US Heat Protection Remains a Patchwork After Record Summer
After the hottest July ever recorded in the United States, there is still no national standard for heat protection in the workplace, and a final rule does not appear imminent. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been working on a federal heat rule since 2024, but according to trade publication ISHN, the Trump administration has announced plans to roll back heat standards and scale back enforcement. A House of Representatives committee also approved a bill this summer that would block OSHA from finalizing the rule. Meanwhile, individual states are setting their own rules, each with its own threshold values.
No Federal Standard, Yet Liability Remains
OSHA published a proposed heat rule for indoor and outdoor work in August 2024. Following a public hearing in June and July 2025, the final comment period closed on October 30, 2025; the rule has remained a proposal ever since. On July 21, 2026, the House Education and Workforce Committee approved the Heat Workforce Standards Act by a vote of 18 to 15, which would bar the Department of Labor from finalizing the proposal. To become law, the bill needs sixty votes in the Senate, and according to Safety Services Inc., those votes are not there. Taylor Murphy of consultancy Enhesa points out that employers can be held liable regardless of what happens at the federal level.
A Patchwork of State Rules
In the absence of a national standard, states are taking their own initiative, with widely varying results. “Seven states have seven different threshold temperatures and rest-break ratios,” says R. Mukund, CEO of software company Benchmark Gensuite. According to Murphy, a facility in one state must already conduct a heat risk assessment at around 27 degrees Celsius, while two states over that requirement doesn’t kick in until 29 to 32 degrees. Some rules, moreover, apply only to outdoor work or to specific sectors. Anna Albright, co-founder and CEO of cooling technology company Clema and a member of the committee drafting the OSHA standard, believes all workers deserve protection. She says she finds it regrettable that there is now “great division across the country.”
More Enforcement, Less Clear Guidance
“Expect more enforcement with less guidance,” says Mukund. According to him, inspectors already assess heat risks based on the general duty clause. A company without a documented heat program is therefore vulnerable, even though no specific rule yet requires one. His advice: make sure risks are visible for each individual worker in real time, rather than simply checking whether your own policy matches California’s.
Context
The US climate agency NOAA confirmed that July 2026 was the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous United States. According to Safety Services Inc., OSHA first intends to publish a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking in December 2026, a rarely used step. The Department of Labor names October 2027 as its target date for a final standard; Safety Services advises employers not to count on that and not to expect an enforceable federal standard before 2029. Until then, OSHA is enforcing heat-related risks through a National Emphasis Program for heat, renewed in April 2026, targeting 55 high-risk industries and running through 2031. Research by Harvard University and George Washington University, based on 2023 OSHA injury data, links heat to nearly 28,000 workplace incidents per year in the US, at establishments with a hundred or more employees, primarily in high-risk industries. This is likely an underestimate, since heat-related injuries are often not recorded as such.
For HSE professionals worldwide, this US situation will sound familiar: heat stress in the workplace is rising in many countries due to climate change, while specific, binding heat regulations are often missing or lagging behind. A missing or delayed standard does not exempt employers from responsibility: regulators can fall back on general duty-of-care provisions, which exist in many legal systems. A documented heat policy that maps risks per worker is therefore a sensible foundation everywhere.
Source: The Reality of Workplace Heat Protections After a Record-Breaking Summer, October 15, 2026
Additional research: status of the federal OSHA heat standard (Safety Services Inc., 2026) and research by Harvard University/George Washington University on heat-related workplace injuries (Safety+Health Magazine, 2025).
