Find work wherever and whenever you need in EHS (EHSCrossing) (AP)

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In this troubled economy, it is always wise to seek out career paths that have good job security. Professionals face less risk of being laid off or of having their jobs outsourced, or of having their positions becoming obsolete if they are in a field for which there will always be high demand. Environmental Health and Safety is one of these career fields.

Often requiring specialized college degrees, EHS (or ESH, depending on who you are talking to) positions are not so much green collar jobs as they are concerned with the safety of the working environment and the health of the employees. This usually requires one to be familiar with biology, chemistry, engineering, and often psychology for maximum qualification.

Environmental Health and Safety professionals keep track of potential hazards in the work place and work to minimize the risk to the workers. One can expect to find Environmental Health and Safety positions in such places as factories and power plants; work environments with a high level of risk to the employees, with large machinery, moving parts, and dangerous substances. All these work places, have an EHS position, but they are also integral, to work environments as medical complexes, where employees may be working with hazardous substances, lasers and what not.



EHS is all about risk identification, employee education and awareness of those risks and how to deal with them, and working to find solutions that minimizes employee's exposure to potential risks. EHS professionals are often the ones to design emergency evacuation procedures for a company, being intimately familiar with the layout of the buildings and the possible problems employees might face during an emergency.

Environmental Health and Safety professionals must be intimately familiar with MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets), be aware of all the potentially hazardous chemicals, physical hazards, electrical hazards and possible psychological hazards to the people working in their building. They must also be aware of the building codes to be able to tell when something in the building is not safe, i.e. a platform without a railing or low hanging pipes, as well as staying ahead of building repairs in the case of such dangers as rust, structural weakness and aging infrastructure. It is his or her job to address these issues before they become a problem, and make sure everyone concerned is aware of the potential danger so that it could be avoided.

In any job environment where there is risk to the physical safety, in both the short term and the long term of the employees, there will always be a position for an environmental health and safety professional.

In addition to private companies, there are also a very large number of government jobs available in EHS fields. While these positions may not pay as well as those in private industries, they are often the end goal of an EHS professional's career track for the incredible level of job security and benefits package quality a government job can provide. These positions are wonderful for the professional with a family to support or someone looking for a little more stability in life.

That said, it is not uncommon for an EHS worker to travel often, especially if he or she is employed in a larger corporation or government field with many offices. Environmental Health and Safety people often have several workplaces they must be responsible for at the same time, and higher the position in the EHS chain, higher is the responsibility. High-level EHS people may be responsible for many individual EHS workers who all report to them on individual workplace environments. This is not a career without the possibility of advancement.

Because Environmental Health and Safety jobs do require so much technical and scientific knowledge, it is not uncommon for those wishing to pursue such a career path to take summer jobs in the field during high school and college, as well as temporary jobs after graduation. These temporary positions are a great way for young people and those interested in making a career change to explore a potential career track. As with internships, jobs help people decide if EHS is an appropriate job choice for their future.

EHS is not a difficult field to get into; one simply must have the proper academic background and often a certain amount of appropriate experience. Many companies will hire graduates fresh out of college and train them to be intimately familiar with the particulars of their company. The Environmental Health and Safety industry is a fairly stable field, which certainly makes it a treasured rarity in times of a troubled job market.
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 factory  hazardous substances  methods  exposure  safety position  environmental health  health and safety  job security  workers  environments


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