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Some 9/11 archetypal responders near successful limbo
Nearly each of the remaining unit astatine the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health were laid disconnected Friday, aggregate officials and laid-off employees told CBS News, gutting programs ranging from approvals of caller information instrumentality to firefighter health.
Much of the enactment astatine NIOSH, an limb of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had already stalled aft an archetypal circular of layoffs connected April 1 astatine the bureau ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
New requests for investigations of firefighter injuries and workplace health hazards had already stopped being accepted. A CDC program to help Texas schools curb the dispersed of measles infections was besides scrapped owed to the layoffs.
NIOSH employees receiving layoff notices precocious Friday included immoderate workers for the World Trade Center Health Program, miner safety, and firefighter wellness programs. Workers for those programs had been asked to temporarily instrumentality to enactment for different period oregon two, aft pleas from members of Congress.
Layoff notices received by workers Friday were astir identical to those received successful the archetypal circular of Kennedy's cuts, which said that their duties "have been identified arsenic either unnecessary oregon virtually identical to duties being performed elsewhere successful the agency."
An organizational illustration obtained by CBS News, annotated by a radical of NIOSH staff, showing the divisions that were eliminated by the layoffs.
CBS News
The main quality with Friday's layoff notices was the day they instrumentality effect: workers are being enactment connected permission until an authoritative separation from work connected July 2, alternatively of successful June.
The layoffs besides stopped enactment astatine the agency's National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory. This NIOSH part had been the authorities assemblage tasked with vetting information instrumentality similar N95 masks and breathing devices utilized by exigency workers.
The laboratory's respirator support programme had been successful the mediate of processing astir 100 applications for idiosyncratic protective equipment, 1 laid-off authoritative said.
Stalled enactment includes changes needed to conscionable caller standards issued by the National Fire Protection Association for this year. No instrumentality is presently certified to conscionable those standards, nor has the bureau been capable to contented refunds to exertion fees paid for by manufacturers.
Efforts to spot and pass of counterfeit idiosyncratic protective instrumentality was besides halted owed to the layoffs, officials said.
"Millions of workers crossed assorted sectors - including healthcare, construction, and exigency services - beryllium connected NIOSH-approved respirators. Without these approvals, their information is compromised, starring to imaginable illness, injury, oregon adjacent death," laid-off employees wrote successful a missive shared with CBS News.
It is unclear what volition hap to the agency's enactment present that astir of its teams person been eliminated. HHS did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.
Alexander Tin is simply a integer newsman for CBS News based successful the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers national nationalist wellness agencies.
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