The US mining industry needs NIOSH

On April 1, hundreds of scientists, researchers and support staff at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) including nearly the entire Mining Program received Reduction in Force (RIF) notices as executed by the Trump administration. Health and safety research for the mining industry landed at NIOSH after the 1996 Congressional decision to cease funding of the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM). Since then, NIOSH has been the only federal agency engaged in research and technical development to advance miner health and safety. It is possible that the decision could be reversed or that in time, some of employees could be called back to duty, but as this issue of Mining Engineering went to press the decision was still in place. It is a decision that will reverberate through the entire domestic mining industry. For example, within a week of the RIF emails being sent, the nation’s 14 mining universities began receiving notice that federal grants administered by NIOSH were being canceled. These mining programs are heavily dependent on the approximately $10 million of research funding that comes through NIOSH. For some programs, these funds make up about 60 percent of their annual budget. Hugh Miller, professor at the Colorado School of Mines said the impacts of the NIOSH cuts will hurt the universities’ ability to continue important reasearch and will also extend beyond academia. “The expertise at NIOSH in a variety of areas has been built over a number of years. So with the closure of the NIOSH labs the question becomes where will that expertise go?” The U.S. Mine, Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is also impacted by the cuts. MSHA is part of the Department of Labor and relies on NIOSH for technical review of new technologies and safety regulations. The news of the cuts was even more shocking in that it arrived just days after President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order creating the National Energy Dominance Council (NDC). The NDC is charged with increasing domestic mineral production through the Defense Production Act to expedite permitting for priority mining projects on federal land. This, and a slew of other announcements from the White House have come as welcome news for the domestic mining industry. However, eliminating the arm of the federal government that is focused on preventing disasters and fatalities through research and collaboration with industry and academia is not only shortsighted but is also dangerous. “The loss of expertise from a nearly gutted program is tremendous,” said SME Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer Dave Kanagy. “The ripple effects in the mining industry will negatively impact everything from worker safety to mining innovation to research funding for mining engineering universities. For an administration that so recently committed to increasing mineral production, this is a puzzling move.” The importance of the work conducted by the NIOSH Mining Program cannot be overstated. Objections to the decision were quick with calls for U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy to reverse the order coming from a variety of voices. Among them, nearly 2,000 researchers and scientists from the National Academies. On April 7, they signed on to a letter that called on the Trump administration to halt this “wholesale assault on U.S. science.” Numerous politicians, including West Virginia Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito have also called on Kennedy to reinstate NIOSH as have labor unions representing miners. In a press release, the HHS said its restructuring plan will consolidate the 28 current HHS divisions into 15 new divisions to create the new Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) in an effort to make the federal government more efficient. But the gaps left by the closure of NIOSH are worrisome, to say the least. The U.S. mining industry currently does not have the capacity or talent to conduct health and safety research at the same level as the NIOSH Mining Program. And if the funding to the U.S. mining schools is not restored or quickly replaced by other entities it is very likely that some of the mining departments will not survive. This comes at a time in which the United States has fallen far behind in producing mining engineers. The NDC aims to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign nations for minerals but without NIOSH funding the United States might well find itself just as reliant on those same nations for the people to mine the minerals. If the research and functions provided by NIOSH is lost forever, or the scientists and researchers remain locked out I, and many others, fear the consequences will be dire and in some cases fatal. n

The US mining industry needs NIOSH

Authored by: William Gleason

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