Brittany Sisco clearly remembers the first time she got heat stroke on the job. At the time, she thought of it as just another hot day.
"It was just another day where, 'Man, I'm feeling sluggish,'" Sisco says . "And I wrote it off like I didn't sleep right that night, or I over exerted myself the day before, so I was just I was extra tired."
Before she realized there was a problem it was too late. She said the episode completely drained her and she felt totally dehydrated. It took a trip to the emergency room and three days of rest to recover.
"I didn’t recognize the severity of what heat could do until I’m the one who tipped over," Sisco says.
Workers in Maine labor endure wind, rain, snow and cold. But for many, heat is the worst — and the most dangerous — element.
And as greenhouse gas pollution from burning fossil fuels makes Maine's summers hotter, employers, workers and advocacy groups are paying more attention to preventing heat illness on the job.
Despite recognition of the issue, there are still no state or federal regulations to keep workers safe in sweltering conditions.
Sisco says since her first bout with heat illness she started treating hot weather like the hazard it is. These days she's a foreman for a construction crew working on a new solar farm in Harrison.
Water, rest and shade breaks are effectively obligatory on her site, and Sisco hands out electrolyte packs and pink Himalayan sea salt that workers can add to their water to help recover vitamins and minerals.
The company she works for takes heat seriously, but that isn't always the case, Sisco says.
"I feel like a lot of companies in this state do not take that as serious as what they need to because heat stroke is just as bad as you breaking your hip, if not worse," Sisco adds.
"Because once you get heat stroke, it seems like you get it every time thereafter," she says.
Nearly 1,000 U.S. workers died from heat exposure between 1992 and 2022, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the country and extreme heat events are expected to become more frequent and intense in the future, according to the agency.
Workers across a number of occupations are vulnerable to heat illness, including outdoor laborers and people working in close contact with heat sources, such as machinery or kitchen ovens.
Early research into Maine emergency room data shows a link between working and contracting heat illness, says Rebecca Lincoln, an environmental epidemiologist at the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study attempts to find out where people and what they were doing when they got sick, Lincoln says.
"We had some sort of prior assumptions about what that would look like; that people would be out running or playing sports or going on a hike or at the beach," Lincoln says.
"And we do see a lot of that, but what we saw most of among all the different risk factors that we were looking for was working; that people were working when they got sick," she says.
Extreme heat is still relatively unusual in Maine. But that creates different hazards for people accustomed to working in cooler temperatures, says Michele King, a safety specialist at the Maine Department of Labor.
Farther south, where the summer brings persistent heat, workers can acclimate to conditions over time, King says. That's not an option when temperatures spike to dangerous levels, such as what happened during a brief heat wave in June, she says.
"We had 50-60 degree days and then we had one hot day that was just off the charts," King says. "You can't acclimatize to that one day."
Even as awareness of dangerous heat in the workplace rises, state and federal protection for workers lags behind.
Employers have a legal duty to keep employees safe, but there are no specific standards for heat protections. A state bill in 2021 to require heat safety training and provide breaks and water for workers in high-heat environments was rejected by Maine lawmakers.
Federal workplace safety regulators in recent years increased messaging and recommendations to keep workers safe during heat events.
And last year the Occupational Safety and Health Administration introduced a national rule that would require similar protections when the heat index hits 80 degrees and extra precautions when temperatures rise above 90 degrees.
Some advocacy groups expected that rulemaking would be rolled back or eliminated under the Trump administration. But OSHA is considering public comments it received on the proposal and "will take everything into consideration and make a decision on how to proceed," according to agency spokesperson Denisha Braxton.
Even without protections, awareness of heat illness is growing, says Rod Stanley, regional director of loss control and safety services at MEMIC, Maine's worker compensation insurance company.
Claims for heat illness have skyrocketed from just a handful in 2018 to more than four dozen last year, according to Stanley. Although the company insures workers in other states, most of its customers are in Maine, he says.
Even though MEMIC doesn't provide information about specific claims, "it's the construction industry, it's the people that are out in the sun all day," that account for most, Stanley says.
And to counter heat illness employers are providing water, portable tents or trailers for cooling centers and permitting plenty of shade and breaks.
At Brittany Sisco's jobsite in Harrison, it's just after 9 a.m. on an August morning and the sun is blazing — the start of a three-day heat wave with temperatures above 90 degrees.
James Smith and Ryan Martin are on their feet, helping install erosion fencing at the edge of woodland newly cleared to make way for a solar farm.
Smith says he's used to the heat — he used to work on roofs in Florida. But he takes a few common-sense precautions to stay safe.
"Take breaks when you need to if you get busy, sit in the truck — AC — drink a lot of water. That's about it," he says.
Martin, on the other hand, says he's had heat exhaustion and heat stroke several times.
For him, heat rises to the top of jobsite hazards, right alongside trips and falls.
"I don't think it is recognized nearly as much as it should be," Martin says.
"Unless you have boots on the ground, you don't have a clue," Smith says.
This story was reported as part of a collaboration between the Portland Press Herald and Maine Public.
