South Ayrshire Council General Enquiries |
Environmental Health
Careers in Environmental Health
For more than one hundred years in Scotland, Environmental Health Officers and their predecessors have been employed to look after the health of the public.
In the early days poor and overcrowded housing, polluted water supplies and adulterated or contaminated food were the source of much disease and ill health. In 1897, the passing of the Public Health (Scotland) Act gave wide powers to the then Sanitary Inspector to take action to improve conditions for the general public.
The work of the Environmental Health Officer (EHO) has evolved from those earlier days, the majority now being employed by local authorities or the Scottish Environment Protection Agency with the task of protecting people living or working in their area or region.
Some EHO's work for the private sector, advising businesses or their legal duties and helping them maintain good environmental standards, often being called Environmental Health Consultants.
All EHO's have similar common goals:
To reduce risks and eliminate the dangers to human health associated with the living and working environment.
View a brief PowerPoint presentation on Environmental Health Careers
If you do not have Microsoft PowerPoint installed on your computer, you can still view this presentation by downloading the viewing software which is freely available for download from the Microsoft website
For information on courses in Scotland visit the Strathclyde University Environmental Health Pages.