I was a firefighter for twenty-five years before I was an industrial hygienist. People tend to treat those as two unrelated careers. They are closer than they look, and most of what I now measure and write about, I first met on the fire side.
The subjects carried over
Start with respiratory protection. A firefighter learns early what a facepiece seal is worth, and what happens when the air supply is wrong for the atmosphere. Title 8, section 5144 puts the same questions to an employer in writing: which respirator, for which contaminant, fitted how, and checked by whom.
Hazardous materials is the plainest overlap. I held Hazardous Materials Specialist and Incident Commander qualifications in the fire service. The emergency response rule an employer answers to, section 5192, is built on those same response levels, from first responder awareness up through specialist and on-scene incident commander.
Then heat. Wildland firefighters work long shifts in the conditions that section 3395 regulates for outdoor employers and section 3396 now regulates indoors: water, rest, shade or a cool-down area, acclimatization, and a plan for the person who goes down.
So did the habits
An incident runs on a written plan, one named person responsible for each piece of it, a briefing before anyone goes to work, and a record of what was decided and why. When an incident goes badly, that record is what gets read afterward.
A serious workplace injury is read the same way. So is a Cal/OSHA citation. The employer holding a written program, training records and someone who can explain the decisions stands in a different place from the one rebuilding events from memory.
What changed
The instruments changed. Industrial hygiene puts a sampling pump, a calibrated meter and a laboratory result behind the judgment, then sets the number against an exposure limit. That is a different discipline from fire prevention, and I trained for it separately. The registrations I hold now are Registered Environmental Professional, Registered Industrial Hygienist and Emergency Planning Professional.
The rank is behind me. I am a former Fire Battalion Chief, and I do not take fire origin-and-cause or arson work.
What I kept from being a firefighter is the way of working.
The agencies, rank and qualifications are on the firefighter career page. Registration numbers are on the credentials page.
Michael Karl McNeil, REP, RIH, EPP, QSD
Michael Karl McNeil — environmental health and safety, industrial hygiene, Cal/OSHA citation defense.
