Employees whose work focused on childhood lead exposure and cancer clusters were among those terminated from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a former staffer.
The ex-employee told The Hill that approximately 200 people — the entire permanent staff — at the CDC’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice (DEHSP) were cut.
Scientists, epidemiologists, and grant program administrators were reportedly among the workers who were let go from the DEHSP, which is housed within the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health.
Tasked with such issues as climate change and health, childhood lead poisoning, cancer clusters and asthma and air pollution, The Hill’s source said that the work their former division does is vital to protecting public health.
They pointed out that the division helped discover that applesauce pouches popular with children were contaminated with lead and noted that it had staff who would have been able to help respond in the event of a nuclear attack.
“Within this division, we house all the experts who do things like chemical, radiological or nuclear response activities,” the person said. “So, for example, if there were a nuclear detonation within the United States, or a dirty bomb, our division would be the one who would lead that response. Those people were targeted as well. There are no survivors.”
The division may still have contractors, they said, but there are no employees left for them to work with.
But an internal email from National Center for Environmental Health Director Ari Bernstein, obtained by Politico’s E&E News, shows that the division had “been slated to be eliminated in its entirety.”
The center’s former director, Patrick Breysse, predicted the layoffs would have long-term repercussions.
“There was just the wholesale elimination of the division that eliminates, essentially, the program that protects children from lead, from air pollution and asthma, from emergencies like fires,” Breysse told The Hill.
“People are going to suffer from this for decades,” he added.
The DEHSP firings come amid a wave of cuts at the CDC and its overarching Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Newsmax reached out to HHS for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
As part of the Trump administration’s effort to shrink the size of the federal government, the department is also looking to shed approximately 10,000 additional employees.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has maintained that the cuts are a necessary part of his plan to “make America healthy again,” but critics say the nation’s health will suffer as a result.
“This is not the way we make America healthy again,” National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences former Director Linda Birnbaum told The Hill. “This is how we make America sick again.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.