Image Credit: Getty Images / Cagkansayin

"I grew up thinking hazard communication was my second language," said Chandra Deeds Gioiello, CIH. For Gioiello, industrial hygiene was the family business. Her parents, both Certified Industrial Hygienists and AIHA Fellows, founded the consulting firm IHSC LLC after they met at an AIHA conference in 1980. Currently, Gioiello is a senior consultant at and the vice president of IHSC, and she is also assuming management of the company's daily operations and long-term planning. Gioiello and her mother, Denese Deeds, CIH, FAIHA, tell their story in an I Am IH video they collaborated on for AIHA.

But Gioiello didn't always intend to follow in her parents' footsteps. As an undergraduate, she studied anthropology, with a focus on sustainability and indigenous peoples. She credits her undergraduate studies with providing her perspective on the microenvironment of the workplace, the need for employers to value workers' points of view, and the importance of including workers' input in implementing safety programs.

However, after completing her bachelor's degree, Gioiello discovered that work in anthropology was hard to come by, so she eventually decided to enter graduate school for industrial hygiene. She attributes her decision to change careers to her parents' vocation and the many years she spent working in the family business before and during college. Although she worked for another firm after graduate school, she realized that she preferred working for IHSC.

Since then, Gioiello has found a variety of opportunities in industrial hygiene. She graduated from the AIHA Future Leaders Institute in 2018, served on the board of ACGIH from 2016 to 2019, and is active with the Society of Chemical Hazard Communication. At SCHC, she serves on multiple committees, including as chair of the Member Engagement Committee.

Gioiello, who is registered with AIHA's safety data sheet and label authoring program, was also a member of the subject matter expert team that helped create the registry. She works with the original and revised OSHA hazard communication standard and the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals, as well as versions of the GHS implemented in other countries. She also specializes in chemical transport classification and training, along with various labeling systems, such as those mandated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Canada's Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System. This expertise led to her coauthoring the chapter on hazard communication in the second edition of Industrial Hygiene Performance Metrics, published in 2023.

For her work, Gioiello received the Mid-Career Professional Award from the AIHA Fellows Special Interest Group in 2024. This award honors industrial hygienists with 10 to 25 years of experience who exhibit outstanding leadership or technical capabilities, have volunteered for AIHA committees, project task forces, or special interest groups, and have demonstrated commitment and contributions to the industrial hygiene profession throughout their careers.

When interviewed for SynergistNOW, Gioiello reflected on the modern workplace. "We are at an inflection point where we can be constantly available or connected," Gioiello said. "The blurred boundaries create challenges for work/life balance that we are starting to reckon with. We need to give everyone space in and outside of work."

Moreover, industrial hygienists should "be aware of our own biases and consider accessibility and fairness issues for others," she advised readers.