Ethics and Professional Conduct
Core concepts
Professional ethics codes for industrial hygienists converge on a few duties: hold paramount the health and safety of workers and the public; practice only within your competence; report data and conclusions accurately and completely; protect confidentiality; disclose and manage conflicts of interest; avoid misrepresentation of credentials or results; and maintain competence through continuing education.
In practice, the hard cases are structural. An employer pays you, but the duty of protection runs to the exposed person. If you are asked to soften a conclusion, omit an exceedance, or sign work you did not perform, the response is to decline, document your objection, and escalate through the appropriate channel - up the management chain, to a safety committee, or to a regulator if imminent harm exists.
Other tested areas: expert testimony demands objectivity rather than advocacy; data ownership and retention should be clarified in advance; informed consent and privacy apply to medical and biomonitoring information; and credentials (CIH, CSP) carry an obligation to report unethical conduct by others.
Traps
- Treating loyalty to the employer as superior to public health.
- Signing a report for work performed by someone else or outside your scope.
- Withholding unfavorable sampling data.
- Accepting vendor gifts or consulting work that creates an undisclosed conflict.
- Testifying as an advocate instead of a scientist.
Worked example
A manager asks you to remove a 1.4× PEL result from a draft report because "it was an unusual day." You keep the data, add context if it is genuinely valid, and state clearly that the exceedance requires corrective action - the report reflects the data, not the desired outcome.
Rule of thumb
Apply the public-safety test: if this decision appeared in a regulator's file or a newspaper, could you defend it? If not, do not sign it.