Re: EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Actually, there is considerable scientific basis for the statement that there is no pollution level that's safe. The "environmental seminars" that you imagine do happen very frequently, but they're not quite as one-sided as you might think. There is a lot of debate about what is called the "threshold" level, or the level below which you don't see any effects. However, for many compounds that are suspected of causing cancer, scientists have not been able to identify a level that has zero risk of causing cancer. So typically, the regulatory structure is based on an "acceptable" risk, usually 1 in a million.
The big question is what is "acceptable." If you feel you are forced to bear the risk, but someone else is getting all the benefit, you're much less willing to think of any risk as being acceptable. So your subject "eye of the beholder" is quite accurate. It's not really true that the "@#$%&" will never accept anything they don't like - they just have to be made part of the issue and not ignored. You'll always have a few "outliers," but using the right approach works much more often than not.
Andy