34
Opinion of the Court
(CA5 1974), held that inmates were entitled to relief under the Eighth Amendment when they proved threats to personal safety from exposed electrical wiring, deficient firefighting measures, and the mingling of inmates with serious contagious diseases with other prison inmates. Ramos v. Lamm, 639 F. 2d 559, 572 (CA10 1980), stated that a prisoner need not wait until he is actually assaulted before obtaining relief. As respondent points out, the Court of Appeals cases to the effect that the Eighth Amendment protects against sufficiently imminent dangers as well as current unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain and suffering are legion. See Brief for Respondent 24-27. We thus reject petitioners' central thesis that only deliberate indifference to current serious health problems of inmates is actionable under the Eighth Amendment.
The United States as amicus curiae supporting petitioners does not contend that the Amendment permits "even those conditions of confinement that truly pose a significant risk of proximate and substantial harm to an inmate, so long as the injury has not yet occurred and the inmate does not yet suffer from its effects." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 19. Hutto v. Finney, the United States observes, teaches as much. The Government recognizes that there may be situations in which exposure to toxic or similar substances would "present a risk of sufficient likelihood or magnitude—and in which there is a sufficiently broad consensus that exposure of anyone to the substance should therefore be prevented—that" the Amendment's protection would be available even though the effects of exposure might not be manifested for some time. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 19. But the United States submits that the harm to any particular individual from exposure to ETS is speculative, that the risk is not sufficiently grave to implicate a " 'serious medical nee[d],' " and that exposure to ETS is not contrary to current standards of decency. Id., at 20-22. It would be premature for us, however, as a matter of law to
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