Georgia Title Protection Update

Our purpose in posting these pages is to provide the opportunity for you, and other Georgia industrial hygiene and safety practitioners, to review our draft before it is submitted to the Georgia General Assembly. If you have comments or questions about the draft bill or the supporting documents linked to this page, please send your comments to Keven Gara at:
kgara@pritchardjerden.com

PS:

One of the things you will notice about the draft bill is that the terms "industrial hygienist" and "safety professional" are not defined. The reason for this is as follows:

The draft bill is based on legislation that was enacted in Florida in 1998. The Florida bill defined, and provided legal protection, to terms like CIH, CSP, ASP, etc. The bill also defined, but did not provide legal protection to the terms "safety professional" and "industrial hygienist." In the Georgia legislature, bills are drafted and reviewed for legal implications by the Office of Legislative Counsel (OLC). Like Florida (and many other states), the OLC in Georgia determined that it is not permissible to provide legal protection to the terms "safety professional" and "industrial hygienist." However, unlike Florida, the OLC advised that to define these terms, without the necessary authority to provide legal protection, could jeopardize the entire bill. Therefore, the terms "safety professional" and "industrial hygienist" do not appear in the draft bill.

Following are corrections that need to be made in the final draft bill:

• The term "construction health and safety technologist" was inadvertently omitted.
  
• The acronyms for the various certifications (CIH, CSP, etc.) were inadvertently omitted.
  
• Page 1, line 19 should read American Board of Industrial Hygiene.