For more than 30 years, the American Industrial Hygiene Foundation (AIHF) has helped advance the profession by awarding scholarships to students in industrial hygiene and related disciplines, and funding training and professional development opportunities for early-career industrial hygiene and occupational and environmental health and safety professionals. Since 1982, AIHF has distributed more than $1.8 million in scholarships to hundreds of students. This year, the Foundation recognized 38 outstanding students at AIHce 2016 in Baltimore, Md.

As part of the scholarship application process, students are asked to write a one-page statement that explains why they are seeking a degree in industrial hygiene and describes their future goals and plans in the profession. Following is a selection of excerpts written by five of the scholarship recipients for the 2016–2017 academic year. I first became interested in worker safety while on summer break in middle school when I worked in my grandfather’s auto body shop. I performed a number of tasks around the shop, including sanding, sand-blasting, grinding, cleaning, painting, polishing, and plasma cutting. These tasks were completed in an enclosed space where temperatures would typically exceed 100°F on any given day in Eastern North Carolina. I was only required to wear personal protective equipment while painting and plasma cutting, which prompted my concern about being exposed to an unknown amount of aerosols and uncomfortable temperatures within the shop. I quickly found that this was commonplace in many auto body shops across the country, and at that time I became concerned with worker safety and how the working environment can affect different people in different ways. Becoming a Certified Industrial Hygienist will help me reduce or control hazards like the ones I was exposed to in the auto body shop as a child. Growing up, it was hard to have a conversation with any of the men in my house without hearing the word, “What?” While the propensity for not listening has become a joke among my siblings and me, it makes sense that my grandfather and father, two men who have had long careers in the mining and construction business, are a bit hard of hearing. Stories about booming machines and deafening explosions made for great bedtime stories when I was younger, but as an aspiring industrial hygienist, these workplace hazards are now the stuff of my nightmares. 

Rather than seeing workers as indicating numbers, I see them as real people with families and lives outside of work. Being able to imagine a background for people allows me to make a personal investment in assuring their health and well-being. I take it as my personal responsibility to ensure that the people I am making safety decisions for are able to go home to their families each day. Making that investment allows me to remain passionate about my career. It is important to pursue a career that makes you feel valuable, and industrial hygiene does just that for me.

My path to industrial hygiene has been a complex and fulfilling journey. My background in the military working as a Korean linguist is probably one of the more atypical starting points to begin a career in IH. Yet my assignments overseas in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East presented me with various challenges with respect to situations that often compromised individuals’ safety and well-being. I learned firsthand how the culture of a workplace can influence workers’ well-being and safety for better or worse. I often observed my fellow colleagues thrive or suffer as a result of pro- or anti-safety leadership, and I became committed to protecting workers’ health and safety. 

I aspire to become a Certified Industrial Hygienist and work internationally with developing nations to help foster a strong safety culture. As we continue to globalize, the need is greater than ever for industrial hygienists to pioneer their safety efforts across international borders. I hope to be part of this effort.