Five former NIOSH and MSHA administrators sent a letter to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson last week to protest the Center for Disease Control's plan to move the National Institute for Occupational Safety deeper into the bureaucracy of the CDC. The CDC's new reorganization plan includes the decision to cluster NIOSH with several environmental health agencies into the Coordinating Center for Environmental Health, Injury Prevention, and Occupational Health, one of four coordinating centers that will report directly to the CDC administrator. The former administrators were joined by a wide range of individuals and organizations, including the United Auto Workers, American Association of Occupational Health Nurses, American Industrial Hygiene Association, AFL-CIO, and the NIOSH Board of Scientific Counselors, who charged that the move will curtail NIOSH's autonomy, undermine its influence on regulation, and perhaps impact its budget. Furthermore, concern was raised that the move fails to meet the intent of Congress as set out in the Occupational Safety and Health Act. "Clustering NIOSH with a number of environmental health programs would undo the intent of Congress and place it essentially where it was thirty-four years ago," the board members of NIOSH's Board of Scientific Counselors stated in a letter to CDC Director Julie Gerberding. NIOSH was established by the href="http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owasrch.search_form?p_doc_type=OSHACT&p_toc_level=0&p_keyvalue=">Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 as a separate institute that reported directly to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare with the mission "to conduct research, experiments, and demonstrations, develop plans, establish criteria, promulgate regulations, authorize programs, and publish results and industrywide studies." President Gerald Ford later moved NIOSH under the CDC, even though occupational health and safety has very little to do with the CDC's primary goals of disease control and prevention. Moving NIOSH deeper into the CDC would only further de-emphasize the agency's importance, visibility and autonomy. Read Some Letters Opposing the Reorganization of NIOSH:

• href="http://www.aaohn.org/public_policy/in_action/letters/CDC_Reorg_AAOHN _Response.cfm">American Association of Occupational Health Nurses Letter
• American Society of Safety Engineers Letter
• href="http://list.mc.duke.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0407&L=occ-env-med-l&F=&S=& P=7977">AFL-CIO Letter