19世紀イギリス化学企業の経営と公害--私企業と地域社会
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概要
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Private enterprise in Great Britain has caused problems of industrial pollution in local communities since the Industrial Revolution. For instance, the Leblanc soda industry established in the context of the Revolution, was one of the most notorious pollution-producing industries, because in its early days it allowed itself to escape "muriatic acid gases" (HCl), destroying property, comfort, and health of the local inhabitants and deteriorating their 'quality of life'. James Muspratt, who became the founder of the soda industry in Lancashire in 1823, was confronted with the problems of atmospheric pollution by HCl and the antipollution movements of the inhabitants around his works in Liverpool, St. Helens, and Newton, as his forerunners and his followers were. None of them took any means to prevent the gases from escaping into the atmosphere, while the French inventor of the soda process tried to do so by building a large ceramic container and a large lead chamber from the beginning of his operations. It was owing to considerable burdens of the prevention costs that they did not do so.<BR>The object of the present author is to elucidate what process the entrepreneur Muspratt applied to soda making, how he and his sons managed their chemical firm, what damages he did to his neighbours, how much he compensated for the damages, what means he took to prevent them, and whether they were effective for the purpose or not.<BR>In sum, the Muspratts were forced to close their works, remove them, and pay the compensations, and to adopt various means of abating the HCl nuisances. Thus they changed their business policy from externalisation of 'social losses' and the prevention costs in their early days of operations through mere internalisation of them to higher internalisation of them in the mid-nineteenth century. It seems that they tried to improve the inhabitants' 'quality of life' through pollution abatement and so perform 'social responsivity of private enterprise for local community' as possible as they could.<BR>They, however, had to deal still with the problems of soil, water, and air pollution by "alkali waste" which became nationally serious in the 1870s.
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