Human health: a surrogate for the environment. The evolution of environmental legislation and regulation during the...

Human health and threat to human health have been used repeatedly and, at times, deliberately, as surrogates for other desirable features of the physical environment in order to make environmental regulatory and legislative initiatives politically attractive. Since the decade of the 1970s, this strategy has been a successful one in terms of providing a persuasive politcal argument for environmental initiatives. At the same time, however, the use of a surrogate or "false colors" has had the unfortunate effect of raising and sustaining public fears and preoccupations which, in at least some cases, have probably diverted our attention away from more important contributors to disease and premature mortality.