Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although surely not serious, lots of naivete here. This assumes everyone values personal health over financial health. This prevents anyone from wanting to get elected to fix an existing problem. This places guilt even on the innocent if they are subjected to upstream or state-level pollution. On and on and on. You either have a problem with existing laws not being enforced or there not being laws to enforce concerni…
"Although surely not serious ..." Not your parent but I took it seriously and I think "skin in the game" structures like this should be taken very seriously - they are likely the best mechanisms for aligning interests. "This assumes everyone values personal health over financial health." Very easy to solve this one - the elected official doesn't eat the fish and drink the water, their children do . "This prevents any…
One other point to add to rsync's comment:
One other point to mention is that rational choices cannot be made about things like pollution when measurement methods can be fudged and the health effects of specific pollutants are not necessarily well studied. Bottom line, putting it in one's own body is the best way to determine whether a sensible person would feel comfortable with the environmental exposure being forced upon citizens due to lax or imperfect regulation, or even imperfect science. Do I want to drink this discolored, foul smelling water just because it does not test positive for known carcinogens? Common sense is actually a surprisingly helpful guide here.
All that would happen is that regulations would begin to be enforced or modified to match the improved perception of reality informed by the tasting.
Think about it this way, climate change is a fairly abstract concept that is much easier to ignore than the fish dinner sitting in front of you that was caught in water your administration declared safe.