The History and future of NIOSH Morgantown

Details

• Personal Author:
  Headley, Tanya ; Shahan, Katie
• Corporate Authors:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Description:
  Occupational safety and health research has deep roots in Morgantown. In 1967, the Appalachian Laboratory for Occupational Respiratory Diseases (ALFORD) was created within the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) to focus on a prominent problem of the Appalachian occupational environment–”black lung disease” in coal miners. ALFORD’s director was Dr. W. Keith Morgan. The lab was initially housed in the West Virginia University (WVU) Health Sciences Center, and its research focused on detecting black lung disease and assessing its physiological effects. In 1969, work began on a new facility for ALFORD on 4.6 acres of land donated by WVU to PHS. In the same year, the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 (Coal Act) was passed. The Coal Act mandated a range of measures to protect coal miners, including limits on coal mine dust exposures and a program providing medical screening with chest radiographs to coal miners at operators’ expense.
• Subjects:
  Accident Prevention Accidents, Occupational CDC--history History, 20th Century History, 21st Century NIOSH--history Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Safety
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Blogs
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Pages in Document:
  https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2014/04/21/morgantown/
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:na
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:25a430321d70fb8a1422b7537329789a276509991f1355fa82773baf040393e784a41ece56b65daf186c2e5a38439de950f56b45bb735a627a9029bbb43570ce
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/102671/cdc_102671_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 185.36 KB ]