Unifying environmental and occupational health

The intimate link between environmental and occupational health is often overlooked.  Many of the air, water and soil pollutants that are the focus of environmental health originate in workplaces, where workers are more heavily exposed than non-workers who are exposed after the pollutant leaves the workplace.  Workers who live in areas of significant environmental contamination may be exposed both at work and in the community. 

Environmental health research is also closely linked to occupational health.  There are many environmental contaminants whose human health effects cannot easily be studied outside the workplace, because these exposures are at relatively low levels. In these cases, studies of the health effects in worker populations are extrapolated down to estimate the risk among those exposed in community environments.

Finally, interventions in environmental and occupational health are linked: in many cases, control of workplace exposures can reduce all exposures, if control is accomplished through substitution by less toxic alternatives or in many cases improved engineering controls. On the other hand, there have been instances where attempts to reduce environmental exposures have resulted in greater workplace exposure.

This talk will highlight examples of such inadvertent harms caused by lack of integration of environmental and occupational controls and policies.  It will also describe current federal efforts to better coordinate and integrate environmental and occupational program activities.

Practitioners in the two fields have much to learn from each other and efforts to better integrate the fields will likely increase the effectiveness of both.