Wellness & Well-being Highlights April 21st

Wellness & Well-being Highlights

for the

Week of Apr 21, 2025

This week’s edition of our Worker Wellness & Well-being blog looks at how binge drinking impacts women more than men—to an essay on eating disorders—to a Whistleblower exposing security breaches at the NLRB. This week I would like to take this opportunity to examine how cuts at NIOSH will endanger workers.

For the past +40 years, I have been involved with worker safety in the construction industry…here and abroad. While I must admit that the first 30 of those years were mainly focused on the physical aspects of safety, in the past decade, US-DOL’s OSHA has made strides in emphasizing the mental aspects of safety. Nonetheless, many of these improvements were brought about because of unbiased research performed at institutions such as Duke University, St. Louis University, Washington University, and the University of Iowa via grants from NIOSH (mostly due to NABTU-CPWR’s leadership).

Make no mistake, these latest cuts in Washington, DC will eventually have a negative impact on US workers. As noted by Blackwood, “Without NIOSH, workplaces will become more dangerous, and more workers will die.”[1] In addition, Davis et al, proclaim, “When you remove a keystone from an arch, the whole thing will collapse. The same is true for key federal agencies that provide support resulting in benefits well in excess of the investment in them.”[2]

To this end, industries, like construction, are great examples of how dangers have been mostly eliminated and, thus, more workers come home safely today than 60 years ago. In fact, more progressive construction owners/buyers, contractors, unions, and JATCs have invested millions of dollars and hours in safety-related resources…from designating and skilling up personnel to purchasing the latest equipment to offering ongoing and updated trainings.

Enough is enough! It is only a matter of time when DC’s cuts result in a death of a fellow worker. In the words of MLK, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Will you take a stand?

Sources: [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gutting-niosh-endangers-every-u-s-worker/

[2] https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/16/niosh-cdc-workforce-layoffs-h5n1-bird-flu-worker-safety-occupational-health/

MH / Bullying / Workplace

Employees & Quiet Cracking

Rethinking ADHD

MT / Mental Illness / Homelessness

Mental Illness / Jail / Starving

Danger: Today’s Meth

RFK Jr / Autism / Epidemic?

Addressing Eating Disorders

Binge Drinking: Women v Men