Sheldon Wilfred Samuels

12/07/1929 - 11/25/2025

Director Emeritus for Health, Safety
and Environment for industrial unions of the AFL-CIO
Sheldon W. Samuels, died November 25, 2025. Was Director Emeritus for Health, Safety and Environment for industrial unions of the AFL-CIO, and Special Representative for Nuclear Weapons Workers Health of the Metal Trades Department. In 1971 he was recruited by the industrial unions to develop the labor movement's first education and research center for occupational and environmental health. He personally submitted the first petition for the first permanent standard under the OSHAct - for asbestos - and coordinated subsequent successful petitions for benzene, cotton dust, lead, vinyl chloride, carcinogens, sanitation, medical surveillance, radon daughters, and other standards issues. He conducted pilot industry-specific educational and research programs for the international labor movement such as "Superfund" workers training and authored the AFL-CIO policies on genetic testing and medical surveillance. He held conference appointments to UNDP and ILO, and provided technical assistance to labor, management and government in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Israel on assignment of the Departments of Commerce, Labor, State and Energy. In 1985 he was made an honorary member of the Norwegian and Swedish Labor Organizations for his international work. Served as the AFL-CIO's Special Representative for Nuclear Weapons Workers Health, Metal Trades Department and Director Emeritus of its Health, Safety and Environment, Industrial Union Department. Samuels was a prolific writer and was a founding Contributing Editor of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine (1980-1992). Since 1995 Samuels worked full-time as an independent pro bono scholar. His moral histories focus on problems of practicing occupational medicine and ameliorating social disease seen in the delivery of compensation for medical expenses and wage replacement, especially in nuclear weapons populations and uranium mining communities. Private service.