The Occupational Hygiene Training Association (OHTA) co-founder and director Noel Tresider, COH, CIH 1984-2017, was recently awarded Member (AM) in the General Division of the Order of Australia in the 2018 Australia Day Honours List. This highly prestigious national award is conferred twice a year in Australia to distinguished recipients. Noel was honoured for significant service to workplace health in the field of occupational hygiene, and to the promotion and development of standards and training.
With a long and illustrious career in worker health protection, Noel is well known around the world for his outstanding leadership, pioneering vision and dedication. He is a former President and Treasurer of the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists (AIOH), a former Board Member (2015-2017) of Workplace Health Without Borders (WHWB), and a former President (2011-12) of the International Occupational Hygiene Association (IOHA). In addition to the IOHA Presidency, Noel also served as Chair of the IOHA National Accreditation Recognition (NAR) Committee for six years, and in this capacity helped to establish and lead a process to recognise excellent quality national qualification processes in occupational hygiene.
Noel was instrumental in the development of the OHTA international training scheme and qualifications framework which enables trainees across the globe to obtain transferable practical skills in a consistent way using freely available training materials. The students who moved through this training went on to make a difference in their respective countries and locations that might not have experienced occupational hygiene competencies otherwise. Noel has worked around the globe to help OHTA gain ongoing support and has utilised his expertise within the oil and gas sector to draft an advanced Oil and Gas OHTA module, currently in final review and development. As a side note, OHTA recently forged a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with NIOSH’s global outreach program and has been the beneficiary of NIOSH’s subject matter expertise in oil and gas. Noel has assumed the lead role in working with NIOSH to bring the Oil and Gas OHTA module to closure.
In an effort to encourage students to engage in occupational hygiene, Noel recently helped establish the Sue Davies Scholarship Fund and continues as one of its trustees. This award is granted to an International Certificate in Occupational Hygiene (ICertOH) student from a developing country to help them attend a major occupational hygiene conference.
Noel’s outstanding contributions to the field of occupational/industrial hygiene have previously been recognised through the IOHA Lifetime Achievement Award (2014) and the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) Yant Award (2015).
Chris Laszcz-Davis, MS, CIH, FAIHA, AIC Fellow, Co-chair of the OHTA Board of Directors and Member of NIOSH’s Board of Scientific Counsellors (BSC), said: “I’ve had a chance to work with Noel over the years and am keenly aware of his incredible capability, his ability to inspire people, and his negotiating skills in bringing disparate perspectives into alignment. I would like to extend congratulations to Noel on behalf of everyone at OHTA. Noel has been a tireless advocate of worker health protection, including the development of standards and training, for over 35 years. We commend him on this truly well-deserved honour and extraordinary achievement.”
