Oliver Pekelharing (asker) Feb 2, 2010:

That does complicate matters... I wasn't even aware of the SHE acronym, and apparently EHS is more common in the US, and HES is used too...

MoiraB Feb 2, 2010:

just to muddy the waters a bit more... SHE is also a commonly used abbreviation, even in the UK (SHE + safety, health and the environment + site:uk gets a respectable 0.5m ghits). OSH is only concerned with H&S in the workplace environment so is just one aspect of HSE/SHE, as you say. I agree it's probably being eclipsed by the latter as corporate accountability on wider environmental matters grows. Does this help at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health,_Safety_and_Environment ? Perhaps this is something you need to discuss with the client, who might be the best judge of which terms the author is using synonymously. Otherwise there's a risk that English-speaking readers will be as confused as you ;-)