The Division of Industrial Hygiene was a division of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) with responsibility for occupational safety and health programs. It existed from 1914 until 1971, when it became the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). It had several names during its existence, most notably the Office of Industrial Hygiene and Sanitation in its earlier years and the Division of Occupational Health during its later years.
It was established as a result of Progressive Era concerns for the conditions of workers, with the goal of providing scientific responses to hazards faced in the workplace. It was headquartered for its first few years in the Pittsburgh U.S. Marine Hospital, and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1918. Its responsibilities expanded during World War I, and during the 1920s its functions grew to include broad field studies integrating environmental analyses of hazards in workplaces with medical analyses of workers' health.
In 1937, it became a division of the National Institute of Health. The following year the Industrial Hygiene Laboratory, the first building built solely for the study of industrial hygiene in the U.S., opened as one of the first three buildings of the new NIH campus. The outbreak of World War II caused a shift away from field investigations to direct services to the U.S. Army Ordnance Department and state agencies to keep workers safe for war production, as well as an increase in laboratory research and development of analytical instrumentation.
The Division was moved into the new Bureau of State Services in 1943 as part of a reorganization of PHS, although the laboratory research programs were split off and remained in NIH. In 1950, its field operations moved to Cincinnati to co-locate with the PHS Environmental Health Center already established there. During the 1950s, its funding and activities were greatly reduced, and it was downgraded from division status, but in 1960 it was restored as a division and began to grow again.
An effort to build support for a national occupational health program culminated in the 1965 Frye Report, which recommended that the Division be given specific legislative authority and increased funding. However, the PHS reorganizations of 1966–1973 were particularly turbulent for occupational health programs, as the organization passed through seven operating agencies and bore four names during this time. Nevertheless, the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 give PHS national responsibility for medical research and examinations, its first legislatively mandated activity in occupational health. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 created NIOSH from the former Division.
Origins Background The Public Health Service first became involved with industrial hygiene during the Progressive Era, when concern for the conditions of workers arose in response to the increasing industrialization and urbanization that had occurred since the late 19th century. Before and during World War I, an increasing number of synthetic products were developed whose manufacture exposed workers to new toxins, increasing specialization of workers as part of an assembly line meant that an illness of one worker caused a greater loss of efficiency. This led to an increase in scientific research and interventions, as well as regulation by state factory inspection bureaus.
Increasing federal involvement in workplace safety included the creation of the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) in 1910 in response to the 1907 Monongah mining disaster, and the Department of Labor in 1913. PHS collaborated with USBM between 1910 and 1914 on studies of silicosis among miners, and in 1913 performed a study of worker health at U.S. Steel. During this period, public health as a whole had been revolutionized by advances in bacteriology and the study of communicable diseases. During the 1910s and 1920s, PHS would pioneer the application of scientific analysis to industrial chemical poisonings and dust diseases. However, the federal response to worker health problems was limited to conducting and disseminating research, with regulatory responsibility belonging to state and local public health agencies.
Establishment
The 1912 PHS law () expanded PHS's mission from communicable into non-communicable diseases. The Office of Field Investigations into Occupational Diseases was established in 1914 as part of the PHS Division of Scientific Research, administratively within its Hygienic Laboratory. In 1917, it was renamed the Office of Field Investigations in Industrial Sanitation.
In 1915, the Pittsburgh U.S. Marine Hospital became its first home. Laboratories for chemistry, physiology, and bacteriology were constructed on the building's second floor, and a physical laboratory on the ground floor, all in the northwest wing of the building. It was the first laboratory for scientific investigation of occupational health in the United States. Its location was likely due to proximity to the recently established Bruceton Research Center of USBM, enhancing cooperation on miners' health. In addition, there were no suitable laboratory facilities in Washington, D.C., as the Hygienic Laboratory at the time only conducted biological and not environmental investigations.
Prior to World War I, the Office's staff consisted of about 12 commissioned medical officers plus additional clerical assistants. The Office's initial studies were in the New York garment industry, the Youngstown, Ohio steel industry, various industries of Cincinnati, and mining in Joplin, Missouri. Epidemiological studies of miners in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri were seminal in the scientific study and control of occupational diseases. Additionally, the Office assisted the U.S. Bureau of Standards in creating a National Gas Safety Code by performing laboratory studies to determine a "toxic limit" for carbon monoxide.
The responsibilities of the Office expanded during World War I. Its new activities included sanitation and surgical services for the U.S. Explosive Plant at Nitro, West Virginia, and studies of medical facilities and worker healthcare in 170 war manufacturing plants for TNT, tetryl, picric acid, war gases, and other materials, as well as in shell loading plants. Other studies during the war covered lead poisoning in the pottery industry, health hazards in the glass and chemical industries, industrial fatigue, plant illumination, and the physiological effects of high temperature and humidity. During the war, the Office often performed field studies to provide individualized recommendations for a particular workplace, though it did not issue general recommendations.
Washington, D.C. era The Office relocated to Washington, D.C. in October 1918. From July 1918 to October 1919, the Office was reconstituted as the Division of Industrial Hygiene and Medicine within the Department of Labor, returning to PHS afterwards as a constituent part of the Division of Scientific Research. On July 1, 1919, it was renamed the Office of Industrial Hygiene and Sanitation.
There were still no laboratory facilities for industrial hygiene in Washington, so technical staff was assigned to various academic institutions, such as Yale and Johns Hopkins University, and to USBM. Temporary field offices were set up in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Chicago. During this period, PHS facilities in Washington, D.C. consisted of the Butler Building and Temporary Building C, until it moved to the new Public Health Service Building in May 1933. Additionally, the Old Naval Observatory housed the campus of the Hygienic Laboratory, which in 1930 became the National Institute of Health.
Early activities
In the 1920s, the Office shifted from individualized wartime field studies to broader field studies intended for wide publication to other occupational health experts, and also grew beyond clinical studies of workers to include study of factors in the work environment. Its projects included evaluating hazards and developing ventilation design specifications for the Holland Tunnel, as well as studies to determine health effects and develop engineering controls for dusts of silica, marble, asbestos, and coal. These studies involved the first use of the Greenburg–Smith impinger for dust sampling, and included the first epidemiological study of the pulmonary effects of coal mine dust.
The Office conducted medical examinations of U.S. Bureau of Standards employees who were exposed to radium, produced one of the earliest documented reports on heat stress, and conducted early studies of community air pollution. The Office also facilitated the start of industrial hygiene departments in the individual states. Another effort was the development of cyanogen chloride as a safer alternative to hydrogen cyanide as a fumigant.
The Office led a 1925–1926 study on the health effects of tetraethyl lead in gasoline to propose regulations covering its manufacture, blending, mixing, and distribution, as well as precautions for automobile garages, repair shops, service stations, and filling stations. These proposals were voluntarily adopted by tetraethyl lead manufacturers, and remained in use (with modifications) for decades. The tetraethyl lead study has been called the culmination of industrial hygiene's development as a scientific field: integrating both environmental and clinical analyses to provide objective technical information, rather than directly advocating for regulatory or policy changes. This approach would persist until World War II.
Great Depression
The onset of the Great Depression brought almost a complete cessation of field investigations. However, after the 1934 Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster, in which many workers died of silicosis, the Office's prior studies were instrumental in state governments establishing hygienic standards for silica dust. Also, a study of mercury poisoning in the felt hat industry led to its outlawing as a carroting agent and its substitution with a non-toxic substance. The Division also began offering training courses in 1936. Nevertheless, other occupational diseases were considered to be low-incidence or non-disabling, and received less attention from public health officials than sanitation and communicable diseases.
The formation of the Division of Labor Standards within the Department of Labor in 1934 led to competition between the two agencies over whether a regulatory or advisory agency should coordinate state and local industrial hygiene agencies, with PHS emphasizing its role as a non-partisan provider of scientific data, while the Department of Labor actively advocated for labor unions' efforts to improve work conditions. The Social Security Act of 1935 provided funds that PHS used for seed grants for state industrial hygiene agencies; an early project was a 15-state industrial hygiene survey. Before 1936, only five state health departments had industrial hygiene units, but by 1938, 24 states had established offices using Social Security Act funds, and by 1949 only three states would lack such units. This expansion of industrial hygiene in state health departments often came at the expense of state labor departments, as the Department of Labor did not have its own grantmaking authority for state governments, and a 1939 attempt to give them this authority failed.
As of 1937, the South Building of the National Institute of Health's campus at the Old Naval Observatory was being renovated for the Office's use, although at the time the Office was not part of NIH.
At the National Institute of Health