Environment and Public Health in a Time of Plague

Abstract

This Article examines two important features of change in the post-9-11 relationship between public health, public health law, and environmental law. The first is an immediate change in the expansion of environmental laws to address biodefense activities of surveillance and response through either executive action or congressional amendment. The second and most pervasive change is the indication of a shift in federalism in public health law, in a way analogous to the development of federal environmental law in the last half of the twentieth century. This Article begins with an examination of the indications of a shift in federalism in public health, and then turns to the changing role of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") and the application of existing environmental laws to new problems and controversies in bioterrorism.