Scott Laney worked at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health for nearly 20 years. It’s part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tasked with keeping Americans safe at work.
He helped the U.S. government respond to an ebola outbreak in Africa. In central Appalachia, he helped reveal an epidemic of progressive massive fibrosis — an advanced stage of black lung disease.
An announcement came last week that Robert F. Kennedy Jr would be “restructuring” the entire health agency under orders from President Donald Trump. Laney said he and his colleagues were nervous. Still, they couldn’t fathom being cut. Their work saves lives. Some of it is required by law.
Word came Monday evening that Laney and his staff would be laid off. According to an AFL-CIO representative, they’re part of a 900 employee “reduction in force” representing roughly two-thirds of the entire NIOSH workforce. Roughly 400 of them conducted research on mines.
“I’ve got these young women, one pregnant, all with young children, in my office bawling their eyes out because they were just fired, and they can’t pay their car payment next month, and I can’t either,” Laney said. “It is absolutely heartbreaking.”
NIOSH researches deaths in industries from fishing to firefighting and develops guidance and technology to make those jobs safer. Once, it even proved that artificial butter flavoring was causing incurable disease in workers at popcorn plants.
“This is f—ing awful,” Laney said. “They’ve just destroyed all of NIOSH. We’re talking about research on policemen and firefighters… and the masks that we had [in the pandemic]? They’re all certified by NIOSH.”
There may be no group of workers that owes more to NIOSH than coal miners. Specialized departments across the country in Pittsburgh, Morgantown, Spokane and Denver focus on mine safety. All are facing layoffs as part of a vast “reduction in force.”
Pittsburgh’s research branch alone boasted an experimental mine, an acoustic chamber and a lab that was instrumental in proving that miners were slowly dying by inhaling toxic silica dust.
Sources privy to notices from the American Federation of Government Employees say the mining research divisions are being gutted by the dozens.
“That’s all gone. All the coal worker health surveillance is gone,” Laney said. “All of this was passed into law by Congress, and they’re just blanking the budgets out.”
Anita Wolfe was a public health analyst with NIOSH’s Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program, before retiring in 2020. It assists miners diagnosed with lung disease in moving to a less dusty task and trains doctors to better identify the disease in X-rays.
“That’s not a disease that you would wish on the very worst enemy you had in your life. It’s horrible,” she said.
The coal workers’ health program is probably best known for a giant mobile health clinic that makes an annual tour through mining communities. There, miners get tested for black lung free and confidentially. The results get added to a federal database where NIOSH tracks the disease.
Wolfe said she understands from former colleagues that those programs will no longer exist after these cuts. They collect the most reliable evidence to track and prevent diseases like black lung.
“The thing that really upsets me about all of this is that the letters [NIOSH employees] got said that they were being let go because they were no longer needed, or the services they provided were redundant,” Wolfe said. “That is totally, totally one hundred percent false. There are no other federal agencies that are doing what NIOSH did.”
Wolfe says she hopes the cuts can be reversed once federal officials understand the seriousness of NIOSH’s work or the laws that mandate it.
“I love my coal miners. They’re the best guys in the world, but I’m just so afraid for them right now,” Wolfe said. “Nobody seems to care… and it really scares me.”