A few years back, things weren’t always going so great for the refuse and recycling workers in the City of Rockville, the seat of Montgomery County, the largest county in Maryland.
Back in the late 2010’s Jamie Sydykov, the Rockville Safety and Risk Manager, remembers the heat was becoming a big problem.
“There'd be often times where someone gets a call over dispatch that someone's in heat stress, and then we're responding either by calling 911, or responding with our crew supervisors,” Sydykov recalled.
One year, the team reported five heat incidents for a team with fewer than 30 sanitation workers. Rockville’s Safety and Risk team decided to create a comprehensive heat safety plan before things took a deadly turn.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that extreme heat kills over 1,200 Americans every year, making it the deadliest weather event. Earlier this month, Baltimore sanitation worker Ronald Silver II succumbed to hyperthermia, or heat stroke, while working his trash collection route. His death shines a harsh light on the approximately 43 workers across the country who die on the job annually of heat exhaustion, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Silver, like millions of other workers, was unprotected by a federal or state occupational heat standard.
It leaves businesses and municipalities like Rockville to act on their own. The Montgomery city’s plan has a series of different precautions that must be taken at different heat index triggers.
“We have acclimatization procedures that go into effect, where, if someone hasn't been here, or if somebody's new, less than two weeks, we will watch them specifically. They also aren't required to work the full day. They'll work a portion of the day,” explained Sydykov, noting that the crews rely on part-time and temp agency help to get the routes complete. That means that people who aren’t used to physical work in high heat routinely get thrown on to the job, and therefore, she said they need extra protection.
On really hot days, she says supervisors will intercept workers on their routes for a check-in, passing out extra water and electrolytes to crews that need it.
Training is crucial, Sydykov says, as well as teaching crews how to recognize heat sickness in the first place.
“We felt this was a really important piece, because they’re two man teams, they're on a truck…They're out there. They are really the first line of defense, recognizing that there's an issue, and then taking action on that,” she said.
Another element is changing the perception of how workers see themselves. Sydykov doesn’t call them essential workers, instead she calls them industrial athletes.
“These people, they are physically pushed every day, no matter what the weather is outside, it's non stop strenuous work. And to just make you realize that that is an industrial athlete, and you should treat yourself as one. You know you need to be in peak condition.”
The Rockville heat policy is always evolving based on worker needs and new information, she says.
Other nearby communities like Prince George’s County, Washington DC, and York, Pennsylvania have all mandated earlier start times in the summer of 2024 allowing work to be completed by the hottest parts of the day.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks sanitation and refuse work as one of the deadliest industries, in part due to vehicle crashes and biohazards. The BLS didn’t break out heat death data although Silver’s death earlier this month illustrates that extreme heat is a danger.
During an interview with WYPR’s Tom Hall, Mayor Brandon Scott has signaled being open to changes but stopped short of specifics, citing respect for Silver’s family.
“As someone who has spent time working outside in those types of temperatures, there's at some point, you know, that we just have to have real serious conversations about the work itself,” the mayor said.
Meanwhile, Baltimore has hired an independent DC based law firm, Conn Maciel Carey, to audit the safety policies in the Department of Public Works. That firm has a history of defending employers with worker deaths and lobbying against proposals for a federal heat standard.
The department says they have provided multiple heat trainings this year on heat sickness but hasn’t said whether those were mandatory and how many workers attended.
“These sessions have reinforced our heat safety protocols, educating employees on how to recognize the signs and symptoms of heat stroke and related illnesses. This year alone, we conducted eight training sessions, including our most recent one on August 6, 2024. In some cases, multiple sessions were held to accommodate the maximum number of staff,” wrote DPW Spokesperson Mary Stewart in a statement to WYPR.
On the day of Silver’s death, he reported feeling pain in his leg and chest: a common sign of heat sickness. Yet Silver was pushed to finish his shift, according to a neighbor who administered care to Silver before he died.
In the wake of Silver’s death, workers, unions, and city officials alike have condemned a toxic culture of harassment at DPW. One worker, Stancil McNair, has reported being forced to work after having a stroke and then being disregarded by management after another incident where he was threatened with gun violence on the job.
Marcus Odorizzi the Safety and Risk Manager in Rockville who wrote the heat plan says that the success of their policy is absolutely dependent on having a culture of support. Management, employees, unions, everyone, was involved in that creation.
“We don't want to create safety programs simply to have them written down and not have anyone follow them. We do want to involve stakeholder feedback, because that's how we can best receive the buy-in, as well as ensure that we're actually complying with what we're putting down on paper,” said Odorizzi.
And in Rockville, the safety measures seem to be working. Despite having historic heat waves of temperatures over 100 degrees, the municipality has reported no heat sickness injuries this summer.
