Food sanitation, drinking-water treatment, and wastewater disposal have been mainstays of public
health since the earliest times. As health departments were given the added responsibility of
guarding against toxins in the broader environment, these regulatory functions were grouped into
environmental health. Most public health orders are directed at environmental health problems.
Because they affect property, not persons, they do not pose the difficult issues of personal freedom
that arise with the rarer communicable disease control orders.
Environmental health regulations pose two central legal questions: whether the government owes
compensation to the owners of regulated property, and under what circumstances health officers
can enter private premises to look for public health law violations. Both questions arise from the
U.S. Constitution, which requires that property owners be paid a fair price for property taken for
public purposes and prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The difficult problem is
deciding if the government has searched the property unreasonably or has taken the value of the
property for which the owner must be compensated.
