ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the ethical dimensions of chemical engineering (ChE) activities, including their effects on the environment and on human health, lifeworld, and culture. This description aims to identify possible content for ethics education specifically geared toward chemical engineering students. After pointing out the specific and characteristic features of chemical engineering in contrast to other fields of engineering and academic chemistry, the authors describe and analyze cases of chemical engineering efforts that have ethical implications, linking these cases to different domains of responsibility and explaining their practical manifestations. The underpinning idea is that engineering ethics education should prepare chemical engineers to exercise various forms of responsibility in their forthcoming careers and that familiarity with matching content will enable teachers and learners to achieve this pedagogical objective. The presentation of historical and contemporary cases can help ChE students to understand the cases’ essence and apply orientational knowledge to the assessment of other cases.
