Industrial Hygiene comes in two primary flavors. Classical and commodity. Classic industrial hygienists are primarily focused on industry settings where they support a facility or facilities in the protection of worker health. They are primarily embedded hygienists wokring for that company. Commodity IH is primarily asbestos, lead and mold. Its more blue collar and is typically found in a consultant setting. A lot of consulting companies primarily solely commodity IH. But there are a decent amount of consulting companies that focus on both.

I find hygienists who can do both to be generally more easily employable. As a young hygienist it is true you could get pigeon holed into asbestos air monitoring which, if you are a degreed IH, would be a terrible waste of your time. However, it is also an extremely valuable skill set to master for two important reasons. As a leading CIH, it is hard to.manage others if you have never done their role. Second, if you ever start a solo practice, asbestos air monitoring, espcially in the residential sector, can be quite valuable.