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Four ways NIOSH’s Spokane Research Lab, now facing closure, has improved workers’ safety

In this image from a video recorded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a worker opens a thief hatch on top of an oil storage tank. The infrared camera shows a plume of dangerous fumes, invisible to the naked eye, that killed at least nine workers between 2010 and 2014 until NIOSH identified the pattern and intervened. (Screenshot from NIOSH video)
By Orion Donovan Smith orionds@spokesman.com(202) 853-2524

Spokane is home to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health’s biggest facility in the western United States, where researchers have worked to prevent harm to workers in mining, commercial fishing, wildland firefighting and other dangerous jobs.

Now, NIOSH’s Spokane Research Laboratory is at risk of closure after the Trump administration notified nearly all its employees in March that their jobs would be eliminated by the beginning of July. Those terminations are on hold after courts in California ruled that President Donald Trump’s mass firing of federal workers likely violated the Constitution, but the more than 80 employees in Spokane remain on paid administrative leave and their fate is unclear.

Facing pressure from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who leads NIOSH’s parent agency, has brought back about 300 of the 900 workers who were terminated – none of them in Spokane. The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions from The Spokesman-Review about the rationale for the mass firing and any plans to reinstate more workers.

Here are four examples of the research NIOSH employees in Spokane have conducted to improve safety for workers.

1. Protecting oil and gas workers from deadly fumes

For years, federal regulations required workers in the oil and gas industry to open hatches on top of huge storage tanks to take samples of the oil inside. In 2013, a doctor at the University of California, San Francisco contacted NIOSH and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a regulatory agency, about the deaths of two of those workers.

Working with the physician and OSHA, NIOSH researchers in Spokane used their database of fatalities in the oil and gas industry and found a total of nine similar deaths that occurred from 2010 to 2014. The deceased workers ranged in age from 20 to 63, and coroners attributed most of the deaths to heart disease, with no autopsy conducted in one case, but the NIOSH data showed a clear pattern. The truck drivers and other workers, who often worked alone, were found “collapsed over open hatch” or “slumped over on catwalk next to tank” – all while doing the same job task, “collecting sample” or “gauging.”

An undated image from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration shows a worker opening a “thief hatch” at the top of a storage tank to collect a sample of its contents. The practice caused at least nine deaths between 2010 and 2014 when fumes from the tanks engulfed workers, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. (Courtesy of OSHA)
An undated image from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration shows a worker opening a “thief hatch” at the top of a storage tank to collect a sample of its contents. The practice caused at least nine deaths between 2010 and 2014 when fumes from the tanks engulfed workers, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. (Courtesy of OSHA)

After NIOSH researchers identified the pattern of deaths, all likely due to workers opening a hatch and being engulfed in a plume of hydrocarbon gases and air that lacked oxygen, they worked with other federal agencies and the oil and gas industry to implement new regulations and safer methods of gauging the tanks’ contents.

2. Detecting airborne silica to prevent lung disease in miners

At hard-rock mines like Lucky Friday in the Silver Valley east of Coeur d’Alene miners can’t get to valuable minerals without blasting, crushing and grinding a lot of crystalline silica, the most common mineral on earth. But when a miner breathes in silica dust, it damages the lungs and causes silicosis, an incurable disease that causes severe breathing problems and can lead to death.

Images from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health show healthy lungs (left), lungs with simple silicosis (center) and lungs with complicated silicosis (right). Silicosis is an incurable disease caused by exposure to crystalline silica dust. (Courtesy of NIOSH)
Images from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health show healthy lungs (left), lungs with simple silicosis (center) and lungs with complicated silicosis (right). Silicosis is an incurable disease caused by exposure to crystalline silica dust. (Courtesy of NIOSH)

Currently, the standard method of measuring airborne silica involves sending a sample to a lab and waiting days or even weeks for a result, said Art Miller, a particle scientist who researched silica detection at the Spokane Research Lab until he retired in 2020. Miller and his colleagues at NIOSH facilities in Spokane and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have worked for years to develop faster methods of detecting dangerous levels of silica dust. The researchers have developed a tool that produces same-day test results, but a project in Spokane to create a wearable, real-time silica monitor that would immediately alert workers to dangerous levels of dust is now in jeopardy.

3. Making commercial fishing vessels safer

The NIOSH facility in Spokane houses the agency’s research on maritime safety, covering waters from Alaska’s Bering Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, which the Trump administration recently renamed as the Gulf of America.

After a 15-year-old boy working on a shrimp boat in the Gulf died in 2012 when his clothing got caught in a winch, the Coast Guard asked NIOSH to look into the prevalence of such entanglements and find a solution. Researchers found 35 severe injuries, eight of them fatal, had occurred on shrimping vessels between 2000 and 2011 when workers got entangled in winches used to haul nets out of the water. NIOSH designed guards to fit several common winch models and made them available to shrimpers.

A graphic from a report by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health shows prototype guards designed by NIOSH to prevent workers from getting entangled in winches on shrimp boats, following a series of major injuries and deaths between 2000 and 2011. (Courtesy of NIOSH)
A graphic from a report by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health shows prototype guards designed by NIOSH to prevent workers from getting entangled in winches on shrimp boats, following a series of major injuries and deaths between 2000 and 2011. (Courtesy of NIOSH)

The crab fishing season in the Bering Sea, made famous by the reality TV show “Deadliest Catch,” has long been one of the world’s most dangerous workplaces. From 1990 to 1999, an average of eight crab fishermen died each season. When NIOSH researchers analyzed the fatalities, they found that most were caused by boats capsizing because they were overladen with crab pots as they raced to maximize their catch in the brief season. Based on those findings, the Coast Guard began enforcing limits on crab pots, and fatalities in the still-dangerous industry fell to an average of one per year in the following 15 years.

4. Keeping miners safe deep underground

The Lucky Friday Mine in Mullan, owned by Coeur d’Alene-based Hecla Mining, has the deepest mine shaft in the world at more than 9,500 feet underground. The mine shut down for more than a year and required more than $30 million in upgrades after a rock burst and other accidents killed two miners and injured seven others in 2011.

In an undated photo provided by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH researcher Doug Scott inspects the aftermath of a rock burst at a deep underground hardrock mine in North Idaho. (Courtesy of NIOSH)
In an undated photo provided by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH researcher Doug Scott inspects the aftermath of a rock burst at a deep underground hardrock mine in North Idaho. (Courtesy of NIOSH)

NIOSH’s Spokane Mining Research Division has worked with companies to improve safety at Lucky Friday and other hard-rock mines in the western United States for decades, developing techniques and technologies that have been applied by miners around the world.

Brad Seymour, a NIOSH mining engineer and union steward in Spokane, started researching ground support methods to prevent deadly collapses in 1986, when the office was part of the now-defunct U.S. Bureau of Mines. Early in his career, he helped to improve cemented backfill techniques – filling underground voids with mill tailings and other material to prevent collapse – at the Cannon Mine in Wenatchee. Those improvements were adopted by other mines, he said, helping fuel a gold mining boom in Nevada in the 1990s and now improving safety and efficiency at North Idaho mines like Lucky Friday and the Galena Complex.