More than 100 current and previous employees of a federal agency responsible for ensuring that the safety of the workplace warns that US workers face a greater risk of death and work injuries as the Trump administration reduces the rows of the organization.
In a letter to Congress, the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety Employees says that the agency’s mission is at risk due to administration’s actions in recent months.
“Without us, more workers will suffer from deaths, diseases and preventable injuries,” wrote the current and previous employees of NIOSH in the letter, obtained exclusively by NBC News before being sent to the members of Congress.
The letter is sent to the entire Congress, but is addressed to Senator Bill Cassidy, R-LA., President of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and his classification member, Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT., Before the scheduled meeting of the Committee with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy JR. To discuss HHS President HHS of the Health of the Committee for the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
NIOSH is part of the centers for disease control and prevention, in the Department of Health and Human Services.
The cuts in the agency are part of Trump’s vote to reduce bureaucracy and stop their interference in private businesses.
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comments from NBC News.
The letter urges Congress to act to save the organization, especially at a time when the administration asks for greater economic activity, including national manufacturing and mining.
He says that more than 90% of NIOSH employees have received “force reduction” letters that place them on administrative license waiting for more permanent layoffs.
The Congress established NIOSH in 1970 as part of the Occupational Health and Safety Law “to ensure as much workers as possible in the safe and healthy working conditions of the Nation and to preserve our human resources.”
While the US Safety and Health and Safety Administration Industries of the USA (OSHA) involved in workers’ injuries, NIOSH has the task of establishing a vision for safer workplaces by conducting research, maintaining databases, certifying equipment in the workplace and collaborating with work sites on preventive training and other measures.
NIOSH supervises the health program for the responders and survivors of September 11, which could be abandoned if staff reductions are formalized, critics said.
Michael O’Connell, who helped with search and rescue operations as an early career firefighter after September 11, was diagnosed with a rare inflammatory disease called sarcoidosis that causes weakening pain. He says he has handled his symptoms with the help of the World Trade Center health program.
“It’s a bureaucratic cruelty,” he said last month, addressing cuts to the agency. “They are trying to save money, which is fine, but do not do it behind the community of September 11.”
If the strength reduction plans are carried out, the letter to Congress says: “Almost all NIOSH functions will end permanently.”
The document was signed by consummated scientists in the field of security in the workplace, including Micah Niemeier-Walsh, a researcher on the effects of exposure to lithium-ion battery fires; Gary Roth, an expert in the small scale of nanotechnology and how can traditional human and labor protections avoid; and the epidemiologist Scott Laney of the health surveillance program of coal workers, who has said that the cuts have already resulted in the radiographs of coal miners for the black lung without examining.
“NIOSH is at risk of imminent destruction,” the states of the letter to Congress. “The activities of the administration in recent months have almost completely prevented NIOSH’s ability to carry out their mission.”
Some programs within NIOSH will move to a recently created agency known as the administration of a healthy America, said NIOSH director John Howard, in an agency email last month, but it is not clear what he will leave after the transition.
The signatories maintain the hope of the Congress’ action to save the agency.
“Send a message to the Trump administration that today’s Congress still supports US workers restoring and protecting NIOSH in its entirety and keeping it within the CDCs,” says the letter.
