Smoke from Canadian wildfires shows outdoor workers need air quality protections

In 20 states, people are once again breathing in hazardous smoke from Canadian wildfires. The return of the air quality warnings, just weeks after the first took much of the U.S. by surprise, are a reminder that we will keep experiencing these conditions in the absence of integrated and health-driven climate adaptation policies.

As global temperatures continue to rise, we are likely to see more periods of extreme and prolonged heat as well as reduced rainfall and humidity, which in turn increases the frequency and severity of wildfires. And, as evidenced by the 700 miles between the wildfires in Quebec and the hazardous smoke in Washington, D.C., climactic events can and do cross international borders.

In addition to disrupting the lives of millions of Americans, the wildfires in Quebec and Ottawa exposed the hodgepodge of regulatory action across the country when it comes to public health policy, climate preparedness, and worker protections.

This is where we need our elected leaders to act. In the face of a changing climate where millions of laborers are exposed to unsafe environmental conditions as they do their jobs, state and federal legislators should not return to complacency once the widespread Code Purple warnings have ended.

Rather, they should be motivated to pass environmental and worker protection laws and regulations now so that we are better prepared for when it inevitably happens again. The climate crisis has made work much more dangerous for outdoor workers. Under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) law, employers are required to ensure that the work environment is free from serious hazards, but federal OSHA has no standard requiring employers to protect outdoor workers from wildfire smoke. (One of us, David, was previously OSHA’s administrator.)

During the worst of the smoke from the Canadian wildfires, many people along the East Coast were able to work inside. But hundreds of thousands employed in construction, agriculture, sanitation, mail and package delivery, and many other service jobs work outdoors and were unable to avoid working in the toxic environment without the risk of losing pay. They were exposed to organic carbon, black carbon, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and other hazardous air pollutants traveling hundreds of miles from the burning of vegetation. In the midst of Code Red and Code Purple air quality alerts on June 7 and 8, some East Coast employers were unprepared to offer guidance on how workers should protect themselves. Some reportedly even walked off their jobs to protect themselves, highlighting the difficult decisions people face when their employers fail to take safety precautions during smoke events.

Wildfire smoke blanketing urban areas has unfortunately become a somewhat regular occurrence in the Western part of the country. In response, state OSHA plans have issued worker protection requirements in California and Oregon, and one is proposed in Washington state.

Anticipating exactly this sort of situation, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) issued a report in 2022 describing the gaps in the nation’s ability to meet the needs of the public and workers for timely access to respiratory protective devices and guidance and support in their effective use. The NASEM experts called on the federal government to encourage the development of new respiratory protection devices and the implementation of policies to stockpile and disseminate them when needed for protection from respiratory hazards, like wildfire smoke and airborne pathogens.

The recent events, in which hazardous smoke blanketed much of the Northeast, illuminate the lack of government policies and programs to protect the public, especially outdoor workers. The fundamental concept of worker protection — the hierarchy of controls — is that it is more effective to change the work environment (like air conditioning trucks to filter out airborne particles) than changing the worker (like providing masks).

However, with the climate crisis, in many extreme situations, worker protection will require many interventions simultaneously: access to clean rooms, frequent work breaks, access to N95s and other sorts of respiratory protection, and sometimes more. But it shouldn’t take the hospitalization of workers or the threat of a strike for employers to take the necessary steps to make the work environment and the worker safe. Most importantly, the burden of securing these basic protections during extreme weather emergencies should not be placed on the individual worker.

Susan Anenberg is professor of environmental and occupational health and director of the Climate & Health Institute at the George Washington University. David Michaels is a professor of environmental and occupational health at GW. He served as assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2009-2017.