Occupational safety and health technology programs prepare people to help safety engineers maintain health and safety standards in the workplace. Students learn principles of engineering. They also learn to inspect and monitor worksites. They learn to test samples in labs.

Some threats to safety and health in the workplace are obvious. Police officers often can tell when they are getting into a dangerous situation. Lumberjacks can see the enormous bulk of a tree as it falls and know they have to keep their distance.

But other hazards are not so obvious. At one time workers used to paint radioactive materials onto clock parts to make the dials glow in the dark. Only when workers started getting sick did people realize that radioactivity can be a workplace health hazard. Similar discoveries have been made about airborne cotton fibers in fabric mills. Some scientists have raised an alarm about the solvent used in some liquid-paper products. Is this a real threat or a trivial matter? Experts in occupational safety and health technology do research that answers such questions. Some of these experts are engineers, but others are technologists and technicians who work as part of the engineering team.

You can study this field at several levels. You can prepare to be a technician by studying two years full-time beyond high school. This earns you an associate's degree. About 45 colleges offer a program of this kind. You learn how to evaluate conditions in the workplace by evaluating chemical, biological, and physical hazards. To do so, you need to be good at these sciences and the math that accompanies them. You study statistics so that you can interpret the data you collect and reach good conclusions. You also learn how to use proper equipment for personal protection, decontamination, calibration, and measurement. And you study how to handle hazardous situations such as chemical spills, prepare hazardous wastes for transport, and prevent fires.

You can enter the field at a higher level of responsibility if you earn a bachelor's degree by studying for four years beyond high school. About 30 colleges offer this degree. You usually need this degree to apply for certification with the professional associations listed in the Resources for this program. Experience in the field is also usually required. Certification is not required by law, but it opens up job opportunities.

A four-year program is likely to give you greater depth in science and math than a two-year program. It is also more likely to include supervised work experience, which can be valuable for teaching you skills and also for making professional contacts that will be useful when you enter the job market.

If you plan on the bachelor's, you should look for a program that has a good helping of science, math, and engineering subjects. (Look for 60 or more semester hours, with at least 15 at the upper-division level.) The five or so programs approved by the Accreditation Board for Science and Technology (ABET) all meet this standard. This kind of program prepares you to design large, complex strategies for assessing exposure to hazards. It also meets the entry requirements for graduate school in this field.

Graduate school is yet another way of entering the work force. You may earn a bachelor's in occupational safety and health technology or in some other field of science, math, or engineering, then a master's degree in this field. This takes a year or two beyond the bachelor's. The roughly 20 ABET-approved programs will give you an especially good background in the science and technology.