tailieunhanh - Ethical Issues in Environmental and Occupational Health

Lean Manufacturing is Mainstream. Substantial research and literature exists indicating that American industries are actively implementing Lean Manufacturing as a key strategy for remaining competitive in today’s manufacturing environment, and implementation of this manufacturing paradigm shift is taking place across numerous industrial and source sectors. Similarly, the Boeing Company began implementing Lean Manufacturing throughout the Commercial Airplanes Division in February 1996: upon realizing early successes in the endeavor, “leaning” efforts at Boeing have been expanded to the entire company. Boeing’s substantial investment in Lean reflects its belief that the strategy plays a critical role in the company’s. | MODULE 7 Ethical Issues in Environmental and Occupational Health Kristin Shrader-Frechette PhD University of Notre Dame Issue Essay US physicist Alvin Weinberg 1988 claims that today s environmental-health problems are relatively trivial. Although many aspects of human well being are influenced by the environment Weinberg says that environmental-health problems such as liquid and airborne wastes stresses in the workplace and unsafe food are sensationalized by the hypochondria of laypeople. Weinberg believes that these contemporary hypochondriacs are driven by an hysteria analogous to the irrationality that drove fourteenth- and fifteenth-century witch hunts. Just as people eventually learned that witches did not cause misfortunes Weinberg claims that the public must learn that various environmental problems do not cause the public-health problems often attributed to them. He says the public needs to come to its senses just as those who killed more than a million alleged witches eventually came to their senses. Public-interest activist and attorney Ralph Nader however thinks Weinberg is wrong Nader 2000 . He believes that many of today s public-health problems are substantial increasing and largely environmentally induced. The culprit behind this corporate cancer Nader believes is the profit motive. Labor leader Sheldon Samuels 1988 agrees with Nader and claims that workplace health problems are increasing largely because of an industrial cannibalism industries killing their own workers in order to save money on pollution control. Background Who is right about environmental-health threats the Alvin Weinbergs or the Ralph Naders of the world Are environmental-health risks minimal but fueled by public ignorance and hypochondria Or are environmental-health risks massive but covered up by vested interests attempting to reduce manufacturing costs To answer these questions it is important to examine environmental-health problems faced by at least three distinct .