Sen. Sherrod Brown wants the federal government to prioritize buying a site in Greater Cincinnati to build a multimillion-dollar headquarters to consolidate two research laboratories operated by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The senator urged Sylvia Mathews Burwell, who was confirmed by the Senate on June 5 as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to include in the agency’s fiscal year 2016 budget the money necessary to identify and acquire a new NIOSH facility in Cincinnati.

NIOSH, which conducts research and recommends ways to prevent injuries and illnesses related to work, operates the Robert A. Taft Laboratory on Columbia Parkway in the East End and the Alice Hamilton Laboratory on Ridge Road in Pleasant Ridge. Both opened in 1954, with the Taft lab named for a Cincinnati senator and the other named for an Indiana native who was a pioneering occupational health doctor.

Brown, a Cleveland Democrat, said there’s a critical need to upgrade the research labs.

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