On Environmental Quality Standards and Finding of Liability for Environmental Pollution Torts

Though bearing technical and legal attributes,environmental quality standards are neither rules nor regulatory documents.With the binding force coming from the legal norms where they are cited,environmental quality standards are designed and implemented as a yardstick for measuring environmental quality.They also play a role in the functions of goal setting,merit appraisals,inspiration,supervision and accountability in conjunction with the legal norms and administrative plans where they are cited.Characteristically,environmental quality standards adopt sort management in concept,take holistic values and methodologies,establish phased goals and accept the resulting policy choices.These standards are not applicable to determine tort liability caused by environmental pollution from the perspective of legal norms but provide limited evidence for finding the same in the view of factual analysis by delivering scientific support to prove negative effects on the environment.Hence,environmental quality standards do contribute to finding torts,thus making the production of evidence less difficult.Also,they can be used to prove the relevance between torts and damage.