These two different jobs might overlap in some ways. Environmental chemists would be concerned with studying how pharmaceutical waste or byproduct impacts our water supplies, our soil, and our landfills. Pharmaceutical scientists and salesmen would be concerned with using chemistry to come up with ways of treating human ailments that stemmed from exposure to unhealthy toxins or chemical compounds. Also, pharmaceutical jobs that make human beings healthier make environmental chemist jobs easier to handle, since healthier humans create a healthier environment.
But the similar root of both job types is chemistry and the use of chemistry in the lab to create new products and new solutions to complex problems.
Environmental chemists try to use their knowledge of chemistry to treat problems that plague the environment, clearly. They wonder what happens when certain chemical compounds such as industrial floor cleaners are dumped into a river. They wonder what impact vehicle exhaust has on the environment. They may wonder how growing genetically engineered crops impacts the nutrients count in their soils. But they would study not just how man-made chemicals change the environment, but also how the environment changes the structure of mankind's chemicals through interacting with them. All of these and other related studies can find solutions to the discovery and use of new pharmaceuticals either as medicines or dietary supplements as well. And the study of both environmental and pharmaceutical chemistry can impact advances in research in other related areas, as so many scientific advances and inventions are made by accidental discoveries.
Chemist jobs can drive the progress of industry directly as well as indirectly. Chemist jobs can help to create new products, and they can also help to find newer and better ways of making old products. Making containers and packaging that are more biodegradable, informing businessmen of safer methods of shipping or waste clean-up, finding more efficient means of producing a food or a fuel, making employees more productive through medications or dietary supplements that give them better health or more energy, and enabling industries to create generally safer work environments are all within the scope of chemist jobs.
Environmental chemists and those who work in the pharmaceutical sciences also help to find less expensive means of producing goods and increasing private industry profits. If chemical processes can be found that make production time shorter and production methods more efficient, if it can be discovered that more goods can be produced from fewer given raw materials, this enables more goods to be produced and more services to be rendered within a given time period, which leads to greater profits.
Of course, environmental chemist jobs and pharmaceutical jobs can be found within government, too. Government testing labs, including the FDA's facilities, the USDA, and the Environmental Protection Agency, need chemistry professionals to help them set federal standards for safety and help to educate the public and private industry about the best possible safety and quality standards for drugs, plastic products, fuels, fabrics, food additives, and anything else that people would regularly use or consume.
Biology, geology, ecology, sedimentology, mineralogy, genetics, soil, water chemistry, and even mathematics and engineering are all used within the disciplines of environmental chemistry. Pharmaceutical chemistry would also make use of most of these disciplines, and would place special emphasis on biology, genetics, and physiology.
Chemist jobs can and often do lead into other jobs in other industries. We have already mentioned government and regulatory policy; but these jobs can also lead into sales and marketing, lawyer careers, or careers as the owners of businesses. Basic, working knowledge and solid understanding of how chemistry works can lead to these other careers.
Government regulations continue to expand. Whether this is good or bad may be in question, but at least one thing is not: the fact that environmental chemist jobs as well as pharmacy jobs will continue to grow. More and more scientists will be needed to help with regulatory processes, whether they are concerned with impact on the environment or an individuals' health. It's not just government chemists who will be needed. Private industry chemists who can help their employers steer clear of the clubbing swings of the government's long arm are in ever greater demand.
What this all means for those who seek these jobs is that competition is rising, but at the same time so is job security.
Environmental chemists are making an average of $45,000 per year, although it's possible, once one gets into a supervisory role, to make over $100,000 a year. Those working in pharmaceuticals are making an average of $73,000 a year. While these careers do overlap, as we have been describing, it comes down to what most interests you and what matters are most important to you.
