The American Board of Industrial Hygiene (ABIH) has been accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for its Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) program.

The accreditation was awarded under the ANSI standard ISO/IEC 17024 - Conformity assessment - General requirements for bodies operating certification of persons and was effective on March 13, 2009.

According to a press statement issued by ABIH, “Since its inception in 2003, this relatively new ISO/IEC standard has become increasingly recognized as an accepted benchmark for organizations that manage the certification of individuals, as the CIH program does.

“This new accreditation by ANSI now provides even greater assurance that ABIH is providing a high-quality certification system that meets the nationally and internationally recognized professional standards of examination and maintenance program administration,” said ABIH Executive Director Lynn O’Donnell, CIH. “This improves the transparency of our systems and the portability of the CIH designation.”

ABIH joins a list of approximately 25 companies who have been awarded the 17024 accreditation. The ANSI accreditation is good for a five-year period and ABIH will be subject to ongoing demonstration of its continuous improvement under the ISO/IEC 17024 standard.

Since 1960, ABIH, a not-for-profit corporation, has been the world’s largest organization for certifying professionals in the practice of industrial hygiene, according to the press release.