Keeping the Rescuers Safe

The US Coast Guard has 42 units providing search and rescue, law enforcement, and environmental protection services in Northern California. All involve potentially hazardous work.

Lieutenant Michael Box, an alumnus of our undergraduate and master’s programs, is responsible for the health and safety of more than 3,000 Coast Guard personnel in that region. He is based in the only remaining military treatment clinic in the greater San Francisco Bay area.

As a Safety and Environmental Health Officer, he supervises, plans, budgets, and implements an environmental health, safety, and industrial hygiene program. While at the University of Washington (UW), Box spent two summer internships with the Indian Health Service and one with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). After graduating, he became an officer in the US Public Health Service, detached to the Coast Guard in Alameda, California.

One of his assignments was to find better ways for the crews of 47-foot motor lifeboats and helicopters to communicate with each other during noisy rescue operations. His work led to recommendations for improved communications gear and hearing protection, which are currently being field tested.

Anyone who has been to Northern California’s coast is familiar with foghorns. That romantic sound, however, can be hazardous to the lookouts on Coast Guard cutters. Box researched and implemented communication headsets that permit the lookouts to hear distant signals, communicate with the bridge, and benefit from hearing protection.
On another project, he evaluated asbestos exposures during brake removal, cleaning, and inspection, which led to an improvement in standard operating procedures for mechanics.

In addition to occupational health, he confronts environmental health problems, such as resolving a recurring indoor air quality problem caused by groundwater intrusion at a housing unit.

Box loves the variety of his work and says he never has a boring day. He is involved in many areas of environmental health, safety, industrial hygiene, and ergonomics. Many of his assignments take him into the field.

He appreciates the fieldwork opportunities he had at the UW. He worked with Associate Professor Sally Liu on research involving particulate air pollution and older adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Box encourages departmental graduates to think about careers in the Public Health Service. Its environmental health officers work in the Indian Health Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, NIOSH, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Prisons, the National Park Service, the National Institutes of Health, and the Coast Guard.