The New Regulation of Health And Safety

Abstract

Regulation has been used to serve numerous ends: health and safety, consumer information, fair prices and wages, product quality, economic stability, and environmental protection. The construction of any empirically based general theory of regulation depends upon the creation of more knowledge about the regulatory process and its results for each of these ends. Health and safety regulation, for example, may be an area in which governmental controls are both more politically possible and more effective. Although the federal government has long sought to protect the health and safety of consumers and workers in certain sectors of the economy, such as the food and drug industries, the airlines, and the mining industry, a new wave of legislation was passed in the 1960s and 1970s to protect the public from injury and disease. In this article, evidence concerning the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is used to elucidate how policy has been formulated and implemented in the regulation of health and safety. This analysis focuses on those factors that either promote or impede regulatory activism; little is said about the outcomes of regulation.