T&F Not for Distribution
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Contents List of illustrations vii 6 Legal systems and the role of List of contributors xiii law in environmental health and Foreword One xvi approaches to regulation 167 Foreword Two xviii Catherine Davey and Stephen Battersby Preface xx T&F7 Business management, environmental health and the EHP/ 1 Historical context, philosophy and business interface 252 principles of environmental health 1 Not for distributionRoger Pearce Stephen Battersby 8 Environmental management systems 281 2 Environmental health – a changing John Barwise and Stephen Battersby practice 60 Chris Day 9 Constructions and related matters relevant to environmental health 310 3 Communication in environmental John Bryson and Stephen Battersby health 90 Sarah Daniels 10 Human physiology, hazards and health risks 343 4 Research and evidence-based David J. Baker; Naima Bradley, environmental health 102 Alec Dobney and Virginia Murray; Rob Couch, Caroline Barratt, Surindar Jill R. Meara and John O’Hagan; Dhesi, Jill Stewart and Alan Page Neil P. McColl; Caryn L. Cox 5 Regulation and environmental 11 Housing, health and the domestic health governance 128 environment 436 Rosalind Malcolm David Ormandy and Véronique Ezratty v Contents 12 Water and environmental health 454 19 Noise and vibration 879 Kathy Pond and Stephen Pedley Andrew Colthurst and Steve Fisher 13 Food, food safety and healthy eating 495 20 Port health 936 John Questier and Jenny Morris Iain Pocknell, Angela Tanner and John Ambrose 14 The work and leisure environments 619 Jonathan Hayes and Stuart Wiggans 21 Environmental health in different settings 976 15 Air and air quality 697 Virginia Murray, Gareth Moore, Geoff Stephen Hedley Ward and Andrew Charnick 16 Pest management and vector control 754 22 The international dimension 1002 Gai Murphy and David Oldbury Barrie Whitehead and Peter Wright 17 Waste management 790 Index 1021 Jeff Cooper 18 Land and land use 835 Alan Higgins T&F Not for distribution vi 1 Historical context, philosophy and principles of environmental health Stephen Battersby SECTION 1 A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Introduction Poor Law Commission (and later Board) and Par- ishes were introduced. The municipal corporations As has been made clear in earlier editions of Clay’s, of the 1830s and the new Boards of Health were the history and development of what we now largely conceived to deal with outbreaks of com- call environmental health is long and complex.T&F As municable disease and to afford basic measures of Western societies developed (what would now be classified as the high-income countries1) so the health protection. Subsequently, a new concept of stressors on humanNot health increased; for indeed distributionper- health arose: the idea of public health. New phi- haps we can ignore the notion of ‘Western’ as there losophies for the delivery of education and other would have been both environmental and health public services began to take shape, and a new form impacts from the moment fire was discovered and of democracy evolved – extended suffrage, which wherever human groupings existed. The history became universal in the early twentieth century. and development of what we now call ‘environ- Environmental health as we know it has often mental health’, however, are closely allied to the been related to public health issues, and some- social history of the UK. times the impacts of different stressors. There are In the UK there were great economic, social and of course practitioners in the UK who qualified environmental changes in the eighteenth and nine- as Public Health Inspectors and remain proud of teenth centuries, when urbanisation and indus- that. Given that the real concern is with the impact trialisation brought millions of people together of environmental stressors on human health it is in crowded, sprawling and insanitary settlements. understandable why many prefer the term pub- In response, society underwent a period of rapid lic health particularly when the focus is on those change particularly motivated when the effects of stressors that are a consequence of human activity. the insanitary conditions spread to the middle and It remains true that environmental health practi- upper classes and the causes of cholera and typhoid tioners are part of the public health workforce. were identified. Impacts are not always the same as issues; whether New models for the delivery of public ser- an impact becomes an issue can depend on the vices to protect public health and maintain both public response, which is often linked to how the a healthier workforce and reduce the strain on the media report an impact. So a public health issue 1 Stephen Battersby reflects public or political pressure. An easy way to Earlier editions of this book sought to divide the think of the development of environmental health evolution of environmental health into eras. This is in the context of different developments in the historical perspective does not intend to replicate legal framework, but that is also to think in very that approach, rather to provide some pointers and narrow terms of environmental health. This section key issues in this evolution that have helped to of this first chapter looks at some environmental or define environmental health. public health issues over time and how they influ- The 20th edition had limited historical refer- enced the legal landscape at that time. However, ences, as it sought to look forward with broader environmental health is more than just a subject horizons, but since then a number of works (listed that relies on legislation and the implementation of in further reading) have perhaps underscored a those laws for its existence. Environmental health point made in the 19th edition that a historical could exist without any legislation, which provides perspective can make it easier to understand the only one means of addressing problems. current position. There is admittedly always the This section of the chapter looks at how envi- possibility that mistakes and tragedies of the past ronmental health as it is generally perceived has will be repeated, and not necessarily as farce (to developed in the British Isles. However, if one con- paraphrase Marx). This is true in the UK if as is siders the range of practitioners around the world possible public expenditure as a proportion of gross who consider themselves to be environmental domestic product (GDP) is reduced to 1930s levels. health practitioners, then we can see that even now Much of this historical perspective is linked to eco- there are slightly different interpretations or indeed nomic and social development. specialities within the overall concept. Historically many of the concerns were with The agricultural revolution the effects of waste on health and, as Mellanby [1] has said, quoting archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes,T&F The agricultural revolution is taken as being the ‘waste disposal by human beings may be said to period from 1700 to the early eighteenth century have begun when hunters of the earliest Stone and also led to movement from the country into Age tossed their gnawnNot bones overfor their shouldistribution- towns. The likes of Charles Townsend, Thomas ders’, indeed to such an extent that caves became Coke, Jethro Tull, Robert Bakewell and others so reduced in size that they could no longer be introduced improvements in animal husbandry and occupied, and their occupants were certainly not arable farming. The Enclosure Acts allowed those ‘cave-proud’. Until the nineteenth century waste with the wealth to purchase public fields and push disposal and sewerage systems and sewage treat- out small-scale farmers, causing a migration of men ment in the cities of Britain were very ineffective looking for wage labour in cities. although through the centuries the great houses New patterns of crop rotation and livestock and monasteries may have had better organized utilisation paved the way for better crop yields, a (and healthier) systems for dealing with waste. Yet greater diversity of wheat and vegetables and the in many towns refuse was allowed to rot in the ability to support more livestock. These changes also streets, and there was no concern with contamina- impacted society so that workers’ diets improved a tion of water supplies. little and contributed to a slow decline in the rural Environmental health was concerned initially death rate. Those who remained as farm workers with those factors that were easily identifiable as had a low living standard in damp and crowded affecting human health, but as the interaction of housing. Working on the land throughout the year, the environment with human health became bet- whatever the weather, and poor living conditions ter understood the role of environmental health still contributed to a low life expectancy. expanded. In some cases this was also accidental as These social changes and growth of towns made environmental health included a cadre of people it increasingly difficult to provide a consistent and able to deal with issues (and legislation) that had satisfactory food supply for those living in the no obvious body to implement control measures. urban areas. The increased productivity of the rural 2 Context, philosophy and principles of EH economy did not lead to improved quality, indeed Machinery enabled production to be vastly the conditions were ripe for fraudulent substitu- increased with economies of scale to be grasped. tion, and for food to be adulterated. As factories increased in size and complexity, they also needed more workers, who had to be housed nearby because, in the absence of public transport, The industrial revolution they had to be able to walk to work. The need The industrial revolution did not follow the agri- to house workers close to the factories resulted cultural revolution, rather they overlapped con- in street after street of small, poorly constructed siderably; for example, Abram Darby first smelted houses. There was little provision for drainage or local iron ore with coke made from Coalbrookdale refuse disposal; water supplies were inadequate and coal in 1709, and in the coming decades Shropshire usually grossly polluted.