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I have always enjoyed helping people. My mother was a cardiac nurse and my father was a merchant seaman who died from asbestosis which he got from his work exposure on the ships and in the shipyards. These were some of the reasons why I was attracted to the field of industrial hygiene when I was studying for the Master of Public Health (MPH) degree at the University Of Oklahoma, College Of Public Health in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Industrial hygienists are concerned with protecting the health and safety of workers and the community. The majority of my working life I have worked for the federal government for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) www.osh.gov, first as an industrial hygienist, then as a supervisory industrial hygienist, an area director of a local office and currently as an Assistant Regional Administrator in the New York Regional Office. As a field inspector, I went out to inspect all types of factories and manufacturing facilities, and also such diversified, interesting and challenging areas such as cotton gins, migrant farm camps, lead and copper smelters, grain elevators, oil rigs and refineries, hospitals and construction sites in West Texas and New York for compliance with OSHA rules and regulations. As an OSHA industrial hygienist, I used air sampling equipment to test employees' breathing zone air and sent the collected samples to the OSHA Salt Lake Technical Center where OSHA chemists perform the laboratory analysis to identify what chemicals the worker is exposed to during the work shift. After "9/11" I worked at Ground Zero during the World Trade Center (WTC) recovery, sampling workers, fit-testing workers to make sure they had the correct size respirator, and helping to distribute personal protective equipment such as safety glasses, gloves and ear plugs. My first job was as an industrial hygienist working for Pan American World Airways which held the contract for providing industrial hygiene and environmental monitoring services at the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida. This was very exciting first job and provided terrific work experience in both industrial hygiene and environmental safety and health. I have always enjoyed teaching and working with young people. For
over seven (7) years I was a Girl Scout leader and I also taught
earth science in Greenwich Village, NYC while I was going to graduate
school for my Master of Arts (M.A.) at Columbia University. While
working for OSHA, I have worked with colleges and universities to
mentor their students through internships and co-op programs. I
encourage you to seek out and take advantage of every opportunity
that you have to volunteer to help others and to get different kinds
of work experiences. Keep track of your volunteer hours or even
the hours babysitting and make notes of what you did and what you
learned. Often those varied part-time and summer job experiences
help you discover what fields of study or work you are interested
in developing or they can even form the basis for answers during
job or college interviews.
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