TITLE: US Prisons and Jails Exposed to an Increasing Number of Hazardous Heat Days, Study Says
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02072024/prisons-jails-hazardous-heat/
EXCERPT: Marci Simmons thinks back to her days in a Texas state prison as a cruel game of psychological planning for the summer. “In April, you start preparing yourself for the heat,” she said. “Towards the end of May, when it starts to get hot, you start telling yourself, ‘OK, it’s only four months of this really bad heat.’ And then you kind of count down in your mind. It’s a mental game of survival.”
Simmons was incarcerated in Texas state custody for more than a decade. She did time in the Dr. Lane Murray Unit, a state-run women’s prison in Gatesville—one of many such facilities nationwide that does not have air conditioning in the living spaces. To keep cool on hot days, she and other women would lie on their cell floors in puddles of water drawn from the sinks.
She said she wasn’t always able to track indoor temperatures because maintenance workers kept a piece of electrical tape over the dorm thermostat to hide the temperature readings. But one scorching day in the summer of 2020, Simmons removed the electrical tape using the sticky sides of two maxi pads that she had attached to the end of a broom. The temperature read 136 degrees. “I thought, well, this is why they didn’t want us to know,” she said.
A study published in March in the journal Nature Sustainability puts her experiences into nationwide context. Evaluating the heat exposure of more than 4,000 prisons, jails and immigration detention facilities across the U.S. since the 1980s, researchers found that the number of hot days per year increased at over 1,000 facilities—mainly in the South. They found the states of Texas, Florida, Arizona and Louisiana had the most exposure to potentially hazardous heat days—yet none provide universal access to air conditioning in state-run prisons.
Overall, state prisons in Texas and Florida had the greatest exposure to hazardous heat, the researchers found, accounting for 52 percent of total exposure to hazardous heat days, despite holding 12 percent of America’s incarcerated population. The researchers say the study illuminates the urgency of improved infrastructure and policies to keep incarcerated people safe from extreme heat hazards that they cannot escape.
Inspiration for the research came from the stories of incarcerated people that are published every summer in the media, said Robbie Parks, an environmental health scientist at Columbia University who co-authored the study. “People are dying without any kind of recourse to cooling. That inspired us to try and understand, ‘What is the actual heat exposure to incarcerated people? And what is the disparity compared with the rest of the country?’” he said. “Of course, the climate is changing. But it turns out that carceral facilities are located in places which are actually biased toward hotter temperatures.”
The researchers found that 118 carceral facilities, mainly in southern California, Arizona, Texas and Florida, experienced an average of 75 days or more per year when the temperature exceeded U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s (NIOSH) hazardous temperature threshold. Air conditioning is not universally available in those facilities, and some rely on evaporative cooling systems which are not as effective, according to the researchers.
They also found that carceral facilities are disproportionately exposed to hazardous heat days when compared with other areas of the U.S. Arizona, California and Nevada ranked as the top three states with the greatest temperature disparities between areas with and without carceral facilities. While climate change is certainly a driving force, the locations of these facilities are also a factor, the researchers say. Prisons and jails are often built where land is cheap and the local community sparse. Historically, that has tended to be in isolated deserts or swampy areas.
TITLE: Judge Orders Changes to Louisiana Prison Labor Program Likened to ‘19th Century Slavery’
https://theappeal.org/angola-prison-farm-line-ruling-louisiana/
EXCERPT: In granting the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order on Tuesday, Jackson identified “glaring deficiencies” in Angola’s heat-related policies, noting that they fail to meet federal and state requirements for heat safety in agricultural settings. He ordered corrections officials to make changes to “preserve human health and safety.” But Jackson also denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction to immediately halt Farm Line work pending the case’s resolution.
Among the required updates to Angola’s heat-related policies, Jackson ruled corrections officials must address the current “failure to provide adequate shade, rest, sunscreen, and other protective equipment, as well as the failure to provide accommodations for those incarcerated persons suffering from an illness or ailment that significantly inhibits thermoregulation.” Corrections officials must also “develop an additional heat-related policy to protect those laboring outdoors when heat indexes reach or exceed 113 degrees, the temperature at which the National Weather Service issues excessive heat warnings.” Defendants must submit their revised policies to the court within seven days.
In a statement to The Appeal, attorney Lydia Wright of the Promise of Justice Initiative, a member of the plaintiffs’ legal team, said they were “elated with the district court’s careful findings that in its current form, the Farm Line falls short of basic constitutional standards.”
On the site of a former slave plantation, Angola’s Farm Line work consists of prisoners—most of whom are Black—laboring in the fields, often without pay or at wages of just two cents an hour, according to the plaintiffs’ motion. The plaintiffs say they can be placed in solitary confinement if they refuse to participate. The Farm Line is “akin to nineteenth-century slavery,” the motion states.
“During their shifts, the men perform grueling, but pointless, manual agricultural labor, like picking rotten watermelons, okra, and other crops with their bare hands, weeding and plucking grass by hand, and watering crops using Styrofoam cups,” attorneys wrote in their motion to the court. A medical expert for the plaintiffs concluded that men who work on the Farm Line in extreme heat are “at substantial risk of serious heat-related disorders,” including fainting, heat cramps, and heat stroke, which can cause death or “permanent disability.”
The plaintiffs allege that staff provide water to Farm Line workers that is “dirty and full of insects.” Damion Thompson, who was incarcerated at Angola as of last summer, told the court the heat in the fields is “unbearable” and that he drank dirty water to “avoid passing out.” He said he was forced to work on the Farm Line even though he has nerve damage from a gunshot wound.
In the state’s response to the court, officials claimed they give laborers water jugs with caps and that the containers are sanitized daily. Officials say that thanks to Farm Line labor, prisoners at Angola “enjoy fresh vegetables at least twice a day.” They also raised concerns that a ruling prohibiting Farm Line work at heat indexes above 88 degrees “would effectively open the flood gates to cease any and all work in any institution across the South.”
TITLE: Biden administration proposes worker heat protections, after DeSantis banned such rules in Florida
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/biden-administration-proposes-worker-heat-protections-after-desantis-banned-such-rules-in-florida-37237328
EXCERPT: [Governor Ron] DeSantis in April signed a bill (HB 433) that includes preventing local governments from requiring heat-exposure protections for workers. That part of the bill came after the Miami-Dade County Commission last year considered a proposal to require construction and agriculture companies to take steps such as ensuring that workers have access to water and giving them 10-minute breaks in the shade every two hours when the heat index is at least 95 degrees, according to a House staff analysis.
Supporters of the bill, including groups such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida, said it would prevent a patchwork of regulations and that employers already face requirements to protect workers from heat-related injuries. But opponents said workers need additional protections as they earn livings in Florida’s sometimes-stifling heat.
The federal government does not have specific standards for hazardous heat conditions, but OSHA can take action against businesses through what is known as a “general duty clause” of a workplace-safety law, according to a background document posted Tuesday on the agency’s website. The proposed rule seeks to provide specific standards.
“OSHA’s efforts to protect employees from hazardous heat conditions using the general duty clause, although important, have limitations leaving many workers vulnerable to heat-related hazards,” the 437-page background document said.
The proposed rule, in part, would require employers to develop plans to prevent heat-related illnesses or injuries and monitor heat conditions.
When conditions reach what is described as an “initial heat trigger,” such as a heat index of 80 degrees, employers would be required to take steps including providing cool drinking water and break areas. When conditions reach a “high heat trigger,” such as a heat index of 90 degrees, they would be required to take steps such as providing mandatory rest breaks of 15 minutes every two hours.
If the proposed rule is ultimately approved, it would apply to about 36 million workers in outdoor and indoor workplaces, according to OSHA. The proposal will be published in the Federal Register, starting a public-comment period before the agency could finalize a rule.
OSHA last week announced it had cited Guerrero Ag LLC, an Arcadia-based labor contractor, after a 41-year-old worker collapsed in December 2023 while harvesting oranges. The worker, who died after being hospitalized, had symptoms consistent with a heat stroke, the agency said in a news release.
SEE ALSO:
Clarence Thomas takes aim at a new target: Eliminating OSHA
https://www.businessinsider.com/clarence-thomas-takes-aim-at-osha-2024-7