News

A new statewide task force led by the Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health is raising awareness among health care providers and the public about the dangers of extreme heat and the use of certain medications.

Visiting Phoenix amid triple-digit temperatures, the U.S. government’s top health official acknowledged on Wednesday that a federal program that helps low-income people pay their utility bills needs to focus more on cooling homes in the summer instead of overwhelmingly on wintertime heating.

OSHA is issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings. This is a significant step toward a federal heat standard to protect workers. 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 ultimate goal is to prevent and reduce the number of occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities caused by exposure to hazardous heat.

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland today announced the availability of $120 million in new funding supported by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to help Tribal communities prepare for the most severe climate-related environmental threats to their homelands. The funding can be used by Tribes to plan for, adapt to, or respond to these threats by safely relocating critical community infrastructure. President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act provided a huge boost for the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Tribal Climate Resilience program, allowing for historic levels of funding to be made available to Tribes and Tribal organizations.  

The United States Environmental Protection Agency released the Fifth Edition of Climate Change Indicators in the United States. The report highlights new data showing the continuing and far-reaching impacts of climate change on the people and environment of the United States. New to the report this year are an indicator on Marine Heat Waves (showing trends related to multi-day high ocean temperatures) and a feature on Heat-Related Workplace Deaths.