Roles
A Public Health Inspector (also known as an Environmental Health Officer) is a public employee who investigates health hazards in a wide variety of locations, and will take action to mitigate or eliminate the hazards. Usually the public perception of a health inspector is someone who examines restaurants and ensures they maintain sanitary standards for food safety set by the regulating authority. However, public health inspectors have much broader job duties, including inspecting swimming pools, substandard housing conditions, public schools, day cares, nursing homes, and personal service establishments such as tattoo parlours. Depending on their jurisdiction, Registered Environmental Health Officers often permit and inspect wells, private water systems, and individual subsurface sewage disposal (septic) systems. Other tasks include: campground inspections, tanning salon inspections, beauty salon inspections, correctional facility inspections and mobile home park inspection. The public health inspector (environmental health officer) also plays a vital role in community projects such as those concerning health promotion, tobacco reduction, healthy built environments/healthy communities, food security, and emergency preparedness.
They may also respond to complaints such as animal bites, garbage complaints, odor complaints, or sewage overflows. Due to their educational background they can provide information and referrals with regards to; lead, radon, mold, and emerging diseases such as West Nile Virus and Avian Flu. The field also overlaps with hazardous materials (Hazmat) and many Hazmat responders are also Licensed Environmental Health Practitioners or Registered Environmental Health Specialists.
Read more about this topic: Health Inspector
Famous quotes containing the word roles:
“There is a striking dichotomy between the behavior of many women in their lives at work and in their lives as mothers. Many of the same women who are battling stereotypes on the job, who are up against unspoken assumptions about the roles of men and women, seem to accept—and in their acceptance seem to reinforce—these roles at home with both their sons and their daughters.”
—Ellen Lewis (20th century)
“It was always the work that was the gyroscope in my life. I don’t know who could have lived with me. As an architect you’re absolutely devoured. A woman’s cast in a lot of roles and a man isn’t. I couldn’t be an architect and be a wife and mother.”
—Eleanore Kendall Pettersen (b. 1916)
“Productive collaborations between family and school, therefore, will demand that parents and teachers recognize the critical importance of each other’s participation in the life of the child. This mutuality of knowledge, understanding, and empathy comes not only with a recognition of the child as the central purpose for the collaboration but also with a recognition of the need to maintain roles and relationships with children that are comprehensive, dynamic, and differentiated.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)