The IH is dedicated to the prevention of work‐related disease and illness that are invariably an outcome of chronic exposures that accumulate over many years or decades. Warning a worker that excessive noise exposures may adversely affect their hearing in the next 20 years if they do not use hearing protection can easily sound like a grandparent's precautionary tale if the message is not delivered correctly. What is the correct method to ensure a worker understands the necessity of consistently using controls related to their profession when the harm may not be immediate or readily apparent and the level of concern amongst their peers is low? This is the most challenging type of risk communication that is all too common for the IH. This drives the necessity of finding a strategy to help workers understand that they must take these risks seriously, often with hazards that are not viewed by the likely apathetic audience in the workplace as an issue or perhaps as a commonly accepted exposure relating to a given task or professional trade. The better‐understood hazards that do not pose a higher risk, which often sets in at a medium level of concern as their impact may be known and are still considered a long‐term issue, can make the IH's risk communication easier. However, emerging new technologies like nanomaterials can cause workers' concern because there is so much unknown about the hazards. Similarly, chemical constituents are continually updated at a pace too rapid to establish occupational exposure limits (OELs), so here too there is often an increased concern that can fill the vacuum of lacking information. The management of this type of risk communication is not common to the IH profession and emerging controversies that can spill out to local communities create difficult issues that the profession must also learn how to handle and discuss with relevant stakeholders (9).
2.2 Occupational Safety
Different from IH, which focuses on exposure and control of exposure, OS has accident scenarios and barriers to reduce or eliminate potential accidents. Barriers are to OS as exposure controls are to IH, with examples like fall arrest systems or ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCI) that can both help stop hazardous energy that lead to accident scenarios like falls from heights or electrocution. Safety professionals are also concerned with the full array of potential workplace hazards, however, the profession has traditionally focused on the prevention of traumatic events that can lead to injuries and workplace fatalities. Although historically focused on the prevention of acute traumatic injury, a broader definition includes controlling hazards and the prevention of accidents that protect the workforce while also protecting the general public and the environment. Therefore, the broad discipline of safety deals with the interaction between people and providing the barriers necessary to prevent the acute or chronic outcomes that can adversely impact their well‐being. The discipline of safety is the systematic application of principles drawn from engineering, physics, education, psychology, health, enforcement, and management to prevent harm to people, property, and the environment. The physical aspects of the workplace and their interaction with the worker is an essential part of the safety professional's purview. This includes focusing on preventing potential injuries caused by slips and falls or by being struck by or crushed under an object, cuts, crushes, burns, electric shock, or improper lifting, bending, or stretching and may also include addressing the use of flammable and/or exploding chemicals in production processes.
As with IH, OS training and professional development often do not include the methods of proper and sustainable communication of the risks present within a given workplace. However, there is an advantage for safety professionals when it comes to the discussions with workers' about the adverse outcomes inherent in industry and manufacturing and the methods to provide barriers to prevent these scenarios from occurring. As an example, if an employee loses a finger in a carpenter shop as an outcome of improper use of a saw, the OS professional will have the full attention of the workers the next day as they can immediately understand that they do not want to lose a finger. Acute traumatic events like this can also include electrical shocks, falls from elevation, machinery mishaps, back injuries, and burns to name just a few. As the outcomes of events like these are immediate and often severe, the opportunity to communicate the risks involved and to inject methods of prevention to the workforce is more likely to be maximized and retained. In the absence of a traumatic injury as a precursor to a safety professional's discussion of hazards, risks, and control barriers to employees, the potential to be in a difficult risk communication position is like the one found for the IH profession. In this situation, both professions need to find an appropriate strategy to ensure workers understand the potential for hazards posing a high risk that requires a consistent implementation of controls is essential. Even if the harm these hazards cause might not be imminent or are considered an intrinsic and accepted component of the work, the audience needs to be sufficiently educated as an outcome of the discussion to ensure the necessary controls are consistently used in their workplace.
2.3 Environmental Analyst
Another key EHS professional is the EA. EAs, also called environmental scientists or specialists, examine soil, water, and air as part of a concerted effort to protect, clean, and/or ensure its preservation. Based on their assessment of the hazards and risks that may be present, they often capture this information in written reports and can be called upon to present their findings to workplace management, policymakers, and the general public in order to raise the awareness of potential environmental issues that may be faced by these stakeholders. EAs often work for government agencies to help develop legislation that protects the environment from contamination by hazardous materials and pollutants. Other EAs also work within the private sector to ensure compliance with government regulations. They may help to identify and reduce and/or eliminate sources of pollution and the emission of hazardous substances. This effort can include the responsibilities for ensuring that facilities comply with environmental regulations for air, water, wastewater, hazardous materials, and hazardous waste by providing guidance and support to the facility's staff.
An issue often faced by EAs is that they feel hampered in communicating the risks of the effects of substances on the environment due to the myriad of regulatory requirements that are applicable. The environmental regulations in each of the 50 states in the United States must be as stringent as the federal environmental regulations; however, these regulations can be more stringent than federal regulations and different from those in other states. The same is true for local environmental regulations. EAs must take into consideration the intertwined federal and state regulations, multiple local jurisdictions, as well as internal requirements and sustainability goals. In addition to the risk communication issues that EAs may face in clearly and succinctly unraveling the regulations that may be potentially violated, they may also be hampered by the same type of dilemma faced by IHs and OSs in the workplace. These environmental professionals are often placed in a situation where they need to provide a precautionary advocacy for potentially high hazard issues to an often reluctant and potentially unwilling room of stakeholders. A good risk communication in this situation is to cautiously stoke concern in the audience in the hopes that precautions can be viewed as advantageous, especially if public concern or environmental groups get involved in the process. Alternatively, EAs may be part of an effort to reduce community outrage about factory emissions or groundwater issues that may be perceived as being tied to employees ignoring or mishandling more serious hazards (9).
2.4 Occupational Physician
Although these three professions make up the heart of the EHS professions, there are other professions that deserve mentioning as they also face unique as well as common risk communication challenges. From a global perspective, it is the occupational physician (OP) profession that often leads health and safety offices as well as more holistic EHS models. It is often an outcome of national regulatory language that the OP manages the other professions. These can be the same regulations that do not directly include the IH profession in their language, directly hampering the necessary growth of the profession in these countries. This structure is also a by‐product of health‐oriented systems, with the EU as a prime example, that are developed by design within larger corporate structures or are derived as independent offices that are contracted to multiple manufacturing or industrial operations regionally. When it comes to risk communication, the OP has a distinct advantage of working directly with employees that are more likely than not