Policy issues in environmental health disputes

This article compares the state of policies concerning three different diseases/conditions with putative environmental factors: asthma, breast cancer, and Gulf War-related illnesses. By comparing the state of four different types of policies - research funding, regulations, compensation/treatment, and citizen participation - the authors demonstrate the dynamic relationship between policies and health social movements. They identify four factors that shape policy for these three diseases: the science base supporting the environmental causation hypothesis, prevalence and perception of risk, the sources of support for the environmental causation hypothesis, and the strength of health social movements. All four factors contribute to policy outcomes, but they find the strength of health social movements to be particularly important for the three diseases they examine. In some cases, social movement activity can be more important than the strength of the science base in terms of policy outcome success.