The imperative that agencies use sound science in developing their regulations has become a major preoccupation of the political branches. In only a few years, Congress passed two appropriations riders that provide extensive new mechanisms for the public to critique the science used by agencies. The executive branch quickly followed suit, promulgating regulations to implement these two laws, as well as proceeding on its own sound science missions. In the space of less than one year, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) circulated for public comment draft peer review requirements for the scientific review of agency science, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched a full scale program to improve the quality of the models it uses in regulation, as well as Assessment Criteria to be used by agency officials in reviewing the quality of third-party (primarily state) science.

When scholars and policymakers think about the relationship between public health and environmental law and policy, they likely think first about controlling pollution and other toxic substances. As other articles have amply demonstrated, water pollution, air pollution, and other environmental toxins can have significant deleterious effects on the public's health. Scholars rightly pay serious attention to these relationships, and policymakers wisely devise methods and strategies to ameliorate the public health risks posed by these polluting substances.

Although pollution control might be the most obvious and important intersection between environmental policy and public health, legal and policy decisions regarding the management and preservation of the nation's natural resources potentially also significantly affect the public's health. Preserving plant and animal species, allocating water resources, and managing the nation's public lands, just to name a few examples, all potentially bear on matters of public health and safety.

The effects of environmental exposure, broadly defined as any exposure from outside the body, on human health are unquestionably the most important determinants of public health. While important genetic determinants of disease exert their effects irrespective of exposure from outside the body, these do not contribute as much to the overall public health burden of disease as factors such as tobacco smoke, poor quality water, inadequate or contaminated food, occupational exposures to dusts and chemicals, motor vehicle accidents, interpersonal violence, air pollution, and other factors external to the body. In many cases, genetic predisposition and environmental exposures combined cause disease in an individual, so it may be impossible to separate out individual biological contributions from various external factors. Nevertheless, it is widely understood that public health concerns populations and communities, and that environmental determinants of health have been paramount throughout human history.

The environment and public health goals hold a common value of healthy populations. The threat of bioterrorism requires a partnership of both, building upon the long history of the link between public health and the environment. This existing relationship is key to an effective system of biodefense for the nation, because the use of biological weapons through every environmental pathway poses a potential threat. Contaminations of water, growing crops, grazing cattle, air through inhalation, dermal absorption, or consumption of food or water in the human environment are potential delivery methods. For these risks of bioterrorism in the environment, there is an existing federal regulatory and statutory framework upon which the relationship between the environment and public health can be strengthened and shaped.

Obesity is the number one health problem facing America today. The connection to physical inactivity and a sedentary lifestyle has long been recognized, but only recently has it become a focal point for physicians worldwide. Surprisingly, the answer may be as close as America's backyardthe public lands and waters under the management of the U.S. Department of the Interior (Interior), as well as other federal, state, and local agencies. While traditional efforts to increase physical activity among Americans have focused on exercise-related activities such as calisthenics, treadmills, or stair machines, more recently leisuretime activities like gardening and housework have emerged as additions to the physical activity arsenal. These activities in turn have shifted attention away from individual obstacles and toward barriers to human movement in the built environment.

Mercury is a persistent, bioaccumulative toxin that adversely affects human beings and wildlife. Mercury, like many such toxins, is a multimedia pollutant that can readily transfer among air, water, and soils, and thus crosses the boundaries of traditional regulatory programs. Mercury can also be transported long distances in the atmosphere, creating transboundary issues that are regional and global in scope. Human exposure to mercury is largely attributable to the consumption of contaminated fish, with women of childbearing age, infants, and children at greatest risk. Because mercury persists in the environment, the risk of neurological or other impairments can span generations. Mercury, largely from anthropogenic sources, enters aquatic systems through a variety of pathways including direct deposition from the atmosphere, runoff, and wastewater discharges.

For several decades now we have been acutely aware of the increasingly intensifying effect that environmental degradation has on human health. While many of these effects are localized, given the increasingly global nature of environmental problems their impact on human health has also become global in dimension. Health experts are becoming more and more concerned about the potential impact on public health if no precautionary measures are taken to deal with these global environmental problems.

Of course, environmental problems have consequences beyond their public health impact. The emphasis in this Article on public health should not be taken as advocating an anthropocentric approach to environmental problems. This Article focuses on public health as a way of drawing attention to the enormity of the problem.

The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.

There is a long history of attacks on scientists. During the Inquisition, the Roman Catholic Church charged Galileo with heresy and, after imprisonment and threats of torture, forced him to renounce his theory that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe. In the 1950s, politicians sought to silence scientists that allegedly held political views sympathetic to Communists.

In recent years, research results, rather than the scientist's religion or politics, have motivated attacks on scientists. As environmental issues grow in economic significance and as science takes on increasing importance in influencing public opinion and resolving environmental policy debates, suppression of environmental science has become increasingly common. As one author observed, the power of science to legitimate environmental positions by claiming exclusive truth makes ownership of science one of the most contested issues in modern environmentalism.

I’m convinced that physical containment is overrated and, while reassuring to the psyche, is hardly the line of defense one would like to put the greatest reliance upon.

So what you have to keep asking yourself is: Suppose the worst happens, what are the consequences?