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HSO emphasizes environment by becoming EHS

What's in a name?

A rose might smell as sweet regardless of what you call it, but a department's mission might get lost if its name fails to capture what it does.

That was the logic behind the University's former Health and Safety Office becoming the Department of Environment, Health & Safety, or "EHS" for short. The name change took effect July 1.

Peter Reinhardt, EHS director, said adding the word "Environment" to his department's name serves to let people know about one of EHS's major roles -- making sure the University is sensitive to environmental needs and employees work in environmentally sound spaces.

The department's complete mission covers:

Educating and training employees about safety and environmental matters;

Maintaining a safe environment;

Ensuring regulatory compliance; and

Recognizing and controlling health and safety hazards.

The new name of the department reflects what similar operations around the country are being called, Reinhardt said. The old name could cause confusion. One person who later joined Reinhardt's staff told him: "I looked you up in the phone book under `EHS' and couldn't find you." Because of similar stories, his entire staff encouraged him to make the change to EHS.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency also is keeping an ever-closer eye on universities' compliance with environmental regulations, another reason why the name change made sense, Reinhardt said.

"It doesn't hurt to have `environment' in our name to reaffirm our commitment to environmental compliance," he said.

EHS's old counterpart -- the Health and Safety Office (HSO) -- was formed in 1974 in the wake of the creation of the federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), from which Carolina's HSO pulled its name.

At first, "Safety" was the focus. Sheldon Wiggins, who joined Carolina's School of Public Health in 1970 and has made his career here working in HSO and now EHS, recalled OSHA inspectors coming to campus in the mid-1970s to inspect handrails and citing the University for not having them on some outside steps.

But later that decade and into the 1980s, HSO dealt more and more with federal environmental legislation and regulations. Those laws included one passed in 1980 that required proper disposal of hazardous waste, and environmental matters grew more emphasized at Carolina.

Wiggins said the office has always dealt with hazardous waste disposal, but the volume has increased tremendously over the years. Until 1980, waste only was collected from the Department of Chemistry. Collection spread campuswide after that. These numbers tell the story: in 1979-80, Carolina generated 1,748 cubic feet of radioactive waste; in 1996-97, the total was 4,693 cubic feet.

And the amount will no doubt grow as the campus grows in the coming years, and that growth will keep EHS busier than ever. As new or renovated facilities come online, its responsibilities include making sure that employees don't leave behind any hazardous materials when they move, and that those new buildings and renovations meet codes for handling hazardous materials and fire safety.

EHS also makes sure that any materials that have to be moved temporarily during building renovations are moved the right way.

"It has to be properly packaged as if it were being transported across the nation, even if it's only being moved across a couple of public streets," Reinhardt said.

But while EHS makes sure that everything meets standards, it tries to stay out of the way of people doing their work.

"We're supposed to be like a fly on the wall," said Rich Miller, who heads up EHS's environmental affairs section. "We don't want to interfere with what people are doing. We're here to support them."

EHS deals with much more than hazardous waste coming out of laboratories. The department also handles materials such as the dirty oil drained from Carolina vehicles and fuel from propane tanks.

And the department also responds to the environmental concerns of employees, who are more and more aware of the space they work in. They don't hesitate to call EHS when a bad smell fouls the air in their office.

"Occupants have higher standards and are more aware of the potential risks," Miller said. "As a result, they call us to identify their problem, and we get Facilities in to fix it."

EHS, on call 24 hours a day, also responds to clean-up sites such as gasoline spills. One of the department's biggest calls came in 1993, when it was on hand at a fire burning in a coal silo at the University's Cogeneration Facility.

Training employees about workplace safety and hazards is another huge task that EHS takes on. The department trains all new employees as appropriate for their areas, as well as gives specialized sessions such as asbestos awareness training for all maintenance employees.

"Safety is our number one issue," Miller said.

The goal of training is to teach employees how to recognize and avoid hazards, as well as to alert EHS to any problems so that they can be corrected.

"We don't want to have employees walking away from an incident," Miller said.

And employees shouldn't just depend on what they learn in formal training, he said. EHS always is happy to help them out.

"No question is a stupid question," Miller said. "This is people's safety we're talking about."

For more information about EHS, call 2-5507 or see http://ehs.unc.edu

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