lation designed to protect environmental health (Illich, 1976, p. 22). Thus, in ancient times also, the relationship between causes and illnesses was recognized.
The so called "Killer Fog" that struck London in the early 1950s prompted the government of the United Kingdom to take action to clean up and protect the quality of the air in southern England. That action led to further environmental clean up and protection actions designed to restore the environmental purity of the Thames and other rivers and streams throughout the United Kingdom.
The earliest environmental protection measures implemented in the United States were, in fact, public health initiatives dealing with sewage disposal. Formal legislation at the federal level dealing with environmental protection has occurred primarily since the end of the Second World War. An important element of environmental protection is the development and implementation of public policy to protect sensitive ecological areas. The policies in the United States designed to protect areas such as Prince William Sound in Alaska from damage by oil spills is one illustration of an attempt at environmental protection. Protection of the environment in such a context, however, does not have a direct relationship to the health of human beings (so long as petroleum contaminated sea life is not consumed). Laws designed to insure the purity of ground water provide another example of environmental protection. In this instance, however, the link to human health is stronger. Polluted water supplies are a direct threat to human health.
Dirty air and dirty water prompted American governments to consider legislation to prevent environmental pollution in the 1950s and 1960s. It was not simply that the air and water were polluted. It was because such pollution was being ever increasingly linked to serious human health problems in many parts of the United States, and because as a result of these ...