More than 100 current and former employees of a federal agency in charge of ensuring the safety of the workplace warns that US workers face a higher risk of death and work injury, while the Trump government reduces the organization’s ranks.
In a letter to the congress, the National Institute of Occupational Health and Health Employees says the agency’s mission is at risk due to government actions in recent months.
“Without us, more workers will suffer avoidable deaths, diseases and injury,” wrote the current and former niosh employees in the letter, obtained exclusively by NBC News before being sent to members of Congress.
The letter is being sent to the whole Congress, but is addressed to Senator Bill Cassidy, R-LA., President of the Health Committee, Education, Work and Pensions, and his ranking member, Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, to discuss the president of the committee, the secretary of Robert F. Kenneded Jr. to discuss the president of the committee, Domert, Domert, that Secretary Robert F. Kenneded Jr. to discuss Domer Domer, Domert, Domert, to the committee chairman.
NIOSH is part of disease control and prevention centers in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Cuts at the agency are part of Trump’s vote to reduce bureaucracy and reduce his interference with private business.
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to NBC News comments requests.
The letter urges Congress to act to save the organization, especially at a time when administration is asking for increased economic activity, including manufacturing and domestic mining.
He says more than 90% of Niosh employees received “strength reduction” letters, putting them on administrative license, awaiting more permanent layoffs.
Congress established NIOSH in 1970 as part of the Occupational Safety and Health Act “to ensure as much as possible from every man who works in the country, safe and healthy, to preserve our human resources.”
Although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Policy Industries (OSHA) involved in workers’ injuries, NIOSH has the task of establishing a insurance place, conducting research, maintaining databases, certifying equipment at the workplace and collaborating with workplace work on preventive training and other measures.
Niosh supervises the health program for respondents and survivors of September 11, which can be practically abandoned if the team’s reductions are formalized, critics said.
Michael O’Connell, who helped search and rescue operations as a career firefighter after September 11, was diagnosed with a rare inflammatory disease called sarcoidosis that causes debilitating pain. He says he got his symptoms with the help of the Niosh World Trade Center health program.
“It’s bureaucratic cruelty,” he said last month, addressing the agency’s cuts. “They are trying to save money, which is good, but do not do it on the back of the September 11 community.”
If the force reduction plans are performed, the letter to Congress says: “Almost all Niosh functions will be permanently closed.”
The document was signed by talented scientists in the workplace safety field, including Micah Niemeier-Walsh, a researcher on the effects of lithium-ion battery fire exposure; Gary Roth, a tiny Nanotecnology scale expert and how he can ignore traditional human and workplace protections; and epidemiologist Scott Laney of the coal workers health surveillance program, which said the cuts have already resulted in x-rays of coal miners to the black lung that do not hurry.
“Niosh is at risk of imminent destruction,” says the letter to those of Congress. “Government activities in recent months have almost completely prevented Niosh’s ability to fulfill its mission.”
Some NIOSH programs will move to a newly known agency known as administration of a healthy America, Niosh director John Howard said in a and email throughout the agency last month, but it is unclear what will be left after the transition.
The signatories hope for the action of Congress to save the agency.
“Send a message to the Trump administration that today’s congress still supports America’s workers, restoring and protecting Niosh in full and keeping it on the CDC,” the letter says.