Opinion: California will finally have indoor heat standards for workplaces — with a cruel exception

A state board recently voted unanimously to create long-awaited indoor heat standards for California workers. Opinion Editorial: California workers shouldn’t have to face another broiling summer without indoor heat protections Workers in sweltering warehouses, kitchens and other workplaces prone to extreme heat illness face another summer without critical heat protection standards if California officials don’t move quickly to adopt and enforce new rules. Because of the high cost of cooling prisons, a sense that air conditioning is a “luxury” and a dehumanizing belief that incarcerated people are not worthy of such care, it seems unlikely that we’ll see separate heat standards for such facilities anytime soon. Incarcerated people are especially susceptible to extreme heat for several reasons, including the locations of jails and prisons, the way they’re built, their general lack of air conditioning and ventilation, the prevalence among prisoners of health conditions that heat can worsen and the use of psychiatric drugs that exacerbate the consequences of heat.