Richard Hirsh, MPH, CIH, FAIHA, is certified in the comprehensive practice of IH and currently works as Sr. Director, EH&S for Nektar Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical firm with operations in the U.S. and India. Before that, Richard served as Global Safety and IH Manager for Stiefel Laboratories and previously worked for Rohm and Haas Company in the Global EHS department for 20 years.
Become an Industrial Hygienist:
Michelle Meyer, Director of COEH Continuing Education, discusses the field of industrial hygiene and why to become an industrial hygienist with Richard Hirsh, MPH, CIH, FAIHA.
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About Richard Hirsh, MPH, CIH, FAIHA
Richard Hirsh, MPH, CIH, FAIHA, is certified in the comprehensive practice of IH and currently works as Sr. Director, EH&S for Nektar Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical firm with operations in the U.S. and India. Before that, Richard served as Global Safety and IH Manager for Stiefel Laboratories and previously worked for Rohm and Haas Company in the Global EHS department for 20 years.
Richard is an AIHA Fellow and currently serves on the board of the California Industrial Hygiene Council (CIHC). He represents CIHC on the California Partnership for Young Worker Health and Safety. He served on the AIHA International Scientific Planning Committee for the International Occupational Health Association (IOHA) Conference in 2018. He is a past chair of the International Affairs Committee of the AIHA and served as chairperson for the planning committees of the AIHA Asia Pacific Conferences held in both Malaysia in 2014 and Singapore in 2013. Richard is a Past-President of the Northern California Section of the AIHA and serves as founder and chair of the Developing World Outreach Initiative. He also served on the Board of Directors for Workplace Health Without Borders – US Branch and continues to serve on the Advisory Committees for the Centers for Occupational and Environmental Health at both the University of California and University of Michigan.
Richard attended UC Berkeley, School of Public Health, Environmental Health Sciences Program where he received his M.P.H. in 1986. He received a biology degree from LafayetteCollege. On behalf of the International Affairs Committee, Richard received the Soaring Star Award in 2014. On behalf of the Developing World Outreach Initiative, Richard received the AIHA Social Responsibility Award in 2012 and the Christine Einert Award from the AIHA Northern California Section in 2011. He received the Distinguished EHS Scientist recognition from Rohm and Haas Company in 2004 and received the EJ Skorpinski Memorial Award from Rohm and Haas Company in 1993.
Audio Transcript
Michelle Meyer: Hello and welcome, thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Michelle Meyer. I'm the Director of Continuing education at the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health and it is my delight to be joined here today by Richard Hirsch and I'm going to let him introduce himself
Richard Hirsh: Hi Michelle, thanks for having me. My name is Richard Hirsch. I'm the senior Director for Environmental Health and Safety here at Nektar Therapeutics, we're a research and development company focused on cancer research and also autoimmune diseases. I've been here for almost 12 years and lead the EHS program at our San Francisco, Alabama, and India locations prior to that I was involved for 20 years with the chemical industry working for Rohm and Haas Company we had 125 sites in 27 countries and then also a shorter stint with a another pharmaceutical company that had about nine sites globally but anyway I'd like to you know talk to you about some of my experiences.
Michelle Meyer: Excellent, well I guess we'll we'll jump right on in. um can you tell us a little bit about what is an industrial hygienist? What is it that you do?
Richard Hirsh: Sure, so in my view an industrial hygienist is a person who through their education, their experiences and training is able to anticipate, recognize, evaluate, manage, and control hazards – any type of hazard. And those could be chemical in nature you know various chemical hazardous compounds biological like viruses, bacteria, covid, food-borne diseases, mold, fungi; physical in nature such as noise, or vibration, or ionizing or non non-ionizing radiation; or even ergonomic hazards so we tend to focus on exposure assessments for any of those types of hazards as industrial hygienists.
As the senior director for EHS at Nektar I develop and implement our strategies to set company policy, develop training materials, standard operating procedures, software tools, and ensure my global team of about 10 are adequately resourced to meet the goals and objectives each year in order to support our business. We integrate multiple disciplines environmental safety, industrial hygiene, biostatistics, medical surveillance, personal protective equipment, including respiratory protection, sanitation, federal state and local regulatory aspects with from the US EPA to Cal/OSHA to the Department of Public Health in San Francisco, the fire department, et cetera, sampling an analytical methodology to actually measure exposures in air or on surfaces, process safety to make sure we are not blowing up our research laboratories, product stewardship to make sure our drugs are handled and used appropriately and the people handling them are protected adequately, leading a safety committee across our three sites to help implement some of our programs, emergency response activities for a spill or a medical emergency or a fire or what have you, business continuity making sure our supply chain is robust and that we can operate in the event we had to evacuate the building or our facility was shut down due to an earthquake or some other natural or man-made disaster and also building a positive safety safety culture in the organization that is sustainable and sustainability in general and looking at the worker the worker population not only at work but also holistically in their community at home etc. I've had opportunities to learn and evaluate hazards and recommend controls for a variety of research and development and manufacturing and industrial processes around the world in biotechnology in the in farm the pharma world of the electronics industry, plastics plastic additives, biocides, plexiglass you may have heard of, acrylic polymers ion exchange, resins, oil additives, monomers used in various polymerization reactions agricultural products, fungicides herbicides, pesticides, even salt production you know going into mines vacuum panning, solar evaporation, different types of solar assault production and all and many other hazardous operations. I'll leave it there.
Michelle Meyer: Wow so quite a lot of different things that are touched by your department oh not even just in the United States but around the world so many different processes involved thank you so much for sharing that synopsis with us. um well and for someone who's just getting into your field are there any common misconceptions about what it is that you do?
Richard Hirsh: Yeah, I think you know one of the old running jokes is that because we're called industrial hygienists that for some reason they think we floss workers teeth, which is obviously not the case. It's also quite a misperception that industrial hygiene is really only about sampling and measuring hazardous chemical concentrations in air and putting on sampling pumps on workers as a what is affectionately known as a pump jockey that's really at the technician level. When in fact what we do involves a wide range of activities I mentioned some of those before but setting company policy, developing standard operating procedures, ensuring our regulatory compliance so being well-versed in all the regulations that apply to our business operations, providing EHS training on a variety of topics, hazard communication for safety data sheets, and being able to read a label, and transporting hazardous materials, the engineering controls ventilation local exhaust ventilation enclosures for containing hazardous materials fume hoods, biological safety cabinets, those types of engineering controls as well as hazardous waste handling chemical and biological hazards, personal protective equipment, making sure people have the right respirator, the right gloves, splash aprons, eye safety wear face shields, etc.
And then also you know in today's environment protocols for COVID. I'm really sort of COVID central here at Nektar, dealing with our case management for any positive cases, our testing protocols, our nursing support contracted service, return to workplace training, and our disinfection protocol in case we have to decontaminate any work areas all the COVID supplies from sanitizing wipes to surgical masks and other items, the signage we've placed around the building and also the regulatory aspects from Cal/OSHA to the Department of Public Health to the Centers for Disease Control and and so forth.
Also dealing with potent drug compound handling. We handle very potent compounds used for cancer and we want to make sure our workers are not being exposed to those materials while they're doing their research. Our ergonomics program making sure that people are set up properly at their office workstation and also in their laboratory or manufacturing environment in terms of manual materials handling, repetitive tests such as pipetting those types of things. Radiation program, up until recently we had radioactive isotopes and needing to make sure that we're handling them according to regulation and protecting our workforce. Noise issues making sure we're you know protecting people's hearing medical surveillance working closely with occupational physicians and our you know occupational health clinic to make sure people are in good health Department of Transportation and air shipments of hazardous materials just to name a few as well as the exposure assessments we conduct regularly for tasks and processes associated with the hazards I mentioned.
Michelle Meyer: It's amazing to hear all of those different things because you know, I know we're just starting to scratch the surface of everything that goes into keeping people safe at work. That's a wow yeah thank you for sharing that that overview. Can you also speak to your background? How did you get into industrial hygiene? What made you say this is the career for me?
Richard Hirsh: Well you know i would have to I reflected on that and I would have to say it might go back to when I was about 15 years old working in a car wash you know I didn't even hear what industrial hygiene was back then but I you know I was working there on weekends and you know this operation really didn't give its workers any personal protective equipment in any way and they basically sent me out back with a bucket of caustic lye and a brush to apply to the hubcaps of cars to clean them off and I was wearing you know as a 15 year old wearing my high top sneakers, I think pro-Keds at the time and you know the caustic lye liquid would just permeate and soak right through my sneakers and actually burn several toes at that time and I thought you know there must be a safer way to do this work and you know even in high school I was very interested in biology and I you know that became my college major and I wanted to focus on proactive health measures, not waiting till people get sick but what can we do up front to protect them before they face a hazardous situation. And then after graduate undergraduate school I started working with an environmental activist non-profit organization working on aerial pesticide spraying in communities and developing a household hazardous waste collection program for San Francisco and I also got to learn the regulatory arena in the Bay Area. The air district and Bay Area Air Quality Management District and and California Resources Board and you know the water control board etc, and I wanted to you know learn how to quantify exposures to hazardous agents not just claim that they were all toxic and that people were being overexposed but i really want to know how much is too much you know are we below exposure limits that have been set and that oriented me to go back to graduate school in the Environmental Health Sciences program at UC Berkeley in the School of Public Health and that offered me the technical skills to provide a scientific approach to addressing those questions and issues.
Right around that same time, right after grad school I volunteered with the Nicaragua technical aid project a group of concerned occupational health professionals in the Bay Area had a relationship with the Ministry of Labor in Nicaragua and there was a case where a US owned lead battery manufacturing facility had poisoned many of its workers that had acute lead poisoning during the battery manufacturing process and we were they were they asked for volunteers to go down there to help train workers and do assessments and help control those exposures so I did met I did volunteer for that effort and got to work with a couple other industrial hygienists there to train workers on preventing lead exposure and also helping to design a ventilation system and that really opened my eyes to the global nature of these issues in the developing world particularly and the lack of awareness around hazards that pervades even now.
Michelle Meyer: Wow thank you so much for sharing those those personal stories.
Richard Hirsh: Sure
Michelle Meyer: Very powerful to hear about your kind of what inspired you to move forward in this this career path well it sounds like you really enjoy your work but I'd love to know what do you enjoy most out of all of the different things that you do?
Richard Hirsh: Sure, you know I would say the most enjoyable aspect of my career and I've been at it for close to 35 years has been training others in the industrial hygiene and environmental health and safety discipline I've had you know through my career the opportunity to travel to over 47 countries and have taught industrial hygiene fundamentals courses to a large variety of global students these are employees of my company in different facilities around the world that had the responsibility for carrying out the industrial hygiene mission and I taught in China, Thailand Argentina, Mexico throughout Europe and also throughout the United States and building capacity in occupational health and safety particularly in the developing world has been a very rewarding aspect and I've maintained many of those relationships that were forged during those training sessions I also had an opportunity to teach a couple of the occupational health training association courses in India this is if you go to ohlearning.com you can see many of these free downloadable curricula on various occupational health and safety topics and I had the opportunity to train about 60 students in two different courses on workplace exposure assessment and control and these students came from all over India to help them go back to their workforces and carry out this type of work.
Besides training during the travel during my many travels I've also provided technical assistance to sites and new acquisitions and auditing those facilities against our own internal company policies and programs one of the outcomes has been founding my own non-profit called the developing world outreach initiative it's actually a subcommittee of the American Industrial Hygiene Association's Northern California section and I started that when I was president of the local section, some 16 years ago. And we focus on building occupational health and safety capacity in the developing world and you know putting on training workshops and doing technical projects in the developing world each year. I also serve on other boards and this is also very rewarding you know to to give back to the profession I I've been on the board of the workplace Health without Borders US branch I've served as president of the or chair as of the International Affairs Committee of the American Industrial Hygiene association I serve now on as a board member of the California Industrial Hygiene Council and I also serve for many years now on the Center for Occupational Environmental Health Advisory Committee for UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and UC San Francisco. And lastly I do serve on a teen safety committee with the American Industrial Hygiene Association to build awareness for teenagers about their rights and what employers responsibilities are to them as a vulnerable workforce.
And currently I'm serving as a guest speaker for the Public Health 290 “Global Occupational Health and Safety” course at the school of public health and I'm delivering three lectures this semester one on sort of the global structure of occupational health and safety organizations from the world health organization on down all the way to some of these small nonprofits, and also the exposure assessment process is another lecture, and finally I'll be talking about the environmental health and safety aspects of the pharmaceutical industry specifically
Michelle Meyer: Wow it is a it's a pleasure to hear about all of the different opportunities both domestically and abroad that open for the field of industrial hygiene.
Richard Hirsh: That’s absolutely true
Michelle Meyer: There's so many different things you could do in so many directions and so many places. Yes, that's amazing thank you well I guess wrapping up today. I have one more question for you and it's just knowing what you know now what advice would you have given yourself when you were just starting out?
Richard Hirsh: Well thanks for the question because I think it's a real important one and I've reflected on it over time and you know my advice to those that are getting into this field are or just graduating from school and figuring out what you want to do is to try a variety of jobs, different employers, different experiences, whether it's a government job, academic research, private industry, such as I've the path I've chosen, or consulting firms. And you know really give yourself an opportunity to explore different work workplaces, different different you know projects, and really you know see what the whole field is like before settling on a particular area of focus. I would also say you know I I'd be negligent if I didn't say support your alma mater and you know I I've given back a little bit to UC Berkeley for the training I've received and and also support your local state national even international or professional organizations that in in this profession because that will help you cultivate professional connections and friendships that will be lifelong and it will also help you build your network which is mutually helpful not only for career development and job searches but also as emotional support in times of need there may be up times when you change jobs or lose your job or have some other personal situation and having you know a good a network of colleagues that you can cry on a shoulder is very helpful at times or bounce off ideas of which way you should go in your career. I would also suggest you know think globally you know to have a global perspective on these issues. You can act locally but think globally. And the last thing I'll say is you know be an intern you know get get internships and have a good mentor and then become a mentor to others and give you know it's sort of pay it back pay it forward I've provided about 11 internships over the since 1993 to different UC Berkeley grad students and in industrial hygiene and it's a total win-win situation to that gives them a lot of experience and gives a lot of benefit to the company to to get a lot of work accomplished and I've also you know had the opportunity to to maintain several of those relationships over the years and that's that's been a very rewarding aspect of it as well thank you
Michelle Meyer: Well thank you so much hear hear some very sage advice for anyone listening thank you so much for sharing your time and also for everything that you do for the community a true environmental health and safety advocate for many years so thank you for being here thank you for all you do and for sharing sharing your expertise with us today.
Richard Hirsh: Thanks Michelle really appreciate it
Michelle Meyer: Thank you!