Investigation Looks Into Heat-Related Deaths of California Workers

KQED's Forum

KQED

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the last 10 years, nearly four dozen California workers have died from heat related-illnesses, according to an investigation by Columbia Journalism Investigations, NPR, KPCC and The California Newsroom. Public health experts say heat-related deaths are 100% preventable. But the investigation finds they still occur because of the chronic underfunding and understaffing of California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health — Cal/OSHA, which is charged with enforcing heat standards and protocols. Without proper inspections, employers can skirt regulations, placing farmworkers, construction workers, landscapers and others who work outdoors at a higher risk for heat-related deaths. With climate change only making California’s temperatures hotter, we’ll talk to the story’s reporters about the breadth of the issue and what’s being done to address it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:12.6	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Nina Kim. Coming up on forum, high heat days are more common now in California,
1:16.6	intensifying wildfires like the Calder Fire bearing down on South Lake Tahoe.
1:21.6	This hour, we get an update on today's critical firefighting efforts,
1:24.6	and we'll look at how the state's hotter temperatures
1:27.9	are affecting agriculture and construction workers and others who work outdoors.
1:33.3	Advocates say it's time for heat standards to be updated, but a new investigation by KPCC,
1:38.7	Columbia Journalism School, NPR, and the California Newsroom finds workplace regulators have
1:44.0	struggled to enforce the state's
1:45.9	existing standards. We learn more after this news.
1:54.5	This is Forum. I'm Nina Kim.
2:01.7	Nearly four dozen California workers, many of them, workers of color, have died in the last decade from heat stroke or other heat-related issues.
2:10.8	And that's likely an undercount, according to my guest Jacob Margolis of KPCC and Brian Edwards of Columbia Journalism School, who also
2:18.9	collaborated with NPR and the California Newsroom to investigate why heat-related deaths on
	...

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