The Birth of Pollution Laws and Regulations

Fundamentally this level of environmental degradation was accepted as a sign of success. Severe pollution was an indication of a prosperous economy. The more successful industrial operations were, the higher the standard of living for at least some of the nation s population—certainly the upper class, who owned the factories, and often the new and growing middle class. If successful factories also released excessive amounts of hazardous waste products into rivers and lakes and the air, that was perhaps unfortunate, especially for members of the working class, but it seemed to be an unpreventahle by-product of a nation s overall economic success. 

The next significant piece of U.S. water pollution legislation was not passed until 1948 with the adoption of the Water Pollution Control Act, also known as the Clean Water Act. This legislation provided funding for states to construct water treatment plants, identify polluted 

By the middle of the 20th century, then, the hrst legislation designed to protect human health and the natural environment had been passed in the United States and other developed nations. Some effort to protect the quality of air, water, and other natural resources was being made. 

The 1960s was a decade of quite remarkable change with respect to environmental awareness in the United States. People had become accustomed to hearing about all manner of risks present in the environment as a result of industrial activity. Swimmers and anglers commonly found signs prohibiting the use of lakes and rivers because of high levels of pollution. Newspapers reported on areas discovered to be so badly contaminated with industrial chemical 

Congress attempted to correct that deficiency and other air pollution problems in a series of amendments to the 1963 act passed in 1965, 1966, 1967, and 1969. The 1965 amendments, for example, authorized the secretary of health, education and welfare to establish nationwide standards for automobile exhaust emissions. This legislation and later amendments also authorized the surgeon general to study the effects of air pollutants on human health, expanded local air quality programs, set compliance deadlines for meeting new air quality standards, established air quality control regions (AQCRs), and authorized research on low emission fuels and more fuel-efficient automobiles. 

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