ABSTRACT
The primary responsibility of an engineering professional is to protect public health and safety. However, engineering professionals also have a responsibility to their employers or clients, to their families, to themselves, to the environment, and for environmental engineers and scientists to “strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their professional duties.” One difficulty in some situations is recognizing when a question of ethics is involved. Frequently, in the area of environment management, a breach of ethics involves a practice that endangers public health and safety or covers up a violation of a rule or regulation. Ethics, in general, is defined as moral principles that govern a person or group’s behavior or the conducting of an activity. Matters of ethics cover every aspect of life, from a personal view of right and wrong to a country’s treatment of and responsibility to its people.
