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Whenever someone asks what I do for work, I say I work in Environmental Health and almost every single time they think I mean the actual environment. Like trees.

So then I say no, public health stuff.

“Oh, so you’re a nurse?”

No.

“I work in local government.”

“Ohhhh, you’re like a health inspector?!.”

Yep. Close enough 😂

Except “health inspector” doesn’t really explain what an Environmental Health Officer – or EHO – actually does, because food is only one part of our job and depending on where you work, the list of things we deal with is actually a little ridiculous.

I’ve worked across seven councils over nearly 20 years (with a break in there to have babies, raise my family, run my own business and randomly work in a supermarket), and I’ve worked urban, regional, rural and now coastal.

Every council is different depending on its size, structure and location, but we can deal with everything from food, accommodation, beauty and skin penetration, tobacco and wastewater through to pools, drinking water, mosquitoes, infectious diseases, noise, asbestos, syringes, events, drug labs and emergency management.

Basically, we’re professional stickybeaks.

If it’s happening somewhere the public eats, sleeps, lives, visits or plays, there’s a fair chance an EHO has something to do with making sure whatever is happening there isn’t going to make you sick.

And we see some shit.

I’ve found people living in the back of a food premises, sleeping on mattresses in a storage area and bathing using the kitchen sink.

I’ve found suspicious bags hidden in boxes during a completely unrelated inspection. That’s a don’t touch it, take photos and refer it to police situation.

I’ve stumbled across massive tobacco plants being grown and tobacco being dried.

I’ve dealt with 11 nursing homes having gastro outbreaks at the same time.

And once, a chef deliberately locked me in his cool room.

He literally shut the door and held it closed.

Which was an interesting choice, because he had just locked an Environmental Health Officer unsupervised inside one of things she was there to inspect.

So obviously I inspected it.

I had nothing else to do 😂

He had uncovered food, utensils sitting in food and a whole range of contamination issues he probably would have preferred I didn’t have uninterrupted time to find.

Thanks mate.

But we actually don’t want to shut you down

I think this is one of the biggest misconceptions about EHOs. People think we’re walking into businesses looking for something wrong or that we don’t understand how businesses actually operate.

It’s really the opposite.

We want our communities to be liveable and fun and safe. We want nice places to stay, yummy food to eat, festivals to go to and businesses people actually want to visit. We live in these communities too.

Most EHOs I know take an education-first approach. Tell us what you’re trying to do and we’ll generally help you work out how to do it without creating a risk to everyone else.

Want to run a festival? Cool, how are we going to do it safely?

Want to build a house? Great. Where’s your poo going?

Want to open a café? Let’s work it out.

It makes our job easier if we can work together.

But there is obviously a line.

I once went into a food premises because someone complained about a dirty menu. I thought it would be pretty straightforward, except the menu turned out to be the least of our problems.

There was food sitting at around 26 degrees, deteriorating metal shelving creating contamination issues and mice everywhere.

While I was being told there was absolutely no pest problem, a mouse popped up on the food preparation bench.

Hello Mousey.

That business ended up closing for three days so it could get back on track.

That’s the part of the job where we can’t muck around. If the risk is so high that somebody could genuinely be harmed, we have to act.

Because ultimately that’s what Environmental Health is – preventing things from happening to people.

Think about going away for a weekend. You stay somewhere beautiful, go out for dinner, have a romantic spa and come home.

You don’t get gastro. You don’t get bedbugs. You don’t get a rash because the spa wasn’t being treated properly.

You just had a great weekend.

Perfect.

Nobody wants their romantic weekend away turning into three months on antibiotics.

A lot of our best work is actually when absolutely nothing happens and you have no idea we were ever involved.

The people part is probably bigger than people realise

You never know what is going on in someone’s life when you walk through their door.

I can tell someone they need to fix their hot water and find out they’re $150,000 in debt and don’t know if they’ll still have a business next week. I can knock on someone’s door about an air conditioner affecting their neighbour and discover there’s a reason that person desperately needs it running.

So much of this job is knowing how to talk to people.

I need to be able to ask questions in a friendly enough way that someone feels safe telling me what’s actually happening, without them thinking I’m being intrusive or that I’m there to harm them or their business.

You build social currency. You listen. You educate. You set boundaries. You work out what the actual problem is and try to guide people towards doing the right thing.

And sometimes, when the risk is too high, you have to make a decision they’re not going to like.

That’s the job too.

And yes, we know all the tea

This is probably one of my favourite weird side effects of being an EHO for so long.

We know far too much about what happens behind closed doors.

Someone will be raving about the amazing new menu somewhere and I’m thinking about the cockroaches I’ve seen running around out the back.

A venue can have amazing branding, a huge reputation and everyone thinks it’s the place to go.

We’ve seen behind the door.

Something is being marketed as beautiful, handmade organic produce and we know what’s actually happening out the back.

And obviously we can’t tell you any of it.

But weirdly, seeing behind closed doors for nearly 20 years has probably made me less judgemental.

People are people. Businesses are run by humans. People make mistakes, people struggle and sometimes they genuinely just don’t know they’re doing something wrong.

And sometimes people are just dodgy as hell.

You also learn very quickly that if someone has got a good PR team, they can apparently market anything 😂

EHOs themselves are a slightly kooky bunch. Most of the ones I’ve met are passionate, can juggle about 14 things at once and seem to enjoy a little bit of chaos.

It’s a bit Nancy Drew sometimes. You get a bunch of information that doesn’t quite make sense, start asking questions and slowly put all the pieces together until you work out what’s actually going on.

And I love that.

I actually stepped away from Environmental Health for a few years while my kids were little. I always knew I’d go back when my youngest started school, but then COVID hit and I ended up taking a three-month EHO contract.

Three months turned into five days a week and eventually I applied for a Coordinator role.

The love for it came straight back.

Nearly 20 years and seven councils later, I still love what I do.

So if you ask me what I do and I tell you Environmental Health, just know we’re probably going to end up at “health inspector” because it’s easier.

But really, I’m a professional stickybeak who knows far too much about what happens behind closed doors, gets to help people do cool things safely and occasionally gets locked in cool rooms.

And no.

I don’t look after the trees.