Center Director Rick Neitzel Receives 2026 ACGIH Meritorious Achievement Award
We are proud to congratulate our Center Director, Rick Neitzel, PhD, CIH, FAIHA, recipient of the 2026 ACGIH Meritorious Achievement Award.
The award recognizes ACGIH members who have made outstanding, long-term contributions to occupational health and environmental hygiene. Dr. Neitzel is a professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Global Public Health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. In addition to directing the Center for Occupational Health and Safety Engineering, he leads U-M’s industrial hygiene program.
An internationally recognized expert in occupational and environmental hazards, Neitzel has published more than 160 peer-reviewed manuscripts examining exposures to—and the health effects of—noise and other workplace and environmental hazards. He is the principal investigator of the nationwide Apple Hearing Study and developed a freely available national job-exposure matrix for occupational noise in the United States and Canada.
Neitzel served as chair of the ACGIH Threshold Limit Values for Physical Agents Committee from 2018 to 2024. He is a Fellow of the American Industrial Hygiene Association and has been a Certified Industrial Hygienist since 2003.