| Overview |
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| The Department of Environmental Health Engineering was set up, as a part of the Basic Science Research Wing of Sri Ramachandra Medical College & Research Institute (Sri Ramachandra University), Chennai, in 1998 with the aid of financial assistance provided by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. |
| The Beginning |
| The department was originally set up to provide occupational safety and industrial hygiene monitoring services to the leather and tanning industry in Tamil Nadu. It has since then expanded to include a variety of R&D and training activities, which cover a broad spectrum of environmental health concerns. |
| Our Focus |
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| The primary focus of the department is health risk assessment for environmental pollutants (in both the occupational and ambient environment). |
| Consultancy for Industries |
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The department also provides routine occupational safety and health consultancy services to a wide spectrum of industries. The department is equipped with a state of the art environmental monitoring and industrial hygiene laboratory. Recently, the department has also been involved with projects concerned with economic evaluation of environmental health issues. |
| Cooperation |
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| The department is involved in research projects that have been funded both by national and international agencies including The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF), Govt. of India, The World Bank, The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, USA. |
| The department actively collaborates with several university departments within the state of Tamil Nadu as well as governmental agencies such as Inspectorate of Factories, Govt. of Tamil Nadu, Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) and the Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) and professional associations/non-governmental organizations such as the National Safety Council (NSC) - Tamil Nadu Chapter, The Indian Association of Occupational Health (IAOH) and The Hindu. |
| Training |
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| The faculty of the department is involved in the conduct of several training modules in collaboration with the Environmental Training Institute of the TNPCB. The department has developed several training modules in the areas of environmental epidemiology, quantitative health risk assessment procedures, industrial hygiene measurements, indoor air quality and biomedical waste management. |
| Joint Research |
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| The department is also involved in joint research and training activities with the Division of Environmental Health Engineering of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and the Metals Epidemiology Laboratory of the Harvard School of Public Health. The department has lately been awarded a training grant by the Fogarty International Center of The National Institutes of Health, USA, for capacity building in occupational and environmental health in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley. |
| The department has been recognized as Technology Transfer Center by the Confederation of Indian Industry under support from the Technology Development Board, Government of India for the purposes of providing occupational health services. |
| International Labour Organisation (ILO) of the United Nations, Geneva has recognized the department as it's Collaborating Center of the International Occupational Safety and Health Information Centre (CIS) Network. This is the third collaborating centre at the all India level and first one in South India to merit this recognition. The department will operate this center and provide services related to occupational safety and health. Through a combination of community based research projects, need based training, periodic reviews of on-going activities related to improving occupational safety and health standards in area industries and intensive dissemination exercises, the institution will contribute to strengthening I L O programs aimed at improving occupational safety and health. |
| The department has been recognized recently, as Air Pollution Related Disease Diagnostic Center (APRDC) by the GAIL (India) Limited. |
| The department has been recognized recently as WHO Collaborating centre. |
| Future |
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| The future activities of the department will be centered on establishing a scientific network of interested organizations within and outside the country that would specifically be concerned with local environmental problems. Using a combination of rigorous scientific environmental health assessments, training and dissemination exercises and fostering interagency cooperation, the department hopes to contribute substantially to generation of crucial local environmental health information for use by policy-makers and the public at large. |
| Academic Courses |
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| The faculty of the department is involved in the conduct of academic courses including M.Sc., (Industrial Hygiene and Safety) and Post-Graduate Certificate Course in Industrial Health offered by Sri Ramachandra University. The aim of these courses is to provide an opportunity to expand the knowledge of practitioners who are already involved with industrial hygiene, safety and health to enable them to identify and manage occupational hazards and diseases, suggest preventive and control measures and implement occupational safety and health programmes. |
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