The Health Effects Laboratory Division (HELD) conducts focused, basic, applied, and preventive laboratory research for controlling and preventing workplace safety and health problems.

• The Health Effects Lab can best be described as science at work for people at work.
  The Health Effects Lab was formed in 1996 as the laboratory research arm of NIOSH, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. It is the strategic and performance leader in integrated laboratory research into the causes and mechanisms of occupational disease and injury. Our mission is to reduce risks for people at work by creating and communicating new laboratory-based knowledge of occupational illness and injury.
  
  
• Workplace risks vary enormously by industry and type of work done.
  Still, all threats depend on "causative agents," such as chemicals, and "mechanisms of action" by which agents interact with and harm workers. Health Effects Lab conducts research to discover causative agents of occupational disease and injury and determine how those agents act in workplaces. With agents and mechanisms known, prevention guidelines and control procedures can be developed. Over time, formal standards inform workplace owners how to operate without risk to workers.
  
  
• Achieving the required knowledge takes basic scientific research across a spectrum of disciplines.
  Health Effects Lab has over 200 employees operating across branches in allergy and clinical immunology, biostatistics and epidemiology, exposure assessment, engineering and control, pathology and physiology, and toxicology and molecular biology, each with several teams in sub-disciplines. All teams are located in a new state-of-the-art facility in West Virginia.
  
  
• Partnerships and interacting with stakeholders are critical to the Lab for conducting effective research.
  Health Effects Lab helps workplace owners by serving three distinct classes of stakeholder. Other scientists tap the Lab's body of scientific work for better constrained hypotheses, unique knowledge, novel and proven methods, and overall lower risk of project failure. Standards organizations use Lab science and engineering to produce standards that are evidence based, complete in depth and breath, implement-able, and credible to industry and labor reviewers. Uniform standards for control systems open broad markets attractive to developers of products and services. The Lab transfers technologies directly, and serves product developers indirectly with contributions to foundational science and standards.
  
  
• The goals for the Health Effects Laboratory Division for FY05-FY10 are to:
  
  1. Conduct research that provides workers, employers, researchers, occupational health practitioners, manufacturers, and those responsible for the dissemination of guidelines and standards with the capability to better assess and understand the relationship between work activities and worker health.
  2. Investigate the biological factors responsible for occupational health problems.
  3. Perform occupationally related research in the area of pathology and physiology.
  4. Research novel and improved techniques for assessing the exposure of workers principally to chemical, but also physical and biological hazards.
  5. Conduct basic and applied laboratory research in areas of immunology, allergy, and inflammation relevant to occupational diseases.
  6. Provide statistical design, analysis, and interpretation for experimental research in the Division and conduct collaborative observational research focused on introducing new laboratory-based technology into population-based studies.
  7. Promote the practical application of NIOSH research outcomes through active participation the r2p process.