Meet your Safety Superheroes: Joey Bellino, Occupational Hygiene Coordinator
Similar to superheroes, the safety officers at the University of Manitoba also work to save the day!
Get to know the safety professionals in your Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) office. We’re spilling the “safe-tea” with these safety heroes to learn about their career path and the rewards and challenges of their role.
Joey Bellino, Occupational Hygiene Coordinator in EHS
Introducing Joey Bellino, the Occupational Hygiene Coordinator. Joey’s responsible for multiple programs in EHS including chemical safety, indoor air quality, safety committee programs and general laboratory safety. From incidents to inspections, you’re highly likely to bump into Joey on campus!
How did you come to this career/position?
I’m an alumni of the UM, I have an undergraduate degree in environmental science which helped me get my first “real job” with Miller Environmental. In this position, I was responsible for ensuring the safe packaging and disposal of chemicals. The University of Manitoba happened to be a client of Miller so I was able to establish an ongoing relationship with the EHS staff at the time. It worked in my favour as they had a contacted me about an available contract position. It was a great opportunity to further develop in other areas of health, safety and occupational hygiene. The rest is history, I’ve been here for over 15 years!
Name something rewarding and challenging in your position.
The variety of people I get to work with at the University of Manitoba is amazing! I’m always learning something new because of the diversity in both our office and the clients my programs serves.
A challenging part of my position is getting “buy-in” from our users. It can be a lot of work to set up safe work procedures, to properly train personnel etc. but in the event of a incident, those documents are extremely useful and make our investigations easier to navigate to ensure no one else gets hurt.
What might others be surprised to know about what you do?
Things can get hectic very quickly! Our safety programs ensure that measures are in place to prevent incidents from happening so in the event an incident does occur, it can get very busy very fast! Fortunately, our office works well as a team in events like this to make sure we minimize the impact and prevent it from happening again.
Superhero you most identify with and why:
There isn’t one superhero in particular but I really relate to the ‘secret identity’ part of being a superhero. They help people but not for the accolades and recognition – their unknown presence is just as important as when they show up to help.
You can reach Joey at joey [dot] bellino [at] umanitoba [dot] ca or at 204-474-6970