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EHPLE Public Health study materials
EHPLE Public Health study resources

EHPLE Public Health: Environmental Health Law, Regulation, and Policy

EHPLE Public Health · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

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Environmental Health Law, Regulation, and Policy

Environmental Health Law, Regulation, and Policy

This domain tests how environmental standards are created, implemented, challenged and enforced. You should know the statutory architecture, the difference between health-based and technology-based requirements, and how administrative procedure constrains agencies.

Sources and structure

Statutes set goals and delegate rulemaking; regulations carry legal force; guidance does not. Common law remedies (nuisance, trespass, negligence) coexist with statutory schemes. Rulemaking normally requires publication of a proposed rule, a comment period and a reasoned response to significant comments; permits and adjudication require due process. Standing requires injury-in-fact, causation and redressability.

Core frameworks

  • Clean Air Act: NAAQS (primary protect health with an adequate margin of safety; secondary protect welfare), state implementation plans, New Source Review/PSD, Title V permits, MACT for hazardous air pollutants.
  • Clean Water Act: NPDES discharge permits, water quality standards, 303(d) impaired waters and TMDLs, dredge-and-fill permits.
  • Safe Drinking Water Act: MCLGs (non-enforceable health goals, zero for known carcinogens) and MCLs (enforceable, set as close to the MCLG as feasible using best available technology, with cost considered); treatment techniques where monitoring is infeasible.
  • RCRA (cradle-to-grave hazardous waste); CERCLA (release reporting, National Priorities List, strict, joint and several, retroactive liability of potentially responsible parties).
  • TSCA (chemical inventory and risk evaluation), FIFRA (pesticide registration), EPCRA (community right-to-know, Toxics Release Inventory).
  • International: Basel (hazardous waste), Stockholm (persistent organic pollutants), Rotterdam (prior informed consent), Minamata (mercury), IHR 2005 (24-hour notification, core capacities).
  • Federal statutes generally set a floor; states may be stricter. The precautionary principle (Rio Declaration 1992, Principle 15) sits against science-based standard setting.

Worked example

A new contaminant is classified as a probable human carcinogen. Under SDWA the regulator sets the MCLG at zero, because health goals ignore cost and feasibility. The enforceable MCL cannot be zero: it must be set as close to the MCLG as feasible using the best available technology, taking compliance cost into account, with a published justification of the health-risk reduction. If reliable monitoring is not feasible, a treatment technique replaces the MCL. Reasoning: the MCLG expresses risk only; the MCL expresses what is achievable.

Traps that cost marks

  • Treating an MCLG as enforceable.
  • Assuming federal limits are ceilings rather than floors.
  • Citing guidance as binding law.
  • Mixing technology-based standards (BAT, MACT) with health-based ones.
  • Missing that CERCLA liability can reach past and present owners, operators, transporters and generators.