New York – New York (AP) – Government staff cuts They have destroyed a small American health agency that aims to protect workers: attract firefighters, coal miners, medical equipment manufacturers and a variety of others.
The National Institute of Occupational Health and Health, an agency based in Cincinnati that is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is losing around 850 of its approximately 1,000 employees, according to the estimates of an affected union and employees. Among those expelled were its director, Dr. John Howard, who had been at work through three previous presidential administrations.
The layoffs stagnate, and maybe they end, Many programsIncluding a fire cancer registration and a laboratory that is key to certifying respirators for many industries.
The cuts are “a very pointed attack against workers in this country,” said Micah Niemeier-Walsh, vice president of the union premises that represents NIOSH employees in Cincinnati.
The unions that represent miners, nurses, hostesses and other professions have criticized the cuts, saying that it will delay the identification and prevention of the dangers of the workplace. The manifestations in Cincinnati and other cities drawn not only the employees of the CDC, but also members of unions representing teachers, postal and masons, said Niemeier-Walsh.
NIOSH Doctors Check and certify that the first to respond on September 11 who developed chronic diseases could qualify for care under the health program of the Federal Government’s Trade center, said Andrew Ansbro, president of a union that represents firefighters in New York City.
“Disassemble NIOSH dishonor the memory of our fallen brothers and sisters and leave those who still fight with diseases related to 9/11,” Ansbro said in a statement.
NIOSH was created under a 1970 law signed by President Richard Nixon. It began operations the following year and grew to have offices and laboratories in eight cities, including Cincinnati; Pittsburgh; Spokane, Washington; and Morgantown, West Virginia.
In the more than 50 years since then, he has conducted a pioneering investigation into the quality of the inner air in office buildings, violence in the workplace and occupational exhibitions to infections transmitted by the blood.
NIOSH researchers identified a new lung disease in workers in factories who did microwave corn palomitesAnd it helped evaluate what went wrong during the Deepwater horizon Petroleum Platform Disaster. Recently he was involved in the CDC response to measlesAdvice on measures to stop propagation within hospitals.
Part of your best known work is related to mining. Trained and certifies doctors on how to evaluate Black pulmonary diseaseand the agency performs its own mobile projections of miners. For years, Niosh owned an experimental mine in Pennsylvania and two years ago announced I was developing a replacement research facility near Mace, Virginia Occidental, which would have tunnels and other mines structures.
His research and recommendations have served as a foundation for the rules of the Department of Labor for the Protection of Workers, including one issued last year for coal miners that reduces half of the allowed exhibitions to poisonous silica dust.
The studies have concluded that NIOSH’s investigation helps the Nation to save millions of dollars every year in compensation for workers avoided and other costs.
“Any detention of this type of research and recommendations can affect all segments of the workforce,” said Tessa Bonney, who teaches about occupational health at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
NIOSH was dragged into the massive agitation In the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States that include about 10,000 dismissals, an early reorganization and proposed budget cuts.
NIOSH workers were told not unionized, mainly supervisors, to clean their desks immediately. The employees of the negotiation unit received dismissal notices, and they were told that their endings would occur at the end of this year.
“We are currently trying to discover the chain of command,” said Niemeier-Walsh.
An HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said that what is left of NIOSH will move to a newly created agency to be called the Administration for healthy America.
The HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has said that 20% of the federal health agencies could be reinstated since the agency tries to correct errors, but the department has not detailed what parts of NIOSH were reduced or eliminated, and which will remain open.
What is known about the cuts made so far was rebuilt by the employees affected by the dismissals and the union that represents them. They say that almost all NIOSH programs faced steep cuts or direct elimination.
A website of the fire cancer registration fell on Tuesday “because there were no people from you for system staff,” said Niemeier-Walsh.
And at least some of the hundreds of mice and rats in a NIOSH laboratory in Morgantown will probably have to be destroyed because the dismissals put an abrupt and half experiment for inhalation investigation there, said Cathy Tinney-Zara, a public health analyst who is president of the local employees of the Union that they represent there.
“Millions of dollars of research, decades of research, are overflowing,” said Tinney-Zara.
Some of the protests of the unions and the industry have focused on the National Laboratory of Personal Protection Technology, a NIOSH office that proves and certifies tight masks that protect workers from inhaling aerial hazards. (The N95 masks that became popular during the COVID-19 outbreak are named after a Standard NIOSH.
The closure of the laboratory offers a competitive advantage to companies in China and other countries that send products to the US. Without complying with the strict quality standards that come with the certification, said Eric Axel, executive director of the American Association of Medical Manufacturers.
“This decision effectively rewards foreign manufacturers who have not made the same investments in quality and security while punishing US companies who have built their reputation in producing reliable and high quality protection equipment,” Axel said in a statement.
The cuts are “really devastating,” said Rebecca Shelton, director of Policy of the Citizens Law of the Apalaches, an organization based in Kentucky that provides legal help to coal miners.
“Here at the center of the Apalaches, everyone knows someone with black pulmonary disease,” he said.
It seems that NIOSH programs for coal miners are being eliminated, asking questions about who will monitor new cases and spot trends, said Shelton.
NIOSH staff visited mines and rural communities to offer free exams and speak in public meetings about black pulmonary diseases and other health problems in the workplace.
“These are not out of contact workers. They are very well connected” with their communities, he said.
Many NIOSH workers come from families who have worked in occupational health for generations. Niemeier-Walsh’s grandfather was toxicologist at the agency for 30 years.
“It was a normal dinner conversation in our family to talk about how you can use the power of science to protect workers,” he said.
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