W.R.Grace Indicted over Asbestos Claims

W.R.Grace did the right thing in misleading the public, the government, and the media about their asbestos mining operations.

1. Section 1

It was wrong for W.R Grace to release asbestos fibers into the air and to endanger the lives of the entire population of Libby, Montana.

In our PHL 318 class we learned that according to the first categorical imperative of the Kant's theory - one should act only in such way, that his maxim could become a universal law. This means that the action will have to be both universalizable and reversible. Universalizable as moral principle is something that everyone could follow. For example "One should not steal" is a universalizable principle, because one of the basic principles of our society is the right to own to personal property. According to the Declaration of Human Rights article 17 - "Everyone has the right to own property and no one should be arbitrary deprived of his property". Reversible principle is one that you will not be objective to if you were on the receiving end of the act. In our case "stealing" is not a reversible principle, because nobody will like to see his personal property being stolen.

W.R.Grace's actions, which led to the release of carcinogenic air pollutants, are neither universalizable nor reversible. If every company uses the same tactics and tries to increase its profits by completely ignoring the air standards and disregarding the human lives the Earth will most likely soon become unsuitable for any living organism. The actions are not reversible, because nobody of W.R.Grace's executives or their relatives would probably like to inhale asbestos fibers and afterwards develop lung cancer.

In conclusion, it was wrong for W.R.Grace to knowingly release asbestos fibers into the air of Libby, Montana. It was wrong for them to be concerned only about their profits and not about affecting the lives and health of the entire community. It was wrong for them to cover up all facts and research, to mislead the EPA and not discontinue their mining operations when it was first discovered that their product is contaminated with asbestos. On two separate occasions when test were conducted W.R. Grace discovered that asbestos fibers are released in such high concentration, that was causing cancer in laboratory animals and yet they did not stop their mining operations, continued selling vermiculite and properties, which ones were used to store the contaminated product.

2. Section 2

It was O.K. for W.R Grace to continue their mining operations, even though it was discovered that their product was contaminated with asbestos fibers and was endangering the lives and health of the entire community of Libby, Montana.

The claim that W.R.Grace Co. have done nothing wrong and they did not sicken and endangered the community of Libby, Montana could be supported by the moral responsibility argument. The theory of moral responsibility states that people are morally responsible for their acts, when hey have knowingly endanger somebody's health and life or fail to act or prevent the wrongdoing. For example, Firestone's officials knew that they may have defects in their tire production, but they chose not to act and blamed all deaths cause by tire punctures to the design and body weight of the Ford Explorers. When we are talking about moral responsibility it is widely accepted that there to excusing conditions when somebody could not be held morally responsible for any wrongdoing. These two conditions are ignorance and inability.

If a person does not know that a particular action would be harmful to another person, he or she cannot be blamed if that person suffers an injury or death. For example, person A has an allergy to peanuts, but he is not aware of it. His friend, person B, invites him to a party where there are mixed nuts served as a snack. Person A consumes the nuts, which include peanuts, his allergy is aggravated and he dies on the way to the hospital. In this case person B, could not be held liable for his actions, because he did not know his friend suffers from allergy to peanuts. In case of the other excused condition somebody could not be morally responsible due to inability. If person A is in a wheel chair and while taking a walk along the shore, he observes that person B is drowning, person A could not be held liable, because of his inability to help person B.

In our case the W.R.Grace's executives could not be held morally responsible if first, they did not know that their product contains asbestos fibers and secondly if they did not know asbestos could be a health hazard. This will be a case where they are not morally responsible due to ignorance. W.R.Grace had begun using the Libby's mine in 1939 and at that time there was not any requirements to test