Environmental hygiene addresses similar issues to occupational hygiene but is likely to be about broad industry or broad issues affecting the local community, broader society, region or country. The term "industrial hygiene" traditionally stems from industries with construction, mining or manufacturing, and "occupational hygiene" refers to all types of industry such as those listed for "industrial hygiene" as well as financial and support services industries and refers to " work", " workplace" and "place of work" in general. The term "occupational hygiene" (used in the UK and Commonwealth countries as well as much of Europe) is synonymous with industrial hygiene (used in the US, Latin America, and other countries that received initial technical support or training from US sources). The International Occupational Hygiene Association (IOHA) refers to occupational hygiene as the discipline of anticipating, recognizing, evaluating and controlling health hazards in the working environment with the objective of protecting worker health and well-being and safeguarding the community at large. The British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) defines that "occupational hygiene is about the prevention of ill-health from work, through recognizing, evaluating and controlling the risks". The profession of occupational hygienist 4.1 Basic characterization, hazard identification and walk-through surveys.2 The social role of occupational hygiene.1 The profession of occupational hygienist.Depending on an individual's type of job, a hygienist will apply their exposure science expertise for the protection of workers, consumers and/or communities. Environmental and occupational hygienists are considered experts in exposure science and exposure risk management. Occupational hygienists work closely with toxicologists (see Toxicology) for understanding chemical hazards, physicists (see Physics) for physical hazards, and physicians and microbiologists for biological hazards (see Microbiology Tropical medicine Infection). For chemicals, the hazard can be understood by the dose response profile most often based on toxicological studies or models. The risk of a health effect from a given stressor is a function of the hazard multiplied by the exposure to the individual or group.
These hazards or stressors are typically divided into the categories biological, chemical, physical, ergonomic and psychosocial. Occupational hygiene (United States: industrial hygiene (IH)) is the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, control, and confirmation of protection from hazards at work that may result in injury, illness, or affect the well being of workers.