Modernizing How We Handle Hazards In the Workplace

Hey, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you'd like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today's guest is Mona Shum, and she's founder and principal over at Industrial Hygienist at AHA. Aurora health and safety. Mona, welcome to the show. Thanks Adam. I just wanted to say it's around here and you're a principal industrial hygienist. There we go. I said that wrong. And then the name of the company is or aura health and safety. Yes. That's correct. That's correct. Hey, welcome. I butchered it. It was a long one. I'll be, I'll be upfront and I'll be honest. You're the first principal industrial hygienist I've had on. Yeah, probably the only one you'll have on actually. No, I'm in. So just to, just to get us started as we go through. So we got lots of cover. So we're gonna talk about modernizing how we handle hazards in the workplace. So we got a lot to talk about here, but just to get us kicked off, we'll start this episode the way that we start them all with our mission matters minute. So Mona, a mission matters. Our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That's what we do. Mona, what mission matters to you? Well, oral health and safety. Our mission is actually to prevent occupational disease through a combination of education and consultation. So what I mean by that is really, we're trying to make sure that everyone goes home. As healthy as they came at the beginning of the day. So, first thing first, Mona, just to get us started, what is industrial hygiene? What is industrial hygiene? What does an industrial hygienist do? Sure, I get asked that quite often. So, industrial hygiene is actually looking at exposures in the workplace. So we all know about safety. Which is usually to prevent injury. So occupational hygiene is actually the science of recognizing, evaluating and controlling exposures in the workplace that eventually hopefully prevents disease. So we're looking at things that maybe have a longer life. Longer timeline than like a like a fall or a cut or something like that in safe in the safety world So industrial hygiene really is about trying to understand what kind of hazards we have exposure hazards We have in the workplace whether they're chemical whether they're biological or physical something like noise Or ergonomics, you know, that sort of thing that can cause an injury in the future. How did you get started in this field? Like, how were you introduced to this originally? Well, I actually have a degree, a bachelor's in microbiology and immunology. And, and I was looking for something that I could do with that degree. And I was looking around and realized I didn't want to work in the laboratory exclusively. You know, I didn't want to do that looking at. It's kind of lonely. I must admit, being in a laboratory. I had worked. I had a roommate. You don't know this. You don't know this. And why would you Mona? But I had a roommate in college who was microbiology major. And when he would tell me about his experience, and I think at some point counting something on butterfly wings, or I don't know what he was doing, I forget. But he would tell me about the days in the lab. It's for some people, but You know, it is meticulous, I'll say. It's interesting. Yeah, and oftentimes you are by yourself. You might collaborate with other people, but essentially there were many long nights in my last year of my bachelor's. I was doing a thesis program, and I'd be alone until 2 a. m. in the morning, running my gels or doing whatever I was doing. Yeah. So anyways, I was looking for something where I could utilize science. And maybe have some lab work as well, but that would involve going out in the world a little bit more. And so I, I found this, program sort of in a happenstance way, where I was looking around at the University of British Columbia and I was walking through this parking lot and I saw a flyer on the, on the wet ground because in Vancouver it's often raining. That's where I'm from. And it was wet and soggy but I don't know what it was about it that made me want to pick it up. So I actually picked it up. Yeah. And it was a soggy piece of like, you know, in those days, it was like people had posters and pamphlets. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't have internet back then. I won't say exactly when, but anyways, they didn't have internet back then. So that's how people you know, distributed information about programs and whatnot. And I found this program. It said occupational hygiene program. And I'd like, I was Really intrigued, but said, do you want to be doing, you know, field work? Do you want to be talking to people? Do you want to also do research and do you want to be, you know, had all those things that I, that I was really intrigued about. And so I actually, in those days, we, I actually went to the faculty and I

Mission Matters Innovation with Adam Torres