DEPARTMENTS
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
LINDSAY COOK
, CIH, CSP, FAIHA,
is retired senior vice president and now principal consultant at The EI Group, an environmental health and safety consulting firm in Morrisville, North Carolina.
Send feedback to The Synergist.Where Is “Communication”?
Musings on the Definition of Our Profession
BY LINDSAY COOK, AIHA PRESIDENT
When I began my career in the 1970s, I had the pleasure of attending the NIOSH course “Recognition, Evaluation, and Control of Occupational Hazards.” As a young industrial hygiene consultant, I taught many classes on industrial hygiene, and my course syllabus was structured around those fundamental tenets of our profession: recognition, evaluation, and control. I often used the analogy of the three-legged stool to convey that those concepts were the foundation of industrial hygiene.
During the 1980s, OSHA issued its new Hazard Communication standard (1910.1200), which fundamentally changed the way we approached communication of hazard information. Most of us were including that core element in our IH programs, but now communication of health and safety hazards was required across the board, no longer limited to the fine print of the few substance-specific standards. I spent a significant amount of time conducting seminars across the country on how to implement this new communication requirement. And I updated my IH courses to add a fourth leg to the stool: communication. In fact, my syllabus now reflected four tenets of IH—recognition, evaluation, control, and communication. I often mused on submitting a guest editorial to the AIHA Journal (a predecessor of JOEH) suggesting a revision to the IH definition to include communication. But the pressures of life, work, and kids pushed that idea to the back burner—until now.
Communication has always been a key component of the successful industrial hygienist’s toolkit. We are called on to communicate, from the boardroom to the shop floor, to justify and sell our programs, convince workers to help us collect sampling data, and make sure workers understand the hazards of the materials they work with and the importance of the procedures necessary to keep them safe. During the early 1990s, when AIHA’s Communication and Training Methods Committee began its work in earnest, dedicated professionals like Margaret Samways and others worked tirelessly to improve communication methods and provide resources for our members. That committee is still active today.
Communication has always been a key component of the successful industrial hygienist’s toolkit.
As we moved into the 2000s, risk assessment and risk management became an important focus of AIHA, and our Risk Committee has devoted a lot of energy to the topic. Risk communication is a key element of the risk process, as discussed in the AIHA position paper on the subject (PDF).
Peter Sandman has worked with AIHA for decades to enhance risk communication. His book Responding to Community Outrage: Strategies for Effective Risk Communication was published by AIHA Press in 1993 and presented his now famous “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” formula. He has advised AIHA members on risk communication through videos, conference presentations, and numerous columns in The Synergist on issues ranging from genetically modified foods to influenza (September 2009, page 24).
Over the ensuing years I watched from the sidelines as our IH definition evolved, first adding anticipation, and later confirmation. My personal feeling is these are nuances rather than fundamentals: anticipation is the proactive stage of recognition, and confirmation is the natural conclusion to control. The IH definition is now a bit of a mouthful when trying to communicate what we do to others (how’s your elevator speech these days?). Yet communication, a fundamental aspect of what we do each day, is still missing. So, as I close out my last President’s Message, I leave you with a question: is it time to streamline how we define ourselves? Should we adopt a simpler, clearer definition of IH: recognition, evaluation, control, and communication of occupational and environmental hazards?
Thank you for the honor of serving as your president during this year of the virtual association! It has been a highlight of my many years in the profession, and I look forward to the opportunity to once again cross paths with both longtime acquaintances and new friends in the coming months.