There is money to be made from asbestos a. Lawyers/lawsuits, there is at least 1 or 2 adverts in my daily paper from lawyers seeking to represent people who may have been exposed to it b. Asbestos removal companies
If it turns out that the panels do contain asbestos, I'd think that its not just me that would be in trouble but the hundreds of other houses in the area which were finished the same way and around the same time.. wouldnt something like this be in the news or more of a public focus? In reading about dealing with panels and such no where was there any caution at all about the chance of them being dangerous.
-Daniel
I'm not sure whether the OP's claim is true or not, but governments don't need scientific evidence to ban a substance. UFFI insulation is illegal in Canada even though there is no scientific evidence to suppost its being banned - it is legal in the US and GB.
As far as asbestos goes, there is plenty of evidence that it is dangerous to the mine workers and others who suffered from high exposure rates. Whether this justifies banning it in low exposure situations, I don't know offhand.
The claim is nonsense. The second tower came down sooner because it was hit lower and there was a lot more structure (weight) above the damaged floors. In both cases, the insulation on the steel was blown away by the force of the impact and explosive ignition of the fuel. It wouldn't have mattered if it was asbestos or not.
Mike
Not exactly. if I recall right, asbestos is, at least within the context of this debate, really just small fibers embedded within other materials to insulate (as in pipe wrap) or retard fire (as in ceiling panels). It's pretty much OK if you leave it there forever and unmolested doing the job nature intended it to do. The potential public health problems begin when you go screwing around with it by moving it, ripping it out, etc.
Same goes for the transformers electric utilities were using on those wooden poles outside everyone's homes up until maybe the 1980s. Those transformers used polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which have astounding insulating properties when added to oil, like with those transformers. PCBs are apprently demonstrated cancer-causers, but they're pretty harmless if they stay enclosed. However, have a transformer blow up after being struck by lightning or massive overload (as transformers are wont to do) and spew all that PCB-laden tranformer oil all over pedestrians or nearby surfaces people touch or walk over and the equation changes considerably.
Stuff like this is often why zillions of feet of industrial toxics are left sitting in our rivers to this day instead of removing them. Dredging up all the heavy metals and other toxic nasties would just make the river a zillion more times more polluted than it is. Nature takes care of everything eventually, no matter how nasty the situation or substance seems to us on general principle.
AJS
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