Inspection Reflections

I was watching Dr. Helen Fisher  being interviewed on the Colbert Report the other night. In case you don’t know her, she is a biological anthropologist who has just written a book detailing how brain chemistry can predict with whom you are compatible. She even has this detailed personality quiz that they use to match up with your chemical results. Dr. Fisher claims she has over a 90% success rate at matching potential mates. 

People often say that health inspectors have a unique brain chemistry and that it takes a special person to be compatible with one. Wouldn’t it be nice to know ahead of time whether or not a potential date was compatible with you? Well now you can by taking the ”Health Inspector Compatibility Test”.

Before going out on your next date, simply have the person read the questions below and pick the answer they prefer most. For every “a” answer, give them one point, every “b” two points and every “c” three points. Then add up their score and see where they fall under the answer guide at the end of the quiz. 

1. You are a contestant on the television show Survivor. The challenge requires you to eat boiled beetle larvae. You would ask Jeff Probst:

2. When you go to a Chinese restaurant, your first question would be:

1. What is today’s special?
2. Do you use MSG?
3. Can I see your last health inspection report?

3. If a group of your friends had the stomach flu, you would:

1. Avoid them like the plague
2. Bring them soup and pepto-bismol
3. Volunteer to take their stool samples to the lab

4. When someone violates your personal space, you:

1. Just ignore it and hope they go away
2. Pretend to sneeze and tell them you don’t want to share your cold
3. Issue them a Notice of Violation, define your personal space requirements and give them a specified amount of time to back-off

5. Your idea of a good “hair restraint” is:

1. Hairspray and low humidity
2. A “scrunchy”
3. A designer hair net

6. When following a sewage pumper truck, you:

1. Want to pass it as soon as possible
2. Wonder why anybody would do that for a living
3. Follow as closely as possible to make sure its not leaking, read the registration number and verify it has a permit.

7. You are at a conference and only have one free afternoon. You would use it to:

1. Go shopping
2. Socialize with fellow conference attendees
3. Tour the local sewage treatment plant or municipal landfill 

8. If a dinner conversation involved projectile vomiting, you would:

1. Find it inappropriate, disgusting and change the subject
2. Smile and tolerate it as long as you weren’t eating split pea soup
3. Be intrigued and ask if the person also had diarrhea, fever and how long the symptoms lasted

9. You are on vacation and your digital camera has enough memory for one more picture. You would photograph:

1. Your family or significant other
2. A beautiful sunset
3. A well installed 5 feet from a slaughterhouse?

10. Soil augers, tank lid lifters, laser levels, probe thermometers, chlorine and quad test strips, light meters and alcohol pads are:

1. Items for which I have no idea what they are used
2. Items I would not typically use or have
3. Items that can be found rolling around in your car at any given time

Answer Guide

(10-15 Points) The health inspector is more likely to give you a fine than his or her phone number. (15-25 Points) A relationship is possible if your kitchen is clean, you wash your hands after going to the bathroom and do not eat rare steaks. (25 and Above) That feeling you are getting in your stomach might not be food poisoning. Romance is in the air!

It was an event that happens to me at least once a week. During a routine high school inspection, a group of biology students noticed my badge and started quizzing me about my job. They wanted to know about the things I saw, what I liked/didn’t like about it and best of all, how they too could be a health inspector. I told them a few of my wild inspection stories and explained how I use science to protect public health. I then encouraged them to continue taking science classes and asked them to consider environmental health when they go to college.

I get this job curiosity with all types and ages of people. Based upon this expressed curiosity, one would assume that environmental health would be a popular career choice, universities offering degrees in it to be overflowing with students and competition for job openings to be fierce. The reality of the profession is starkly different. Vacancy rates for environmental health positions nationwide range between 10-22% with many positions remaining unfilled due to the lack of qualified candidates. These vacancy rates are expected to rise rapidly with the coming wave of baby boomer retirements. Universities offering accredited environmental health programs report difficulties recruiting enough students to sustain their programs and some no longer offer environmental health degrees. Despite strong initial interest, people are ultimately not choosing environmental health as a viable career option and it threatens the very core of our profession. Why the disconnect?

I believe it can be explained by examining the multiple confluence of several factors:

1. According to the National Environmental Health Association, there is an increasing culture of indifference that exists among EH practitioners due to low pay scales and minimal advancement opportunities.
2. In his book, Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal, journalist Eric Schlosser noted a swing in government policy over the past 20 years toward weakening regulations to allow the dictates of the market to gain precedence over consumer protection.  It is my belief that this shift has fundamentally altered how regulatory efforts are perceived by the public. Environmental health practitioners have shifted from the “people who help protect consumers” to “people who interfere with the free function of markets, job creation and community advancement.”
3. A November 2006 edition of the National Science Teachers Association’s Science Scope suggests that movies and television shows, such as CSI, can greatly influence how students perceive a science profession. Compare, for example, how media portrays crime scene investigators vs. health inspectors. Crime scene investigators are smart, elite teams of scientist who solve mysteries. Environmental health professionals (think of any inspector character in Larry the Cable Guy-Health Inspector or Walter Peck in Ghostbusters) are not portrayed as scientist at all. We are depicted as corrupt, bumbling, frustrated or obsessed bureaucrats who enforce laws.  
4. According to a United States Government Accountability Office report (GAO-06-702T May 3, 2006), sub par teacher quality, poor high school preparation, lack of professional outreach and insufficient mentoring are cited as primary factors that discourage student pursuit of science degrees. They note that while postsecondary enrollment has increased over the past decade, the proportion of students obtaining degrees in science fields has fallen.

It’s time to start a conversation about these factors and what we as a profession can do to stop the disconnect. First of all, we need to look inward and realize that the real reward of our efforts is not in our paychecks or the job titles we hold, but is the difference we make in the lives of people we will likely never meet. While our profession can be impacted by weakening regulations, cuts in funding and shifts in public perception, they do not necessarily create obstacles that keep us from achieving our public health goals. Secondly, environmental health is a branch of science, not law or code enforcement. This misperception is, in my opinion, one of the primary causes of the disconnect. We are people who use science to solve disease outbreak mysteries and protect the public’s health and environmental health is a branch of science. People considering a future career need to understand this fact. We need to be vocal proponents for our profession to be sure it is being represented properly and counter the biased images created by popular media. Thirdly, we need to do our part to keep students in the sciences by working as mentors to middle and high school aged students. We need to be there at those critical moments when they are so discouraged with science that they are ready to give up. At the same time, we need to show them environmental health is not only a viable career option; it is a knowledge tool that can positively impact the lives of others.

People these days do not want a “job”. They want to do something that gives meaning and purpose to their lives. When I asked those high school students why they were so interested in being a health inspector, they unanimously answered, “I want to do something that makes a difference”.  Not so surprisingly, the quest for purpose and meaning was a major reason I chose this profession and why I remain in it today despite the low pay, increasing workloads, biased media portrayals and regulatory challenges. I still believe that I make a difference! Do you? NOW is the time for members of our profession to turn this crisis around….before it’s too late.