The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH, ) is the United States federal agency responsible for conducting research and making recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury, illness, disability, and death. Its functions include gathering information, conducting scientific research both in the laboratory and in the field, and translating the knowledge gained into products and services. Among NIOSH's programs are determination of recommended exposure limits for toxic chemicals and other hazards, field research such as the Health Hazard Evaluation Program, epidemiology and health surveillance programs such as the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer, regulatory approval of respirators according to the NIOSH air filtration rating system, and compensation and support programs such as the World Trade Center Health Program.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act, signed by President Richard M. Nixon on December 29, 1970, created NIOSH out of the preexisting Division of Industrial Hygiene founded in 1914. NIOSH is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Despite the similarities in names, it is not part of the National Institutes of Health or OSHA, which have distinct and separate responsibilities.
NIOSH is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with research laboratories and offices in Cincinnati, Morgantown, Pittsburgh, Denver, Anchorage, Spokane, and Atlanta. NIOSH is a professionally diverse organization with a staff of 1,200 people representing a wide range of disciplines including occupational epidemiology, occupational toxicology, medicine, industrial hygiene, safety, research psychology, engineering, chemistry, and statistics.
As part of the announced 2025 HHS reorganization, a small piece of NIOSH is planned to be integrated into the new Administration for a Healthy America. On April 1, 93% of NIOSH's staff was told they were being fired. This most strongly impacted its mining safety research and respirator approval programs, with its laboratory in Spokane, Washington, and the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh expected to close completely, Operations at the Morgantown, West Virginia, campus also ceased on April 1 as staff were placed on leave and instructed to leave the building, ending its research into emerging threats to workers. The cuts included all staff of the Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program which offered free health care for coal workers, including a mobile x-ray van that screened workers for signs of black lung disease.
Authority
thumb|NIOSH's Taft Laboratory in [[Cincinnati in 1976]]
thumb|NIOSH's Byrd Laboratory in [[Morgantown, West Virginia in 2017]]
thumb|NIOSH's laboratory in [[Spokane, Washington in 2018]]
Unlike its counterpart, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, NIOSH's authority under the Occupational Safety and Health Act () is to "develop recommendations for health and safety standards", to "develop information on safe levels of exposure to toxic materials and harmful physical agents and substances", and to "conduct research on new safety and health problems". NIOSH may also "conduct on-site investigations (Health Hazard Evaluations) to determine the toxicity of materials used in workplaces" and "fund research by other agencies or private organizations through grants, contracts, and other arrangements". Currently, NIOSH is the only body authorized to regulate respirators, and has trademark rights to the NIOSH air filtration ratings.
Programs
Major guidance publications
NIOSH determines recommended exposure limits and immediately dangerous to life or health levels for toxic chemicals and other hazards, which are published in various types of publications.
Criteria Documents contain recommendations for the prevention of occupational diseases and injuries. These documents are submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or the Mine Safety and Health Administration for consideration in their formulation of legally binding safety and health standards.
Current Intelligence Bulletins analyze new information about occupational health and safety hazards.
The NIOSH Manual of Analytical Methods contains recommended standard methods for collection, sampling and analysis of contaminants in the workplace and industrial hygiene samples, including air filters, biological fluids, wipes and bulks for occupationally relevant analytes.
The NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards informs workers, employers, and occupational health professionals about workplace chemicals and their hazards.
Field studies
NIOSH conducts field research through a number of programs:
- The Health Hazard Evaluation Program allows employees, employers, and labor unions can request assistance from the HHE program at no cost to them.
- The Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation program publishes occupational fatality data that are used to publish fatality reports by specific sectors of industry and types of fatal incidents.
- The Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program investigates specifically the causes of firefighter deaths on the job.
National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory
The National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory (NPPTL) is a research center within NIOSH located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, devoted to research on personal protective equipment (PPE). NPPTL was created in 2001 at the request of the U.S. Congress, in response to a recognized need for improved research in PPE technologies. It focuses on experimentation and recommendations for respirator masks, by ensuring a level of standard filter efficiency, and develops criteria for testing and developing PPE.
The laboratory conducts research and provides recommendations for other types of PPE, including protective clothing, gloves, eye protection, headwear, hearing protection, chemical sensors, and communication devices for safe deployment of emergency workers. It also maintains certification for N95 respirators, Its emergency response research is part of a collaboration with the National Fire Protection Association.
NIOSH Certified Equipment List
<!-- BEWARE! This section is transcluded by NIOSH air filtration rating -->
NPPTL is the designated publisher of the NIOSH Certified Equipment List, or CEL. The CEL is a public domain database that details the respirators currently approved by NIOSH, and is ordered separated based on type of respirator, which is designated with a schedule (e.g. TC-84A). The CEL was initially released in paper form on September 30, 1993. However, due to low usage of the paper CEL, as well as the increasing number of respirators approved by NIOSH, a Microsoft Access-based version of the CEL was released. Initial releases of the CEL had hose and pressure information for air-line respirators. This information had been eliminated due to concerns over users prioritizing the CEL over respirator documentation. Mining research done by NIOSH is primarily focused in two locations: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Spokane, Washington. The Pittsburgh site focuses on a larger scope of mine safety and health issues, including dust monitoring and control, mine ventilation, hearing loss prevention and engineering noise controls, diesel particulate monitoring and control, emergency response and rescue, firefighting and prevention, training research, ergonomics and machine safety, mine ground control, electrical safety, explosives safety, surveillance, and technology transfer. The Spokane site primarily focuses on metal and nonmetal mining. In 2015, it was administratively divided into two divisions by location, the Pittsburgh Mining Research Division and the Spokane Mining Research Division.
Compensation and support
NIOSH administers the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides medical benefits to specific groups of individuals who were affected by the September 11 attacks in 2001 against the United States. The WTC Health Program was established by Title I of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act in 2011.
Separately, for some claims for cancers that may have been caused by occupational radiation exposure filed under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, NIOSH's Division of Compensation Analysis and Support performs a radiation dose reconstruction. NIOSH requests the energy employee's individual exposure records, and interviews the claimant or survivors, and collects all relevant data regarding the individual's work site.
B Reader Program
NIOSH certifies physicians, known as B readers, qualified to read radiographic images of various occupational diseases, such as diseases caused by silica, asbestos, and coal dust. A list of B Readers can be found on the NIOSH website for the program. B Reader testimony has been used extensively in mesothelioma personal injury lawsuits.
Epidemiology and health surveillance
NIOSH has several programs in occupational epidemiology and workplace health surveillance, including:
- Adult Blood Lead Epidemiology and Surveillance
- National Firefighter Registry for Cancer
- SENSOR-Pesticides
Hearing protection
- Buy Quiet and Safe-in-Sound Award
- The NIOSH Power Tools Database contains sound power levels, sound pressure levels, and vibrations data for a variety of common power tools that have been tested by NIOSH researchers.
- The NIOSH Hearing Protection Device Compendium contains attenuation information and features for commercially available earplugs, earmuffs and semi-aural insert devices (canal caps).
Extramural programs
Education and Research Centers
right|thumb|Staff members at the NIOSH research center in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1978
NIOSH Education and Research Centers are multidisciplinary centers supported by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health for education and research in the field of occupational health. Through the centers, NIOSH supports academic degree programs and research opportunities, as well as continuing education for OSH professionals. The ERCs, distributed in regions across the United States, establish academic, labor, and industry research partnerships. The research conducted at the centers is related to the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) established by NIOSH.
Founded in 1977, NIOSH ERCs are responsible for nearly half of post-baccalaureate graduates entering occupational health and safety fields. The ERCs focus on industrial hygiene, occupational health nursing, occupational medicine, occupational safety, and other areas of specialization. At many ERCs, students in specific disciplines have their tuition paid in full and receive additional stipend money. ERCs provide a benefit to local businesses by offering reduced price assessments to local businesses.
Centers for Agricultural Safety and Health
The Centers for Agricultural Safety and Health (CASH) are a set of 12 NIOSH-funded agencies focused on occupational health in industry involving food or plant products, such as fishing, forestry, and agriculture. The agencies were established in 1990 under the Agricultural Health and Safety Initiative.
The National Agricultural Safety Database, which contains citations and summaries of scholarly journal articles and reports about agricultural health and safety, was developed through the CASH program.
Locations and organization
NIOSH has 12 divisions, distributed among eight locations across the United States.
Cincinnati
alt=A black-and-white aerial photograph of a long, narrow six-story building|thumb|NIOSH occupied the Robert A. Taft Center as its main facility in 1976. The building had opened in 1954 for the [[United States Public Health Service|PHS Environmental Health Divisions, which became the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and moved to a new facility.]]NIOSH's largest location is Cincinnati, which has two facilities. The first is the Robert A. Taft Laboratory in the Columbia-Tusculum neighborhood, which hosts the Division of Compensation Analysis and Support and Division of Science Integration.
The second Cincinnati facility is the Alice Hamilton Laboratory at 5555 Ridge Avenue in the Pleasant Ridge neighborhood, which hosts the Division of Field Studies and Engineering. PHS leased space in it beginning in 1962, and by 1973 the entire building was leased by the federal government. Its headquarters were established in Washington, D.C. in 1918, and field stations in Salt Lake City in 1949, and in Cincinnati in 1950.
Establishment
NIOSH was created by the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 NIOSH's initial headquarters were located in Rockville, Maryland.
The Appalachian Laboratory for Occupational Respiratory Diseases, which had been created within the PHS in 1967 to focus on black lung disease research, was incorporated into NIOSH, and its building in Morgantown, West Virginia was opened in 1971. NIOSH also continued to operate its Salt Lake City facility. The headquarters moved back to Washington, D.C. in 1994, though offices were maintained in Atlanta.
When the U.S. Bureau of Mines was closed in 1996, its research activities were transferred to NIOSH along with two facilities in the Pittsburgh suburbs and in Spokane, Washington. NIOSH preserved the administrative independence of these activities by placing them in the new Office of Mine Safety and Health Research. These were closed over time, and by 1989 there were regional offices only in Denver and Boston. The Alaska Field Station in Anchorage, Alaska was established in 1991 in response to the state having the highest work-related fatality rate, with Senator Ted Stevens playing a role in its establishment. It later become known as the Alaska Pacific Regional Office, and in 2015, the Denver, Anchorage, and non-mining Spokane staff joined into the Western States Division.
In 1996, a large addition was built to the Morgantown facility containing safety engineering and bench laboratories. A location for the new facility in the Avondale neighborhood was announced in 2017, and proposals from architectural and engineering firms were solicited in 2019.
In 2001, NIOSH was called upon to help clean up Capitol Hill buildings after the 2001 anthrax attacks.
In 2025, most NIOSH staff were fired and most of its departments were closed following orders by HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Directors
The following people were Director of NIOSH:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
!
!Image
!Director
!Term start
!Term end
!
|-
|1
|70px
|Marcus Key
|1971
|1975
|
|-
|2
|
|John Finklea
|1975
|1978
|
|-
|3
|
|Anthony Robbins
|1978
|1981
|
|-
|4
|70px
|J. Donald Millar
|1981
|1993
|
|- bgcolor="#e6e6aa"
|acting
|
|Richard Lemen
|1993
|1994
|
|-
|5
|70px
|Linda Rosenstock
|1994
|October 31, 2000
|
|- bgcolor="#e6e6aa"
|acting
|
|Lawrence J. Fine
|November 1, 2000
|June 2001
|
|- bgcolor="#e6e6aa"
|acting
|
|Kathleen Rest
|June 2001
|July 14, 2002
|
|-
|6a
|70px
|John Howard
|July 15, 2002
|July 14, 2008
|
|- bgcolor="#e6e6aa"
|acting
|
|Christine Branche
|July 15, 2008
|September 2, 2009
|
|-
|6b
|70px
|John Howard
|September 3, 2009
|April 1, 2025
|
|- bgcolor="#e6e6aa"
|acting
|
|Kelley Durst
|April 1, 2025
|May 13, 2025
|
|-
|6c
|70px
|John Howard
|May 13, 2025
|present
|
|-
|}
Table notes
See also
- National Fire Fighter Near-Miss Reporting System
- Prevention through design
- Occupational exposure banding
- Division of Industrial Hygiene
- N95 respirator
References
Further reading
- A Sideline Mushroomed - A summary of collaboration between LANL and NIOSH in the field of industrial hygiene
External links
- NIOSH account on USAspending.gov
- Global Environmental and Occupational Health e-Library online database of environmental health and occupational health and safety training materials