Emergency Management & Public Health

Environmental Responsibilities In today's business world, there have been many rules and regulations imparted upon the corporate environment that are enforced by specialized institutions that oversee the environmental obligations that our society has established. Throughout the generations, as science and technology have produced new capabilities for understanding the natural world, as well as with a considerable amount of trial and error, science has been able to establish an understanding of the extent of damages that pollution can cause.

There are many forms of pollution; soil, water, air, radioactive, and even noise to name a few. These pollutants can not only be damaging to the local ecology, but many of these substances are now understood to effect natural systems on a global scale as is the case with greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The changing environment is already becoming associated with extreme weather events but the worst effects will be one future generations. Yet other forms of pollution have a more immediate effect.

For example, chemicals like benzene and even secondhand smoke have been linked to cancer and the negative consequences of these pollutants are comparatively more immediate. Recently, with the introduction of agencies such as the environmental protection agency (EPA), there have been many regulations of harmful chemicals established to protect the health and well-being of the population. However, before these regulations were established, it was generally completely legal to dispose of harmful substances in any manner in which the company felt was appropriate.

Companies would dump industrial waste products directly into rivers and streams and many of the pollutants would eventually make their way into the community drinking water supplies and be ingested by the individuals as well as were responsible for a host of other problematic environmental issues. Today there is a general consensus that it is the responsibility of the polluter in most situations to pay for the damages they cause from their pollution emissions.

Before such regulations were implemented however, companies would impart the costs of their pollution onto the public while keeping all of the profits that they earned through their operations. Therefore, they externalized many of the costs while keeping all of the profits internally. Furthermore, many of the leaders responsible for such actions were not even conscious of what they were doing.

Although many people could intuitively perceive that pollution was having negative effects on surrounding areas, it was entirely legal to dump pollution in unsafe ways and in many cases it was even expected. Famous economists such as Milton Freidman was known to argue that companies had no obligations to anyone except for the company's investors and their internal stakeholders (Friedman, 1970). The responsibility for the damages the pollution caused is not necessarily clear for those who emitted pollutants before their effects were not clearly understood.

In many cases, the companies may have legitimately oblivious to the harm that they were causing. However, many companies who did understand the consequences and chose to pollute anyway were obviously acting unethically, despite not acting illegally. However, even with many protections in place to protect communities, there are still a plethora of cases of harmful pollutants. One example that has made headlines recently has been Flint, MI, which has had extremely high levels of lead found in their water supply; other less publicized examples include St.