What is Industrial Hygiene?

People often wonder when they hear the term: Just what is industrial hygiene?

Industrial hygiene is the managing of workplace and community health hazards that could cause injury or illness to workers.

The job of an industrial hygienist is to protect the health of workers who often operate in dangerous conditions.

How do you do that?

First and foremost, it’s critical to establish useful standards and engineering controls that remove risk at the outset.

These engineering controls should be prioritized and emphasized over administrative and personal controls like rules and guidelines or safety equipment (such as goggles, helmets, respirators, etc.).

Administrative and personal controls can affect worker effectiveness and are inherently less safe than controls that are implemented on the worker environment.

Industrial hygienists also work hard to protect the health of the environment and the communities where the work is done.

What is industrial hygiene?

At Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the vision of our graduate degree program in Industrial Hygiene is to protect the health of communities and workers by training the most competent industrial hygienists in the world.

You can learn more about earning a MSPH degree in Industrial Hygiene at the link.

Listen to and watch our program director Rustin Reed, assistant professor in Environmental Health Sciences, explain more at the video below.