Studies on how workplace exposure to chemicals like formaldehyde and phthalates may harm reproductive health, an investigation into a possible cancer cluster at a state university, the only national program tracking blood lead levels in adults.
These are among the many casualties of the Trump administration's decision to level a research agency that has devoted much of its energy over the past five decades to reducing people's exposure to harmful chemicals and other dangerous conditions in the workplace.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, is expected to lose upwards of 900 employees — the vast majority of its staff — by the end of June as a result of the mass firings carried out by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
"It's been almost destroyed," says Dr. Robert Harrison, who directs the Occupational Health Services at the University of California San Francisco.
David Gergen, a journalist who served as a White House advisor to Republican and Democratic presidents,...
