David Michaels

David Michaels is an epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health (EOH) at the Milken Institute School of Public Health of the George Washington University.

From 2009 to January 2017, he served as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Nominated by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Michaels served as OSHA’s 12th Assistant Secretary, the longest serving Assistant Secretary in OSHA's history.

Michaels graduated from the City College of New York, and holds a Master in Public Health (MPH) and PhD from Columbia University, in New York City. Before joining the faculty at the George Washington University, he taught at the CUNY School of Medicine at the City University of New York and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

As Assistant Secretary, Michaels worked to strengthen the agency's enforcement in high risk industries, improve OSHA's whistleblower protection program, promote common sense worker protection programs and standards, expand compliance assistance provided to small employers, and increase outreach to the vulnerable populations who are at greatest risk for work-related injury and illness. He also increased OSHA's focus and capabilities in the areas of data analysis and program evaluation.

Michaels served as the United States Department of Energy's Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health from 1998 through January 2001. In this position, he had primary responsibility for protecting the health and safety of workers, the neighboring communities and the environment surrounding the nation's nuclear weapons facilities. Michaels developed the initiative to compensate workers in the nuclear weapons complex who developed cancer or lung disease as a result of exposure to radiation, beryllium, silica, or other hazards. That initiative resulted in the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, which has provided over $17 billion in benefits to sick workers and the families of deceased workers since its inception in 2001.

During the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Michaels developed a widely used mathematical model to estimate the number of children orphaned by the disease.In addition, while employed at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, NY, he helped found and directed the Epidemiology Unit at the Montefiore-Rikers Island Health Service, the first such unit at a jail in the United States.

Michaels has written extensively on issues related to the integrity of scientific information that serves as the basis of public health and environmental regulation, and is the author of The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (Oxford University Press, 2008). His studies and articles have been published in Science, JAMA, Scientific American, the International Journal of Epidemiology, the American Journal of Public Health and other scientific journals.

In February 2006, Michaels was awarded the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. He has also received the American Public Health Association's David P. Rall Award for Advocacy in Public Health, the 2009 John P. McGovern Science and Society Award of Sigma Xi, the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH®) William D. Wagner Award and the US Department of Energy's Meritorious Service Award.

Michaels is the son of photojournalist Ruth Gruber, the step-brother of feminist writer and activist Barbara Seaman, and the cousin of writer Dava Sobel.