Anita Wolfe, a retiree of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) facility in Morgantown, Monongalia County, speaks against the federal employee job cuts occurring in West Virginia during a news conference held by West Virginia labor representatives outside the House of Delegates chamber in the West Virginia State Capitol in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä on April 3, 2025.
Anita Wolfe, a retiree of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) facility in Morgantown, Monongalia County, speaks against the federal employee job cuts occurring in West Virginia during a news conference held by West Virginia labor representatives outside the House of Delegates chamber in the West Virginia State Capitol in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä on April 3, 2025.
As a physician who specializes in occupational health, I have worked closely with colleagues at the National Institutes of Safety and Health in Morgantown for over 25 years.
While details regarding the number of employees being laid off by the Trump administration at NIOSH in Morgantown are scarce, some of the communications within our community refer to more than 400 being placed on immediate leave, essentially putting an end to all activities. Perhaps the best way to appreciate what may be lost with the closure of this facility is to highlight some of the recent work of the three divisions of NIOSH based in Morgantown.
The Division of Safety Research has focused on injuries and fatalities, including several long-running programs to investigate deaths at the workplace, with one dedicated for firefighters who have died to keep us all safe. At a minimum, we owe each of these victims every effort to learn from these tragedies to prevent them in the future. The efforts have been highly successful: non-fatal occupational injuries have gone down by 90% over the first 50 years since NIOSH was created.
Nine years ago, a radiologist in Kentucky contacted the Respiratory Health Division about an increase in the most severe cases of black lung disease. NIOSH personnel investigated and eventually identified hundreds of affected coal miners in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia. I have reviewed many of the medical files of these miners when the only treatment, lung transplantation, is requested. It is grim reading. Men still in their 40s are suffocating to death. Even with a new lung, patients often only live a few months more. Some never leave the hospital. Such numbers of severe cases had never been seen before and the question was, why was this happening now?
The answer required additional expertise to analyze the inhaled dust within the lung tissue of the affected coal miners using highly sophisticated equipment, which is only available at a few specialized centers. That is where the Health Effects Laboratory Division came in. Their investigations revealed that the miners’ lungs had unusually high levels of silica dust, which is more damaging than coal dust, compared to those of miners from decades earlier. The explanation for this change is that in Appalachia we are now mining narrower seams of coal than historically. As a result, miners are exposed to higher levels of silica dust from cutting into the rock above and below the coal seam.
Not only has the work involved lung diseases we have known about for a long time, like black lung, but it revealed new ones. NIOSH personnel investigated and isolated the cause of lung damage among workers making microwave popcorn, a chemical additive used to provide butter flavor.
Without NIOSH Morgantown, there will be no team of skilled, experienced professionals to investigate the next death of a firefighter in the line of duty. There will be no one to contact when the next outbreak of lung disease occurs at a workplace and no laboratory with the equipment to help us understand why. And the workers of America will be less safe.
Dr. Christopher Martin is a physician living in Morgantown.
