On a hot summer afternoon, the back of a UPS truck can feel stifling. Chris Cappadonna knows from experience: the 28-year-old from Brooklyn has been hauling packages for five years. Two years ago, he nearly passed out on the job. It was an especially hot summer day in New York City, and he was unloading packages when he suddenly felt anxious and very dizzy.
“So I stepped out [of the truck] to try to catch my breath, but it was 100 degrees, so it didn't really help anything," says Cappadonna. "There air was no wind, no nothing, barely any oxygen in the air.”
Cappadonna was experiencing heat exhaustion and a panic attack at the same time. He couldn’t cool off in his truck, as it didn’t have air conditioning, and he couldn’t find shelter nearby. Feeling trapped, Cappadonna grew faint in the heat until a city sanitation worker stopped to ask if he was OK. The man let Cappadonna rest in his air-conditioned van.
“I thank God for that sanitation worker, honestly. Because who knows what would have happened after that," he says.
Cappadonna was lucky. Heat-related injuries like heat exhaustion and stroke are the leading causes of weather-realted deaths in the U.S., killing more than 200 people in 2023. And 2024 was the hottest year on record.
So far, few states have passed legislation protecting workers from extreme heat. New York could have been one of them — groups like the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health pushed for the “New York TEMP Act” last year, but it didn’t get anywhere. NYCOSH Executive Director Charlene Obernauer was told the bill was too similar to a federal rule being proposed by OSHA.
“A lot of people were saying, ‘Well, if this moves at the national level, why are you going to push for it at the state level?’” she recalls.
But Obernauer’s seen federal proposals fall through before — and she’s preparing to do so again. With President-elect Trump about to take office, experts say the future of the OSHA rule is in question.
“The Department of Labor under Trump could review the rule, and they might not necessarily deem that this is something that they want to continue to pursue," says Margaret Poydock, a senior analyst with the Economic Policy Institute. "So they will just not issue a final rule, and that will kind of be the end of that rulemaking."
OSHA declined to comment on the future of the rule.
While Trump didn’t discuss the OSHA rule on the campaign trail, the Republican has historically rolled back environmental and industry regulations. It's also provoked ire from some House Republicans, with House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman of Arkansas calling it “one of the most idiotic things” OSHA has ever done.
The rule would require employers to take action at two different heat thresholds. The first, at 80 degrees, would require employers to hand out water and give workers rest breaks. At 90 degrees, they would have to provide paid rest breaks of at least 15 minutes every two hours.
OSHA notably uses wet-bulb temperature, a lower measurement that accounts for heat and humidity. Anna Bershteyn, an associate professor at NYU Langone, says people can overheat in a variety of conditions — from heat alone, heat and humidity, or overexterion — but heat and humidity is an especially deadly combination. Research shows the highest wet-bulb temperature humans can survive is 95 degrees, but Bershteyn says those studies were conducted on athletes and young adults, not your average, older employee.
“The kinds of deaths we tend to see in New York are people whose personal thresholds for heat is relatively low, because of some other physical or medical condition that they might have," she adds.
Under the OSHA rule, employers would need a plan to monitor workers for signs of ovreheating, like sweating, flushed skin, confusion, dizziness, headaches, and nausea.
Even if the Trump Administration moves forward with the rule, it’s possible the final version will look different from what OSHA proposed. Public comment wrapped Tuesday, and the agency now has more than 50,000 comments from groups like the Business Council of New York State. Frank Kerbain, director of the council’s Center for Human Resources, says the rule is too complicated for small businesses to navigate.
“They’re supposed to be doing heat index monitoring and wet-bulb temperature taking — I don’t even know what that is," says Kerbain. "There’s gonna be a lot of people trying to do the best to protect their workers who end up being cited and fined and penalized by OSHA.”
In the years since Cappadonna’s heat scare, UPS reached an agreement to equip its existing trucks with fans and all new package trucks with air conditioning going forward. In a statement, UPS says it has “hundreds of vehicles with A/C operating on the roads today." It also provides employees with water, ice, cooling gear, heat safety training, and more.
Cappadonna says his truck has a fan, and it helps, but he’d still feel more comfortable with air conditioning. He likes his job, but he worries about working summers long-term.
“I’m not gonna be 28 years old forever. I’m gonna be in my 40s, 50s, getting close to retiring," he ponders. "And my freaking worst fear is to be out there in the heat, and when you’re right there by the finish line, something terrible happens, you know?”
Obernauer says NYCOSH is working with lawmakers to re-introduce a version of the TEMP Act this session. While OSHA still has guidelines on how businesses should shield workers from heat, she says that advice doesn’t have any teeth without a legal standard to back it up.
“It’s as if you’re driving in a car and there were no speed limits. It was just recommended you drive 65 miles per hour," she explains. "You want to believe people will do the right thing, just as some employers do the right thing, but there are gonna be some folks who go 100 miles an hour on the highway, and you have to have some kind of consequences for people who do that.”
