A literal life or death challenge’: Boston weighs mandating air conditioning for renters
Extreme heat is a growing public health risk for Massachusetts residents and workers. MassCOSH urges statewide heat protections, building on Boston’s new worker heat-safety ordinance, to ensure safe homes and workplaces as extreme heat becomes more common.
Mandating AC for Renter in Boston
Recent coverage in the Boston Globe (‘A literal life or death challenge’: Boston weighs mandating air conditioning for renters, July 3) underscores the growing public health and safety risks posed by extreme indoor heat across Massachusetts. While renters are the main focus of the story, it’s important to underscore that many of those same residents are also working jobs without adequate heat protections.
To protect Massachusetts’ workers, we must invest in their well-being at home and at work — and that means taking meaningful steps to incorporate occupational heat protection and enforcement to safeguard the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable workers. A recent report, highlighted in this article and co-authored by our organization and others convened by the Barr Foundation, offers several recommendations to improve worker protection and accountability during our hottest months.
Thankfully, we are moving in the right direction. This year, we partnered with the City of Boston on a series of training sessions to help implement the city’s first-ever ordinance mandating heat-illness protection plans for workers. While this momentum is promising, we need statewide solutions to protect residents and workers during extreme heat events, which are increasingly becoming a public health crisis.
Tatiana Begault
Brookline
Executive Director of MassCOSH
帮助我们有所作为
您的支持助推器 培训， 宣传，以及 组织 这样工人就可以安全回家。
