
What is Occupational Hygiene and Who is an Occupational Hygienist?
- What is Occupational Hygiene?
By definition, occupational hygiene is the discipline of anticipating, recognising, evaluating and also controlling health hazards in the work environment with the sole purpose of predicting local help and also the well-being and safeguarding of the community at large.
Occupational hygiene can also be defined as the latent practice off the identification of hazardous agents which could be chemical, physical or biological. The occupational health staffing hence associated with this discipline can identify these agents in the workplace which could be causing disease discomfort. Occupational hygienists are the ones who will evaluate the extent of risk due to exposure to these hazardous agents and how to control those risks in order to prevent ill health in the long or short term.
- Who is an Occupational Hygienist?
Occupational hygienist as an occupational health staffing is committed to protecting the health and safety of people in the workplace as well as the community. Some occupational hygienist work in manufacturing, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, steel mining and other such industries. While there are others who work in national governments, hospitals as well as public utilities. The rest are employed as consultants or are in the search or academia.
In terms of occupational health staffing – an occupational hygienist specialises in identifying risks in the workplace and adroitly advice companies on how to avoid or resolve them. A variety of locations such as building sites, offices and factories our common employment places for them, as they promote responsible practices as well as raise awareness regarding health and safety issues.
Occupational hygiene can be described as where science and engineering meet the human element of work. It is a specialised discipline within the broad area of occupational Health& Safety which basically aims at preventing people from injuring themselves are you getting ill as a result of their workplace activities. Occupational health recruitment in this particular field involves operating as a part of a multidisciplinary team which might include managers, safety practitioners, occupational physicians, occupation help nose jobs applicants and employees.
An occupational hygienist in his routine work ensures that the work environment is not because of ill-health for the workforce and the levels of exposure to any hazardous material are in compliance with the statutory Occupational Exposure Limits (OELs), which is predetermined for chemical, physical and biological agents. Occupational hygienist thus, is primarily concerned with the working environment itself, as opposed to the medical effect on the workforce. This occupational health recruitment is mainly focused on the factors in the workplace which may actually affect the comfort, health and the well-being of the employees.
- What does an Occupational Hygienist Do?
Occupational hygienists keep workers as well as the communities surrounding workplaces healthy and safe. They also ensure compliance with laws and regulations there are applicable in the ward environment. Occupational health vacancies for occupational hygienists are basically for specialists who can assess health risks in the workplace – for example, they might need to sample the air to determine if there are any harmful substances present – Measure the noise levels in factories – supervise the safe removal of asbestos from buildings as well as provide practical advice regarding how workers can be protected from work-related health and safety risks essentially.
What are the Work Activities of an Occupational Hygienist?
Work activities of this particular occupational health staffing include:
- Studying existing equipment, materials, products, production processes and other gender working conditions in order to identify if there are any hazards present in the workplace which could impact the health or well being of the workers. Apart from this, they would also have to advise the management on how to eliminate or reduce these hazards.
- They need to monitor the potential exposure to harmful substances in the workplace and also interpret these results in order to communicate them to the relevant people.
- They need to recommend control measures that can help on minimising exposure and also aid in developing strategies which will help control the hazards at the workplace.
- They would also have to participate in risk assessments, and aid in developing management strategies for the elimination of the hazards or learn how to control them.
- They would also have to be adept in communicating the legal requirements of occupational hygiene to both the management as well as the workforce.
- How Can You Become an Occupational Hygienist?
For occupational health staffing as an occupational hygienist, education, experience and training are important aspects of the career. The educational aspect can be fulfilled through formal undergraduate or postgraduate degrees. The training aspect can be gained by undertaking specialised courses the experience can, of course, be achieved.
- What are the Entry Requirements and Career Development as an Occupational Hygienists?
Occupational healthvacancies in occupational hygiene are open to graduates from a varied field of disciplines. Most occupational hygienists have undergraduate degrees that are related to science- which can be in various disciplines such as maths, engineering or even in medical, health and nursing.
Thus, occupational health recruitment happens from many backgrounds – chemists, engineers, doctors, physicists, nurses etc. basically people who have chosen to apply their skills for the improvement of working practices and conditions. Furtherance of career, primarily depends on the organisation that has employee you, followed by additional qualifications, undressing of further training or specialisation in a particular area of occupational hygiene.
Occupational health staffing in occupational hygiene is seeing a boom right now, given the need of the hour, hence you too can capitalise on the opportunity – if you have the aforementioned skill set.