The Environmental Health Divisions was a unit of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) that focused on environmental health, existing in various forms from 1913 until 1970. It is the primary direct predecessor of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It had several other names earlier in its history, including the Office of Stream Pollution Investigations and Division of Sanitary Engineering Services.
PHS established a program focusing on water pollution in 1913 in Cincinnati. During and after World War II, it expanded into additional aspects of environmental health, becoming the Division of Sanitary Engineering Services in 1954. In 1960 it was reorganized into the Environmental Health Divisions, one of two units of the PHS Bureau of State Services. As part of a series of several reorganizations of PHS beginning in 1967, most of the former Environmental Health Divisions became the core of the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, with the exception of two components that became the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health. The direct successor of the PHS Environmental Health Divisions' main facility in Cincinnati, the Andrew W. Breidenbach Environmental Research Center, remains EPA's second-largest research and development facility.