Bhopal, Asbestos, and Love Canal . . . How They Should Affect Engineering Education

Over the past 15 years, society has come to expect that engineers, as practitioners and managers, be aware of those activities over which they have control, that could adversely affect the public´s well-being. Specifically, due to incidents such as Love Canal, Times Beach, Bhopal, and Chernobyl, and the pollution of groundwater, the public now recognizes that technology which is within the control of others can, if mishandled, jeopardize the health and well-being of thousands of innocent people. This realization will undoubtedly place increasing pressures on engineers to be more aware of the potential adverse consequences of their work. This paper suggests that schools of engineering have a responsibility to prepare engineers to meet these expectations and it recommends an approach to meet this challenge.