• Employees of federal, state, territorial and local agencies (health departments) such as sanitarians, engineers, public health nurses and professionals who work on environmental public health issues, e.g., industrial hygienists, epidemiologists, veternarians, chemists, geologists, physicians, economists, public administrators and lawyers
• 4.5% of the total U.S. public health workforce*
• For every 14,000 persons, there is one environmental public health practitioner

*It is difficult to account for the large number of professionals engaged in environmental public health activities that occur outside the public health system (for example, in environmental protection, non-government organizations (NGOs) and private companies).

REFERENCE: CDC. A National Strategy to Revitalize Environmental Public Health Services. September 2003.

FACT:

“Environmental health practitioners are involved not only in inspections, but perhaps more importantly in surveillance, warnings, permitting, grading, developing compliance schedules and variances, risk assessment, risk communication, public information, exposure evaluation, seeking injunctions and other legal remedies, embargoing, sampling for the values and benefits of public health, plan and design review and epidemiology. Such activities are essential to a modern, effective program.”
Former APHA President (1981) Larry Gordon