National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

**Mission and Goals**:
– Strategic goals include reducing occupational cancer, cardiovascular disease, adverse reproductive outcomes, chronic diseases, hearing loss, immune, infectious, and dermal diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, and respiratory diseases.
– Aim to improve workplace safety to reduce traumatic injuries and promote safe and healthy work design and well-being.

**Authority and Standards**:
– NIOSH does not issue enforceable safety and health standards but develops recommendations.
– Develops information on safe exposure levels to toxic materials and conducts research on new safety and health problems.
– May conduct on-site investigations to determine workplace material toxicity.

**Products and Publications**:
– Issues alerts to prevent, solve, and control new occupational hazards.
– Provides prevention recommendations through Criteria Documents and analyzes new information on health and safety hazards through Current Intelligence Bulletins.
– Databases like the National Agricultural Safety Database and NIOSH Power Tools Database offer scholarly articles and data on sound and vibrations for tools.

**Research and Development**:
– Conducts intramural and extramural research across various fields.
– Develops innovative solutions for work settings using knowledge obtained.
– Collaborates with specialized centers for programs and produces manuals, guides, and databases for workplace safety.

**Collaboration, Impact, and History**:
– Utilizes virtual centers and shared networks for collaboration, overcoming challenges of teamwork across distances.
– Provides national and global leadership in preventing work-related illnesses and collaborates with other agencies and organizations.
– NIOSH ERCs support education and research in occupational health, aligning with the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA).
– Traces its origins back to 1914 and has had notable directors like John Howard, Linda Rosenstock, and J. Donald Millar.