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This article was produced by Capital & Main. It is republished here with permission.

As Californians have weathered relentless heat waves, state workplace safety regulators have repeatedly reminded employers to protect employees from heat illness by providing water, shade, cooldown areas, and additional rest breaks when temperatures climb.

But there’s a notable exception to the state’s heat safety rules: the nurses, guards, staff, and tens of thousands of incarcerated people who work in California’s aging correctional facilities that are largely not air-conditioned.

In 2024, California adopted landmark rules intended to protect more than 1 million workers who toil in sweltering warehouses, kitchens, factories, and other indoor workplaces. But the state Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board exempted prisons and local government detention and juvenile facilities after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration warned the rules could cost the state billions.

Two years later, the Newsom administration has put forward weaker indoor heat standards for California’s correctional facilities, alarming worker advocates and public health experts who argue they would provide inadequate protections from extreme heat as the risks are worsening from climate change. Regulators with the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA, have proposed protections that wouldn’t kick in until temperatures reach 87 degrees — 5 degrees higher than for other indoor workplaces, according to draft rules released in May.

“It’s basically a second-class standard, and we don’t accept that correction workers get weaker protections than everybody else, with no scientific or medical basis,” said Stephen Knight, co-executive director of Worksafe, a California nonprofit that pushes for workplace health and safety protections. “The human body doesn’t handle heat differently in a prison than, you know, an Amazon warehouse.”

Families of Victims Who Died From Heat in Prison Fight to Prevent More Deaths

Extreme heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the U.S., with heat-related deaths and illness spiking during heat waves as elevated temperatures exacerbate other health problems, including cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Even among people without preexisting conditions, prolonged exposure to heat without the opportunity to cool off can cause heat exhaustion and heat stroke, which can lead to death.

State agencies have estimated the price tag to cool California’s prisons could run between $900,000 and $6 billion in upfront costs, although the Newsom administration has refused to provide detailed information and declined interview requests.

“These facilities were exempted from the indoor heat standard due to the unique challenges in the correctional institutions with complying,” Eric Berg, Cal/OSHA’s deputy chief of health, research, and standards, told stakeholders at a recent meeting. He added that “we’re creating a separate standard to kind of address their unique conditions they have in those facilities.”

California’s average temperature across an entire year is about 2.5 degrees warmer than it was in 1895. At least nine of........

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