University of Massachusetts Amherst, Environmental Health Sciences Department

The Department of Environmental Health Sciences offers a wide range of academic programs, including Master of Public Health (M.P.H.), Master of Science (M.S.), and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree options. The concentration prepares students, with prior undergraduate/graduate education in natural and physical sciences, to be leaders, with the technical knowledge and skills necessary to assume expanded roles in evaluating and regulating environmental exposures to humans.

Our award-winning faculty has decades’ worth of experience educating students in the classroom and in research settings, preparing future generations of professionals and researchers in the field. Faculty expertise extends to many pressing public health issues such as environmental contamination, environmental toxicology, ecological risk assessment and regulatory issues, air quality and pollution and their associated risks to cardiovascular health and asthma, and prenatal environmental exposures and their influence on health outcomes via epigenetic processes.

Environmental health graduates interested in general environmental health practice that deals with sanitation and public health are employed as public health directors in local and/or state departments. Graduates focusing in environmental toxicology and risk assessment are often employed in consulting firms or state departments of public health, environmental protection, or agriculture, and assess public health concerns from toxic substances. They are also employed in a wide range of federal agencies (EPA, DoE, DoD, ATSDR, and FDA) and chemical and pharmaceutical industries performing toxicological research and assessing risks. Approximately 25% of M.S. graduates continue to pursue Ph.D. degrees.

Environmental Health Sciences is a department within the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences (SPHHS). The SPHHS is fully accredited by the Council of Education for Public Health, and is a member of the Association of Schools & Programs of Public Health.