Occupational Health MDs Call for Immediate Action to Save NIOSH

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Occupational Health MDs Call for Immediate Action to Save NIOSH

April 8, 2025

The recent decision to terminate a majority of the workforce at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), by June 2025, is a dangerous and shortsighted move that will have devastating consequences for the health and safety of American workers.

NIOSH is critical to workplace safety nationwide. NIOSH develops the vital safety standards implemented by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), conducts unique research on workplace hazards, delivers lifesaving information and resources directly to employers and working Americans, and ensures that essential personal protective equipment such as respirators function as intended. NIOSH also maintains the valuable NIOSH List of Hazardous Drugs in Healthcare Settings.

NIOSH funding to universities and hospital systems enables the training of specialist doctors in Occupational and Environmental Medicine residencies. This irreplaceable funding also supports the training of Industrial Hygienists, Occupational Health Nurses, and Epidemiologists.

Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) physicians are indispensable leaders in protecting the health of the workforce and the resilience of our economy. As experts at the intersection of medicine, work, and society, OEM physicians safeguard workers across every industry—keeping businesses running, families secure, and communities strong. They reduce disability, prevent illness and injury, and help workers achieve their economic goals while preserving their long-term health. During the COVID-19 crisis, OEM physicians were the trusted medical advisors who kept businesses open safely and responsibly. Today, their impact extends
beyond the clinic—shaping workplace policies, guiding public health efforts, and ensuring a healthier, more sustainable future for all.

The elimination of NIOSH will devastate the high-quality training programs used to prepare the next generation of healthcare providers and safety professionals. Aggravating an already perilous shortage of these highly-skilled trainees may damage the pipeline of safety workers and medical experts beyond repair. The repercussions of this loss will be felt for decades by employers, workers, safety professionals and their families.

The drastic cut to NIOSH ignores other long-term implications for American workers, businesses and policymakers. If NIOSH is shuttered in June, Americans will have lost the only government agency dedicated to gathering and analyzing critical safety information to protect them at work.

With an annual budget of less than $2 per American worker, NIOSH is one of our nation's most cost-effective safety and health agencies.

At a time when only 6% of American workers belong to unions equipped to monitor workplace safety, the role of NIOSH is more valuable than ever. Without NIOSH, American workers will lose the only independent and reliable source of workplace-related health information. This includes crucial data on production line speeds, ergonomics, the prevention of crippling back and hand injuries, protection from thousands of cancer-causing chemicals and reproductive hazards, and insights into how workplace stress impacts heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and mental health.

Any American who has used a certified N95 mask for protection at work has directly benefitted from NIOSH research.

As a further result of these cuts:

• Firefighters, nurses, and construction workers will lose protection provided by approved respirators and clothing. They may also lose a registry dedicated to 9/11 first responders and key research programs that have provided important insight on cancers in firefighters.
• Cancers attributable to workplace exposures will increase. Important research establishing causative relationships will disappear, making it impossible for workers to seek compensation for life-changing injuries.
• More than 5,000 workplace fatalities annually will go uninvestigated, with no efforts toward prevention.
• Miners will face increased risks of incurable dust diseases.
• Tens of thousands of American workers will suffer serious, disabling injuries, costing the healthcare system billions annually. There will be a profound economic penalty for employers, worker compensation insurers and health care providers.
• Young workers will no longer receive vital safety training before entering the workforce or starting a new job.
• New infectious diseases could rapidly spread among workers and communities.
• Well-vetted, publicly accessible information regarding worker safety and best practices will vanish.
• High quality scientific resources utilized by health and safety professionals, businesses and doctors will be eliminated.

The Western Occupational and Environmental Medical Association urgently calls upon policymakers to immediately reverse these destructive cuts. The health and safety of our nation's workforce depend on swift action to restore full funding and operational capacity to NIOSH.

Contact:
Western Occupational & Environmental
Medical Association
(415) 764-4918
woema@woema.org