United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
President Warren G. Harding proposed a Department of Education and Welfare as early as 1923, and similar proposals were also recommended by subsequent presidents, but for various reasons was not implemented.  It was only enacted as part of Reorganization Plan Number 1 of 1953, transmitted to Congress by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on March 12, 1953. HEW ran a Community Public Health Program, which was famous for its grants to cities like Chicago for rat control. It ran a Solid Waste program focused on municipal waste issues, like how to build sanitary landfills rather than dumps. It also had a radiation program under which it wrote standards on things like microwave ovens. When the EPA was created in 1970, it assumed a number of HEW’s programs that related to environmental protection, including its pesticides program and half of its radiation program.