Naval Medical Research Unit Dayton



Naval Medical Research Unit Dayton (NAMRU-D) is a biomedical research laboratory of the United States Navy in Dayton, Ohio. It is one of seven subordinate commands of the Naval Medical Research Center and incorporates two research divisions. The Environmental Health Effects Laboratory was established in 1959 in Bethesda, Maryland, and moved to Dayton in 1976. The Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory's predecessor activities date back to 1939 in Pensacola, Florida, and it moved to Dayton in 2010. Despite being a Navy activity, NAMRU-D was set up on the grounds of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base so it could be co-located with similar Air Force activities.

History
The U.S. Navy Toxicology Unit was established in January 1959 in response to air quality issues within the USS Nautilus as well as toxicity concerns about replacements for flammable hydraulic fluids. It was initially based at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and by 1965 had 22 personnel. Around that time, its building was condemned because of structural deficiencies, but due to funding difficulties for a new building they continued to occupy it through 1976, when the building was about to be lost to termites. In May 1975, the Navy Toxicology Unit was incorporated into the Naval Medical Research Institute. The loss of the building, as well as laboratory space lost to the Environmental Health Effects Laboratory, forced a move of site and the following year it was relocated to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, increasing collaboration with the Air Force toxicology program.

An aviation medicine research and training unit was established in 1939 at Naval Air Station Pensacola, which in 1946 became part of the newly established Naval School of Aviation Medicine, later called the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute. In 1974 it was separated into its own independent command as the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory. In 2010, it moved to Ohio and merged with the Environmental Health Effects Laboratory to form NAMRU-D as part of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process.