EH vs. MPH with emphasis??

[OaklandtoSB]

After a BS in Biopsychology and 2 + working in healthcare, my interests have began shifting in the direction of public health. Specifically the fields of toxicology, environmental health, and health ed have really caught my attention. I have been doing a fair amount of online research, but this forum is the first time I have heard of EH as a separate degree. And I obviously have additional questions....

~First, What are your opinions on the pros/cons of choosing an EH degree over an MPH with an emphasis in toxicology or EH? I have also considered epidemiology, but I know from experience that I would not be content doing data analysis/stats/lab work.
~Based on my career interests, is there another emphasis I may want to look into?
~What are the compared job outlooks for the two fields (EH as compared to PH) I feel like I have spent time putting my feelers out into the environmental health/ toxicology fields, and have come up with very little!

Every little bit will help, I look forward to your responses!!

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[Stories]

The first thing you need to do is determine which direction you're more interested in. If you're more interested in becoming a toxicologist (testing cell cultures for toxicity levels, doing animal tests for toxic levels), then you should pursue a toxicology degree (from a Biology or Biomedical department). If you're interested in toxicological assessment or risk assessment and how that might affect humans, you should pursue an environmental health degree from a public health school.

The topics you'll learn will be roughly the same, but with a toxicology focused degree, you'll get more focus on the science and less on application of it outside of the immediate toxicology. You'l also likely have some laboratory methods. With the public health degree, you'll get a broader education which incorporates all parts of public health (like epidemiology and biostatistics) while still primarily focusing on environmental health and toxicology.

The other option I know about is environmental health engineering (within engineering departments). This option obviously isn't the route you want as you don't have the engineering background necessary.

The job outlooks would be probably pretty similar. There'll always be a need for these types of folks. It's not a particularly broad field, so be aware of that. You'll be narrowing yourself quite a bit (as most of us are by doing any master's education).

I have a friend that got a EH MPH degree, and she currently works at a consulting group that gets a lot of contract work from EPA. She's primarily a literature and data aggregator and writes policy briefs and memos. She gets paid fairly decently and enjoys her work. This is likely a common route for many EH MPH grads who focus on toxicology.