New book published by the CIEH to mark 60 years of environmental improvement during the Queen’s reign

In 2012, to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, CIEH chief executive, Graham Jukes OBE, asked current and retired members to send in professional recollections and photographs from the previous 60 years. They responded in large numbers and this material has now been collated into a full-colour, 167-page, illustrated book.

In the first years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, cities were darkened by smog and living conditions were generally primitive. But over the next 60 years the environmental health profession played a vital role in a public health revolution.

Mr Jukes said: “Putting Wrong Things Right shows how the members of a professional body, the CIEH, helped to make the UK a healthier and safer place. Since 1952 air quality has improved, the slums have been cleared and food has been made safer by the countless interventions of the environmental health profession.”

In words and pictures, “Putting Wrong Things Right” records in detail the London smog, the Aberfan disaster, slum landlord Peter Rachman’s terror tactics, outbreaks of smallpox and typhoid, the BSE crisis, awareness of climate change and countless unacknowledged but vital interventions that improved the quality of the nation’s life.

William Hatchet, editor, said: “It was labour of love putting this book together. It’s an account of an aspect of UK history that is not often talked about – how improvements to our physical environment since the 1950s have been of great benefit to the nation’s health and wellbeing. The book is designed as a corrective to the current view that we are over-regulated or that all regulation is bad. It was particularly gratifying talking to the older members of the CIEH and capturing their memories of the early-1950s and 1960s, while they are still around to tell their stories.”

A short film introducing the book directed by Paolo Sedazzari and written by William Hatchett can be seen on YouTube.