The OSHA Heat National Emphasis Program is an internal instruction to OSHA's own compliance officers, not an employer duty. It changes OSHA's inspection posture at a forecast heat index of 80°F and when the National Weather Service has a heat warning or advisory in effect for the local area. It creates no exposure limit, no work/rest schedule and no stop-work, and it never contributes to the calculator's composite recommendation.
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The drag-to-check calculator needs JavaScript. Every value it can show is a row of the table below, which is computed by the same engine.
No standalone formula is published for this standard; see programmable logic and parameters below.
OSHA records heat fatalities below 80°F heat index; the 80°F figure is an enforcement-targeting trigger, not a safety threshold.
| Forecast heat index (°F) | Result |
|---|---|
| 70 | Caution |
| 71 | Caution |
| 72 | Caution |
| 73 | Caution |
| 74 | Caution |
| 75 | Caution |
| 76 | Caution |
| 77 | Caution |
| 78 | Caution |
| 79 | Caution |
| 80 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 81 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 82 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 83 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 84 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 85 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 86 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 87 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 88 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 89 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 90 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 91 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 92 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 93 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 94 | Warning — heat-priority day |
| 95 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 96 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 97 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 98 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 99 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 100 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 101 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 102 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 103 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 104 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 105 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 106 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 107 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 108 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 109 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 110 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 111 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 112 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 113 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 114 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| 115 | Danger — heat-priority day |
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
heatPriorityDayHeatIndexF | 80 |
heatSafetyToolWarningMinF | 80 |
heatSafetyToolDangerMinF | 95 |
effectiveDate | 2026-04-10 |
operativeUntilNoLaterThan | 2031-04-10 |
targetIndustryNaicsCount | 55 |
Version history matters here, which is why the engine id carries no year. The April 8 2022 NEP is cancelled: every page of its PDF is watermarked 'OSHA ARCHIVE DOCUMENT' and its landing page sits under 'Directives (Archived)'.
The chain, all four links read in primary text: the 2022 NEP carried a 3-year ceiling expiring 2025-04-08; CPL 03-01-024 (effective 2025-01-16) extended it to 2026-04-08; it then lapsed for about two days; the reissue took effect 2026-04-10 with a 5-year ceiling.
DELIBERATELY NOT ENCODED: the 2022 text's separate four-category NWS heat-index table (Caution 80-90°F, Extreme Caution 91-103°F, Danger 103-124°F, Extreme Danger 126°F and above) and the 2022 Appendix G numbers (100/105/95/90/75°F), all deleted by the reissue under its own sec. VIII.B.
The four-category table also contradicted the Heat Safety Tool bands printed two paragraphs away in the same 2022 document, putting Danger at 103°F where the bands put it at 95°F; only the 80/95°F bands the 2026 directive retains and restates twice are encoded.
Also not encoded: the 104°F figure, which defines exertional heat stroke physiologically rather than setting an environmental trigger, and the 'cup of water every 15 minutes' instruction, which governs compliance-officer self-protection under Appendix B and is not worker guidance.
The directive states no rounding rule for a non-integer heat index between the integer band edges — 94°F is expressly inside Warning, stated twice, so only the open interval 94.1-94.9°F is undefined; treating 95°F and above as Danger is this calculator's implementation choice and is labelled as such. This engine is always excluded from getMostProtective: a 95°F 'Danger' label is a communication tier, and letting an inspection-targeting number act as a protective ceiling is the conflation the project's domain rules forbid.
Required inputs: heatIndexF
Optional inputs: nwsHeatAlert
This standard was added to the calculator.
Get notified when OSHA Heat National Emphasis Program (CPL 03-00-024, April 2026) changes — threshold changes, scope and legal-status changes, additions and removals. Changes that permit more heat exposure than before are labelled as such.
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If a threshold, trigger, exemption, date or duty here disagrees with the governing text, tell us and point at the section. The form arrives with this standard already named, and a correction is checked against the same primary document it was encoded from.