Rate My Professor Darrah Sleeth

Darrah K. Sleeth, PhD, MPH, CIH, serves as a Professor in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Health within the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah, a position she has held since 2010. In this role, she directs the Industrial Hygiene Program and is affiliated with the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, where she has contributed for over 12 years by managing teaching, research, and laboratory facilities for air sampler testing, as well as participating in field studies to collect real-world air samples. Sleeth's academic background includes a BA in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, an MPH in Industrial Hygiene and Hazardous Substances from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Industrial Health from the same institution. As a Certified Industrial Hygienist, she applies her expertise across occupational and environmental health domains.

Sleeth's research specializations include exposure assessment for airborne respiratory hazards, particle size selective sampling methods, and indoor air quality. She has pioneered the design of a low-speed wind tunnel and breathing mannequin system to evaluate particle inhalability and air sampling device performance under realistic workplace conditions. Her work also features community-based participatory research on environmental exposures in tribal populations. In 2024, she received a $1.55 million NIH grant to develop environmental health communication strategies for rural tribal communities. Sleeth has authored or co-authored over 47 publications from 2008 to 2025. Key contributions include "Visualization of the airflow around a life-sized, heated, breathing mannequin at ultralow windspeeds" (Schmees et al., 2008, Annals of Occupational Hygiene), "Performance study of personal inhalable aerosol samplers at ultra-low wind speeds" (Sleeth and Vincent, 2012), "A Simple and Disposable Sampler for Inhalable Aerosol" (L'Orange et al., 2016), and "Environmental and Occupational Health on the Navajo Nation: A Scoping Review" (Coombs et al., 2021).