The Heyday of the Environmental Movement, 1960–1979 117
Although the oil crisis had brought home to mil-
lions of Americans the dangers of dependence on
imported oil and had created interest in smaller cars
and energy-saving technologies—President Jimmy
Carter even had solar panels placed on the White
House roof—the popular environmental focus was
shifting from utopian solutions [see Document 121]
to economically viable approaches that would enable
Americans to maintain their way of life. While the
general public was turning away from the idealists
and from doomsayers such as Paul Ehrlich [see Docu-
ment 107], some of the more radical environmental
groups were borrowing from the tactics of the protest
movements of the 1960s to develop new tactics, rang-
ing from civil disobedience to sabotage, to promote
their political, ethical, and philosophical views and
to effect changes in environmental policies [see Docu-
ments 122 and 123].Document 97: The Surgeon General’s Report on Environmental Health (1960)
By the end of the 1950s the effect on people’s health and well-being of the post-World War II expansion of
urbanization, industrialization, and population size was obvious. In its April 1959 report on appropriations for fiscal
year 1960, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations noted that “environmental factors affecting
health have become increasingly significant” and recommended that “the Public Health Service make a thorough
study of the environmental health problems and the most efficient organization of our facilities to meet these needs.”
The Surgeon General’s report on “Environmental Health” was produced in response to that request. It underscored
“the multiplying and far-reaching effects of new and complex problems in the field of environmental heath, and
the immediate need for their identification and control.” Consequently, in the 1961 budget of the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare, “environmental health activities” appeared as a separate line item for the first time.It is not being overdramatic to suggest that
threats from our environment, actual and poten-
tial, cannot only generate wholly undesirable
effects on the health and well-being of isolated
individuals, but under certain circumstances
could affect large segments of our population
and conceivably threaten the very existence of
our Nation.
[O]ver the past several decades significant
and growing nonbiological health hazards in the
environment have arisen. Our increased use of
materials and products is attended by increasing
quantities of potentially toxic substances in our
environment of limited physical dimensions. The
uses of energy, accompanied by mechanization
of processes and services, produce additional
hazards of noise, other physical forces, and acci-
dents. The diverse and growing beneficial uses of
nuclear energy, potentially of enormous benefit,
are producing a whole new spectrum of hazards
to health for present and succeeding generations.
While the biological health hazard normally
assaults the individual in discrete and separate
instances, the chemical and physical hazards
come more often in intermittent or continuous
doses, which reach him in a variety of ways.
It is the total and cumulative exposure of the
individual to ionizing radiations which is now
recognized to be important, no matter how the
separate components reach him. Of no less con-
cern is the total exposure to chemical toxicants,
portions of which reach the individual sepa-
rately through air, water, and food.
Social factors in the environment are contrib-
uting to the newer environmental health hazards.
Increasing urbanization, the growth and coales-
cence of large metropolitan complexes, and new
patterns of living compound the sources of envi-
ronmental hazards and concentrate the people
affected by them. Reactions between hazards and
people are thus multiplied, and controls, to be
effective, must be correspondingly more efficient.
The magnitude of our newer environmen-
tal health hazards is expanding at more than a