“We all gathered in the hallway, and we were like, ‘What does this mean for my research?’ ” says Micah Niemeier-Walsh, a Niosh union officer who studies firefighting hazards for the agency in Cincinnati. In Pittsburgh staffers scrambled to complete a guide to spotting faulty personal protective equipment (PPE) and to document the dangerous chemicals in their lab so someone could safely dispose of them. In Morgantown, West Virginia, scientists called around in search of new homes for their lab animals. The mice they couldn’t relocate were euthanized.