Sometimes on Lemmy these seem like the only jobs that actually exist, but I’m sure there’s a lot of people here with different and unusual lines of work.

  • philpo@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    47
    ·
    5 months ago

    As someone who is doing disaster response consulting for healthcare and public health: I fucking love you guys. You make my job sooo much easier.

    Seriously.

    The surveillance you folks do is pretty much indisputable and far more incorruptible compared to everything else we do, in healthcare especially.

    Very often you are my “discussion ending gun” when decision makers endlessly want me to prove their (flawed) point of view. A “nope, here are validated wastewater based numbers, you are wrong” is extremely satisfying sometimes.

    Thanks folks!

    • runner_g@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      ·
      5 months ago

      Love to hear it! 2 years ago I had no idea that I’d be working with wastewater but here I am now!

      Anyone out here reading this, write to your senator about increasing funding to public health!

        • runner_g@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 months ago

          Great question! For the US, you will need a degree in Molecular Biology/Microbiology or a Medical (Laboratory) Technologist. You’ll then either need to live near the city where one of the few private companies that do wastewater testing ar e(my case), or live near a public health lab that does ww. Pretty much all state public health labs do it, but city/county level varies immensely. For the government route, look at APHL or NACCHO to find information on your local public health labs. There are a few universities that also do ww testing, for example I know University of Illinois, University of Missouri and Michigan State are all doing a bunch of wastewater work.

          Feel free to DM me if you want more information.