My work in Environmental Health is within housing. I love the work, the people, and variety of issues to deal with, from ensuring adequate fire safely in bedsits to dealing with "life of grime" filthy properties.
This week I have been heavily involved with trying to secure an abandoned property, which was being used as a squat and for varied and prolific drug taking. Several trips to the house and chats to the occupants, found more needles than I care to mention, and a huge pile of foul smelling festering rubbish in the rear garden. This rubbish contained sharps and carrier bags of human faeces, along with various stolen items all now foul stenching the neighbourhood.
Making the house secure after ensuring no one was inside was achieved with Police assistance. The positive publicity of the occasion saw the arrival of not only a newspaper reporter and photographer after an interview, but also a radio journalist so another interview was undertaken. I am sure I would have been terrified if I had had more time to think about this.
The good news was there was no one inside the house and the boarding went smoothly. I got my 15mins of fame and am even in the photographs in the local paper, and can apparently be heard on the radio.
What I really love about this job is that you never really know what the day will bring, and for someone with a short attention span its varied nature keeps my interest.
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