Introduction

Environmental health as a profession has a long history of taking action to protect the public from illness and accident in the home, workplace and elsewhere. Environmental health is a specialism of public health, and practitioners are often employed in local authority regulatory roles, although an increasing number work in the private sector. The regulatory role sets it apart from other public health occupations, as practitioners can serve legal notices and take prosecution action to enforce change where necessary. The focus of this book is on environmental health in this local authority context.