When I started teaching occupational hygiene at Griffith University some 20 years ago I pressured my colleague Dr David Grantham to expedite the publishing his book “Occupational Health & Hygiene – Guidebook for the WHSO” in 1992, so that I could use it as a text book in my teaching. David was funded by the Australian Occupational Health and Safety Trust to write the book.
I asked the head of the Griffith University Co-op Bookshop, appropriately named Robert Browning how I could ensure students bought the book. “Simple”, he said, “have open book exams”. I thought about it for a couple of seconds and realised in the real world, if you did not have the exact answer for a question, you should know where to get it, so it was reasonable to have an open book exam. All my exams after that were open book and I found it made little difference to the exam results. It took a lot of pressure off students and they arrived at the exam with the text looking like a yellow porcupine, full of PostIt notes. They had read the book cover to cover.
When the print run was exhausted, I produced an A4 version of the book from the original WordPerfect files and scanned images (and corrected a few typos), so that the university printer could continue to supply the book. The AIOH got a couple of dollars royalty for each copy. A number of other universities in Australia also used the text and later, the A4 version.
David generously gave the rights to the book to the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists (AIOH) and under the editorship of Dr Cherilyn Tillman, a second edition, “Principles of Occupational Health and Hygiene, An Introduction” was published in 2007, using the vast expertise of the membership of the AIOH. Gary Gately (Chief Hygienist at Orica – was ICI) and I wrote Chapter 4 on Control. I did the section on Industrial Ventilation, a passion of mine.
Several years ago, Professor Cordia Chu, Director of the Center for Environmental and Occupational Health at Griffith University realised there was little available in Mandarin for the huge OHS needs in China and organised the translation of the text. It was a huge task. David Grantham and myself are adjunct Associate Professors at the CEPH.
The book is to be launched at Griffith University in Brisbane on Monday September 6th 2010 by representatives from China, Griffith University, the Queensland Government, AIOH, IOHA and AFOEM. I believe it to be a landmark in OHS in China.
