August 22, 1967
Page 23538
"A STRATEGY FOR A LIVABLE ENVIRONMENT" – REPORT OF THE TASK FORCE ON ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, last November, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare appointed a Task Force on Environmental Health and Related Problems and assigned it a mission of unequaled scope and importance to the future of American life. Secretary Gardner directed the task force to recommend to him the goals, priorities, and strategy for the Department in seeking to make the environment the ally and not the enemy of man.
A few weeks ago, the task force report was completed and published. The Secretary felt strongly enough about the significance of this report to send a copy of it to every Member of Congress. I commend the Secretary for this step. As I think my colleagues will agree, not every document delivered to the Congress by the executive branch – not even by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare – can stand the burden of a careful reading. But in the case of this report to the Secretary, careful reading is not only warranted, it is mandatory.
The Task Force on Environmental Health and Related Problems has given Secretary Gardner and the entire Nation, in terms that any concerned citizen can comprehend, a graphic and disturbing picture of the state of the human environment and the effects it is having and will continue to have on the quality of life. But, more importantly, the report goes far beyond a description of the perils we have created in the environment about us. It recommends a number of concrete steps that can and must be taken to restore the quality of the environment and to prevent the mistakes of the past from being repeated on a monstrous scale in the future.
Entitled "A Strategy for a Livable Environment," the report is just that – a plan of action for the reckoning and achievement of necessary goals of environmental health protection. So far as I am aware, this is the first time that the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare has ever asked for – and gotten – a blueprint for action in the critical field of environmental health. Earlier reports, some of them quite noteworthy, have been addressed at parts of the environment or at specific environmental programs within the Department. But this report is a bold attempt – and a very successful one – to lay aside the artificial barriers that tend to limit efforts to deal with environmental health and to seek, as far as is humanly possible, a total approach to the health problems of man in his total environment.
My purpose in calling this report to the attention of the Senate is twofold: First, I believe that the report's blueprint for action urgently requires very careful study, not only by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and by the Congress, but by the people of this Nation who must ultimately decide the steps to be taken to improve and protect the environment upon which the quality of life in this and future generations largely depends.
My second reason is perhaps closer to home but I trust by no means less worth the attention of my colleagues. I believe that the task force report points up very sharply the need for a continuing review by the Senate of the effects of changing technology on the human environment.
One of the points which the report to the Secretary makes most convincingly is that attention to environmental health problems tends to be split among numerous agencies within and outside the Department . of Health, Education, and Welfare. This results in overlapping efforts to deal with environmental health problems and, what is certainly more important, problem areas for which no agency of the Federal Government has clear responsibility.
In my view, somewhat the same situation pertains with respect to the U.S. Senate. We, too, are hampered in our efforts to assess meaningfully the impact of staggering technological change on the quality of man's environment. My 4 years' experience as chairman of the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution has made me acutely aware of the Senate's need for a select committee capable of providing a continuing analysis of environmental factors and forces that are now materially influencing the national health and welfare, and will do so to an even greater degree in the decades ahead.
For this reason I introduced Senate Resolution 68 calling for the establishment of a Select Committee on Technology and the Human Environment. I was joined in this resolution by Senators BAKER, BARTLETT, BIBLE, BOGGS, GRUENING, HARRIS,. INOUYE, JAVITS, KENNEDY of Massachusetts, KENNEDY of New York, LONG of Missouri, MANSFIELD, McGEE, MONDALE, MOSS, NELSON, PELL, PROXMIRE, RANDOLPH, SCOTT, and TYDINGS.
I am gratified to say that the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations of the Select Committee on Government Operations, to which the resolution was referred, has reported favorably to the full committee, and I am hopeful that the committee will recommend approval of Senate Resolution 68 to this entire body.
Because I am so convinced of the critical importance of the recommendations presented to Secretary Gardner by his Task Force on Environmental Health and Related Problems, I would like to ask that they be included in the RECORD as a part of this statement. Let me point. out that the recommendations are of two kinds: 10 action goals intended to guide the Department in meeting its immediate and most urgent responsibilities in the field of environmental protection, and 24 additional. recommendations designed to create within the Department a system for continuing appraisal of environmental problems and prevention or control of them.
The action goals are as follows:
First. An air quality restoration effort to initiate by 1970, in 75 interstate areas, abatement plans to reduce plant stack emissions by 90 percent, and to establish national standards to reduce vehicle exhaust emissions by. 90 percent from 1967 levels through enforcement and a technological development program, to provide the equipment necessary to meet the standards.
Second. A water quality effort by 1970 to test all existing and proposed public drinking water supply systems and produce meaningful public drinking water standards which, through an enforcement program, will insure health-approved drinking water for 100 percent of the Nation's. public systems.
Third. A waste disposal effort to provide, by 1973, a grant-in-aid program for solid waste disposal at the local level; developmental research program to integrate solid and liquid waste disposal and air quality control; and for the disposal of nuclear wastes.
Fourth. A population research effort to determine by 1968 the effects of population trends on environmental protection goals and programs as part of the basis for setting departmental objectives with respect to family planning and population dynamics.
Fifth. An urban improvement effort to develop by 1973, through research, basic data sufficient to establish human levels of tolerance for crowding, congestion, noise, odor, and specific human endurance data for general stress and accident threats, including traffic, home, and recreation. accidents.
Sixth. A materials, trace metals, and chemicals control effort to establish, by 1970, human safety levels for synthetic materials, trace-metals,. and chemicals currently in use, and prohibit after 1970, general use of any new synthetic material, trace metal, or chemical until approved by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Seventh. A consumer protection effort which, by 1970, will initiate a comprehensive program for the identification of health and safety hazards associated with the use of appliances, clothing, food, hazardous substances, and other consumer products and for the control of such products which fail to meet consumer protection standards established by the Department.
Eighth. A radiation control effort which, by 1970, through developmental research and enforcement, adequately protects workers and the public from harmful radiation levels.
Ninth. An occupational disease and safety protection effort to extend, by 1970, preventive services to 100 percent of the employed population at its work place.
Tenth. A governmental compliance effort which, by 1980, through effective relations with local, State, and Federal Governments, will insure that criteria and standards for physical and mental health for housing, urban development, and transportation will be available and used by the Federal agencies administering these programs.
The 24 recommendations which comprise a strategy for action to prevent and control environmental hazards are as follows:
First. Establish a surveillance and warning program which will, through basic research, identify current and potential problems, and determine the effect of these problems on man, thus giving the Department the continuing supply of scientific knowledge necessary to protect man from environmental injury and aesthetic insult.
Second. Establish an environmental design program which will establish criteria and dual-level standards for individual hazards and combinations of hazards under varying conditions of geography, population, industrialization, economics, and technology, with one level being the minimum health level acceptable and the other being a desirable level which can be achieved in a specific number of years.
Third. Establish a technological development program using contracts with industry in conjunction with departmental activities and grants to institutions so as to bring about the technological improvement necessary to reach the desirable environmental quality levels.
Fourth. Establish an intergovernmental compliance program using Federal functionally oriented grants-in-aid free of formula and allocation restrictions in conjunction with Federal technical assistance teams to obtain comprehensive plans and action from State and local governments consistent with national goals and objectives.
Fifth. Development by 1970 of a nationwide surveillance system necessary for identifying levels of pollutants and components of pollutants and components of pollutants in air, water, and soil.
Sixth. Establishment by 1970 of criteria for individual and combinations of chemicals discharged into air, water, or soil.
Seventh. Require by 1969 the filing of 5-year comprehensive environmental health plans from State and local governments receiving funds from the Department.
Eighth. Creation by 1968 of a permanent technical assistance unit within the Department which can provide multi-disciplined teams of specialists to be available to State and local governments at their request to aid in planning and implementing environmental health programs.
Ninth. Determination by 1969 of the manpower requirements necessary to adequately supply both public and private sector needs for environmental program operations beginning in 1972 and beyond, and the means of supplying such needs.
Tenth. Establishment by 1968 of an integrated effort for health education and general education to create a public understanding of its environment and an increased awareness of the individual and social responsibility in reference to it.
Eleventh. Urge the President to call a White House Conference on Financing Local Government to explore ways for cities and other units of local government to raise adequate funds to finance essential governmental activities on a metropolitan and regional scale.
Twelfth. Urge the President to seek congressional authorization to create a Council of Ecological Advisers to provide an overview to assessment of activities in both the public and private sectors affecting environmental change, and to act in an analyzing capacity, to be in a commanding position to advise on critical environmental risk/benefit decisions, and finally, to be instrumental in the shaping of national policy on environmental management.
Thirteenth. Seek authority to provide air pollution program grants only to those control agencies which develop emergency plans that would control combustion activities under certain air pollution alert conditions.
Fourteenth. Accelerate within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare a national family planning program to disseminate family planning information to all requesting State and local health agencies, physicians, private associations, and individuals.
Fifteenth. Develop urban and rural model codes and suggested standards for the prevention and control of various sources of noise in the environment.
Sixteenth. Contract with appropriate universities and/or research institutions for the establishment and operation of a facility for large-scale, long-term, health-related studies in human ecology.
Seventeenth. Undertake a grants program for the establishment and support of university-based centers for ecologically oriented environmental health studies.
Eighteenth. Create through contracts a nonprofit research organization using experts in a wide variety of fields to respond exclusively to the Department's needs for problem solving in the health and environmental health areas.
Nineteenth. Establish an Office of Assistant Secretary for Research and Development so that activities within, or supported by, the Department are integrated into a total systems approach and provided with overview, direction, and control.
Twentieth. Provide grant-in-aid or contract support for the establishment and operation of urban sociological health research centers in major metropolitan areas.
Twenty-first. Establish units of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in other Federal agencies to provide liaison to those agencies and an assessment of the effects of their programs on man's environmental health and welfare.
Twenty-second. Provide fellowships for in-service training and continued education for departmental personnel in the environmental health field.
Twenty-third. Promote the establishment of programs and curriculums in clinical and human ecology through grants to the Nation's professional schools, such as schools of medicine, law, public health, and public administration.
Twenty-fourth. Provide fellowships for State and local personnel to permit them to continue their education in environmental health fields.
Mr. President, the task force has presented an alarming picture of the environmental health problems facing this Nation at the same time it has given a plan for dealing with those problems. But the task force clearly recognized that the Department is by no means prepared to assume its full responsibilities in the area of environmental health protection.
One of the Department's major limitations is its present failure to make use of the vast capabilities of American industry for the prevention and control of environmental hazards of all kinds. The environmental hazards of which the task force report speaks, and with which I and many of my colleagues are very deeply concerned, are the result of industrialization and the precipitous application of new technologies. But these problems, whether in the form of air and water pollution, or urban congestion, or occupational health hazards, or traffic safety, are going to be solved – if at all – by the application of technical knowledge in the hands of people who have the social and political wisdom to use it in the public interest.
It is folly, I think, to impugn the reckless use of technology and at the same time make no serious attempt to draw on the resources of the greatest of all sources of technological genius – American industry. Yet, as the task force points out in its report, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has made little attempt to secure the cooperation of industry in the development of the tools we need to meet the challenges of environmental protection. Neither in the Office of the Secretary nor in the various operating agencies responsible for carrying out elements of the Department's responsibilities in the environmental health field is there strong evidence of a capability to draw effectively on the resources of industry. The task force has made some very meaningful suggestions in an effort to guide the Department toward overcoming this serious deficiency.
The task force has recommended huge investments of Federal funds in the coming years to develop and apply the means of dealing with existing and anticipated problems of man's environment. We in the Congress will be asked to appropriate these sums, if the Secretary acts upon the recommendations that have been presented to him. I would hope that when these appropriations requests are presented, we will have reasonable assurance that the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare will be in a position to make maximum use of funds to take advantage of the great potential for progress that American private enterprise has to offer.
Mr. President, I believe that in this report, "A Strategy for a Livable Environment," Secretary Gardner has made available to us a challenging and imaginative plan for the protection of this and coming generations from hazards in the world about us. I hope that the Secretary will find it possible to translate this report into an effective program. And I hope that my colleagues will join with me in giving the secretary the support he will need in planning and carrying out such a program.
Let me take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the members of the Task Force on Environmental Health and Related Problems for the service they have rendered to the Secretary and indeed to the American people. The chairman of the task force was Mr. Ron M. Linton, director of special projects for Urban America, Inc., and former staff director of the Senate Committee on Public Works. The task force members were Mr. Samuel Lenher, vice president, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.; Miss Anne Draper, research associate, AFL-CIO; Harold L. Sheppard, Ph. D., staff social scientist, W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research; John J. Hanlon, M.D., director of public health, city of Detroit and Wayne County, Mich.; and Raymond R. Tucker, professor of urban affairs, Washington University, St. Louis. To each of these distinguished people and to Secretary Gardner who sought their wise and helpful counsel, we are deeply indebted. They have given this Nation a challenge which, like it or not, we must accept. But they have also given us a plan for meeting that challenge and for making the environment the ally and not the enemy of man.