So, I read something awhile back saying that it was sort of hypocritical to expect developing nations to follow pollution and worker safety rules that we have now, when we didn't hamper ourselves with them while we were developing.

Sure, you can say that we didn't know that dumping all those chemicals into the bay was such a bad idea at the time. But, that's like smokers saying that no one told them that inhaling smoke was such a bad idea.