Friday Flashback: EHS Certification

This week's Friday Flashback is "The Need for Certification of the Safety Professional" from June 1970. Written by George L. Gorbell, ASSE’s 1960-61 president, it provides a look at the early history of certification in EHS. Gorbell is credited with helping to establish Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP) in 1969. At the time he wrote the article, he was one of BCSP's directors. He was named an ASSE Fellow in 1964.

"The benefits of certification of the safety professional to the practitioner, the profession, the employer and the public are obvious. The evidence of competency in safety furnished by certification will improve the individual, raise the general level of competency in the safety profession, promote high standards of professional conduct, assure management that it will receive top-quality job performance, and last, but definitely not least, it will enhance the safety profession’s chance to take its rightful place in the sun." --George Gorbell, 1970