Image Credit: Getty Images / Emmanuelle Firman

Editor’s note: This week, news organizations reported that some NIOSH employees whose positions were terminated have been recalled.

Since NIOSH was established by the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the agency has been a world leader in promoting workplace health and safety and supporting a highly trained corps of health and safety professionals. I have personally benefited from the work of NIOSH in terms of educational opportunities (my Master of Science and doctoral degrees were both partially funded by the agency) and research support (NIOSH has funded many applied research projects over my career). I can say, with complete certainty, that without the support of NIOSH my career in industrial hygiene would likely have looked much different, and that I might not even have gone into this field in the first place. This is true for me, and it is also true for literally tens of thousands of other occupational health and safety professionals across a variety of disciplines—industrial hygiene, occupational safety, occupational medicine, occupational health nursing, occupational epidemiology, ergonomics, and more—whose education was supported by NIOSH. These professionals are our first and most important line of defense against workplace injuries, illnesses, and fatalities, and it is precisely this professional workforce that is threatened by the Trump administration’s April 2025 decision to essentially eliminate NIOSH and end 55 years of federal funding to train critically important health and safety practitioners and researchers.

The elimination of NIOSH will also have many adverse and direct impacts on workers in the United States, including, to name just a few, stalled research on workplace hazards and interventions to reduce them in healthcare, construction, mining, agriculture, and other dangerous industries; reduced surveillance of occupational illnesses and diseases; no certification of personal protective equipment; and no research to support new standards for emerging as well as existing workplace hazards. While each of these outcomes is completely unacceptable, I will focus on one aspect of the elimination of NIOSH that I find particularly troubling: the elimination of the 18 NIOSH-funded Education and Research Centers (ERCs).

The University of Michigan Center for Occupational Health and Safety Engineering (COHSE) and 17 other ERCs have been training highly skilled and interdisciplinary occupational safety and health practitioners for decades (over 44 years, in the case of COHSE). With the elimination of the ERCs, America will experience a significant reduction in the next generation of health and safety professionals. This reduction will undoubtedly lead to an increase in on-the-job injuries and occupational illnesses, especially if there is a resurgence in manufacturing jobs in the U.S., which the administration has indicated is a priority.

COHSE alone has trained more than 2,000 health and safety professionals since the center was first funded, and these individuals have gone on to protect workers in Michigan, the Great Lakes region, the U.S., and around the globe. ERC alumni supported by NIOSH have advanced to important leadership positions in industry, academia, regulatory agencies, and non-governmental organizations, and in doing so have translated the foundational education they received into practical, effective, and cost-saving health and safety programs and policies. Without the support of NIOSH, this stable pipeline of practitioners and researchers with deep knowledge and experience related to workplace health and safety is at risk, and we are likely to see major reductions in the number of professionals dedicating their careers to protecting the American workforce.

Additionally, the faculty who teach in these ERCs, myself included, will be unable to conduct cutting-edge research on evaluating and controlling workplace hazards, which will limit advances in workplace exposure controls and protective programs and needlessly endanger future American workers. All 18 ERCs support vibrant, low-cost continuing education programs for occupational health and safety practitioners, and the elimination of these programs with the ERCs will prevent those practitioners from staying up to date on recent developments and best practices.

The negative impacts resulting from the elimination of NIOSH will compound over time, setting the U.S. workforce farther and farther behind in terms of occupational health and safety in relation to other high-income countries. The burden of workplace injuries and illnesses, which will directly impact workers, their families and communities, their employers, insurers, and others, will also continue to grow. This burden is already hundreds of billions of dollars per year in preventable costs.

Fortunately, all these negative impacts can be avoided if the administration reinstates NIOSH funding. For roughly $2.20 per American worker per year, we can continue to provide the essential health and safety services that keep American workers safe and healthy, and that the American workforce deserves. I encourage you to take a moment today to let your legislators know that the decision to eliminate NIOSH is ill-informed and must be reversed. There is still time for us to give American workers and the U.S. economy the protection they so badly need.

More information about how to participate in AIHA’s campaign to restore critical occupational health programs is available on the AIHA website. Visit VoterVoice for additional ideas about local advocacy.

Resources

The Milbank Quarterly: “Economic Burden of Occupational Injury and Illness in the United States” (December 2011).

RAND Health Quarterly: “Understanding the Economic Benefit Associated with Research and Services at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health” (August 2018).