Preparing for Extreme Heat and Wildfire Smoke
—guest post by Mark Chapman, AFSCME Local 328 steward, safety-committee chair and building manager—
Oregon OSHA recently published two rules meant to address the extreme weather conditions that have been occurring with increasing frequency in the Pacific Northwest.
On August 1, Temporary Rule 437-002-0155, Heat Illness Prevention, went into effect. This rule concerns workplace exposure to environmental heat of 80 or greater. All Oregon employers are required to train employees who might be exposed to this environmental danger. OHSU has not yet complied with this rule.
OHSU created an online training that is available on Compass as “Extreme Heat: Be Prepared.” OHSU has not yet determined which employees should take this training in order to satisfy OSHA’s requirements. Once this determination is made, the training will become an assigned mandatory training for affected employees; there is no projected date for this. Another round of hot weather is forecast for next week.
When I suggested that the process could be facilitated by notifying employees by email that the training is available, Central Services Safety Committee Chair Sam Parrish responded that I should perhaps take the initiative and get the word out via email. Local 328 is happy to do so, for the following reasons.
We want to help OHSU move closer to compliance with this temporary OSHA rule.
The training contains a wealth of general information about the dangers of heat illnesses, knowledge of which will benefit all of our represented employees..
The rule defines employee rights and employer responsibilities when the work environment hotter than 80. It’s in effect now, even though few employees have been trained.
Since the training is currently available to all OHSU students and employees with access to Compass, our union highly recommends that everyone take the training, regardless of their workplace environment. Simply log into Compass from the list of shortcuts on O2, then search for “Extreme Heat: Be Prepared” in the search bar on the upper right corner of the Compass homepage. The training takes 12 to 15 minutes. Local 328 also encourages OHSU to post a link to the training on OHSU Now, on O2 and publicly on their homepage. We believe that wide distribution of the information contained in the training would benefit the health and wellbeing of all Oregonians.
In addition, Oregon OSHA’s Temporary Rule on Protection from Wildfire Smoke went into effect on August 9. This rule requires that all employees who may be exposed to Air Quality Index 101 while working be trained by August 16 on the dangers of wildfire smoke. OHSU is not compliant with this rule. I could find no applicable training on Compass as of this writing. Information will be shared as it becomes available.