Will AI replace Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health?
AI reaches most of this job’s work.
72/100
Very high exposure
More exposed to AI than 97% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 17% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 95% of the work
What the job involves
Conduct research or perform investigation for the purpose of identifying, abating, or eliminating sources of pollutants or hazards that affect either the environment or public health. Using knowledge of various scientific disciplines, may collect, synthesize, study, report, and recommend action based on data derived from measurements or observations of air, food, soil, water, and other sources.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Already happening(4)
- Process and review environmental permits, licenses, or related materials.
- Collect, synthesize, analyze, manage, and report environmental data, such as pollution emission measurements, atmospheric monitoring measurements, meteorological or mineralogical information, or soil or water samples.
- Determine data collection methods to be employed in research projects or surveys.
- Plan or develop research models, using knowledge of mathematical and statistical concepts.
Within reach(17)
- Communicate scientific or technical information to the public, organizations, or internal audiences through oral briefings, written documents, workshops, conferences, training sessions, or public hearings.
- Provide scientific or technical guidance, support, coordination, or oversight to governmental agencies, environmental programs, industry, or the public.
- Prepare charts or graphs from data samples, providing summary information on the environmental relevance of the data.
- Review and implement environmental technical standards, guidelines, policies, and formal regulations that meet all appropriate requirements.
- Provide advice on proper standards and regulations or the development of policies, strategies, or codes of practice for environmental management.
and 12 more
Out of reach(1)
- Supervise or train students, environmental technologists, technicians, or other related staff.
Also called
Environmental Analyst · Environmental Scientist · Environmental Specialist · Environmental Protection Specialist · Hazardous Substances Scientist · Environmental Consultant · Environmentalist · Health Environmentalist
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics