We spoke to Elisa Moetiara, 2025’s BOHS Early Career Occupational Hygienist of the Year, and someone who’s seen first-hand the critical importance of occupational health.
Cura Terrae couldn’t be prouder to have Elisa Moetiara on the team. An outstanding Occupational Hygienist, she was the recipient of 2025’s British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) Early Career Occupational Hygienist Award. Her award-winning essay discussed real-time monitoring in occupational hygiene and drew on her experience protecting workers during severe hazes in Sumatra, Indonesia.
We sat down with Elisa to discuss this experience, how it reaffirmed her commitment to protecting worker health, and what it’s been like practicing occupational hygiene in the UK.
Was occupational hygiene something you always wanted to practice?
“My bachelor’s was in public health, but it was a four year programme, and in the last two years we had to choose a major. That’s when I chose occupational health and safety, which industrial hygiene is a part of. I was always intrigued by chemistry – since I was in high school – and I’d seen that industrial hygiene or occupational hygiene is a subject that involves a lot of chemistry. There was a time when I was talking to my friend and I said, ‘I think I want to be an industrial hygienist!’. And now it’s a full circle moment, because decades later, I am one! So it was something that I always wanted to do.”
After graduating, Elisa worked as a Health and Safety Engineer in Indonesia for a multinational oil and gas company, gaining experience of a wide range of processes including incident investigation and reporting, contractor health, and safety management systems. Then, during the COVID pandemic, she became an Occupational Hygiene Advisor.
“That was when I was assigned to develop a programme throughout the company, involving three islands,” she says. But it was challenging. Rather than occupational health, people focus more on safety. “Accidents are really easy to notice, but with occupational health, illness isn’t always visible, it’s not as obvious. That’s why I’m passionate about promoting occupational hygiene.”
What are some of the similarities and differences between practicing occupational hygiene here in the UK and in Indonesia?
“I think we have the same foundation of occupational health, the professional development is all the same. We have similar regulation, but the one thing I see that is different is the implementation and enforcement. Here, it was really eye-opening for me, because it is not only the big companies that are doing it. Even remote, family-owned businesses too. Back in Indonesia, in the oil and gas companies, they do it not because the law enforcement is strong, but because it is a really high-risk industry”.
To improve implementation back home, Elisa says that knowledge sharing is key. “We can share what we do in the UK as something [Indonesia] can aim for in the future”. But there are still lots of positives. “I’ve been practicing health and safety for 15 years now, and when I started in my bachelor programme and then as a Health and Safety Engineer, there were not many practitioners, especially women. But now, health and safety – not only the safety part, but occupational hygiene too, is more understood and becoming more popular and people have more awareness of it. So that’s a really good thing”.
When you were working as an Occupational Hygiene Advisor, it was during a period of severe haze on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. What was that like?
“The site was an oil and gas field situated in the middle of a forest undergoing significant deforestation. The land was being cleared to convert the forest into palm oil plantations. However, the issue was complex. It was not just an environmental problem – many of the people burning the trees were local residents who were doing so for economic reasons”.
Elisa explains that the fires are made worse by Sumatra’s climate change hotspots, which are areas disproportionately affected by climate change – both environmentally and socially. The fires are also exacerbated by the landscape’s peat substrate, which can burn and smoulder for weeks. These factors result in severely polluted air that is toxic to breathe. In her essay, Elisa likened it to living in Gotham City.
One of the issues is that the centre of government is on a separate island – Java. “In Sumatra, we felt a bit like we had been neglected,” Elisa says. “Because the central government is based in Java, they could not see how bad the situation was, they couldn’t put themself in our shoes or know how desperate we were during that period. If they did, they could do something more robust to take action”.
You worked to protect people from the dangers of the hazes, but they didn’t always follow advice. Why do you think that was?
“I think it’s just humans being human. I see the same thing here in the UK. It’s something I’ve learned.
“In the context of Sumatra, I wasn’t local. I saw these things that were horrible and unacceptable. But from the point of view of someone who’s local, they’ve been there their whole life. This is normal to them, so they don’t perceive the risk”.
“It’s hard to change people’s hazard perspective. It’s the same here, and everywhere. For example, an operative who’s always done things one particular way, or a welder who’s been welding for years and years. For them, everything appears normal. So it’s about how they perceive the hazard”.
“The best we can do is to communicate. Not confront them but give them the facts: this is the hazard of the fume, the dust. This is what we can do to protect you. We especially need to communicate the benefits, so that they understand that it is for their own good”.
How did your master’s degree shape your understanding of the hazes and occupational hygiene?
“With the Sumatran hazes, part of me thought that maybe some of the solution is in tackling the subject of climate change. So I thought, I want to pursue a master’s degree around climate change. So in 2022 I flew to the UK to begin my master’s in environmental science”.
Elisa says it was interesting to study climate change in the UK, where perspectives and foci are slightly different to Indonesia. “We knew that forest fires and hotspots were not only happening in Indonesia, but across the world. There were very bad ones in Canada, with the haze reaching the US. Everybody was panicking, and I thought, that’s what has happened in Sumatra for 25 years, but no one really took notice”.
“People in the southern hemisphere are vulnerable to climate change impacts. I think people in the southern hemisphere have felt the consequences of climate change more up to now, but their concerns are different. In the North, there is often a sense of anxiety or helplessness about climate change, because the scale of the problem can feel overwhelming. But in the South , climate change is sometimes less discussed, because people are also facing immediate challenges in their daily lives, particularly economic ones”.
Reflecting on the impact of climate change on occupational hygiene, Elisa discusses how UK workplaces are not designed for very hot weather. “Factories and houses will feel like ovens or saunas,” she says. “Factories usually rely on natural ventilations, but when the temperature increases, especially during the summer, people often start using fans to move the air around. However, these can actually stir up and circulate dust in the workplace”.
What major trends have you seen so far over your career in occupational hygiene?
“What’s obvious to me is the development of technology, and how it’s been embedded into risk measurement. Especially wearable technologies, which can be used everywhere. For example, with a smartwatch, you can see the decibels, the noise levels, even when you just dry your hands under the hand dryer. It gives you information, even when you are only exposed to the noise level for a couple of minutes.”
“Also dust monitors. Back in the day, it was usually just the occupational hygienists who would have them. But now, we see that even within places such as retail environments, there are now particulate matter monitors. People have the awareness, and the technology is a lot cheaper and easier to access. It’s amazing to see the shift, but there are challenges, like making sure the equipment’s calibrated and the results are accurate.”
When asked if she had any predictions for the industry’s future, Elisa said, “Well, AI is something that is incredible”. She gives an example of how AI is changing approaches to occupational health. “I’ve been doing a module on ergonomic assessment. Usually, if we’re doing ergonomic assessment, you just observe, take measurements, assess the risks of the angles and posture. But with AI, you just make a video, upload it into the program, and it will write the report, so it saves a lot of time”.
However, AI should be used with caution. “Human judgement is hard to replace”, Elisa says. An occupational hygienist’s work must be set in a context and be personal. “The people that we observe are human. We need to understand why they do things a certain way and what challenges they face, so that we can help them work more safely. And this can only be done when you have a chat with them. We can give the best recommendations by learning from them, and this also helps ensure that they have buy-in to the recommendations”.
What advice would you give someone – perhaps women especially – considering a career in occupational hygiene?
“My advice would be not to feel limited. Everyone can do this with enough committment. You should not limit yourself due to your gender. Particularly at Cura Terrae, having Susan [Russell] as a Director, I have someone to look up to. And as for the BOHS award shortist for The Early Career Occupational Hygienist Award in 2025, the three of us [Elisa and the two shortlisted candidates] are ladies.”
Elisa also shared how it can be an incredibly rewarding job. “It’s really rewarding when you make recommendations to a client and they appreciate it. And I come back the next year and they’ve improved it. For example, a few months ago, a company we work with built a new plant, and they have now proactively included the recommendations that we had made for their other plants too.”
Read Elisa’s winning essay here.
If you’re interested in a career with Cura Terrae, get in touch.
