New York (AP) – The government’s recruits have disappointed a petite US health authority that aims to protect workers – drawing by firefighters, coalem workers, manufacturers of medical devices and a number of others.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an agency based in Cincinnati, which is part of the centers for the control and prevention of diseases, loses around 850 of its approximately 1,000 employees. Among these displaced director, Dr. John Howard, who was deployed in three former presidential administrations.
The layoffs are blocking – and possibly – many programs, including a fire brigade cancer register and a laboratory, which is crucial for many industries to certify the respiratory protection officer.
The cuts are “a very pointed attack on the workers in this country,” said Micah Niemeier-Walsh, Vice President of the union, which Niosh employees represented in Cincinnati.
Unions that represent miners, nurses, flight attendants and other professions have criticized the cuts and explained that the identification and prevention of job dangers is slowed down. The rallies in Cincinnati and other cities not only pulled CDC employees, but also members of unions who represent teachers, postal workers and bricklayers, said, said Niemeier-Walsh.
Niosh Doctors check and confirm that 9/11 first aiders who developed chronic diseases could qualify for the care as part of the World Trade Center Health program of the federal government, Andrew Ansbro, President of a union, represented the firefighters in New York.
“Niosh mitigates the memory of our fallen brothers and sisters and leaves those who are still fighting 9/11 relations,” said Ansbro in an explanation.
Agency examines the dangers in the workplace
Niosh was founded according to a law signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970. The company started the following year and became offices and laboratories in eight cities, including Cincinnati. Pittsburgh; Spokane, Washington; and Morgantown, West Virginia.
In the more than 50 years since then, pioneering research has carried out the air quality indoors in office buildings, violence at the workplace and for professional exposure to blood -lying infections.
The Niosh researchers identified a up-to-date lung disease in workers in factories that made microwave popcorn and helped to assess what went wrong during the catastrophe “Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig”. It was recently involved in the reaction of the CDC on measles and advised measures to stop the spread of hospitals.
Some of his best -known works relate to mining. It trains and certified doctors how to test black lung diseases, and the agency carries out its own mobile screenings from miners. Niosh had an experimental mine in Pennsylvania for years and announced two years ago to develop a replacement research system near Mace, West Virginia, in which tunnels and other min structures would be present.
The research and recommendations served as the basis for the protection of the employee for employee protection, including one that was published last year for coalem workers and which lowers half of the permissible exposure to poisonous silica dust.
Studies have concluded that the nation research research helps to save millions of dollars in avoided employee earnings and other costs every year.
“Any interruption of this type of research and recommendations can affect all segments of the workforce,” said Tessa Bonney, who teaches about professional health at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
The effects of deep personnel cuts are unclear
Niosh was instructed in the massive upheaval of the US Health Ministry and the human service, which includes around 10,000 layoffs, expected reorganization and the proposed budget cuts.
It was not unionized Niosh workers – mainly superiors – asked to clear out their desks immediately. With the employees of the negotiation units, knowledge of discharge was preserved and was announced that their dismissals would take place later this year.
“At the moment we are trying to find out the chain of command,” said Niemeier-Walsh.
An HHS spokesman, Andrew Nixon, said what is left of Niosh will be transferred to a newly created agency to describe the administration for robust America.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained that 20% of the persons dismissed by federal health agencies could be restored if the agency tried to correct errors, but the department has not been detailed in detail which parts of NIOSCH have been reduced or eliminated.
On Saturday, the US Republican of the US Republicans announced Andrew Garrarino in a press release that Howard, as the administrator of the World Trade Center Health program, had been restored after the legislator asked the White House to reverse the decision. However, it was not mentioned that Howard regained his job as a Niosh director, and HHS officers did not answer questions on Saturday.
What is known about Niosh’s reductions so far was composed by employees who are affected by the layoffs and the union that represented them. They say that almost every Niosh program was exposed to steep cuts or complete elimination.
A website for fire brigade cancer registers went out on Tuesday “because there were no IT people to occupy the system,” said Niemeier-Walsh.
And at least some of the hundreds of mice and rats in a Niosh laboratory in Morgantown are likely to be destroyed, since the layoffs are an abrupt, medium-experimenting ending for the inhalation of research there, said Cathy Tinney-Zara, an analyst for public health, the president of the union employed there.
“Millions of dollars research, decades of research, rise into the drain,” said Tinney-Zara.
Industry concerned about the certification laboratory
Part of the rampage of unions and industry has focused on the laboratory for personal protective technology, an office in Niosh, tests and certified the adapted masks that protect workers from taking a breath. (The N95 masks that became popular during the Covid 19 outbreak are named after a Niosh standard.)
Closing the laboratory offers companies in China and other countries that send products to the USA, a competitive advantage without fulfilling the strict quality standards associated with certification, said Eric Axel, Managing Director of the American Medical Manufacturers Association.
“This decision effectively rewards foreign manufacturers who did not make the same investments in quality and security while they have punished American companies that have built their reputation for the production of reliable, high -quality protective equipment,” said Axel in an explanation.
The cuts are “really devastating,” said Rebecca Shelton, director of politics for the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, an organization based in Kentucky that offers legal assist.
“Here in central Appalachia, everyone knows someone with black lung diseases,” she said.
It seems that Niosh programs are eliminated for coal people to raise questions about who will monitor up-to-date cases and mock trends, said Shelton.
Niosh employees attended routine mines and rural communities to offer free preventive examinations and to talk about black lung diseases and other health problems at the workplace at public meetings.
“These are not non -touching federal workers. They are very well connected to their communities,” she said.
Many Niosh workers come from families who have been working in professional health for generations. Niemeier-Walsh’s grandfather was a toxicologist of the agency for 30 years.
“It was a normal conversation with dinner in our family to talk about how to use the power of science to protect the workers,” she said.
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