Thousands of Urine and Tissue Samples Are in Danger of Rotting After Staff Cuts at a CDC Laboratory

WIRED

17-04-2025

Apr 17, 2025 11:48 AM Workers who recently lost their jobs at the National Institute for Occupational Safety say they're concerned that there's no plan for managing biological samples tied to research projects. Photo-illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images
Seven federal workers who abruptly lost their jobs in recent weeks say they are worried that thousands of biological samples—from human urine to frozen rodent organs—may be left to rot in a government laboratory in West Virginia. The workers left behind the samples, which they say include lungs, spleens, and brains collected from rats and mice, after the Trump administration laid off or placed on administrative leave about two-thirds of the staff working at facilities managed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) earlier this month.
The NIOSH researchers collected the tissue samples as part of experiments to determine how Americans may be impacted by chemicals and other substances they are exposed to at their jobs. Some of the samples are stored in a refrigerator that needs to be kept at -112 Farenheit at all times, while others are stored in liquid nitrogen. Unless someone inside the federal government continues to ensure the liquid nitrogen doesn't totally evaporate, the samples will eventually defrost and begin to rot, according to three staff researchers who work with such materials.
'You can't really store them very long in a regular freezer—they won't be viable,' says Kyle Mandler, a toxicologist at the Morgantown NIOSH facility who was placed on administrative leave during the recent so-called reduction in force at the agency. 'That clock is ticking, and every day is closer.'
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has historically overseen NIOSH, referred WIRED's questions about the fate of the samples to the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS declined to comment on the record. But hours after WIRED contacted the agency, a current NIOSH staffer said that some remaining employees were abruptly told by higher-ups that the liquid nitrogen levels were being 'monitored.'
One NIOSH researcher who lost their job tells WIRED that if the samples aren't left to rot, they will probably be destroyed—a process that would involve placing them into biohazard bags and paying a third-party company to incinerate them. It's unclear what may happen to other materials in the lab, such as chemicals used in experiments. The researcher said that a large shipment of chemicals had arrived the morning of the layoffs.
The Morgantown facility also houses historical tissue samples, including what the CDC describes as a ''time capsule' of diseased human lungs from black lung victims. Current and former NIOSH employees who spoke to WIRED say they are not aware of any plans for these samples. 'I have seen and held those samples in my hands,' Mandler tells WIRED. 'There is nothing like that tissue bank anywhere in the world.'
Created as part of the Occupational Safety and Health Act signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970, NIOSH is responsible for conducting research into causes of work-related injuries and deaths. It also helps inform federal workplace regulations, such as safe exposure levels for various toxic substances.
In late March, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that NIOSH would be moved from the CDC to a new entity called the 'Administration for a Healthy America' as part of a 'dramatic restructuring' plan that would involve eliminating 10,000 full-time employees at HHS.
Cathy Tinney-Zara, a worker at NIOSH's Pittsburg facility who spoke to WIRED in her capacity as the union representative, says that before they lost their jobs, the researchers at the Morgantown facility had been actively studying how Gulf War soldiers were affected by exposure to Mustard Gas, how pregnant workers have been affected by exposure to PFAS chemicals, and how manufacturing workers contract lung fibrosis after inhaling nanoparticles.
Two Morgantown researchers—who like others in this story, asked to remain anonymous to avoid professional repercussions—say that their laid off colleagues were also researching how agricultural workers are impacted by inhaling dust from hemp plants, and a possible link between exposure to chemical disinfectants and asthma. The lab was also about to begin developing a rapid toxicity test for chemicals that US troops may be exposed to while they are deployed.
Mandler says he was researching why some people who manufacture, cut, and install stone countertops were starting to get silicosis—a potentially fatal lung scarring and inflammation disease that makes it difficult to breathe—after just a few years on the job. Generally, he says, workers tend to get the disease after spending decades in the field.
'I have listened to men younger than me sit across the table and talk about how they feel like they're drowning in their own lungs because of these exposures, and they can't see their children grow up,' Mandler says.
He adds that some of the NIOSH staffers who lost their jobs were testing how lung tissue reacts after being exposed to the dust from different brands of commercial synthetic quartz. The material, commonly used in countertops, is thought to cause more severe lung damage than exposure to pure natural quartz, Mandler says. He believes something in the manufacturing process may be to blame, but now that his research team at NIOSH has been dismantled, Mandler fears it will take longer for the scientific community to find the root cause.
Three Morgantown researchers who were affected by the job cuts tell WIRED that they have not received any information about who would be in charge of the facility's biological samples after the reduction in force, how custody of them could be transferred, or what their ultimate fate may be. Since entire divisions at NIOSH were eliminated, one researcher says, they don't even know who could take responsibility for the samples they oversaw at the facility.
Another researcher says that when the layoffs happened, the only instruction they received was 'to destroy our purchase and travel cards, and maintenance was available to help us take personal items to our cars.'
The researcher says that CDC guidelines direct employees to keep physical samples and accompanying personally-identifiable information under lock and key, and only certain authorized staff are permitted to access them. 'My colleagues and I took this responsibility very seriously,' the researcher tells WIRED. 'Many are worried about samples and what will become of them, sensitive and otherwise.'
Even before the recent reduction in force, Mandler and two other laid off researchers say that a federal spending freeze ordered by the Trump administration in January had reduced the Morgantown facility's supply of liquid nitrogen to 'critical' levels. It took several weeks to restart the shipments.
In addition to samples taken from rodents, NIOSH's frozen tissues include commercially produced immortalized cell lines—cells that can proliferate indefinitely and enable small tissue samples to grow into larger ones that can more easily be experimented on. Mandler tells WIRED that one small vial of immortalized cells cost about $600, and his team alone had almost 100 of them ready to use before they abruptly got laid off. Across all of the different research teams at NIOSH, Mandler estimates that the frozen vials and tissue samples they have bought would be worth 'millions of dollars' in total.
The mice and rat cells come from live animals housed directly inside the Morgantown facility, which are usually cared for by a veterinarian and other support staff. The lab's Morgantown's attending veterinarian, Stephen Harvey, also lost his job as part of the reduction in force, according to a comment he made on LinkedIn.
Mandler says that, despite losing his job, Harvey has continued to work and care for the animals. Harvey declined an interview request from WIRED, but said in a LinkedIn message that the lab has 'not euthanized any animals' and is trying to 'find good solutions for them.' Tinney-Zara says that about 600 of the approximately 700 rodents at the Morgantown lab have been relocated to a nearby university.
One researcher at NIOSH's Pittsburgh facility—whose work has focused on developing and modifying machines for monitoring the amount of dust and chemicals in the air—says they fear expensive instruments purchased by the government could also go to waste across different NIOSH facilities.
The researcher says that hundreds of machines in NIOSH's Pittsburgh facility, many of which are worth tens of thousands of dollars, have to be used, calibrated, and serviced frequently in order to continue working properly. They point specifically to a device called an X-ray diffractometer, an instrument for identifying the elements in small physical samples, which they say is supposed to run constantly.
From their firsthand experience during COVID, the researcher says they know that fixing a long-dormant machine is expensive and can take many weeks, if it succeeds at all. Now, they worry that these instruments, and their specialized testing capabilities, will be abandoned and go to waste.
'We could be in a situation to leave behind millions of dollars of equipment and infrastructure in the labs,' the researcher tells WIRED.