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Recently I received formal notice that I will be furloughed from my job, thanks to Elon Musk’s and President Donald Trump’s DOGE-related cuts. I work for a federally funded research center at a public university. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, is our main funder, but after last week’s layoffs of roughly 80% of the institute’s staff, there will be nobody left to administer our grants. And as a university employee rather than a directly federal one, I and my colleagues who lose our jobs will not be counted with those layoff numbers.
But I’m not the true victim of this story.
NIOSH’s mission was to protect American workers’ health and safety by researching the hazards that could hurt or kill them. It, along with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, were signed into existence by President Richard Nixon with overwhelming congressional support. And they have been incredibly successful. Routine workplace injury is not the everyday occurrence it once was, and occupational fatalities are even less common. Black lung and silicosis, which galvanized political movements across mining regions in the 1960s, became much rarer in the new era of increased federal investment in research and regulation. Yet all this could change.
One of NIOSH’s core functions is to certify that respirators and other personal protective equipment are up to high standards that can keep workers safe from respiratory hazards, be they physical like silica dust or biological like viruses. Many knockoff respirators attempted to pass themselves off as NIOSH-approved during the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly putting thousands of people at risk when they thought they were being responsible. This function of NIOSH will no longer be performed, and we are already seeing the consequences. On April 8, the Mining Safety and Health Administration announced that it was pausing its enforcement of its silica exposure standard for coal miners due to the lack of NIOSH’s technical assistance, leaving the standard for other types of miners intact for now.
If you or your family have no experience with silicosis, the disease caused by exposure to the rocky dusts produced from mining, stonecutting and construction, I truly hope it stays that way. Silica scars the lungs incredibly quickly and can make previously healthy workers in their 30s struggle to breathe, shortening their lives considerably. Occupational diseases like silicosis can be prevented, but only with investment in the necessary knowledge and materials, and a basic respect for working peoples’ lives.
Minnesota is a mining state, a state with a metropolis in constant need of construction work, and it is also a home of high-end technical companies and health researchers. For those of us whose lines of work are in the latter two, we may feel some financial instability ahead. The University of Minnesota, where I earned my Ph.D. (and which brought me to Minnesota in the first place), is losing grants and talent. Companies like 3M, which manufacture critical lifesaving equipment based on government research and investment, is facing a more uncertain marketplace. But it is the workers who build our roads, extract valuable materials, care for us when we are sick and grow our food who are facing life-altering consequences. It is unclear how this administration’s attempted turn toward a more inward-facing economy will address these challenges.
