Occupational Health and Safety Engineering

Occupational health and safety engineering is a science and technology that, by predicting, identifying, evaluating, and controlling occupational hazards, strives to ensure, maintain, and promote the highest level of physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of employees in all occupations, to prevent safety and health hazards in the workplace and hazards from harmful factors in the workplace, and to participate in matching work to their physical and mental abilities. Occupational health and safety engineering can be very effective in protecting the country’s working population, which is estimated to be over 21 million people.

Regarding the history of this field, it can be said that the field of occupational health was first established in Iran in 1968 under the name of industrial nursing. The name of this field was changed to industrial health in 1974, and in 1977, the first master’s degree course in this field was established under the name of occupational health and industrial protection at the Faculty of Health of the University of Tehran. The field was changed to occupational health in 1982, and in that year, the first associate’s degree course began at the University of Tehran. In the following years, other universities also accepted students at different levels of education. Currently, students are studying at associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels in 40 universities of medical sciences across the country.

The specific goals of this field are to improve the health of employees in workplaces during work and during retirement, reduce work-related accidents, reduce absenteeism, reduce harmful factors in workplaces, help improve production quality, and help improve human resource productivity.

Graduates of this field can work in community health centers, medical universities and health centers, labor inspection departments in the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, municipalities, HSE units under the Ministries of Defense, Industry, Mines, Trade, Power, Oil and its subsidiaries including petrochemicals, oil and gas refining and distribution, government and non-government sector industries in the country, and occupational health service companies, safety service companies, especially in the field of firefighting.