Talk:Occupational hygiene/Archive 1

Merging Occupational Hygiene with hygiene

Regarding the suggestion to merge this page with "hygiene", I recommend against it. Occupational Hygiene / Industrial Hygiene is a defined, recognized profession. DanHarr 15:32, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this proposal, as this highlights a basic misunderstanding of the term occupational (or industrial) hygiene. This misconception of occupational hygiene has long bedevilled practitioners, who are somewhat weary of explaining that their job has nothing to do with cleaning, kitchens, drains, toilets or washrooms. Instead, it is a highly scientific approach to reducing the risk to health of workers by addressing chemical, physical, biological, ergonomic and psychosocial hazards in the workplace. In this regard, it may be categorised as a sub-set of occupational health. -- 202.165.65.93 03:54, 24 May 2005 (UTC) Martin Jennings

I agree with the other contributors above; merging 'occupational hygiene' with 'hygiene' will only perpetuate the misconception that occupational hygienists are concerned with cleaning toilets. While 'occupational hygiene' may be a poor description of the discipline, we occupational hygienists have yet to come up with a better name for it! -- 84.65.135.76

I agree with other comments that merging the Hygiene article with either Occupational Hygiene or Industrial Hygiene is completely inappropriate. Occupational/Industrial Hygiene is an established and recognized profession and quite distinct from the general concept of hygiene.

There is, of course, a relationship at the core, but it is not highly relevant today. In the beginning occupational/industrial hygiene got the "hygiene" term because it addressed the issue of increasing the cleanliness of the workplace by attempting to control the hazardous materials being spewed out by the work processes of the day. This took the form of providing hand washing and showering facilities, sweaping out the trash from time to time, improving ventilation, etc. But the profession has reached far beyond those basics and is now a highly technical field requiring a knowledge of toxicology, physiology, chemistry, physics, and math as well as some basic engineering concepts. -- Pzavon

I also recommend that Occupational Hygiene is NOT merged with hygiene. The scientific discipline of occupational hygiene is quite distinct from the general topic of "hygiene". -- 82.41.253.214 John Cherrie

Why I changed the proposed merger target.

I think that Industrial hygiene and Occupational hygiene are close enough concepts (if they aren't identical!) that they ought to be merged into a single article. To me, the only question is of which term has wider primary use, and ought to be the primary article name. I admit my preference is for "industrial", but only because that's the term I first encountered. The Literate Engineer 18:09, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I think it should be occupational hygiene, as it is more accurate. This is from the International Occupational Hygiene Association.

"The term Industrial Hygiene originated in the USA while in other parts of the world it is known as Occupational Hygiene. In some ways the term Occupational is a better description as health risks occur in all places that people work such as offices, shops, hospitals and farms, not just in places you would think of as industrial." -- Kjkolb 05:42, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. The two articles ought to be merged. Although I am based in the US and learned the profession as "Industrial Hygiene" the rest of the world calles it "Occupational Hygiene." I would make "Occupational Hygiene" the primary article as long as a true merger took place and the resulting article addressed the US profession, practice and history as well as that of the UK, Canada, and other countries. Pzavon 02:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it is fine to merge "Industrial Hygiene" with "Occupational Hygiene", as long as there is a redirect from "Industrial Hygiene" to "Occupational Hygiene"--that is just a usage difference (American vs. elsewhere) for the same field. (I'm an American, but feel using "Occupational Hygiene" makes sense for Wikipedia.)--Cotinis 15:46, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

It seemed to me that sufficient time had passed without dissent or any other comment, so I've merged the two articles into 'Occupational Hygiene' and am in the process of expanding that one a bit. Pzavon 03:08, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

this article is more form than substance

wheres the discussion of substantive aspects of this field: noise pollution, air pollution, toxicity, light pollution?? Anlace 05:42, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, we start with what we find and add to it. A few days ago this was not much more than a quote of the definition of the term. I've added some form and a bit of history, with the intention of contributing more in time. You've added some too, now. BUT "light pollution" (which you called "over-illumination" is something that is of concern to optical astronomers and perhaps as an aesthetic issue to city planners and suburban and rural dwellers. It is not an issue in occupational hygiene. Pzavon 17:55, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

light pollution (in the form of over-illumination) should be an ind hygiene issue since it increases risks of headache, fatigue, vasoconstriction, hypertension and other human health factors. light pollution has three mainifestations: astronomical interference, exterior stray light trespass into neighbors yards and over-illumination (primarily in the workplace} regards, Anlace 19:30, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

But as a workplace problem it is not called "light pollution". Rather it is excessively bright light, or sometimes it may be an issue of excessive contrast rather than simply too much light. And there is an equal but reverse issue of insufficient light. In the workplace it all comes under the head of illumination (whether too much or too little).

Pzavon

i agree with you pzavon, its not called light pollution in the workplace, and underillumination can be an issue as well but not as common as overillumination. so lets call it over-illumination; furthermore, the real issue is the correctness of the spectrum. so we need to discuss over-illumination as an issue and also treat the unnatural color spectrum of fluorescent and HID lights which have their own health effects ....including fatigue, SAD syndrome and circadian disturbance. see we are converging here :) regards Anlace 05:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

In my experience, with the exception of glare on a computer screen, under-illumination is by far the more common issue in the workplace, but whether it is or not is not really relevant to this discussion. We started by talking about what items should be in a list of the technical areas encompassed by Occupational Hygiene. As we agree that both too much and too little lighting are included, the appropriate term to use in such a list would be, simply, "illumination." I see no need for detailed technical discussions in the article, as there are clearly (or can be) specific articles on most such topics elsewhere in the Wikipedia to which links can be provided. Frankly, I find the extention of the concept of "Light Pollution" to the workplace to be an inappropriate reach in the "Light Pollution" article, but that is something for discussion there - and there are several projects of greater interest to me than addressing that forum at present. Pzavon 02:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

i think we are in total agreement at this point. thank you for the interactions. Anlace 02:55, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Link Farm

This article is a link farm, in violation of WP:NOT#REPOSITORY. I'm not sure how to address this other than removing almost all the external links throughout the article. I hope someone can come up with a better solution. --Ronz 23:04, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

If the organizations/etc. are notable enough to have articles about them, the links should be converted to WIKI links. Zodon (talk) 07:40, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Current Issues to improving article

"Open Source" references are generally not available in the subject area, in particular articles on issues in Occupational Hygiene. This fact alone makes the article difficult to improve. Training, particularly accredited training has a number of directly competing educational institutions both with each other and across international borders. Any expression of accredited training applicable in one location may not apply elsewhere. It may also be acceptable to one educational institution and not another. The Wiki classification of this article only loosely fits into the "Health and Fitness" category. NB it also fits health and safety, life work balance, safety, engineering, toxicology, to name a few. The article is now large enough to need breaking into sub-categories. --DZM 20:39, 31 October 2010 (UTC)