ABSTRACT
During the 1970s, the United States and other advanced industrial countries enacted tough new environmental laws to protect their citizens against hazardous substances in consumer products, the environment and the workplace. In doing so, they unwittingly created problems for many developing countries that are only now embarking upon the process of industrialization, and for whom comparable programs of preventive regulation are economically, technically and politically out of the question. Products deemed too dangerous in producing countries - drugs, pesticides, defective consumer goods - are sold abroad in countries with less stringent quality control standards. Hazardous industries locate new plants in these countries to avoid costly pollution control requirements. While few receiving nations would deny entry to all such "exported" hazards, none are prepared to accept a wholesale flight of risk from the more highly industrialized areas of the world.
