Tim Ferretti was looking forward to burning two Tesla Model 3s.
The vehicle demolition and salvage safety consultant bought the cars to train firefighters on how to respond to electric vehicle fires. But now the training will miss a key participant: a researcher from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who collects air and soil samples as part of an effort to protect firefighters from dangerous chemicals.
The researcher was among 800 worker safety experts recently fired by the Department of Health and Human Services. The CDC’s firefighter health program no longer exists — another casualty of the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal workforce.
“I’m up in arms and angry about it,” Ferretti told POLITICO’s E&E News. “It is a dirty, nasty business in emergency response and demolition, and we need all the help we can get.”
Eliminating the firefighter health program was part of a massive restructuring at HHS, in which Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put 10,000 workers on administrative leave, with plans to lay them off in June. Another 10,000 employees took early retirement and voluntary separation offers, while more than 5,000 probationary employees were fired in February.
The cuts amount to some 18 percent of the HHS workforce and have resulted in the elimination of multiple programs, including those that work to prevent lead poisoning and help local health departments respond to extreme weather. CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) — which includes the firefighter program — was particularly hard hit, with nearly all of its departments eliminated.
The International Association of Fire Fighters union has pushed back on the elimination of the firefighter safety and health program. Union General President Edward Kelly said in a statement that he has spoken with the White House “to express our concerns about HHS’ actions” and “urge the administration to fully restore those vital programs.”
HHS has said the overhaul is necessary to fulfill its newfound priority of “ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness” by focusing on, among other things, “elimination of environmental toxins.”
But the agency did not respond to questions about the apparent disconnect between those priorities and eliminating all experts at NIOSH’s Center for Firefighter Safety, Health and Well-being, which focuses on protecting firefighters from cancer-causing chemicals. An HHS spokesperson who declined to be named said only that what remains of NIOSH will be moving out of the CDC to HHS’s newly created Administration for a Healthy America.
Cancer is the top cause of line-of-duty death in the fire service. Chemical cocktails inhaled or absorbed into skin while battling blazes give the nation’s roughly 400,000 career firefighters a 9 percent greater chance of being diagnosed with cancer and a 14 percent greater chance of dying from it than the general population, according to NIOSH.
“In firefighting, it’s always, ‘Guess what, this is bad,’ after you’ve been exposed to it for 40 years. It’s once the levels show up in people’s bloodstreams and they are dying of cancer that we do something about it,” Ferretti said. “But with electric cars, NIOSH was trying to be ahead of the game and stop a potential problem before it becomes a chronic issue.”
The Center for Firefighter Safety, Health and Well-being conducts research into a variety of hazards firefighters face, including chemical exposures from smoke and toxic substances in their firefighting gear, as well as specific risks posed by wildland firefighting. The center also helps investigate line-of-duty deaths and advises on how to prevent them, a job it was specifically assigned by Congress in 1998.
Micah Niemeier-Walsh is the NIOSH researcher who had been working with Ferretti to study electric car fires. They had planned to use samples collected at the Tesla burn to examine the best techniques for washing firefighter uniforms.
“Every type of fire has a different chemical composition, and you may need to protect yourself differently based on what burns,” Niemeier-Walsh said, speaking in their capacity as vice president of the AFGE Local 3840 union that represents the researchers and support staff at NIOSH’s Cincinnati offices. “Electric vehicles are a new type of fire we are trying to learn more about.”
The last time Ferretti burned electric cars, Niemeier-Walsh was there to collect air samples, and with swatches of firefighter uniforms to see how the smoke residue collected on them. The samples they collected were sent to multiple NIOSH labs for testing.
But Niemeier-Walsh said they can’t share the results with anyone — not even Ferretti, whose burning cars they tested — because they are on administrative leave.
“This is just one very specific problem for one industry, but in any industry, there are these same types of questions that my colleagues at NIOSH were studying,” they said.
The near-total elimination of NIOSH has alarmed labor groups, unions and occupational safety experts. Some 450 groups wrote a letter to Kennedy, President Donald Trump and congressional leaders last week urging the reversal of the “misguided” cuts “so that NIOSH’s vital mission continues, and its workforce can maintain efforts to keep Americans safe and well.”
“Rather than accept that working requires individuals to place their health and wellbeing at risk, we believe strongly that all occupations can be made safer through the prevention of work-related injuries and illnesses,” they wrote.
For his part, Ferretti is mourning the loss of critical data that could help firefighters protect themselves. He’s also not sure what he will do the next time his work brings him in contact with an unknown chemical.
“Calling NIOSH is like calling your big brother, it’s a great relationship,” he said. “They are in my rolodex of emergency calls — ‘Hey, I have to deal with this, how quickly am I going to die?’ — so, no. I’m just not understanding this.”
