On the time lag between awareness of a public health problem and the enactment of preventive legislation

Abstract

Two case studies, one about white lead in paint and another about industrial deafness, are employed to reveal 19-year lags between the emergence of preventive legislation and initial awareness that a public health problem existed. A discussion follows about ethics, politics and the human condition and the main findings of this discussion are applied to the question of how legislative lags might be shortened.