Point of information: The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducts investigations into workplace illnesses and is part of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which in turn is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, a federal agency. Thus, people can and have been using the two acronyms NIOSH and CDC interchangeably. This also explains why the letter from the NIOSH investigator who dealt with NC State is on US Department of Health and Human Services letterhead.
Summary of the situation (TL;DR)
We have dueling public narratives: CDC/NIOSH have clearly stated that NC State stopped their investigation into the Poe Hall PCB contamination and cancer cluster issue due to a lack of cooperation from NC State. In reply, NC State has issued a series of carefully crafted and confusing statements which dance around the issue and imply that NIOSH stopped their investigation of their own volition without explaining what really happened.
It’s clear that NIOSH has no incentive one way or the other to investigate. They can only investigate public sector workplaces when the workplace allows it. Given their workload, it’s not a big deal to them if a public workplace passes on their assistance.
NC State, on the other hand, is looking at a liability of at least 100 million dollars. I base this estimate on the number of cancer cases found thus far (101) and information from a colleague that under state tort law each of us is limited to $1 million in damages. I know of several faculty who have retained lawyers, and a law firm is already advertising for Poe Hall clients!
The University also faces intense faculty anger over the lack of transparency and the fact that faculty and staff have complained about environmental problems in Poe Hall for years, anger so intense that the College of Education faculty have called for votes of no confidence in College of Education and University leadership.
Clearly, NCSU wants this whole thing to disappear and does not want anyone to find out they stopped an independent federal investigation over which they would have no control, in favor of a private company under their thumb.
A review of the evidence
A letter from NIOSH states:
- “ … the North Carolina State University’s Office of General Counsel has asked us to stop our evaluation …”
- “Because … the university did not want assistance from the HHE program [HHE stands for Health Hazard Evaluation and is NIOSH’s name for their investigation], we are not able to proceed further.”
- “NIOSH received two requests for a Health Hazard Evaluation (HHE) regarding Poe Hall at North Carolina State University (NCSU). The first request was from NCSU. NIOSH had an initial meeting with the requestors to discuss the HHE request in November 2023. NCSU’s general counsel withdrew the request in January 2024. The second request was from three NCSU employees.
- “ … NIOSH does not have the authority to proceed with its evaluation without the cooperation of NCSU.”
So, the government has said that 1) Two requests were made for federal investigations: one by the University and one by employees, 2) NC State in some way stopped or prevented NIOSH from investigating, and 2) the University refuses to cooperate with federal investigators.
The Chancellor’s baffling public response
In an email to the community yesterday, Chancellor Woodson said “At no point since we began evaluating the building did the university withdraw the Health Hazard Evaluation confidentially requested by employees.”
Note the very careful wording. He refers to the HHE request by employees. But the CDC Press Office said there were two requests, one from employees and one from the University. Why does he not mention the University’s request? Moreover, the University has no power over a request made by employees directly to the agency. We all know his statement was crafted by legal counsel, and apparently it was crafted to deliberately mislead us about the University’s actions.
Note that he had the opportunity to explicitly deny in writing what the CDC and NIOSH have said but did not.
The Provost begins to squirm
I posted previously about how the Provost’s and General Counsel’s comments to the Faculty Senate meeting this week on the federal investigation of Poe hall were at best deliberately misleading.
The Provost also issued a statement about the hubbub, saying “The language in the memo referencing the closure of a confidentially requested Health Hazard Evaluation (HHE) does not align with our understanding of the process with NIOSH.” Wow, you could drive a train through the phrase “does not align.”
Note that he had the opportunity to explicitly deny in writing what the CDC and NIOSH have said but did not.
The University used an external law firm, not the Office of General Counsel, to issue a misleading statement
NCSU had an external law firm send a letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services partially challenging what CDC and NIOSH have said. What is bizarre is that it did not come from NC State’s Office of General Counsel, and it was signed by an attorney, not the Chancellor. Note that this protects the Chancellor and General Counsel Newhart from having to defend the statements in the letter to the faculty or in future litigation.
The letter starts off by denying that NC State has had any contact with the CDC! Yet a simple Google search reveals that NIOSH is one of the “centers” that makes up the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It goes on to say that a member of the NC State Office of General Counsel had a phone call with NIOSH, including Dr. Dallas Shi, on January 18th. Note the timeline: NIOSH issued the letter stating that NC State closed the investigation on January 22nd, and the author of the letter was Dr. Dallas Shi.
During the call, NC State told NIOSH that “Poe Hall remained closed and only open to properly trained personnel with appropriate personal protective equipment for essential activities (i.e., sampling, repairs, maintenance).” NC State explained they had hired a firm for testing.
Then it gets really weird. The next sentence is “In response, NIOSH informed NC State that it preferred to close HHEs [their investigation] rather than pausing them.”
The attorney deliberately left out quite a bit of what transpired in that phone conversation between Poe Hall is closed and NIOSH doesn’t want to pause the investigation. So what exactly happened that would force NIOSH to pause their investigation? Clearly, they had to pause in response to something NC State did. Otherwise, the investigation would have continued. Here are some possibilities:
- NIOSH refused to have their personnel wear personal protective equipment while in the building. This seems far-fetched – a team from the CDC refusing to wear PPE???
- NCSU denying NIOSH investigators access to Poe Hall because they are not “properly trained personnel” as described above. This is ludicrous: NIOSH personal have far more expertise than the private firm hired by NC State to investigate.
- NCSU denying NIOSH investigators access to Poe Hall because they were not conducting “essential activities.” This also seems ludicrous: what could be more essential than looking into the reasons the building was shut down?
The logical explanation is that NC State denied federal investigators access to Poe Hall, probably on the pretext that they already had their own people taking samples. Of course, there is no reason why both teams could not work side by side, but the university needed some reason to keep federal investigators out of the building.
Then the university suggested that NIOSH “pause” their investigation, because they knew it would cause a shitstorm when news came out that a federal investigation of Poe Hall was shut down. NIOSH doesn’t pause investigations, so they closed it. This allowed the Provost to tell the Faculty Senate, “ … we never asked for any case to be closed by NIOSH,” even though NC State’s actions forced NIOSH to close their investigation.
Once NIOSH was told they could not enter Poe Hall, they drew the conclusion that ANY reasonable person would conclude: NC State stopped the investigation. And they interpreted their refusal to cooperate as a withdrawal of their request for an HHE.
Ask yourself this question: Why was NIOSH welcomed with open arms by UNC Hospitals but for some reason they are not currently on campus investigating Poe Hall? Any why hasn’t the University leadership explained why NIOSH shut down their investigation?
