| Action | NOIRA for Heat Illness Prevention Standard |
| Stage | NOIRA |
| Comment Period | Ends 9/23/2026 |
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5 comments
Thank you for the opportunity to provide input on the NOIRA for the Heat Illness Prevention Standard.
As the COO and Co-Founder of ProTect Athletics, and a former Athletic Equipment Manager with decades of experience on the sidelines, I strongly support DOLI’s work on this standard. Our organization is a 501(c)(3) non-profit built by professionals who have spent their careers protecting athletes at every level, from youth sports to the professional ranks.
When we talk about occupational heat hazards, it is critical that we do not overlook the athletic sector. Athletes, coaches, athletic trainers, and support staff spend hours operating in high-heat environments, often wearing heavy protective equipment. They are workers who need to be protected from exertional heat illnesses just like anyone else.
As your team drafts this standard, I urge you to include:
At ProTect Athletics, our core belief is that safety has to come first. We would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with DOLI and share our expertise in athletic safety, risk analysis, and operations management as you develop these regulations.
Thank you for everything you are doing to protect Virginians.
As a longtime operator of full-service restaurants in Virginia, I am opposed to any type of regulations or government oversight on managing the heat in restaurant environments.
It has long been known in our industry that it is hot in the kitchens at certain times. While we go to great expense to provide AC and make up air in our kitchens, there is no hiding the fact that it gets very hot at times. I believe this is a commonsense issue. If any employee gets overheated, they take a break. They either go to the front of the house for a few minutes to cool down or go in one of the many walk-in coolers they have full access to in order to cool down quickly. We don't need the govt to regulate this....it's a matter of practicality in our industry and we have been self-managing this for many years.
I have been running restaurants in VA for 47 years and don't recall ONE incident where someone complained it was too hot in the kitchen. It is a known fact that it gets hot in the kitchen of all restaurants and employees and managers find ways to cool down if it ever gets uncomfortable.
Workplace safety is of paramount importance, we all agree, but regulating this is unnecessary govt overreach in my opinion. Employees are smart enough to understand this and never has a truer statement been said: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!"
Please exempt restaurants from these regulations
Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related mortality worldwide and has been projected to intensify as climate change increases both mean temperature and humidity while amplifying the frequency and severity of heat waves across the United States.
Assessing heat risk requires a metric that reflects the full physiological burden of heat stress. Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) integrates air temperature, humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation into a single index. WBGT has established flag categories for risk quantification and has been adopted by numerous state high school athletic associations, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), the American Academy of Pediatrics, and many athletic event organizers. WBGT better predicts heat-illness risk in athletes and laborers than air temperature or heat index alone.
I strongly urge the state of Virginia to adopt WBGT as the key metric to evaluate heat stress on workers and provide guidelines for work/rest periods for indoor and outdoor laborers. Adopting evidence-based WBGT guidelines will ultimately lead to better public health outcomes and allow for proper heat stress mitigation techniques to be used. This will ultimately increase worker productivity and lead to fewer lost labor hours and event cancelations due to taking an evidence-based and structured approach to preventing heat-related illness.
Virginia has an opportunity to close a significant gap in worker protection by requiring the use of Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) as the official metric for evaluating the impacts of heat in the workplace. I urge the Commonwealth to adopt WBGT-based thresholds as the basis for setting work/rest schedules
This is by no means a novel or untested approach. Employers, regulators, and safety organizations across the country already rely on it. OSHA references it in guidance materials, the American Industrial Hygiene Association adopts it in creating their professional standards, and the American Academy of Pediatrics endorses it for protecting children involved in athletics. High school athletic associations in many states have built their own heat safety guidelines around WBGT’s flag-based alert system, giving Virginia’s employers an already proven, straightforward framework for workplace decision making.
The principal justification for this adopting WBGT comes down to accuracy. Unlike air temperature readings or conventional heat index calculations, which use a limited set of inputs, WBGT incorporates four separate environmental factors at once: temperature, humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation. Because heat-related illness in the human body is a product of all of these variables taken together, as opposed to any one variable alone, WBGT outperforms these simpler metrics in analyzing actual physiological risk for people working outdoors, in a climate that continues to produce hotter and hotter weather patterns.
It’s incredibly important to get this right. No other weather hazard kills more people in the U.S. than extreme heat, and warming temperatures, higher humidity levels, and more frequent and severe heat waves are all expected to make conditions more dangerous for Virginia’s workers in the coming years
Aside from the direct health benefits, there’s also a strong economic justification for this metric. A uniform, evidence-based system for monitoring and limiting heat exposure helps prevent sudden workplace absences, expensive work stoppages, and reduces the chances that outdoor activities or job sites need to cease operations entirely due to unsafe heat conditions. Protecting our workers and maintaining workplace productivity are not mutually exclusive.
For all these reasons, I strongly urge that Virginia move forward with WBGT-based heat safety standards.
The Virginia Chamber of Commerce is pleased to submit comments in response to the Department of Labor and Industry and Safety and Health Codes Board’s Notice of Intended Regulatory Action regarding the development of regulations as required by Chapters 731 and 732 of the 2026 Acts of Assembly. As the largest business advocacy organization in the Commonwealth, representing thousands of employers of all sizes and in all industries, the Virginia Chamber has a direct interest in ensuring the rulemaking process results in regulations that are workable, clearly understood, and implemented in a manner that ensures employers are able to comply.
The Virginia business community understands well the importance of heat illness prevention and heat safety. No employer wants an employee to collapse on the job, and a workforce that is hydrated, rested, and appropriately trained is a more productive one. As the Board and Department proceed with this rulemaking, we respectfully urge the development of standards that target truly dangerous conditions rather than standards which would impose new and burdensome mandates on employers generally. Standards which do not recognize the difference between a mild summer afternoon and a legitimate heat emergency do not serve the interests of employers nor employees.
§ 40.1-44.2(A) defines “worker” to mean an “employee, independent contractor, or other laborer whose worksite conditions are controlled by an employer.” Worksite condition control is an essential limiting principle, however what constitutes that control is undefined in statute. That principle effectively determines whether the standards to be developed applies to traditional employment relationships or extends into arrangements where the employer, as defined, has no practical control.
Heat is unlike other workplace hazards that a standard or regulation may require an employer to control. A commercial construction firm cannot control the ambient temperature on a roof in July, an agricultural employer cannot control conditions in a field, a transportation contractor cannot control heat radiating off asphalt, etc. In these cases, the employer can control some mitigating factors, such as water, shade, and training, but not the heat itself. Likewise, for contractor-based arrangements, a company cannot affect the conditions within a contractor’s personal vehicle, determine the availability of water on a delivery route, etc.
The concept of “worksite control” is significant within the context of the statute, but the statute itself provides no guidance or indication as to how these issues should be resolved. If left undefined, the term will be constructed on an ad hoc basis, and as such will provide no certainty or predictability for employers responsible for complying with the standards nor for the workers the standards are intended to serve. As such, we respectfully urge the Board and the Department to define “control” in the regulatory process with as much specificity as possible and to recognize that, especially for industries involving outdoor work, heat itself is not a factor an employer can control.
§ 40.1-44.2(B)(ii) contemplates a two-tier system for heat illness standards: a general threshold (“heat”) and a separate “high-heat” threshold which are to be set by the Board. These thresholds are among the most consequential aspects of the rulemaking, and we respectfully urge the Board and Department to consider thresholds with appropriate rigor.
Earlier drafts of the legislation that became Chapters 731 and 732 made specific reference to an 80-degree Fahrenheit threshold. This language was appropriately dropped from the enacted legislation, and we respectfully urge the Board and Department to not resurrect the idea through regulation. In the Commonwealth, 80 degrees Fahrenheit is not an unusual nor elevated condition, but rather a typical afternoon temperature across most of the Commonwealth for many months of the year. Establishing a threshold at that temperature would therefore effectively establish a continuous obligation for any employer with outdoor or non-climate-controlled indoor operations for nearly half the year, an outcome which would be at odds with the contemplated two-tier structure. Moreover, while Chapters 731 and 732 require standards for both indoor and outdoor work, the conditions are materially different and we respectfully urge the Board and Department to recognize those differences in the regulations to be developed.
Regarding outdoor work, we respectfully urge the Board and Department to tie the “high-heat” threshold to existing, recognized standards. The National Weather Service (NWS) issues Heat Advisories and Extreme Heat Watches and Warnings calibrated to regional conditions based on a combination of temperature, humidity, and duration. Anchoring outdoor heat procedures to an official NWS determination serves numerous benefits, including ensuring consistency in application across the Commonwealth’s regions and employers.
Indoor work is necessarily different in kind from outdoor work, whether the work occurs in a climate-controlled environment or otherwise. We respectfully urge the Department to establish distinct standards for indoor work, focusing particularly on functional climate control (where feasible), break access, and appropriate training, developed by the Department or another independent source and provided at no cost to the employer, to recognize symptoms.
Additionally, we respectfully urge the Board and Department to recognize many employers already use tools such as wet-bulb globe temperature on their own initiative to provide more precise, real-time data on worksite conditions. These employers undertake such initiatives because it better enables them to protect their workforce and more efficiently manage their operations. Such efforts should be recognized and encouraged by the regulations to be developed.
§ 40.1-44.2(B)(i) lists categories of required protections, including water, shade, climate-controlled access when practicable, rest periods, acclimatization, and training, but does not prescribe how an employer must satisfy those requirements. We respectfully urge the Board and Department to preserve and reinforce that flexibility in the regulations, as a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all approach fails to recognize immutable and practical differences across industries.
For example, “shade” has a materially different meaning for a warehouse with a loading dock, a highway work crew, a farm, or a restaurant kitchen. A prescriptive checklist, for shade, water, rest, acclimatization, or training, may fit some employers or industries reasonably well and others not at all. Under such a regulatory framework, employers seeking to protect their workforce may incur substantial costs to satisfy a specific requirement that does not reflect the material conditions, rather than direct limited resources toward efforts that would meaningfully reduce risk for their workforce. Such an outcome serves neither the employer nor the workforce the regulations are intended to protect.
Heat illness risk also varies significantly across individuals, independent of industry, job type, or other factors. Individual personal factors, including acclimatization, age, medication use, hydration, and underlying health conditions, can all affect an individual’s physiological response to heat. In any given scenario, indoor or outdoor, two workers performing the same task in identical conditions may experience meaningfully different levels of risk. A standard that is constructed around uniform or fixed requirements necessarily cannot account for such variations. A performance-based approach focused on identifying signs and symptoms of heat illness will better protect individual workers whose actual risk cannot be predicted by any independent factor such as temperature, job type, or industry.
Across industries, employers are best able to determine what protective measures are needed for their own operations because they have a better understanding of their day-to-day operations than any statewide regulation can anticipate. A performance-based standard which specifies required outcomes while affording employers discretion in achieving those outcomes allows employers to apply their knowledge productively rather than force a one-size-fits-all mechanism onto meaningfully disparate working conditions.
Such an approach would also be consistent with the second enactment clause of Chapters 731 and 732, which directs the Board, in consultation with the Department, to consider a range of existing and proposed standards. Just as these standards differ meaningfully in their mechanics while supporting a common goal, so too should the Commonwealth’s standards give employers the flexibility to adapt in pursuit of a shared outcome.
Finally, the statute appropriately conditions the shade or climate-controlled-environment requirement on practicability, a standard which recognizes individual employers have varying degrees of environmental control. That term must not be left undefined in regulation, however, as failure to define the term will result in inconsistent application of the standard. As above, such inconsistency benefits neither employer nor employee.
We respectfully urge the Board and the Department to define practicability with reference to employer size and industry. Factors within the definition should include, at minimum, consideration of cost relative to an employer’s resources, the operational feasibility given the nature and location of the work undertaken, and the availability of alternatives which achieve the same purpose. A clear and workable definition is essential to ensure employers can comply with the regulations in good faith.
In conclusion, we respectfully urge the Board and the Department to make full and genuine use of the regulatory advisory panel required by Chapters 731 and 732. As the application for that panel explicitly references practical knowledge and experience, we encourage the Department to include employer representatives with practical knowledge across the full spectrum of industry and to make use of that expertise. Virginia employers already take meaningful steps, on their own initiative, to protect their employees from heat-related illness because it is good practice and because a healthy workforce is a more productive workforce. Standards developed with robust input from the business community, and with meaningful consideration of business concerns, will best enable Virginia’s employers to comply with the requirements in good faith and will be the outcome that best protects Virginia’s workers.
The Virginia Chamber of Commerce thanks the Board and the Department for its thoughtful consideration of this comment, and we look forward to continued engagement and active participation as regulations are developed.