The second legal issue in environmental health is the right of the health department to enter private
property to assess environmental health risks. With certain exceptions, the police may not enter
private property to search for evidence of criminal activity without a search warrant approved by a
judge. Such warrants are difficult and expensive to get and will be granted only when there is
evidence of wrongdoing.
In contrast, most environmental health inspections are done to ensure that the owner is in
compliance with the law, not because the inspector believes that the owner is violating the law. The
courts do not require specific warrants for environmental health inspections, as long as there is no
threat of criminal prosecution. Thus an inspection for rats does not require a search warrant based
on probable cause, whereas one for toxic waste dumping in violation of criminal laws would. The
courts do require that searches be related to a public health purpose. This can be satisfied by
having a general plan for the inspections (called an area warrant) that describes which buildings will
be searched and why.[Camara v Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco, 387 US 523
(1967)] Access by health inspectors can be made a condition of licensure, so that any
establishment with a food handling or other public license has to admit inspectors without a warrant.
