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FILE NAME ICI ICI DATE 1998 DOC ICI009 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION Obituary _ 10/05 99 MON 18:19 FAX 0131 447 5161 Robin Howle 003 ere which lly Occu isinclined to manile which r best to from all mists At ty whose nexpected . To over- However al signifibias epi- .er risk of he expersufficient text Malte Pam tant con- ant fear of overplay oms thus continues jut depen ' bluntly hazards = Pergamon .in up flyg . Vul 42 No. 4. pp 225 226. 1408 11 11 British Cupational Hy Sictuty Published by Elever Sun Lud All rights r Plain Plain Lirant Briluin 034878-190 034878-190 + 034878-190 als Obituary S.A. Roach An Appreciation E. KING 16 Windsor Road Hazel Grove Stockport Cheshire SK7 4SW U.K. Stan Rouch died in October 1996. He was president of BOHS in 1969-1970 and founder president of the Institute of Occupational Hygienists in 1975. His mathematical ability his readiness to apply practical skills in a range of industrial environments and his concern for the proper recognition of occupationul hygienists earned him a leading place in his generation of professional colleagues An early employer recognised Stan's abilities and enabled him to get a higher education He then joined the MRC's Pneumoconiosis Research Unit PRU in about 1948. He became one of the small group of us attempting to evaluate exposure to fibrogenic dusts in his case in coal mining Stan worked at PRU with H. H. Watson the pioneer ofthe thermal precipitator but he recognised the problems of using a period instrument in a fluctuating environment In a series of papers Stan helped establish a strategy by which the thermal precipitator could be used as the Coal Board's standard instrument However his work on the coun- ting errors that could arise from particle overlap also showed the instrument's shortcomings Stan also worked at PRU in the development of practical instruments for measuring the respirable mass fraction contributing to B. M. Wright's work on the Hexhlet Stan shared a flat until he married with Heinz Wolff who has since become widely known for his television work and with Heinz Stun developed the conicycle a long mass sampler for the mining industry I recall borrowing one from Heinz in the early 1950s for unsuccessful factory trials Towards the end of his PRU time Stun operated with Richard Schilling in providing the air sampling expertise for the collon dust surveys in Lancashire and in the late 1950s he left PRU to join Richard at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine This involved teaching he published proposals for the first time occupational hygiene course in 1962 I understand that he had no real enthusi- asm for this aspect of University life He was more interested in his scientilic work including errors produced by the overlap of purticles which was the sub- ject of his Ph.D. thesis Stan was an carly member of GOPOH unstructured group of practising occupational hygienists who met informally to discuss matters of mutual interest As host Stun chaired the meeting at the London School which agreed the 1 mg standard for respirable quartz which led to the formation of the BOHS Standards Committee with Stan as one of its members He played a major role in drafting the Chrysotile Asbestos Standard of very important in its own right and as a pattern for all later standards He remained a part of the Committee and several of its committees up to 1983 providing an invaluable logical mathematical background to proceedings Over that period and later I had many friendly but firm disagreements with him on air sanpling strategy could not understand my opposition to static air sampling with its constancy allowing statistical interpretation and I did not see why ho did not wholeheartedly embrace personal sampling despite its statistical problems Towards the end of his time at the School he became restless and in the early 1970s he had a brief affair with an American commercial service which he left to take up the post at the RTZ Avonmouth smelter on interim basis while John Belbin was being trained at the School In 1975 he joined ICI as the Company's first corporate occupational hygienist in the erstwhile central medical group The nature and scale of the task of establishing and leading professionally the occupational hygiene discipline in so diverse a company was a new challenge to Stan Initially feathers were ruled but gradually a company occupational hygiene presence evolved leaving Stan time to develop the substance of his future book and also in deference to Einstein his general theory of threshold limit values later to appear in the book During this period Stan was awarded the degree of D.Sc. by the University of London for his work in occupational hygiene first to be awarded in the subject Stan left ICI in 1988 but was soon awarded a Regent's Professorship at the University of California Berkeley for the 1988/89 academic year as a dis- 225 05/10/99 13:22 TX NO.3873 P.003 . 10/05 99 MON 18:18 FAX 0131 447 5181 Robin Howie 226 E. King tinguished individual from a non academic setting Over that year he worked closely with Professor $ M. Rappaport continuing his work on the setting and documentation of TLVs publishing a joint paper in 1989 which provoked considerable debate over ACGIH's procedures On his return to the U.K. for retirement just outside Cambridge he found a part time lecturing job at one of the colleges while com- pleting the publication of his hook Health Risks from Hazardous Substances at Work 1992 -the first major work from his generation 1 understand that even when his health was failing he was compiling another In 1994 he received the William P. Yant award of the AIHA as an individual residing outside the U.S.A. for his outstanding contributions to industrial hygiene Despite all of the above Stan will be remembered for just one brief action at about 11.00 a.m. on 16th July 1975. Although BOHS had recognised the disc^>- pline of occupational hygiene by the formation of the Examining Board in the 1960s it was much less clear as to the profession By 1974. those of us par- ticularly GOPOH members who thought of ourselves as professionals were concerned that many members of BOHS were calling themselves occupational hygienists without having bothered the Examining Board that the professional bodies of both Safely and Chemistry were claiming that occupational hygiene was merely a discipline of their own that many of our medical colleagues thought that occupational hygiene was merely a technical role parallel with nursing that HSE was claiming that all its inspectors were Occupational hygienists and so on In 1974 BOHS responded with a committec with Stan in the Chair which recommended an institute separated from BOHS This was turned down by BOIS's Management Board and two alternatives a professional committee subject to the Management Board or a change in BOHS structure to make it a professional body were tobe debated and voted upon at General Meeting Before this took place both Stan and I and I suspect several others were heavily lobbied threatened and we knew that neither pro- posal would satisfy all parties At the meeting there was a very visible block voting faction to oppose the second motion After the meeting had heard the proposals there was a break during which Stan gath cred a group about nine of us and we discussed the matter for about five minutes in a laboratory We cmerged with the nucleus of the Institute of Occupational Hygienists the formation of which Stan then announced to the meeting Afterwards we were accused of attempting to destroy the Society ridiculous with Stan as Past President 1969/70 und the rest of us owing our carcers to our membership of the Society with its interdisciplinary exchanges of ideas and the development of our discipline As regards the final outcome the Society has reverted to the role at which it was most successful- a learned society covering all aspects of clinical occupational health without any professional complications The Institute is flourishing and it is a respected member of the international grouping of the profession We have the best of both worlds and a very great deal of the credit must go to the founding father of the Institute-- Stan Roach 002 < Fa Pro J. 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