Wildfire season has spread beyond California — how to keep employees safe

With wildfires increasingly impacting states across the U.S., employers need to be prepared for a new era of disaster-readiness. 

The Canadian wildfires continue to impact states in the Northwest, Northeast and the central Great Plains, coming all the way down to Alabama and Georgia. At its peak in June, the wildfires placed 128 million people under air quality alerts, with New York registering the worst air quality in the world at the time. 

And while the West Coast has had a relatively quieter wildfire season this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that due to climate change, wildfires will only get worse in the western U.S. In fact, for every annual degree Celsius increase, the average area burned by wildfires jumps by as much as 600%. 

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While federal guidance on workplace safety during wildfires is limited, that doesn't excuse employers from taking action to protect their affected workers, underlines John Ho, an attorney at Cozen O'Connor and co-chair of his law firm's OSHA-Workplace Safety Practice. OSHA, or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, sets nationwide standards that employers must meet in order to have healthy and safe working conditions.  

"The wildfire issue tends to be geographically based, so there are no federal OSHA standards that cover wildfires," says Ho. "That being said, all employers, even if you're outside of a state like California, have an obligation to provide all of your workers a workplace free from recognized hazards under the General Duty Clause."

OSHA's General Duty Clause requires employers to create a work environment free from hazards that could cause serious physical harm or death. Given that prolonged exposure to air pollution can not only damage one's lungs but raise the risk for heart disease and cancer, employers should take wildfires seriously, even if their employees don't work exclusively outside. Ho even points out that workers in manufacturing plants may be exposed because windows are kept open to cool down the plant.

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Ho advises employers to look to safety guidelines set by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, as well as the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. Both institutions recommend employers frequently monitor air quality in their region, improve air filtration systems within the workplace, reduce any strenuous activities and provide longer breaks. Both guidelines advise employers to relocate their employees to a safer working environment if possible or reschedule their work hours to less smoke-heavy times of day.

"The easy thing to do is say, 'Hey, we're just not going to come to work today. Stay home,'" says Ho. "But employers may not be in the position to do that. You have to see what makes sense for your workers."

For desk workers, employers can ask everyone to work remotely, allowing employees to avoid the smoke during their usual commute to work. However, most workers in the U.S. don't have that privilege. Ho asks employers to consider what threats their particular work environment poses to employees and reduce them as much as possible — whether that means going remote, lessening the workload or rethinking the work schedule. 

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According to California's safety measures, employers should also provide NIOSH-approved respirators like N95 masks on a voluntary basis — but if the air quality index, which measures the presence of five major air pollutants, surpasses a value of 500, then those masks should be required alongside respirator safety requirements like employee fit testing and medical evaluations.

Ho encourages employers to look over these NIOSH and California guidelines and create their game plan accordingly, even if they are located in a region that doesn't usually see wildfire smoke. 

"I've been working in New York City for 40 years, and this is the worst I've seen the [air]," says Ho. "Hopefully, we're moving beyond it, but these are the situations employers should be considering."