The Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (EHE-SRIHER) was set up in 1998 with the aid of financial assistance provided by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. Over the last two decades, EHE-SRIHER has been involved with a network of more than 50 institutional partners for research and training activities concerning occupational and environmental health (OEH). In particular, financial support from the ITREOH program of The Fogarty International Center, USA, the International Integrated Experts Program of GTZ, Germany, and collaborations with University of California Berkeley, USA have enabled EHE-SRIHER to establish some of the most extensive human resource capacities for OEH research in India

In its capacity as a WHO-Collaborating Center (since 2007) and ICMR Center for Advanced Research on Air Quality, Climate and Health (since 2010), EHE-SRIHER has been actively engaged in numerous national and regional capacity-building activities as well as in policy-relevant efforts concerning OEH issues. An extensive infrastructure of field and laboratory instrumentation supports the conduct of large scale field studies and allows estimation of population-level exposures/ health effects for a variety of environmental toxicants. The department offers Masters in Public Health program with specialization in occupational and environmental health and Master of Science in Industrial Hygiene and Safety. The department also provides routine occupational safety and health services to a wide spectrum of industries.

The team has contributed to several national and international technical assessments concerned with air quality including the Global Burden of Disease and Comparative Risk Assessments (GBD 2000, GBD 2010, GBD 2013); The IARC Monographs for household (2006) and ambient air pollution (2013); The Global Energy Assessment (2009); and the World Health Organization Air Quality Guidelines for ambient (2006) and household air pollution (2014). The team has also published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles in high impact journals.