It was established as a result of Progressive Era concerns for the conditions of workers, with the goal of providing scientific responses to hazards faced in the workplace.

The Division was moved into the new Bureau of State Services in 1943 as part of a reorganization of PHS, although the laboratory research programs were split off and remained in NIH.

An effort to build support for a national occupational health program culminated in the 1965 Frye Report, which recommended that the Division be given specific legislative authority and increased funding.

However, the PHS reorganizations of 1966–1973 were particularly turbulent for occupational health programs, as the organization passed through seven operating agencies and bore four names during this time.

[6][7] The Office of Field Investigations into Occupational Diseases[8] was established in 1914 as part of the PHS Division of Scientific Research,[4][9] administratively within its Hygienic Laboratory.

[12] Its location was likely due to proximity to the recently established Bruceton Research Center of USBM, enhancing cooperation on miners' health.

[14] Additionally, the Office assisted the U.S. Bureau of Standards in creating a National Gas Safety Code by performing laboratory studies to determine a "toxic limit" for carbon monoxide.

[1][8] There were still no laboratory facilities for industrial hygiene in Washington, so technical staff was assigned to various academic institutions, such as Yale and Johns Hopkins University, and to USBM.

[4] The tetraethyl lead study has been called the culmination of industrial hygiene's development as a scientific field: integrating both environmental and clinical analyses to provide objective technical information, rather than directly advocating for regulatory or policy changes.

However, after the 1934 Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster, in which many workers died of silicosis, the Office's prior studies were instrumental in state governments establishing hygienic standards for silica dust.

During his tenure as NIH Director and later Chief of the Bureau of State Services, he emphasized industrial hygiene as the emerging core of public health efforts.

[5] The outbreak of World War II caused a shift away from field investigations towards direct services to the U.S. Army Ordnance Department and state agencies.

[4] The Division's laboratory research activities supported the TNT field investigations, and also included studies of other toxic gases and dusts present in factories.

This program was ended in 1948, and the Division reacted by creating a field station in Salt Lake City with an initial staff of four on the grounds of the former Fort Douglas, which was donated by the University of Utah.

[4] The Division also performed a major study of the deadly 1948 Donora smog incident,[4] involving a multidisciplinary 25-person team interviewing 1,500 families and testing more than 4,000 air samples.

[18] The increased space allowed the Division to restart laboratory research interrupted by World War II, and facilitated consultative services to industrial regions in the Midwestern United States.

[33] The administrative offices remained in Washington, D.C.[30] Cincinnati was already home of the PHS Environmental Health Center, which originated from the water pollution research station established in 1913 in the former Cincinnati U.S. Marine Hospital building,[7][34][35] and had expanded into air, industrial, chemical pollution and radiological health research during and after World War II.

[37] However, the 1950s were a period in which occupational health did not attract national attention as a major concern, continuing a trend that had begun with the end of World War II.

[43] In the mid-1950s, the Program's major field investigations were on silicosis in the metal mining industry, lung cancer in uranium miners, and hearing loss among prison workers.

[36][46] This coincided with an increase in funding, as House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Fogarty was interested in industrial safety and health,[4] and as the silicosis studies had been well received.

[49] A 1962 report recommended moving the Environmental Health Divisions, including the Division of Occupational Health, from Cincinnati to a new facility in Washington, D.C., as the report committee considered the Taft Center to be inadequate for its recommended expansions of activities, and Cincinnati to have difficulties in attracting scientific personnel and to be too far from the facilities of other federal agencies.

[30][50] Under the leadership of Murray C. Brown, there was an effort to build support for a national occupational health program, as the Division had existed without any specific legislative authority since its establishment 50 years prior.

He enlisted Louisiana State University Medical Center Chancellor William W. Frye to develop a special report to set national goals for occupational health and make program recommendations.

The Division needs only the legislative authority and funds to extend its existing activities and to assume effective responsibility for areas of need identified for many years.

[4] At the same time, President Lyndon B. Johnson took interest in workplace hazards and began integrating the topic into his speeches beginning in May 1966,[6] and in 1968 he would propose the first version of the legislation that would later become the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

As each national center was to be centralized in a specific city, the Occupational Health Program's administrative staff moved from Washington, D.C. to Cincinnati.

[4] The law was the first legislatively mandated activity of BOSH or any of its predecessors,[6] and was seminal in establishing federal rather than state supremacy in regulating industrial safety and health.

[35][59] 5555 Ridge Avenue had been constructed during 1952–1954 and was initially the headquarters and manufacturing plant of Disabled American Veterans;[60] PHS had leased space in it beginning in 1962.

[65] In 1978, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare determined that NIOSH did not require a new facility after all, making permanent its location in Cincinnati and the Taft Center.

[70] The Salt Lake City field station became the Western Area Laboratory for Occupational Safety and Health (WALOSH) and moved into a newly constructed facility in 1975.