National Weather Heat Index Chart Used by OSHA Invalidated

An administrative legislation decide of the unbiased Occupational Security and Well being Evaluation Fee held this week that the Occupational Security and Well being Administration (OSHA) had failed to indicate {that a} doc the company used to prosecute employers in warmth stress circumstances—the Nationwide Climate Service’s warmth index chart—has a scientific foundation.

The holding is anticipated to reverberate broadly, as OSHA and its attorneys have many occasions used the chart as proof that employers had violated the Basic Responsibility Clause of the Occupational Security and Well being (OSH) Act.

Background

A few years in the past, the Nationwide Climate Service (NWS) of the U.S. Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration printed this warmth index chart.

The chart has what is likely to be thought-about to be two layers of data, the second of which is vital to OSHA prosecutions. The chart’s first layer include its numbers, which point out how scorching human beings really feel when uncovered to sure mixtures of temperature and humidity. For instance, when the temperature is 84 levels Fahrenheit and the relative humidity is 70 p.c, one feels as if the temperature had been 90 levels. The numbers in that first layer mirror a scientific paper printed in 1979; neither its validity nor that of the primary layer of the chart has been questioned.

The chart’s second layer—which consists of its shade codings, its legend for the colour codings, and the legend’s warnings (“Warning,” “Excessive Warning,” “Hazard” and “Excessive Hazard”)—is a distinct story, as might be defined under.

OSHA’s Reliance on the Chart

OSHA and its attorneys have for years cited the NWS warmth index chart as proof that employers uncovered their staff to extreme ranges of warmth, in violation of the OSH Act’s catch-all provision, the Basic Responsibility Clause.

In 2016 and 2017, OSHA issued 5 such citations to the USA Postal Service (USPS), alleging violations in San Antonia and Houston, Texas; Des Moines, Iowa; Charleston, West Virginia; and Benton, Arkansas. OSHA launched the NWS warmth index chart into the trial report and pointed to it as proof.

USPS argued, nonetheless, that the chart’s second layer ought to be disregarded as missing a scientific foundation. (Ogletree Deakins represented USPS on this matter.) It argued that the NWS had based mostly the chart’s second layer on a 1981 article in a preferred journal on climate and local weather. The article cited, nonetheless, no sources for its assertions that sure warmth index values indicated warning, excessive warning, hazard, and excessive hazard. USPS additionally confirmed that the co-authors of the article had been a meteorologist and a climatologist with no obvious {qualifications} in human physiology. It additionally launched skilled testimony rebutting the concept the chart had any scientific validity.

On July 15, 2020, Decide Sharon Calhoun of the Occupational Security and Well being Evaluation Fee agreed that “no proof was introduced to ascertain the scientific foundation for the danger classes depicted on the NWS warmth index chart.” Regardless of the prominence of the difficulty on the listening to, Decide Calhoun discovered that OSHA had failed to offer any “supporting information … for why the degrees of threat [indicated by the chart’s color coding and legend] are attributed to their respective temperatures.”

OSHA has not but requested the complete Fee to overview the decide’s choices within the 5 circumstances. Except overview is sought and granted, and the decide’s choices are adopted because the Fee’s personal, they won’t be binding on some other decide or the Fee. If OSHA does search overview and it’s granted, the decide’s findings concerning the chart are extremely unlikely to be challenged, not to mention overturned. And even when the decide’s choices stay non-binding, they’re nonetheless more likely to be influential, as Decide Calhoun (a former supervisory lawyer for OSHA) is thought and broadly revered as a decide extremely skilled in occupational security and well being legislation. The selections thus seemingly spell the tip of OSHA’s capability to depend on the NWS warmth index chart.