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"Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy." In this eye-opening expose, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Product defense consultants, he argues, have increasingly skewed the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. To keep the public confused about the hazards posed by global warming, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials, industry executives have hired unscrupulous scientists and lobbyists to dispute scientific evidence about health risks. In doing so, they have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats. The Orwellian strategy of dismissing research conducted by the scientific community as "junk science" and elevating science conducted by product defense specialists to "sound science" status also creates confusion about the very nature of scientific inquiry and undermines the public's confidence in science's ability to address public health and environmental concerns Such reckless practices have long existed, but Michaels argues that the Bush administration deepened the dysfunction by virtually handing over regulatory agencies to the very corporate powers whose products and behavior they are charged with overseeing. In Doubt Is Their Product Michaels proves, beyond a doubt, that our regulatory system has been broken. He offers concrete, workable suggestions for how it can be restored by taking the politics out of science and ensuring that concern for public safety, rather than private profits, guides our regulatory policy. Named one of the best Sci-Tech books of 2008 by Library Journal!
Written by one of the leading asbestos experts for attorneys, occupational and environmental health professionals, and others in the field of toxic substances control, this updated resource provides a comprehensive examination of the public health history of asbestos. Includes extensive discussion of corporate knowledge and responsibility for asbestos hazards and detailed discussion of alternatives to asbestos.
This book is an introduction to the energy and resources systems that influence all of our lives.
A sequel to Civil Action-W.R. Grace company, owners of a vermiculite mine in that small Montana town, never told the miners what it knew: there was asbestos in the vermiculite, and the asbestos was destroying the miners lungs.
Until the mid-1960s, asbestos had a reputation as a lifesaver. In 1960, it became known that exposure to asbestos can cause mesothelioma, a virulent and lethal cancer. Yet the bulk of the world's asbestos was mined after 1960. This is the first global history of how the asbestos industry defended the product throughout the 20th century.
There is currently much debate over corporate social responsibility on whether business companies should look beyond shareholder primacy and profit maximisation to act for the benefit of others. It is generally agreed, however, even amongst advocates of shareholder primacy, that profit maximisation should only be achieved within the framework of external laws regulating the conduct of individuals and companies generally. If the objectives of such external laws are not to be defeated, then it is important for controllers of companies to ensure corporate compliance with the law. Despite this, controversies have arisen where corporate enterprises may have improperly flouted or evaded liabilities under the law. Against this background, it is argued in this book that it is necessary to ensure that responsible persons are accountable under the law so as to promote compliance with legal regulations in the corporate context. Individuals or entities behind the company who are responsible for wrongful conduct should be held liable under the law – whether it be tort law or statutory regulation. Some counter that the corporate law principles of limited liability and separate entity have the primacy to effectively shield those behind the company from at least certain types of liability. However, it is undesirable for corporate insiders to hide behind the company to avoid tortious or statutory liabilities. This book adopts a theory of interactive (corrective) justice that is applied in the corporate context to justify the imposition of civil liability on responsible directors, shareholders and other corporate participants under Anglo-Australian law. In light of this theoretical framework, possibilities of rectifying deficiencies in the law through judicial development of existing legal principles are examined. To the extent that appropriate directions in the law cannot be achieved via judicial development of the law, the book also investigates possibilities of statutory reform.
For decades asbestos was considered an ideal substance and therefore was called 'the mineral of the twentieth century'. Even though the fiber had already proven much earlier to cause various ailments, a real boom began in the 1950s and prospered everywhere in Europe. This book retraces the history of the Swiss asbestos cement company Eternit, investigating the strategy it developed – together with other asbestos industrialists – to prevent this carcinogen from being outlawed until, in 1999, an EU Directive was finally adopted to this end. The book also reviews the struggle of the asbestos workers and their families to gain official recognition of, and compensation for, the harm suffered.
Reconstructed from hundreds of hours of interviews and thousands of pages of documentation, this reference focuses on one of Austalia's oldest and proudest corporations, Hardie, retelling the story of one of the worst industrial poisons of the 20th century, asbestos. This compelling narrative relates the frantic financial engineering in 2001, during which Hardie cut adrift its liabilities to sufferers of asbestos-related disease, the public and political odium that followed, and the extraordinary deal that resulted.