Trump administration eliminates workplace prevention research

Testo in italiano disponibile qui

In early April, more than 90% of the staff of the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) received e-mail notices that their jobs had been eliminated. The agency had a staff of approximately 1500 employees spread over 5 states and Washington D.C. Essentially all of the staff have been laid off. The Trump administration gave misleading public statements about the staff reductions, saying that these were limited cuts, with the goal of increasing efficiency. But in fact, essentially all the Institute’s programs have been stopped. The total NIOSH budget this year was about $360 million, which translates to $2.20/year from every working American. Eliminating this agency will have almost no effect on the government’s massive fiscal deficit, but a very big effect on the health of the country.

NIOSH is the federal government agency responsible for conducting scientific research to provide the basis for preventing occupational injuries and illnesses in the workplace. Despite its name, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is not one of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. NIH is the very large government research program that conducts or funds a large fraction of all the biomedical research in the U.S. NIH is also under attack by the Trump administration, but has not, until now, seen major cuts to its core functions or budget. NIOSH instead is a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rather than NIH, and this reflects its role as an applied, prevention-oriented research agency. 

NIOSH has the specific task of conducting research focused on prevention of injury and illness in the workplace. This role was defined in its founding legislation, the Occupational Safety and Health Act. NIOSH was created to support the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the 1970 law, signed by President Richard Nixon. This legal structure of two parallel agencies was designed to separate OSHA, the regulatory enforcement agency from NIOSH, a scientific research agency. NIOSH has no enforcement powers but conducts a wide range of research activities to inform and design prevention strategies. 

Some of the critical functions that have been halted include:

• The national laboratory responsible for evaluating and certifying personal protective equipment, most notably respirators. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were frequent attempts to import ineffective masks into the country, and NIOSH certification was the only way to ensure the quality of the masks being sold in the country.
• Investigation of outbreaks of new diseases in workplaces. NIOSH is responsible for responding to requests from employers and employees to conduct health hazard evaluations. This program has identified and then prevented numerous disease outbreaks over the years. One of the most notable examples is the identification of the link between diacetyl, an artificial flavor ingredient added to many foods, and a life-threatening lung disease, bronchiolitis obliterans.
• NIOSH provides funding to approximately 40 universities to deliver training in occupational safety and health. These programs prepare occupational medicine physicians and nurses, occupational hygienists and epidemiologists and ergonomists. A substantial fraction of all the occupational health professionals working for industries, hospitals, state and local governments have been trained in NIOSH-funded university programs.
• NIOSH continues to monitor the health of workers who survived the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. This program provides ongoing healthcare to the survivors, as well as epidemiologic evidence leading to the identification of diseases linked to the exposures during and after the attack.
• NIOSH compiles and publishes workplace environmental standards and protective equipment recommendations.
• There is a program to monitor the respiratory health of coal miners and assist them in filing for compensation when they become sick. And there is another program to monitor the deaths of firefighters in the line of duty.

Cutting the NIOSH staff is only one of the many actions that the Trump administration has taken to close agencies and eliminate programs. The Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency, both many times larger than NIOSH, are also under attack. This is an entirely new level of executive branch power. Can the President simply eliminate entire programs? We will see. 

NIOSH was created as a part of a law passed by Congress, and in theory, it can only be eliminated through another act of Congress passing another law. Even though the Republican party controls both houses of Congress, they cannot pass new legislation without Democratic support. The urgent question therefore is whether the President can “effectively” close a program by firing all the staff. This would seem to be subverting the role of Congress. But because the Republicans in Congress seem, until now at least, to be willing to allow Trump to make these dramatic and apparently illegal actions, we are in a moment that is being called a “Constitutional Crisis”, and entirely unprecedented. There are numerous lawsuits working their way through the federal courts trying to stop these actions. Will the Supreme Court let the President proceed? We will see.

In the meantime, NIOSH is effectively closed. Rather than “saving” money, this is very likely to end up being very costly to U.S. industries and workers.

24 April 2025

Testo in italiano disponibile qui