Basic Calculations for Occupational Safety and Environmental Health Professionals - Mathematics and Statistics for the Environment - page 380

Who were those space-suited individuals who not only appeared on our TV screens during the
aftermath of 9/11 but were also prominent figures in footage of post offices victimized by anthrax?
They were industrial hygienists. Terror ism and bioterrorism might have been new buzzwords a
decade ago, but responding to hazard sites is nothing new to those space-suited folks whose func-
tion most people can't even identify. Times have changed, but the need for fully trained professional
industrial hygienists has not.
On a different note, one might ask whether the industrial hygienist is a safety professional or an
environmental professional. Either. It depends. The safety profession and environmental health and
industrial hygiene have commonly been thought of as separate entities (this is especially the view
taken by many safety professionals and industrial hygienists). In fact, over the years, a considerable
amount of debate has risen among those in the safety and industrial hygiene professions regarding
safety and health issues in the workplace, including exactly who is best qualified to administer a
workplace safety program. Who is really the safety professional?
Historically, the safety professional had the upper hand in this argument—that is, prior to enact-
ment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act), which mandated formation of the
administrative entity OSHA. Until then, industrial hygiene was not a topic that many professionals
thought about, cared about, or had any understanding of. Safety was safety—and the job title “safety
professional” included environmental health protection—and that was that.
After passage of the OSH Act, however, things changed, and so did perceptions; in particular,
people began to look at work injuries and work-related illnesses differently. In the past, they were
regarded as separate problems. Why? The primary reason for this view was obvious and perhaps
not so obvious. The obvious reason was work-related injuries. Work injuries occur suddenly and
the agent (e.g., electrical source, chemical spill, machine, tool, work or walking surface, careless
co-worker) is usually readily obvious. Not so obvious are the agents of work-related illnesses (e.g.,
lead, asbestos, formaldehyde). Why? Because most occupational illnesses develop rather slowly,
over time; they are often insidious, like cancer. In asbestos exposure, for example, workers who
remove asbestos-containing materials without the proper training (awareness) and personal protec-
tive equipment (PPE) are subject to exposure. Typically, asbestos exposure may be either a one-time
exposure event (the silver bullet syndrome) or the exposure may go on for several years. No matter
the length of exposure, pathological changes due to asbestos contamination occur slowly—some
time will pass before the worker notices a difference in his pulmonary function. Disease from
asbestos exposure has a latency period that may be as long as 20 to 30 years before the effects are
realized (or diagnosed, in some cases).
The point? Any exposure to asbestos, short term or long term, may eventually lead to a chronic
disease (i.e., asbestosis) that is irreversible. Of course, many other types of workplace toxic expo-
sures can affect workers' health. The prevention, evaluation, and control of such occurrences com-
prise the role of the industrial hygienist.
Because of the OSH Act and because of increasing public awareness and involvement by unions
in industrial health matters, the role of the industrial hygienist has continued to grow over the years.
Certain colleges and universities have incorporated industrial hygiene majors into environmental
health programs. Another result of the OSH Act has been, in effect (though many practitioners in
the field disagree with this view), an ongoing tendency toward uniting safety and industrial hygiene
into one entity, into one profession.
This trend presents a problem with definition. When we combine safety and industrial hygiene,
do we combine them into one specific title or profession? Debate on this issue continues. What is
the solution to this problem—how do we end the debate? Does it matter? Do we care? Not in this
text. However, whether your title is safety professional, industrial hygienist, or environmental health
professional, one thing is certain: You can't possibly perform your assigned duties correctly unless
you are well versed in statistical and mathematical operations.