When wildfire smoke wafted from Canada across large swaths of the U.S. in 2023, it served as a wake-up call for federal safety experts. They drafted recommendations to protect outdoor workers from increasingly prevalent smoke.
This time, the experts are on administrative leave.
That has left a void in the federal health response to the plumes of wildfire smoke that spread across the Midwest earlier this month. The workforce purge under President Donald Trump is also raising questions about whether the 350-page report that was issued after the 2023 fires would ever be finalized, a requirement before its recommendations for protecting workers can be implemented.
About 80 people who worked on the draft wildfire assessment are slated to be laid off from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that is responsible for researching how to prevent workplace injuries and death.
