Overview

Significant progress was being made in the fight against air and water pollution up to the mid-1970s. Key pieces of legislation were passed. In the United States and Western Europe, increasingly stringent environmental rules and regulations were put into place. Favorable court rulings supported these protection regulations. Most of these actions were aimed at addressing what we now call traditional pollutants. But waiting to thrust itself into the public arena were the so-called toxic pollutants and hazardous substances. The pollutants so familiar to sanitary engineers and environmental chemists would soon be joined by a litany of problems associated with compounds that were previously unknown or that had not been associated by the scientific community with environmental quality. At the same time, epidemiological studies were improving, especially those linking lifestyles and environmental factors to cancer. Theo Colburn, who is probably best known for her publications on the increasing exposure and effects of environmental endocrine disruptors, sums up the problem of synthetic chemicals that only began to be appreciated in the late 1970s:

Every one of you sitting here today is carrying at least 500 measurable chemicals in your body that were never in anybody's body before the 1920s We have dusted the globe with man-made chemicals that can undermine the development of the brain and behavior, and the endocrine, immune and reproductive systems, vital systems that assure perpetuity