References to “Climate Change” Removed from CDC Website

References to “Climate Change” Removed from CDC Website

In late 2016, following the presidential election, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website was changed to remove references to “climate change.” The changes affected at least four webpages maintained by the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which detailed how climate change influences worker health and safety. One of the four pages was removed and the other three were amended to:

• delete references to “climate change” or replace them with alternative terms (e.g., “climate variation”);
• delete content discussing the relationship between climate change and human health; and
• delete links to other online resources and documents discussing climate change.

According to a report in the Washington Post, the CDC described the website changes as “planned updates,” but many suspect they “were made by agency employees looking to keep the Obama-era, climate-focused program below the radar and avoid drawing a new president’s ire.”