Environmental Health Services, Inc. history

The forerunner of the department of Environmental Health was the Harvard-MIT Institute of Technology School for Health Officers, which was established in 1913.

1938 Warren Cook, the first Industrial Hygiene professor at the University of Michigan, co-founds the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA); one of 13 AIHA presidents who have graduated or been associated with the department.

By 1939, the department — called the Department of Industrial Hygiene at the time — was staffed with a significant group of scientists and engineers.

1944 The National Sanitation Foundation (now NSF International) is founded at SPH as an independent, non-profit organization to set standards for the food service industry, Today, it certifies products and develops global standards for food, water, air and consumer goods.

The University of Washington Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS) began in 1947 as a small program to train undergraduate students in sanitary science.

By the mid-1950’s, the Department of Industrial Hygiene had enlarged its curriculum and research efforts to include radiological safety and air-pollution control in addition to the more traditional studies of industrial hygiene, industrial medicine, industrial safety and environmental sanitation.

1951: The program launches the Environmental Health Laboratory to support industrial hygiene services for industry and air pollution studies for local governments.

In the mid-1960’s the department continued its historic interest in the relationship between occupational exposures and occupational disease with research efforts aimed at identifying new job-related hazards and bringing them under control.

In 1962, Leslie Silverman and Melvin First launched a new field of studies on solid waste management continuing the enlargement of the scope of concern related to environmental health management and to environmental health problems.

1963: The Washington State Legislature allocates a portion of workers’ compensation funds to expand the lab and support our work in research, teaching and service to improve occupational health for Washington’s workers.

The program, initially part of the UW School of Medicine, became one of four departments in the new UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine in 1970.

In 1973, Department faculty Benjamin Ferris and his colleague Frank Speizer proposed what was to become one of the most influential, innovative and longest-running studies concerning the health effects of air pollution in America: The Harvard Six Cities Study.

Current Department Chair and epidemiologist Douglas Dockery joined the project in 1974 and directed the study’s attention to particulate matter, now recognized as a dangerous form of air pollution.

1977: The Northwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety, housed in DEOHS, is launched with funding from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

1979 - Industrial Health and Safety (IHS) program established

1982: Gilbert Omenn is hired as department chair, then becomes dean of the UW School of Public Health.

1986: The department receives funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to establish the UW Superfund Research Program.

45.J. Matthews (1990). ‘They had such a lot of fun: The Women’s League of Health and Beauty between the wars’, History Workshop Journal, 30, 22–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1991: Gerald Van Belle is named department chair after Murphy’s untimely death.

1995: The department’s first PhD student graduates.

1996: The Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center is founded with funding from NIOSH to address health and safety concerns in the farming, fishing and forestry workforces.

2000: David Kalman is named department chair.

2005: The US Environmental Protection Agency awards its largest-ever research grant to DEOHS to study the connection between air pollution and cardiovascular disease.

23.C. Sellers (2006). ‘Worrying about the water; sprawl, public health and environmentalism in post World War Two Long island’, seminar given at Centre for History in Public Health, LSHTM 7 April.Google Scholar

DEOHS 60th anniversary timeline (2007) and souvenir booklet.

With the passage of the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, there has been an increase in the development and use of electronic health records (EHRs) within clinical practice.

To reflect the expansion of safety standards in the industry, the program name changed to environmental health and safety (EHS) in 2015.

2017: The department ranks fifth in the world among all public and private universities for environmental and occupational health programs, according to the Center for World University Rankings.

2019: An interactive mapping tool developed by DEOHS and our partners ranks Washington communities that are most impacted by environmental health risks.