Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and public health

IDENTIFICATION: U.S. government agency responsible for enforcing many federal environmental laws

DATE: Established on December 2, 1970

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administers federal laws that protect natural resources such as air, water, and land. Among its many duties, the agency enforces regulations regarding air and water pollutants, oversees programs that promote energy efficiency and conservation, and participates in the cleanup of sites where toxic materials have polluted the natural environment.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for protecting the public health and ensuring a clean by safeguarding natural resources, controlling air and water pollution, and regulating the disposal of in the United States. The agency carries out its mission through its rule-making and enforcement authority granted by the US Congress. The EPA also conducts scientific research, provides environmental education to the public and to private companies, and utilizes the best available scientific information in its quest to reduce environmental risk. States and tribal nations throughout the United States follow the national standards set by the EPA in enforcing their own environmental regulations. The EPA provides grants to states, nonprofit entities, and academic institutions to carry out environmental and human public health research, often related to the cleanup of sites. The EPA also works with other nations to protect the global environment.

History

After World War II the growth of industrialization in the United States led to serious air and water and environmental deterioration, which in turn spurred a movement that demanded the adoption of federal laws to protect the public health and clean up the environment. In 1969, President Richard Nixon created a White House committee to consider the existing environmental laws and enforcement agencies in the United States. In addition, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which was signed into law on January 1, 1970.

A public policy of achieving harmony between humankind and the environment by assessing the environmental impacts of various federal projects was the impetus behind the National Environmental Policy Act and eventually the establishment of the EPA. The president’s committee recommended the creation of an independent environmental agency that would not be influenced by the goals and mandates of other agencies for the purpose of enforcing environmental laws. The Environmental Protection Agency became a reality when Congress consolidated the duties of several federal agencies into one entity in December 1970. William D. Ruckelshaus became the agency’s first administrator.

The EPA was established for the purpose of enforcing many of the environmental laws adopted and amended by the federal government during the 1970s and 1980s as the result of public pressure to clean up the environment. These early laws included the 1970 Clean Air Act amendments, which authorized the EPA to adopt vehicular controls to reduce emissions, set national air-quality standards and attainment goals, and regulate through a permitting and enforcement process. In 1972, the EPA worked in tandem with the US Army Corps of Engineers to set standards for water quality and to regulate discharges into national water resources under the Clean Water Act.

The EPA was named as the lead agency for enforcement of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1947, including the act’s 1972 and later amendments, which resulted in the ban of the toxic in the United States. In addition, the EPA was made responsible for regulating the manufacture, distribution, import, and processing of specific toxic substances through the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976. The EPA was not given authority over all environmental laws; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service remains responsible for enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, and nuclear wastes are regulated by the Department of Energy.

RCRA and Superfund

Before the adoption of federal environmental laws in the 1970s, the dumping of toxic materials in the United States, mostly illegal, took place with little government control. When the degradation of natural resources became a major concern, the federal government realized that it needed to step in and help to prevent the contamination of the environment with hazardous substances and to clean up old, abandoned toxic sites. In 1976, Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to prohibit future dumping of toxic and hazardous substances and granted the EPA authority for legal management of the disposal of such wastes “from cradle to grave.” Under the act, the EPA is responsible for regulating the generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal of toxic and hazardous substances. Congress later passed several amendments to RCRA that gave the EPA the power to set standards for nonhazardous solid waste disposal and for the installation and maintenance of underground storage tanks containing hazardous substances such as products.

By 1980, Congress recognized that contaminated toxic waste sites throughout the United States had become a serious threat to public health and enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. The act, known as Superfund, provides for retroactive liability for those deemed to be the parties responsible for the dumping, usually the property owners, even if the dumping took place before passage of the law in 1980. In addition, the law established a trust fund through a tax on the industry to cover costs of cleanup not covered by the responsible parties. Superfund provides for short-term toxic waste removal from the most dangerous hazardous waste sites in the United States, which are listed by the EPA on the agency’s National Priorities List. In addition, the EPA often employs long-term remedial actions to reduce public health dangers posed by the continuing of buried hazardous substances at some of the highest-priority sites. In 1986 Congress passed the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) to clarify liability issues. Many states followed suit and adopted their own environmental dumping, enforcement, and cleanup laws.

Challenges and Future Opportunities

Since its establishment, the EPA has demanded compliance with federal environmental laws from private businesses, from states, and from individual cities, such as Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Los Angeles, California; and Atlanta, Georgia. The EPA has met its enforcement challenges by adopting and imposing strict regulations and often seeking assistance from the courts to obtain compliance. Moreover, the EPA has been in the forefront of cleanup after natural and human-caused environmental disasters, including those related to the hazardous wastes buried under the Love Canal residential development in Niagara Falls, New York; the Three Mile Island nuclear plant core meltdown near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; the Exxon Valdez in Alaska; the destruction of the World Trade Center towers by terrorists in New York City on September 11, 2001; and the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizonoil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition to its enforcement and cleanup functions, the EPA works in many areas to encourage the protection of the environment. Aside from its Energy Star program, which promotes energy efficiency in household appliances and other consumer products, the EPA has undertaken initiatives concerned with the reduction of greenhouse gases and the adoption of air-quality visibility rules. The agency has also conducted and peer-review assessments to ensure the safety of high-concern chemicals found in products and in the environment, developed new strategies to protect the quality of public drinking-water supplies, and supported the revitalization and reuse of abandoned and contaminated inner-city brownfields.

The EPA must carry out its responsibilities of protecting the environment, natural resources, and public health while attempting to avoid negative impacts on economic growth, industrial development, energy production, agriculture, transportation, and international trade—a balance that at times seems impossible to achieve. In its efforts to keep that balance, the EPA has partnered with both public and private companies and institutions to find new and innovative approaches to environmental protection that can satisfy competing goals.

The EPA's Public Health and Environmental Systems Division (PHESD) is tasked with promoting human health and healthy and safe communities. The division's scientists engage in study of public health and the environment.

Bibliography

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