r/industrialhygiene

Hey safety professionals and fellow humans! I-I-I mean, prospects!

I am (and this may be a long shot) but I’m looking for some advice from people already working in the HSE/EHS space because I’m getting a little frustrated with the catch-22 of trying to get into the field. As the common denominator in short, is experience required but the experience needed is the job.

I have a degree in Psychology, and almost a decades of experience in Fire/EMS that I feel translates pretty well to safety, including experience working in environments where safety, compliance, procedures, and risk awareness. I’ve also been intentionally building my knowledge of OSHA requirements through independent research along with hazard identification, incident prevention, workplace safety, and EHS practices. But have yet to sit for the OSHA 10/30, also I don’t believe I can apply to BSCP to take the ASP until I have some experience in this exact field..

The problem I keep running into is that I’m applying for entry-level or junior EHS/Safety positions, but even those jobs often want 1–3+ years of direct EHS experience. And so it just often feels like every position wants you to already have the experience needed to get the position in the first place.

I’m also finding that many of the jobs I’m interested in involve manufacturing/industrial environments, where I know there are hazards involving things like machinery, lockout/tagout, electrical safety, safety boards, machine guarding, ergonomics, chemicals, PPE, forklifts/material handling, and general workplace safety. But..

For those of you who successfully broke into HSE/EHS:

What was your first actual safety job, and how did you get it?

Did you have to take a job that wasn't technically an EHS position to get your foot in the door?

What certifications or training actually helped you get interviews? (OSHA 30, ASP/GSP, CHST, etc.)

How much weight do employers realistically put on a degree versus hands-on experience?

Would you recommend targeting EHS Coordinator/Safety Coordinator roles rather than EHS Specialist positions?

Is there anything you see candidates with my type of background consistently doing wrong when applying?

Thanks and have a wonderful day!
-Environmental, Health and Safety Prospect

I am really interested in the field of industrial hygiene and environmental health as a whole, and am wondering how to best find an entry level position/market my skills. I graduated in may and am now working fulltime at a disease ecology lab that i worked at as an undergrad, where im doing a lot of lab and field work doing water quality monitoring and microbial culturing. I realized I am really more interested in understanding how environmental or human caused factors are impacting health than just ecology. I have a lot of field work experience doing stuff like chemical analysis of water samples, monitoring, and typical microbio skills. I feel like all the ehs or industrial hygiene positions i see require environmental health science degrees, but what kind of entry level positions would my skills and experience make me somewhat qualified for? Is it it better to pursue an mph/ms in industrial hygiene now or should I wait until I have actual years in the field?

So close but didn’t make it. So disheartening after all the work that went into it. Not sure if I’ll go for it again or not.

I just made a post yesterday asking how to get into IH, and then following people's advice I found a smaller consulting firm and applied for an asbestos field tech position and got an interview for next week. My girlfriend is a nurse and concerned about the effects of asbestos exposure or potentially bringing contaminants back home. I understand it is a very highly regulated industry, so I am pretty okay with it, but I wanted to get the opinion of IH professionals.

In Maharashtra in midc a incident happened :A factory name vid*a**t is for industrial development and I dont know about that much but in factory their is harsh usage of chemicals and disease causing products as it is usual for a industrial company in india so what happened basically a worker was thirsty while doing the work so he picked a normal water bottle and drank some of content from it and guess what it turns out to be white petrol let me tell you it's usage White petrol is used as an industrial and laboratory solvent, for fabric spot-cleaning in dry cleaning, and as aviation gasoline (avgas). Normal petrol powers standard vehicle internal combustion engines. And when he drink it he was felt on floor and he began to Hematemesis.

When he was taken to hospital the master and workers of factory told to doctors that he dranked normal water and felt aside ,which was lie and now he is admitted and now he is in ICU..Look guys how some greedy people just to save theirs jobs and earn money risk someone's life ..The fact is that the bottle was a normal water bottle maybe a cod drink bottle without label Idk but it was not labelled as white petrol ..

Due to laxity of someone a life is fighting ..

What do you think of it..??