Regulation of environmental pollutants: introductory remarks.

The environmental problems we face today are multifold and complex. The emission of pollutants in the atmosphere, the discharge of effluents in lakes and rivers, the disposal of hazardous materials in ecosystems, and the use of pesticides on crops and food products are serious problems that are not yet fully understood. More recently, the industrially advanced nations of the world have been confronted with the critical environmental issue of toxic waste products management. The most pressing requirement today is to identify and assess the toxicity of these substances, particularly their carcinogenic and mutagenic effects. Our modern society has introduced vast numbers of toxic substances into the environment. The American Chemical Society has listed more than four million different chemical compounds; thousands more are being made each year; 70,000 are in common use, produced and distributed by some 115,000 industries and firms. Billions of gallons of industrial effluents are discharged to our lakes, rivers, and oceans each year. In 1977, 190 million tons of criteria air pollutants were emitted in the atmosphere; this quantity does not include the other unregulated and potentially hazardous particles, gases and aerosols emitted by industrial and energy-related processes each year. And, with solid waste, again we are faced with several billion tons of unwanted materials-some harmful, some innocuous-that are disposed of, legally and illegally, each year. The regulatory initiative to clean up the environment began slowly in the 1960's with the passage of five different pieces of environmental legislation addressing the problems of air and water pollution. The earliest regulation to control human