Ms Fowles established Compliance Partners, an Ashburton-based business that focuses on health and safety, human resources and occupational monitoring, predominantly in the agriculture and construction industries.
Last year, she completed a graduate diploma of professional practice through Otago Polytechnic, in occupational health and safety.
She focused her research project on occupational health in the agricultural sector, an area in which she had gained a strong interest in recent years.
It was a fascinating topic but one that was not done particularly well in New Zealand, nor discussed, she said.
Agriculture was an industry that was synonymous with risk to the health and safety of its workers but it was very much in its infancy when it came to occupational health.
With the ill effects of exposure to a work-related health hazard not being visible for days, weeks, months or even decades, it was hard to decide whether an illness was related to a person's work or caused by other lifestyle factors.
"Agricultural workers do a wide range of work and deal with a range of chemicals, substances and fuels in their work; many of these are poisonous and can damage their health without them realising,'' she said.
Her project was aimed at providing an understanding of the potential ill effects of agricultural work on a worker's health, and compared international good practice for health protection and education with current New Zealand practice.
Those ill effects included everything from noise through to dust, chemical vapours and vibration.
Her report focused on health issues in agriculture, that she had either heard about or read about during the project, which were causing major concern: respiratory, hearing, skin, zoonoses (infectious diseases that can be naturally transmitted between animals and humans) occupational cancers, the nervous system, leptospirosis, musculoskeletal and stress.
In the United Kingdom, United States and Canada, there were separate entities that looked after occupational health.
In New Zealand, it came under WorkSafe but she did not believe the organisation had the capacity to do both safety and occupational health well. It was still very much focused on safety and that was ``rightly so''.
Establishing the extent of the problem in New Zealand was the first thing that should be done, she believed.
Then it would come down to education and making people understand the issue.
Ms Fowles' list of recommendations included creating a national policy on health in agriculture to prevent occupational illness and the establishment of an occupational health institute focused primarily on research and data collection and then identification of key objectives for implementation.
She was saddened that workers were often not being kept as healthy as they could and should be.
But she was also motivated to use the new information to educate, talk and demonstrate to the industry how important it was to focus on their health, especially with younger agricultural workers.
"With up-to-date research, we could lead implementation of acceptable measures to minimise the risk in line with World Health Organisation and International Labour Organisation frameworks.
"It would see a significant shift in thinking for many groups in the industry and it is not going to be a quick project, but until there is a start made on it we will not be able to see what the real successes will be,'' she said.
Wellness testing was something her firm advocated for. The reality was that if workers felt better, they would be more productive.
Ms Fowles believed less accidents, injuries and deaths would be caused in the workplace if people were more alert.
She had also been quite vocal with clients about focusing more on the ``holistic'' person of their employee, questioning whether they were fit to climb the likes of a ladder.
People had different lifestyles now compared with 25 years ago and that needed to be factored into decision making about health and safety in New Zealand.
"I've no doubt that with wellness testing, we have saved people's lives. It's all about trying to build a fence at the top of the cliff and try and stop these people from being unwell,'' she said.
But changes would not be made unless a start was made on understanding the problem in New Zealand and putting it in layman's terms, she said.
