The materials were not believed to be hazardous at the time, nor could their potential hazards have been known in advance of their use. And there are lots of other PCBs around anyway. Certainly all of us on this list, and probably all of us on earth, have detectable quantities of them in our bodies right now, and would still have them at the same levels even if the Hudson were sparkly clean. In short, while there's some cause for concern about PCBs generally, there doesn't seem to be a clear and provable hazard specific to GE's waste disposal in the Hudson River. Other than that .
Environmental alarmists tend to make wildly exaggerated claims based on pseudoscience.
The notion that they may be doing so in this case is much more believable than the alternative notion that a long-established business has anything to gain by poisoning its employees, customers and neighbors. Comparing biblical political and soci-economic structures to modern ones is unacceptable. Classical liberalism is predicated on a level of freedom of action, of separation of the religious arm from the governmental arm and on a whole host of notions and ideas alien to the pre-18th century. Classical liberalism posits the independance of the individual qua individual. While this might be a worthy notion in modern western society, it is certainly not an idea compatible with pre-enlightenment practical philosophies, which emphasize mans place in a community et.al.