ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the theoretical framework that grounds the study of the development and evolution of the occupational and environmental health and safety policies in Cetrel and Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority. Most commentators in Ives’ book argued that US multinationals had been exporting banned products and technologies to developing countries without any government control, nor any safeguards for the health and safety of workers and consumers in these countries. From the late eighties on, the export of hazards and the double standards arguments were debated in academic journals and at public health conferences in the United States and elsewhere. Barry Castleman’s argument in 1979 probably exaggerated the migration of hazards when he predicted the “wholesale exodus.” His argument that multinationals “on occasion” export ultrahazardous chemicals to the Third World and maintain a system of double standards is correct.
