The Tree Care Industry Association is a national trade association comprised of employer members in the tree care and landscape trades. We have approximately 65 to 70 member companies that reside or conduct operations in Virginia. Obviously, their production employees work outside, subject to the elements. Many of these employees perform electrical line clearance tree trimming or right-of-way maintenance, activities vital to keeping a safe utility infrastructure and road system, respectively. Employees in residential/commercial arboriculture work to keep public areas safe from potential tree hazards.

Given the essential nature of these employees’ work, it is in the public’s best interest to insure that Virginia’s proposed heat illness prevention rule protects them without imposing an undue regulatory burden on their employers.

We support DOLI’s effort to provide better protections for workers exposed to heat, and to the approach they took of emulating language that appears in other State Plan OSHA’s heat rules in its draft 16VAC25-210. While we are supportive of DOLI’s overall concept for that rule as represented by that draft standard, we take issue with specific passages, as follows:

16VAC25-210-50(E) appears non-sensical, and contradictory to 16VAC25-210-50(A). We believe it should be deleted. Instead, 16VAC25-210-50(A) could be re-written (added text is underlined):

1. Employers whose work activities are covered by this chapter shall establish and maintain, or provide timely access to, one or more cool down areas when the heat index temperature in the work area equals or exceeds 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Cool down areas may be provided by any natural or artificial means that does not expose employees to unsafe or unhealthy conditions and that does not deter or discourage access or use.

16VAC25-210-70(B)(4)  (high heat procedures) mandates a 10-minute break in the shade at least every two hours, regardless of the overall length of the shift. We feel this is too rigid a requirement. What if the employee was 70 feet up in the canopy of a tree, and taking that 10-minute break entailed descending to the ground and re-ascending the tree at the end of the break? This is just one example where flexibility in the break interval, or in how the employee cools off, is absolutely necessary.