SALEM — Oregon OSHA on Tuesday adopted permanent rules intended to protect workers, including farmworkers, from high heat and wildfire smoke.

The rules create additional requirements for employers.

The heat rule creates guidelines around access to shade and cool water, preventive cool-down breaks and prevention plans, information and training. The wildfire smoke rule includes exposure assessments and controls, training and communication.

The heat rule will take effect June 15 and the wildfire smoke rule July 1.

The rules are designed to protect workers who rely on employer-provided housing, including on-farm operations.

The new rules, which have been in development for months, build on the temporary emergency rules Oregon OSHA adopted last summer after a 38-year-old farmworker, Sebastian Francisco Perez, died of apparent heat stroke during the June “heat dome” that enveloped the Northwest.

According to a document Oregon OSHA released to the Capital Press in an email, the new workplace rules are “the most protective of their kind in the United States.”

This was echoed by Ira Cuello Martinez, climate policy associate at the farmworkers union Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or PCUN, who called the new rules “big victories.”

“The heat and smoke proposed rules are some of the strongest in the nation,” Martinez told the Capital Press shortly before the rules were officially released to the public. “So, these (rules) are very exciting. It’s exciting to see these changes to improve working conditions for farmworkers.”

In a statement, Gov. Kate Brown called the new rules “a national model for heat and wildfire smoke protections for all workers.”

Some farm groups, however, are concerned.

“The Oregon Farm Bureau is disappointed that OR-OSHA adopted rules that open employers up to significant new liability for heat and smoke events outside their control,” said Mary Anne Cooper, vice president of government affairs at Oregon Farm Bureau. “Many of the proposed requirements will be impossible to apply or leave family farms exposed to penalties and litigation.”

Cooper said that while Oregon OSHA was developing the rules, Oregon Farm Bureau had urged the agency to adopt rules that protected workers but were also doable for employers.

The final rules, she said, could hurt small and family-run farm businesses and are “yet another example of agency overreach by unelected bureaucrats.”

The full text of the rules will be posted on Oregon OSHA’s website this week, but here’s a summary:

What the heat rule does:

• Applies to outdoor and indoor (when there is no climate control) work activities, where the heat index equals or exceeds 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

• Requires one or more shade areas “immediately and readily available” to exposed employees who are outdoors.

• Requires an “adequate supply of drinking water” for exposed employees, with immediate availability, no cost and the opportunity to drink.

• Requires a specific rest-break schedule — when the heat index equals or exceeds 90 degrees Fahrenheit — for preventive cool-down periods. Such breaks are work assignments, with no cost to employees.

• Requires “acclimatization” to gradually adapt employees from other regions to working in heat and to prevent heat illness.

• Requires a heat illness prevention plan and supervisor and employee training.

What the wildfire smoke rule does:

• Applies to employers whose employees are or will be exposed to wildfire smoke where the ambient air concentration for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) equals or exceeds an Air Quality Index of 101.

• Requires employers to provide N95 masks or other types of NIOSH-approved filtering face-piece respirators.

• Requires exposure monitoring and training.

• Requires employers to relay wildfire smoke information to employees before employees are exposed.

• Requires employers to use engineering and administrative controls, including relocating the workers or work or changing the work schedule.