Without regular breaks in shaded or air-conditioned areas, workers can accumulate heat stress over time. Lack of recovery time between physically demanding tasks can also push the body past its safe threshold.
- Heavy Protective Gear or Clothing: Some job roles require thick or non-breathable gear that traps heat and limits airflow. In these situations, even moderate temperatures can lead to dangerous overheating.
- Poor Acclimatization: New employees or those returning from time off are especially vulnerable to heat-related illness if they haven’t gradually adjusted to the environmental demands of their job. Jumping straight into full-duty shifts without a ramp-up period increases the likelihood of injury.
These risk factors often work together to create a hazardous work environment. It’s not always the hottest day of the year that causes a heat injury—sometimes it’s the combination of workload, hydration habits, and worksite conditions that push the body beyond its limit.
Common Heat-Related Work Injuries
According to a workplace injuries report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 33 of the total 37 work-related deaths in 2015 and a huge number of the 2,830 reported nonfatal occupational illnesses and injuries occurred during the months of summer. Commonly reported heat injuries include:
- Heat Stroke: This life-threatening illness occurs when the body can no longer regulate its core temperature. The victim stops sweating and becomes unable to get rid of excess heat from the body. Signs include confusion, seizures, and loss of consciousness. Heat stroke can cause permanent damage to the brain and other vital organs and may result in death.
- Heat Exhaustion: The body’s natural response to excessive loss of water and salt caused by heavy sweating, heat exhaustion can quickly lead to heat stroke if left untreated. Signs include a headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, thirst, irritability, and heavy sweating.
- Heat Cramps: The loss of body fluids and low salt levels in the muscles from excessive sweating can cause painful cramps during or after work.
- Rhabdomyolysis: When the body suffers a fast breakdown caused by overexertion, death of muscle tissue causes irregular heart rhythms, seizures, and kidney damage.
Summer heat is also a major contributing factor for other types of workplace injuries. Fatigue, dizziness, and fogged up glasses can all lead to impaired judgment, workplace errors, and falls.
What Are the Employer’s Responsibilities?
Heat-related injuries are preventable. It is the responsibility of the employer to lessen the risk of heat-related work injuries by maintaining a safe work environment. This can be done in the following ways:
- Maintaining Cooling Areas: Keeping shaded areas or enclosed spaces with air conditioning helps provide employees with a reprieve from the heat and protects them from overheating.
- Provide Adequate Hydration: Employers should provide water, sports drinks, or both to ensure employees stay sufficiently hydrated in the summer heat. Dehydration is no joke, and can lead to complications down the line that could put a person’s life at risk.
- Provide Sufficient Breaks: Employers should give employees the opportunity to take a break and get out of the heat multiple times throughout the shift. Additionally, shorter work shifts are recommended in the summer heat.
- Monitor Employees: The employer should monitor employees for signs of heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and dehydration, among other things, to ensure that prompt treatment is accessed by the afflicted individual before symptoms worsen.
When employers fail to provide safe working conditions, and employees suffer as a result, it may become a matter for a workers’ compensation claim.
Workers’ compensation benefits are payable regardless of who was at fault for the illness or injury, and many people hire a workplace injury lawyer to ensure they recover full compensation for their injuries. Benefits cover medical expenses including initial and follow-up doctor’s visits, prescription costs, physical therapy, and rehabilitation expenses. Employees are also entitled to receive up to two-thirds of their total gross weekly wages when they are unable to immediately return to work.
The experienced workers’ compensation attorneys at DePaolo, Zadeikis, & Pino, LLC have decades of experience handling workers’ comp claims. If you suffered a heat-related work injury due to work conditions, and need help filing a workers’ comp claim, contact our law firm today for a free consultation.
