Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR <DEPDOC>[Docket No. OSHA-2021-0009]</DEPDOC> <SUBAGY>Occupational Safety and Health Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>29 CFR Part 1910, 1915, 1917, 1918, 1926, and 1928</CFR> <RIN>RIN 1218-AD39</RIN> <SUBJECT>Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Labor. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM); extension of comment period; notice of informal hearing. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> OSHA is extending the period for submitting comments by 15 days until January 14, 2025, to allow stakeholders interested in the NPRM on Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings additional time to review the NPRM and collect information and data necessary for comment. In addition, OSHA is scheduling an informal public hearing on this proposed rule. The public hearing will begin June 16, 2025. The proposed rule was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on August 30, 2024. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The comment period for the NPRM that was published at 89 FR 70698 on August 30, 2024, is extended. Comments on any aspect of the NPRM must be submitted by January 14, 2025. <E T="03">Informal public hearing:</E> The hearing will be held virtually and will begin June 16, 2025, at 9:30 a.m. If necessary, the hearing will continue on subsequent weekdays. Additional information on how to access the informal hearing will be posted at <E T="03">https://www.osha.gov/heat-exposure/rulemaking.</E> To testify or question other witnesses at the hearing, interested persons must electronically submit their Notice of Intention to Appear (NOITA) on or before May 2, 2025. In addition, those who request more than 10 minutes for their presentation at the informal hearing and those who intend to submit documentary evidence at the hearing must submit the full text of their testimony, as well as a copy of any documentary evidence, no later than May 23, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Submission of comments:</E> You may submit comments and attachments, identified by Docket No. OSHA-2021-0009, electronically at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> which is the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Follow the online instructions for making electronic submissions. The Federal e-Rulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> is the only way to submit comments on this NPRM. <E T="03">Notice of Intention to Appear</E> (NOITA): A NOITA must be submitted electronically at <E T="03">www.osha.gov/heat-exposure/rulemaking.</E> Follow the instructions online for making electronic submissions. Those who file NOITAs must also submit electronic copies of all documents that they intend to use or reference during their testimony. Information about how and when to submit these materials will be provided at the time of registration. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency's name and the docket number for this rulemaking (Docket No. OSHA-2021-0009). All comments, including any personal information you provide, are placed in the public docket without change and may be made available online at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Therefore, OSHA cautions commenters about submitting information they do not want made available to the public or submitting materials that contain personal information (either about themselves or others), such as Social Security Numbers and birthdates. <E T="03">Docket:</E> To read or download comments or other material in the docket, go to Docket No. OSHA-2021-0009 at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> All comments and submissions are listed in the <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> index; however, some information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> copyrighted material) is not publicly available to read or download through that website. All comments and submissions, including copyrighted material, are available for inspection through the OSHA Docket Office. Documents submitted to the docket by OSHA or stakeholders are assigned document identification numbers (Document ID) for easy identification and retrieval. The full Document ID is the docket number plus a unique four or five-digit code. OSHA is identifying supporting information in this NPRM by author name and publication year, when appropriate. This information can be used to search for a supporting document in the docket at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Contact the OSHA Docket Office at 202-693-2350 (TTY number: 877-889-5627) for assistance in locating docket submissions. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD>   <E T="03">For press inquiries, ASL interpretation, and language translation service requests:</E> Contact Mr. Frank Meilinger, Director, Office of Communications, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Department of Labor; telephone: (202) 693-1999; email: <E T="03">meilinger.francis2@dol.gov.</E> <E T="03">For general information, technical, and hearing inquiries:</E> Contact James Frederick, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Department of Labor; telephone: (202) 693-1950; email: <E T="03">osha.dsg@dol.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD>   On August 30, 2024, OSHA published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings. The proposed standard would apply to all employers conducting outdoor and indoor work in all general industry, construction, maritime, and agriculture sectors where OSHA has jurisdiction. The standard would require employers to create a plan to evaluate and control heat hazards in their workplace. It would clarify employer obligations and the steps necessary to effectively protect employees from hazardous heat. The public comment period for the NPRM was to close on December 30, 2024, 120 days after publication of the NPRM. However, OSHA received requests from stakeholders to extend the public comment period ( <E T="03">see, e.g.,</E> Document ID 18667, 18380, 18373, 18664). Stakeholders requested additional time to carefully review the questions in the NPRM, gather data, and prepare their submissions. Several noted that the current deadline falls during the holiday season, when personal schedules may make finalizing comments difficult. OSHA agrees to an extension of the public comment period and believes a 15-day extension is sufficient and appropriate to balance the agency's need for stakeholder input with the agency's desire to proceed with the rulemaking in a timely manner. The comment period extension will also avoid the comment deadline falling during the holiday season. Therefore, OSHA is extending the public comment period until January 14, 2025. Additionally, several commenters (see, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Document ID 18377, 18373, 18345) requested that OSHA hold a public hearing. OSHA agrees to hold a fully virtual public hearing, which will begin June 16, 2025, and continue on subsequent weekdays, if necessary. Witnesses are welcome to testify about any topics, issues, or concerns they have with the proposed rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Informal Public Hearing—Purpose, Rules and Procedures</HD> OSHA invites interested persons to participate in this rulemaking by providing oral testimony and documentary evidence at the informal public hearing to provide the agency with the best available evidence to use in developing a final rule. The public hearing will be fully virtual to provide the opportunity for more stakeholders from across the country to participate in and/or observe the hearing without the financial and logistical burden of traveling to Washington, DC to attend in person. Pursuant to 29 CFR 1911.15(a) and 5 U.S.C. 553(c), members of the public have an opportunity at the informal public hearing to provide oral testimony and evidence on issues raised by the proposal. An administrative law judge (ALJ) will preside over the hearing and will resolve any procedural matters relating to the hearing. OSHA's regulation governing public hearings (29 CFR 1911.15) establishes the purpose and procedures of informal public hearings. Although the presiding officer of the hearing is an ALJ and questioning of witnesses is allowed on crucial issues, the proceeding is largely informal and essentially legislative in purpose. Therefore, the hearing provides interested persons with an opportunity to make oral presentations in the absence of rigid procedures that could impede or protract the rulemaking process. The hearing is not an adjudicative proceeding subject to the Federal Rules of Evidence. Instead, it is an informal administrative proceeding convened for the purpose of gathering and clarifying information. Accordingly, questions of relevance, procedure, and participation generally will be resolved in favor of developing a clear, accurate, and complete record. Although the ALJ presiding over the hearing makes no decision or recommendation on the merits of the proposal, the ALJ has the responsibility and authority necessary to ensure that the hearing progresses at a reasonable pace and in an orderly manner. To ensure a full and fair hearing, the ALJ has the power to regulate the course of the proceedings; dispose of procedural requests, objections, and comparable matters; confine presentations to matters pertinent to the issues the proposed rule raises; use appropriate means to regulate the conduct of persons present at the hearing; question witnesses and permit others to do so; limit the time for such questioning; and leave the record open for a reasonable time after the hearing for t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 14k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━