As temperatures begin climbing across Las Vegas, we're taking a look at whether Nevada's heat safety regulations — which lack a temperature trigger — are equipped to protect outdoor workers during a season that appears to be starting earlier each year.
It's an issue coming into focus this week, as a historic weather pattern is turning up regional heat months ahead of schedule, with temperatures 20-30 degrees warmer than normal here in the Mojave Desert. Typically, highs in the 90s would be more common in June, let alone days before Spring formally starts on March 21 with the seasonal equinox.
Watch: Climate Reporter Geneva Zoltek checks in on heat regulations for Nevada workers
Norm Schilling runs a horticulture and landscaping business in Las Vegas. His field crew of about 25 workers spends their days outdoors, transforming backyards into elaborate landscapes.
"They spend their entire work day outdoors, and you know, this gets brutally hot and dangerously hot," Schilling said. "It starts with heat stress, then goes to heat exhaustion and then heat stroke, which can be very damaging or even fatal."
Due to these dangerous conditions that workers across the state are exposed to during the hot months, Nevada adopted heat safety regulations at the end of 2024, requiring businesses to evaluate risk and develop a safety plan for workers. Enforcement began in April last year, and the rules are designed to ensure workers have access to water, rest, and cooling.
But unlike some other states, Nevada's law does not set a specific temperature at which those protections must kick in. Instead, it is up to individual businesses to determine the hazards their workers face.
Adam Dean, an expert on public health and workplace safety policy at George Washington University, said that flexibility creates gaps.
"The most important thing that Nevada's heat standard lacks is a temperature trigger," Dean said. "That is a temperature at which employers are required to provide things like water, rest, and shade, these very simple, low-cost interventions that can save workers' lives."
Dean's latest research examined California, which implemented its heat standard in 2005. His findings show that the law alone was not enough.
"For those first 5 years, there was not a decrease in deaths," Dean said. "It wasn't until California started to get serious about increasing enforcement of its own policy in 2010 and then 2015, closing loopholes in that law, that we see it actually being effective."
California's heat standard includes a temperature trigger at 80 degrees when employer protections become mandatory. Dean said that threshold matters more than many people realize.
"People can suffer heatstroke, working in the sun at much lower temperatures than that, maybe even in the 70s and 80s," Dean said.
When I asked Dean what is preventing states and the federal government from setting harder lines on temperature thresholds, he pointed to industry opposition.
"There's explicit opposition from businesses, sometimes in agriculture, construction, transportation, worried that anything that could potentially increase the cost of labor," Dean said.
Nevada OSHA Administrator Victoria Carreon, whom I interviewed in November 2024 when the new heat regulations were announced, defended the state's approach.
"Heat stress can cause heat illness, you can have heat exhaustion, you can have heat stroke," Carreon said. "Those are very real medical conditions that we need to be cognizant of. And in our hot desert environment, we need to do everything we can to make sure that workers are protected as best we can from heat illness in the workplace."
Carreon said the decision to forgo a temperature trigger was deliberate, and that a flexible, employer-driven model produced stronger stakeholder support.
"Whether you're in a kitchen, whether you're outside as a landscaper or construction worker, or a warehouse, every situation is different," Carreon said. "And so there was no real uniform temperature threshold that really worked for all types of environments."
"Ultimately, what proved to be successful was instead of looking at a set temperature that would kick off any requirements, we found that it was more successful and we were able to get much better stakeholder buy-in by having just a requirement that every employer do a job hazard analysis," she continued.
Any worker in Nevada can file a complaint, including an anonymous one, with OSHA if they believe their job is putting them at risk for heat exposure or heat illness (or any other hazard). So far this year, 5 heat complaints have been filed. Last year, there were 425. Check out the heat complaint dashboard here:
At the federal level, Rep. Dina Titus is leading the push for what she calls the Extreme Weather and Heat Response Modernization Act.
The legislation would empower FEMA to provide communities with more resources, including cooling centers, to keep people safe during extreme heat events. It would also require FEMA to issue guidance on extreme temperature events, establish eligibility criteria for projects that primarily mitigate the impacts of extreme heat, and examine the impacts of extreme heat on disadvantaged communities, infrastructure, pets and livestock, and public health.
Scripps News has also reported on whether the federal branch of OSHA will take on heat protections. Check that reporting out here.
In the interim, for businesses like Schilling's, preparation is already underway, even before the most extreme heat arrives.
"We do safety training on an annual basis and we always time our heat training right towards the beginning of the season," Schilling said.
As climate change pushes dangerous heat earlier into the calendar year, the question facing Nevada is no longer just how to survive summer; it's whether protections designed for peak heat are ready for a season that no longer waits.
