Attacks on the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Threaten Workers and Families
NIOSH recently lost around 90 percent of its staff, practically ending 50 years of its work aimed at protecting workers from getting sick, maimed, or killed on the job
It’s hard not to feel some whiplash, dismay, and even panic at watching the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attacks on federal scientists and scientific research. Many of the budget cuts are illegal (Congress approves the budget, and the funds had already been approved and allocated). Importantly, they have resulted in the loss of critical health and safety policies and programs. These include rollbacks on clean air rules, safe drinking water rules, and life-saving medical research.
A recent report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, led by Senator Bernie Sanders, includes the startling finding that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the “agency in charge of the health and well-being of all Americans, including tens of millions of seniors, children, and working families, may have its workforce cut down to less than half the size of Tesla, a car company.” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) continues to defend his budget cuts.
Also within HHS is the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). In April and May, somewhere around 90 percent of its 1,200 staff received layoff notices as part of the Trump-DOGE massive reductions in force (RIF) effort. This effectively shuttered the agency, ending a half century of its work aimed at protecting workers from getting sick, maimed, or killed on the job.
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NIOSH is a research and science agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). NIOSH was established in 1970 to research workplace risks; to make recommendations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and others on how to prevent harm to workers; and to recruit and train the next generation of occupational safety and health physicians, industrial hygienists, scientists, and others. The agency has no regulatory authority. It conducts world-class scientific, health, and safety research and makes smart evidence-based recommendations to promote workplace safety.
NIOSH does all this—for all Americans—with an extremely modest (too low) budget of only $363 million, amounting to $2.20 per American worker. On the flip side, workplace injuries and deaths cost Americans roughly $250 billion (with a B!) each year in the United States (a 688-time difference) in health-care coverage, workers’ compensation claims, and lost productivity. In short, NIOSH pays for itself many times over.
More than 450 industry, labor, professional, education, and scientific organizations wrote to Congress a “Friends of NIOSH” letter to ask for NIOSH funding and staff to be restored.
In response to pressure from unions, states, Congress, the public, and others, as well as successful lawsuits opposing the NIOSH RIFs, Secretary RFK Jr. announced that he would be bringing back a little more than 300 NIOSH staff, including 100 in West Virginia who work on programs protecting coal miners. “The reinstatement follows a May 14 preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Irene Berger, which found that HHS lacked the authority to dismantle the Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program. The injunction mandates not only the return of nearly 200 employees but also the full restoration of the program’s services.”
However, an HHS DOGE representative was reported as requiring that, for every employee brought back, another one must be fired in a one-to-one substitute layoff from within the CDC.
Moreover, while miner safety programs that reduce the risk of black lung disease among coal miners may have been saved, the program that extended these protections to miners exposed to silica dust is gone, according to news reports.
Here’s a look at some of what we’ve lost
The program to monitor and report on nanoplastics and microplastics in the workplace is gone. The NIOSH Nanotechnology Research Center (NTRC) conducts publicly available research to measure workplace exposure to plastics, assessing and minimizing the health risks from these substances.
This is especially important as there are no OSHA regulatory exposure limits. NIOSH built on its 50 years of staff expertise studying workplace aerosol inhalation risks in its work on microplastics. Smart industrial hygiene practices based on its research would have been critical to protecting workers in industries that use plastic products.
The NIOSH SENSOR pesticide surveillance program has also been cut. This program provides the only national tracking of pesticide-related illnesses and deaths, and it provides all this information to the public along with mapping and analysis tools.
Moreover, NIOSH experts provided technical support to state health agencies to train medical professionals on how to diagnose and treat pesticide poisonings, thus strengthening the network of health experts who can help advise farmworkers, pesticide applicators, parents, and others to prevent harm from pesticides.
We expect to lose support for a dozen NIOSH Centers for Agriculture Safety and Health across the United States, which research and reduce harm to workers and their families across farming, forestry, and fishing.
Workers in these industries are killed at a rate of 18.6 deaths per 100,000 workers, about five times higher than workers in all other U.S. industries. The Centers are in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Below, I highlight just a small part of the important work of these centers, none of which are expected to survive the current budget cuts (at the time of this writing).
NIOSH’s Young Worker Safety and Health program is dedicated to training and protecting the more than 19 million workers under age 25 (12 percent of the workforce). The U.S. Department of Labor determines which dangerous jobs young workers are forbidden from doing, but the research into those jobs comes from NIOSH.
Fatalities and injuries among U.S. youth workers in agriculture exceed all other industries combined (one death and 33 injuries every three days); they were even higher before NIOSH established the only center in the United States focused on preventing harm to underage agriculture workers. The current cuts to NIOSH come at a time when young workers are most vulnerable, as states like Florida are proposing to address labor shortages by rolling back child labor laws.
We will lose NIOSH scientists who conduct independent health and safety investigations of workplaces and provide critical life-saving recommendations about preventing harm that can be used by employers, workers and their representatives, researchers, and the public.
For example, NIOSH researchers published the largest and most important study of cancer risks among workers exposed to ethylene oxide, a petrochemical (see the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) summary here, although this EPA chemical assessment program is also slated for DOGE destruction). NIOSH is uniquely positioned to conduct this study because it has the legal authority to enter a workplace to conduct Health Hazard Evaluations of chemicals to determine whether workers may be exposed to hazardous materials like ethylene oxide (see more about this issue in Scientific American).
Based in large part on the high-quality NIOSH research, communities are advocating for stronger regulations and protections against the harmful effects of ethylene oxide. However, the Trump administration's EPA is set to exempt chemical industries from complying with Clean Air Act pollution limits for ethylene oxide and other chemicals. Killing the science will favor polluters.
The NIOSH Firefighter Cancer Registry supports research to identify and prevent cancer risks to firefighters, such as from PFAS “forever chemicals,” which are used by firefighters. PFAS are also a risk for chemical manufacturing workers who produce or use PFAS chemicals. Because of their widespread use, PFAS contaminate drinking water systems throughout the country, making them everyone’s problem, and the Trump administration's EPA is already weakening tap water limits.
NIOSH cuts hurt you, me, and everyday Americans
NIOSH’s research and investigations touch the lives of all workers by conducting surveillance to gather and examine health risks to coal miners and workers in the industries of construction, manufacturing, health care, social assistance, transportation, public safety, oil and gas, wholesale and retail trade services, and agriculture, forestry, and fishing. NIOSH conducts health hazard evaluations of worksite cancer clusters and assesses, tests, and certifies personal protective equipment while at the same time examining engineering controls, all culminating in research for the public good.
Without NIOSH—or with just a fragmented, unfunded shell of an agency left—who will assist local and state health departments in determining the occupational risks to workers in an outbreak, like the ongoing, highly pathogenic avian influenza infections or the COVID-19 pandemic, or protect emergency workers during the next wildfires? It is essential that the institute continues to work in its health surveillance, evaluation, and research capacities to strengthen science-based policies and practices to improve health and safety for all workers.
That’s why NRDC is supporting litigation to help defend the life-saving work of federal health and safety scientists, researchers, and technical experts, including at NIOSH. And, so far, we are winning!
What can you do?
- You can help support the AFL-CIO effort to save NIOSH here.
- You can donate to Migrant Clinicians Network to support health services for farmworkers.
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