The journal was founded in 1910. The history of the journal is directly related to the history of the establishment and development of hygienic science, state sanitary and epidemiological supervision and the system of training specialists in the field of preventive medicine. In 1910-1913, N.F. Gamaleya published and edited the journal "Hygiene and Sanitation". From 1922 to 1931, outstanding scientists E.I. Martsinovsky and A.N. Sysin edited and published the journal under the name “Hygiene and Epidemiology”. In 1932, the epidemiological section of the journal was transferred to the Journal of Microbiology, Epidemiology and Immunology. The journal Hygiene and Epidemiology merged with the collection Social Hygiene. The new journal was published under the name "Hygiene and Socialist Healthcare" and was the publishing organ of the Institute of Healthcare and Hygiene Management of the People’s Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR and its constituent institutes: the Central Sanitary and Hygienic Institute, the Institute for the Protection of the Health of Children and Adolescents, and the Institute for Occupational and Industrial Health.
Since 1933, the journal has been published again under the name "Hygiene and Sanitation". The journal combined the field of hygiene as a separate scientific discipline and sanitation as a practical application of this science.
In the pre-war period, the problems of general, communal, industrial, food, school, social hygiene and the organization of sanitary affairs found the reflection on the pages of the journal. For a short time (1941–1942), the journal was published under the name "Hygiene and Health". During the Great Patriotic War, anti-epidemic measures were actively covered on the pages of the journal, and a new section "Sanitary Measures in Liberated Areas" was opened.
Since 1943, the journal's name was returned to "Hygiene and Sanitation". In the post-war period, the journal mainly covered issues of a laboratory-experimental character, sanitary technology and practice. Since 1947, the new Editorial board (Chief editor: F.G. Krotkov, deputy (editor: A.N. Sysin) focused on the scientific substantiation of health measures as the goal of hygienic science. The All-Union Scientific Society of hygienists (VNOG) had a great influence on the work of the journal. The journal became the publishing printed organ of the USSR Ministry of Health and the VNOG Board. Throughout its history, the journal has consistently maintained a broad general hygienic profile, designed for hygienists and sanitary doctors of all specialties, and contributed to the development of hygienic science in the experimental direction.
Over the 1960s and 70s, much attention on the pages of the journal was paid to the methodological problems of hygienic standardization of environmental factors. Many articles were devoted to the extrapolation of data obtained in experimental studies on animals to humans, the assessment of the combined effect of various factors, the development of calculated express-experimental methods for predicting the toxicity and danger of chemicals, the justification of hygienic standards for new chemicals in various environmental objects, and the hygienic assessment of polymeric materials.
Significant changes in the work of the Editorial board of the journal occurred after the appointment of Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences G.I. Rumyantsev as the Editor-in-chief. The structure of the journal was radically revised, the most significant sections were highlighted. Since the early 2000s, the problems of human ecology and environmental hygiene have become a priority for the journal: hygienic diagnostics of the state of the environment, assessment of the real levels of impact of its factors on the body, elaboration of risk criteria for the development of environmentally dependent diseases and chronic exposure to xenobiotics. During 2009, in connection with the reorganization of the Ministry of Health of Russia, the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing became the founder of the journal. From 2014 to 2020, the journal was headed by Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Honoured Scientist of the Russian Federation Yu.A. Rakhmanin. During this period, the journal again became monthly. Every year, the journal published materials from the Plenums of the Scientific Council of the Russian Federation on Human Ecology and Environmental Hygiene.
Since 2020, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences V.N. Rakitsky has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the journal. By order of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing, the country's leading scientific hygienic institution, the Federal Scientific Center of Hygiene named after F.F. Erisman of the Federal Service for Supervision in Protection of the Rights of Consumer and Man Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor), has been granted the powers of editorial board, publisher and distributor of the journal "Hygiene and Sanitation".
