Public education cannot be considered an efficient alternative to industrial pollution abatement. The public education alternative stresses that an informed non-industrial public will, out of civic responsibility, bring about sufficient social pressure on the industrial sector to end pollution. However, evidence suggests that the mere presence of pollution does not guarantee salient awareness by the public-at-large. Greater dissemination of public information as a remedy to unawareness becomes inhibited by such factors as a communication gap between scientific and lay publics, incompleteness of biophysical data, and a reluctance on the part of government officials to release known information. The frequent lack of civic responsibility in the general public is caused by differential perceptions of "crises," variability in adaptation to pollution, and various factors which surround public pessimism. Other alternatives need to be studied which call for greater coordinated planning and implementation by public leaders. (Author/DE)