The Detroit News
Opinion: Don’t let Michigan workers pay the price for budget cuts
COHSE Directors: Rick Neitzel, Stuart Batterman, Adam Finkel, Marie O’Neill, Alexis Handal, Marie-Anne Rosemberg, Marjorie McCullagh, Leia Stirling and Sheryl Ulin
Every year, more than 75,000 workers are killed by occupational injuries or prolonged exposure to hazardous substances. Adults often spend half their waking hours at work, and most of us know someone who has been hurt or sickened by their work.
The cost of workplace illnesses and injuries in the U.S. is already hundreds of billions of dollars per year.The Trump administration’s recent decision to eliminate nearly all staff and programs of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) threatens the lives of workers and the health of the economy across America— including in Michigan. This nonregulatory agency seems to be a casualty of an approach to cutting federal spending that has not considered the benefits NIOSH brings to the economy, workers and their families.
This is the only federal agency that supports research and education on occupational health and safety to protect workers across the country, offering free onsite consultation to industries from automotive manufacturing to agriculture to hospitality to health care. In Michigan, our core industries depend on NIOSH guidelines to maintain safe operations, and the destruction of NIOSH will reduce productivity and increase the likelihood of safety failures, threatening sectors critical to our state’s economy.
As an example, without NIOSH, there is no agency that certifies the respirators necessary to work with airborne hazards like chemicals and viruses, or that works to protect firefighters, healthcare workers, construction workers, farmers, miners and those working in other high-risk occupations.
The elimination of NIOSH staff and programs will decimate efforts to prevent workplace injuries and fatalities, ultimately increasing healthcare costs for employers and the healthcare system nationwide.
This agency has helped the U.S. and its more than 160 million workers become not only dramatically safer, but more productive. For example, the agency’s National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory does cutting edge research to make sure that many different types of personal protective equipment are effective and protective for the workers who use them. Funding for NIOSH is the very definition of effective, not wasteful, federal spending.
The elimination of NIOSH programs will also shut down all 18 of NIOSH’s Education and Research Centers nationwide. These centers, including the Center for Occupational Health and Safety Engineering at the University of Michigan, foster regional and national innovation and progress by training health and safety practitioners and researchers. Eliminating NIOSH now will destroy the pipeline of health and safety professionals we need to keep our workforcehealthy and safe, stunt innovation and erode the country’s competitive edge.
Other centers funded by NIOSH that focus on agricultural health and safety and Total Worker Health will also be eliminated, further harming the nation’s industries and workers.
Moreover, eliminating NIOSH will catastrophically impact researchers and safety and health practitioners outside of the agency. The agency supports research at universities but also conducts health hazard evaluations that help employees, employers and unions, and ensure they are adequately protecting their workers. The shattering of NIOSH will reduce, not improve, health, and will undermine occupational safety and economic stability throughout the country. WithoutNIOSH, workers will needlessly suffer from tragic but preventable cancers, amputations, diseases, injuries, and accidents.
Occupational health is everyone’s health. Strong continued support for NIOSH is crucial to safeguard worker health and ensure U.S industries remain economically robust.Rick Neitzel, Stuart A. Batterman, Adam M. Finkel, Marie O’Neill, Alexis J. Handal, Marie-Anne Rosemberg, Marjorie McCullagh, Leia Stirling and Sheryl S. Ulin are occupational health and safety researchers at the University of Michigan