EXPOSED
The field half of this job — collecting soil, water, air, and asbestos/lead samples, calibrating monitors, setting up sensors at industrial sites and contaminated properties — is physically real and cheap robotics won't touch it this decade. The desk half — logging data, running standard calculations against regulatory thresholds, drafting sampling reports and permit paperwork — is exactly what AI now does at usable quality, and sensor networks plus automated telemetry are already thinning the routine monitoring rounds. No general license shields the role; certifications (asbestos inspector, HAZWOPER, state sampler credentials) matter for specific tasks but the signing professional is usually the environmental engineer or scientist above you.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $46,540 → $55,090 -5.3% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+4%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 34,670 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Exposed, but growing
AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +4% more of these jobs by 2034. Demand for the output is growing faster than the work is being automated away — the mechanism BLS gives for software developers, and the combination people most often misread as an error.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~5,600 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
SanitarianAir AnalystSmoke TesterSoil AnalystBiotechnicianWater AnalystRadon InspectorField TechnicianWaste SpecialistWastewater AnalystSolid Waste AnalystAir Pollution AuditorAsbestos MicroscopistEnvironmental AnalystSanitarian SpecialistWater Quality AnalystPublic Health SanitarianWater Quality SpecialistWater Treatment SpecialistSmog Technician (Smog Tech)Materials Exchange SpecialistEnvironmental Property AssessorSample Technician (Sample Tech)Environmental Services Associate
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Splitting a 40-hour week between chain-of-custody sampling at active industrial sites and writing up EPA Method 200.8 results against MCLs puts this at 10 — the field trips still require a person walking a monitoring well transect, but continuous telemetry from datalogged sondes and automated report generation have already absorbed the routine quarterly rounds and the narrative sections you used to draft by hand.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments A 15 reflects that you are in Level C on a brownfield in July, augering to five feet, changing PM2.5 filters on a rooftop, and crawling attics for asbestos bulk samples — uncontrolled sites with variable weather and access, though you are not doing structural work or operating heavy equipment, which is what keeps it out of the 18-20 range.
Certification preferred, not legally required At 5, credentials like state-accredited asbestos building inspector, 40-hour HAZWOPER, and lead risk assessor gate specific tasks and can be revoked, but the Phase II report, the remediation recommendation, and the regulatory submittal carry a PE or licensed geologist's stamp, so the enforcement exposure sits above you.
Meaningful discretion Method 9 visible-emissions calls, deciding a well needs redevelopment before sampling, flagging a duplicate that blew its RPD, or deciding a friable material warrants a stop-work — real on-site discretion at 9, but bounded by SOPs, QAPPs, and prescriptive EPA and OSHA methods that specify what to do when a reading exceeds the trigger.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (10/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (5/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (6/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (9/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 20 of this occupation's 45 points (44%).
Embodiment (15/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
Conservation Scientists EXPOSED
Nuclear Engineers EXPOSED
Foresters EXPOSED
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 61/100, still EXPOSED.
State-mandated accredited-sampler credentials with personal chain-of-custody attestation: e.g., EPA/state drinking-water programs and the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements requiring a named, certified sampler to sign each sample's custody form, and state asbestos/lead (AHERA, EPA RRP) rules already requiring a licensed inspector's personal signature on clearance results. If more media (PFAS sampling under state programs, vapor intrusion, Phase II ESA field work) get equivalent named-certified-sampler requirements rather than firm-level accreditation, the technician becomes an unsubstitutable signatory.
Task-mix shift: as report drafting and threshold checks automate, the residual job is the genuinely hard field tier — deciding where to place a sensor, recognizing a compromised sample, diagnosing drift and matrix interference, adapting a sampling plan when site conditions differ from the work plan. Two tiers genuinely exist here; the surviving role is the second one, and it is a smaller headcount.
Expansion of sampling into environments hostile to fixed sensors and automation — post-disaster response, PFAS and lead service line inventories requiring physical excavation/inspection, indoor air and mold assessment inside occupied buildings, illicit discharge tracing in sewer systems. More statutory inventory and inspection mandates means more irreducibly physical, unpredictable-site work.
Court/enforcement treatment of AI-assisted data as inadmissible without a human field witness — a Daubert-style or state-enforcement ruling that automated telemetry logs need a certified technician's sworn attestation of calibration and siting to support a penalty or a cost-recovery claim.
Formal QA/QC sign-off authority pushed down to the technician under NELAP/state lab accreditation and EPA data-validation guidance: if the field technician is the named party who rejects or accepts a sample batch and documents deviations that determine whether a cleanup is declared complete, the role owns a consequential call.
The limit. Trust premium has no realistic route: buyers are regulators and property transactions purchasing compliance, not a human touch, and they will accept whatever the rule permits. The liability levers are also real but narrow — they attach to specific media (asbestos, lead, drinking water), so the shield protects credentialed subspecialties rather than the occupation as a whole. Even with every lever, automated telemetry continues to thin routine monitoring headcount; the score rises for the survivors while the job count falls.
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 1,460 | $62,850 +14% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,440 | $62,650 +14% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 930 | $49,170 -11% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 710 | $53,780 -2% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 690 | $60,380 +10% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 690 | $80,840 +47% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 650 | $49,930 -9% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 650 | $62,280 +13% |
| San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA | 40 | $90,720 +65% |
| Duluth, MN-WI | 50 | $89,040 +62% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 690 | $80,840 +47% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 45. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.