Environmental Health Regulations in U.S. and Canada

This research examines environmental health regulation in the United States and Canada. The approach to environmental health regulation in the two countries is compared and contrasted through considerations of historical development, motivations2 for intensified legislation, and current and future trends.

Environmental health, as a concept, contains elements of both environmental protection and public health, although the scope of environmental health does not encompass the totality of either environmental protection or public health. An important element of environmental protection, as an example, is the development and implementation of public policy to protect sensitive ecological areas. The policies designed to protect areas such as Prince William Sound in Alaska from damage by oil spills provide an illustration of an attempt at environmental protection. Protection of the environment in such a context, however, does not have a direct re2lationship to the health of human beings (so long as petroleum contaminated sea life is not consumed). Thus, policy initiatives designed to protect the natural environment where direct relationships to human health are not strong are not included within the concept of environmental health.

Laws designed to insure the purity of ground water provide another example of2 environmental protection. In this instance, however, the link to human health is stronger. Polluted water supplies a

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exceed natural sulfate emissions (Urban, 1991, pp. 561-568). The sulfur oxide content of acid rain is 25 times greater than that of ordinary rain (Kim and Aneja, 1992, pp. 41-53). In North Carolina, cloud water has also been found to be more acidic in the summer than in the spring and fall (Kim and Aneja, 1992, pp. 41-53). The acidity of rains in Venezuela has been found to be much less than that of the rains in the Eastern United States (Sanhueza, et al, 1992, pp. 54-62). The presence of acid rain in North America and Europe is well documented. Less well known is that acid rain has also been reported in the remote areas of the Amazon Basin. While most of the acid rain reported in the Amazon Basin is assumed to be the product of natural causes, the very existence of the substance in such remote locations illustrates the pervasiveness of the problem. One recent study, however, concluded that the prevalence of acid rain in pre-industrial times was almost the same as it is in the 1990s (Krug, 1991, pp. 123-137). This study contended that climate, not pollution, causes acid rain. This study, however, is likely one of many conducted in the United States with a goal of debunking the significance of acid rain as a problem, s

Category: Government - E