Environmental Law Newsletters

Environmental Tobacco Smoke

Although early regulation of the tobacco industry in the United States was geared towards limiting advertising and providing warnings of the dangers of smoking, efforts to protect nonsmokers from the hazards of secondhand smoke, which was widely regarded as a form of air pollution rather than a harmless byproduct of personal behavior choice, slowly began to take root. Although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) presently has no authority to regulate secondhand smoke, it considers it an important indoor air pollutant and has made it a significant target of its indoor air quality programs. Because the EPA already ranks indoor air pollution in the top five environmental risks to public health, buildings in which smoking is permitted pose all that more of a hazard to the occupants.

Safe Drinking Water

In 1974, Congress enacted the Safe Drinking Water Act for the purpose of regulating public water systems throughout the country and ensuring the safety of public drinking water, as well as protecting sources of drinking water such as lakes, rivers, springs, reservoirs, and groundwater.

The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996

The Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), passed unanimously by Congress in 1996, represented landmark legislation that modernized food safety regulations relating to the presence of pesticides in food products. The FQPA provides a single standard for all pesticides in food that is based on health-oriented scientific research, makes special provisions for the protection of infants and children, provides expedited approval of pesticides that are safer to use in agriculture, promotes the development of an array of crop protection tools with the purpose of reducing the need for pesticides, and requires periodic reevaluation of the safety of pesticides.

The Precautionary Principle

The precautionary principle is a recently-developed ethical principle that states that if an activity carries the possibility of harming human health or the environment, precautions should be taken even if the cause and effect relationships of the activity are not fully established. If the activity poses a risk to human health or the environment, the proponent of the activity should prove that there will be no negative consequences of the activity. The precautionary principle can be applied to the development of new technologies such as genetically-modified organisms, the manufacture and use of new chemicals, the use of radioactive materials, or any other technologies that might affect public health and the environment.

The Radon Gas and Indoor Air Quality Research Act of 1986

In recognition of the potential hazard posed by radon gas in particular as well as the overall importance of indoor air quality, Congress passed the Radon Gas and Indoor Air Quality Research Act (Air Quality Research Act) in 1986. Among other things, the Air Quality Research Act directed the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a research program with respect to indoor air quality in order to add to the understanding of health problems associated with indoor air pollutants.