UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Abstract: At 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. on July 3, 2020, an employee was working at a commercial ba kery. He had been hired on and had completed new worker orientation on July 1, 2 020. The facility had seven oven lines. The workers wore hairnets and cloth smoc ks, provided by the company, over street clothes. The employee was working on ov en line number 7, the "Wawa line", in the production/baking department. He loade d dough onto a conveyor belt and unloaded boards from the conveyor. The conveyor belt fed product into an oven that operated at temperatures ranging from 288 de grees C (550 degrees F) to 302 degrees Celsius (575 degrees F). On July 3, the o ven was operating at 288 degrees C (550 degrees F). The National Weather Center recorded the high temperature for the day at 2:27 p.m. The highest relative humi dity reading was 79 percent, at 11:00 a.m. The line operator noticed the employe e walking back and forth from the oven line to the bathroom, acting erratically, and sweating. The line operator sent the employee for an additional break to co ol off and hydrate. When the employee returned, he was still behaving erraticall y, disoriented, and sweating profusely. The line operator notified someone in ma nagement, who enlisted the help of the manager of line oven 7 to find and assist the employee. The employee had left the building through a breakroom. The two s upervisors found the employee passed out in the parking lot. He was wearing two cloth smocks. The supervisors began removing his clothing to cool him down and c alled for emergency medical services immediately. The employee was non-responsiv e when EMTs or paramedics arrived. His temperature was 40.6 degrees C (105 degre es F). He was taken to the Emergency Department at Cooper Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He had died due to heat-related illness. The medical examiner confirmed that it was a heat-related death. There was no training for the heat. Out of COVID concerns, the fans had been removed from the floor that day.