Sanitary Inspection

SANITARY INSPECTION, institution of practical sanitary workers, possessing especially assigned rights for conducting sanitary supervision. In various countries, this term is applied differently; sometimes it refers to physicians; sometimes to other auxiliary personnel. In England, S. I. is the institution of sanitary inspectors' assistants; in the USSR, this term was assigned to a special primary group of sanitary physicians within the health authorities, according to the decree of the USSR Council of People's Commissars of August 10, 1931 (see Sanitary Organization), and then to the group of sanitary physicians of the People's Commissariat of Labor (except those who had joined to the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions), so-called sanitary labor inspectors. Along with the aforementioned 'state' sanitary inspectors (according to the terminology of the 1931 decree), at the same time the institution of 'public' sanitary inspectors was created, recruited from the public active. The total number of state sanitary inspectors within the RSFSR by 1933 amounted, according to the People's Commissariat of Health data, to about 3,500 (positions); the number of public sanitary inspectors was counted at over 20,000. Rights, duties of S. I.-see Sanitary Organization and Sanitary Supervision, industrial sanitary supervision.-S. I. of labor-see Labor.