LITMIR.BIZ

ETHICS IN INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE

      NINA TOWNSEND, GARRETT BROWN, AND MARK KATCHEN

1 DEFINING ETHICAL BEHAVIOR

      According to ethicist Rushworth Kidder, the single largest problem in ethics is the inability to recognize ethical issues (1). Failure to “listen to our gut feelings” is a leading cause of ethical lapses. Self‐serving motives can lead to unethical acts with severe, sometimes irreversible, consequences (e.g. Ponzi schemes). The environmental health and safety professional's primary responsibility is protecting the stakeholders they are advising. All actions must be measured against this directive.

      Good ethical behavior is simply stated by the “Golden Rule”, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and it's corollary, “do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.” While first ascribed to Hillel, the statement in one form or another can be found in the ideology of all major religions and espoused by several philosophers.¹ It is arguably the most essential basis for the modern concept of human rights and ethics.

      Ethical values can be derived from several paradigms. First is natural law best defined by Thomas Aquinas.² Aquinas espouses that humanity senses by its very nature that certain entities are always worth protecting by their very nature and not because they are a means to an end (e.g. humans). Therefore, as environmental health and safety professionals, those actions that promote human life are essential to our professional practice.

      The second theory is ethical relativism holding morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. Application of ethical relativism can lead to several problematic consequences because it is based on individual opinion and not on a consensus standard of ethical behavior. Consequences may include inconsistency in decision‐making resulting in variable outcomes.

      Third, moral absolutism is the ethical belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act. According to this theory, there are no gray areas within ethics leading to inflexibility and the potential for injustice.

      Objectivity is the key to ethics. This implies there are principles outside of one's self that members of a profession can use in making ethical decisions. The application of reason to achieve objectivity is often considered a cornerstone in ethics. Successfully addressing an ethical issue requires selecting the appropriate standard (e.g. American Board of Industrial Hygiene (ABIH) Code of Ethics) and applying the standard's principles in an unbiased manner.

2 BUSINESS ETHICS AND CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Ethical challenges for individual industrial hygienists and the companies that employ them grew substantially with the development of the global economy starting in the 1990s. Production of consumer goods – such as apparel, electronics, medical equipment, sports equipment, toys, and home appliances – is now done in long global supply chains using factories in developing countries where health‐protective regulations either do not exist or exist but are rarely enforced. Major corporations – the “brands” – employ first‐tier contractors, who hire sub‐contractors all the way down to industrial home work in workers' homes. For almost three decades, news media coverage of “sweatshop” conditions in global supply chains has documented widespread violations of labor laws (unpaid wages, excessive working hours, harassment and discrimination, and violations of freedom of association) as well as unsafe and unhealthy working conditions in most brand's and industry supply chain (2,3).

      Beyond consumer goods manufacturing, resource extraction industries (mining, oil and gas, agriculture, and forestry) have faced public condemnation for adverse impacts from their operations on the environment and the health of nearby communities, in addition to concerns about violations of labor laws and unhealthy working conditions for their own direct and subcontracted workforces (4).

      Industrial hygienists are faced with acting ethically and protecting workers' health and safety in the context of business models and sourcing policies that prioritize low‐cost, high‐profit production in countries having few or no regulations or enforcement, and are desperate for economic development. Moreover, courts in the brands' home countries have recently ruled that brands' legal liability stops at the national boundary, particularly when there is no direct contractual relationship between the brand buyer and the factory producing the goods in the multi‐tiered supply chain.

      Starting with the apparel industry in the early 1990s, corporate brands and their supply chain managers (including some industrial hygienists) have sought to produce goods in an ethical fashion via the development and implementation of “corporate social responsibility” or CSR programs. CSR programs – now also called “sustainability” programs – have spread to virtually every industry and global supply chain. Essential elements of CSR programs include: