All -
I am encouraged by the growing discussion on diversity within the chemical EH&S profession.
As you all know, ACS has taken a very strong position to improve diversity within ACS Publications (See Confronting Racism in Chemistry Journals Cynthia J. Burrows, Julia Laskin, et al. doi.org/10.1021/acs.accounts.0c00383). The Society has also worked hard to address diversity with its staff.
CHAS leadership is very diverse by gender. But, the Executive Committee has virtually no diversity by any other measure. Further, the EH&S profession is by and large not diverse. The profession is very under-represented among the several diversity measures.
Here are data taken from the June 2020 CHAS Demographics report which illustrate this point.
GENDER | | | |
Group | | COUNT | % |
Female | | 679 | 34.95 |
Male | | 901 | 46.37 |
Non-binary/third gender | | 2 | 0.1 |
Prefer to self-describe | | 1 | 0.05 |
n/a | | 360 | 18.53 |
Total | | 1943 | 100 |
| | | |
ETHNICITY | | | |
African Descent or Black | | 34 | 1.73 |
Asian (Including Pacific Islanders) | | 77 | 3.91 |
Native American (including Alaskan Native | | 16 | 0.81 |
White (Caucasian) | | 709 | 35.99 |
Other | | 39 | 1.98 |
No Response | | 7 | 0.36 |
N/A | | 1088 | 55.23 |
Total | | 1970 | 100 |
| | | |
HISPANIC | | | |
No | | 566 | 29.13 |
Yes | | 61 | 3.14 |
No Response | | 26 | 1.34 |
N/A | | 1290 | 66.39 |
Total | | 1943 | 100 |
I recognize that many of us dislike providing gender/ethnicity/race information. However, we all recognize that you must be able to measure something to improve it. So, a very helpful (and easy) step is to go to your ACS profile and add the missing information. A goal is to reduce the No Response/Not Applicable to less than 10% of each category. Do it today and we can see what the data look like by the end of September.
The current discussion is useful with the goal of bringing more ethnic and racial diversity into both leadership and the profession.
It is easy to join the CHAS leadership; you make your interest known to the current Chair or Membership Chair and they will help you develop within the profession and the ACS. A goal is to have a visibly diverse group at the next face-to-face CHAS open meeting, whenever and wherever that happens.
I hope we can work together to meet ACS goals and improve our profession.
Reply from:
NEAL LANGERMAN
(619) 990-4908
From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU> On Behalf Of Jessica Martin
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 7:44 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Diversity in Chemical Health and Safety
Ralph,
I was absolutely blown away by that statistic! Over 80% of the OSH undergrads at Keene State are white males? What do the demographics of Keene State look like overall?
I am particularly fascinated by the male part. I have had several conversations with people about who has been attracted to the LST movement and to discussions about safety in academic labs, and it appears to be very heavily female. It has been hypothesized that this may be because women often feel "responsible" for others and that safety could be connected to the concept of "nurture." That being said, I also notice a very heavily male component to safety within the industrial context.
Best,
NSF Graduate Research Fellow
Pinkhassik Group, Department of Chemistry
University of Connecticut
"To change a community, you have to change the composition of the soil-
If you want to meet with me, come to the garden with your shovel so we can plant some sh-t."
"Argue for your limitations
and sure enough they're yours."
"You know, farming looks mighty easy
when your plow is a pencil, and you're
a thousand miles from the corn field."
"When you start an administrative job, glean institutional memories and lore
from prior leaders before it all dies in the black holes of their souls."
Peter Dorhout quoting somebody brilliant
*Message sent from a system outside of UConn.*
My initial thoughts are that we do have an issue about how people enter the profession in the first place.
There is an interesting challenge for two reasons:
1) I suspect that professional safety work is not something that people become aware of as a career choice until they are recruited into the work, either due to a unfortunate personal experience or an unexpected career opportunity.
2) Among those who intentionally choose an occupational health and safety undergrad major here at Keene State are white males by a large majority (at least 80%).
So I'm not sure that the problem is the leaky pipeline we see in other fields so much as getting diverse people into the pipeline to begin with.
If we are able to do recruit a more diverse group, I think that the profession will see similar benefits to those realized by other fields when women and people of color start asking questions that the profession doesn't traditionally address. A good discussion of the challenge these professionals face can be found in the Probability Matters podcast at
https://pod.co/probability-matters
particularly Episode 16, where a female woman of color talks about her experiences as a safety professional. There are several other episodes of this podcast that discuss diversity issues. Probability Matters is a podcast from the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the AIHA.
Thanks for raising this question.
- Ralph
Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
Environmental Safety Manager
Keene State College
603 358-2859
ralph.stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu
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