Why 'Pardon Dust

What baffles me is the (political) equal fanaticism in using asbestos then and the fanaticism in blaming asbestos now. Asbestos was known to mankind for three millenia but was never used as heavily as in the 1900s. In the NYC area, there was a cheap source when the Vermont mines opened in 1920. The other day I went to buy grout and all of them had polymer in them and I got upset because I would rather add the polymer myself if I wanted it. In engineering, you know the contractor NEVER follows specs. Remember that dance hall that collapsed in Kansas in 1981? The design called for metal columns going all the way up, but the contractor, cut them and staggered them so they created shear stress between them. I was patching some cement on the wall of my house a few years ago and I found they had left the wood shape-mold for the inner concrete inside the wall. The legal system doesn't work in your favor either. There is a precedent in contracts (Jacob vs Young 1921 NY) where the contractor was allowed to put "equivalent" pipes to those requested. I had a neighbor who in 1965 had the asbestos shingle removed in the house he was buying new (Selikoff's first paper on ship asbestos mesothelioma was 1961 and asbestos wasn't seriously banned until the mid70s). I have sadly learned that in law and social science, the standard of proof is nowhere as rigorous as I am accustomed to in Science. I mean instead of suing the asbestos manufacturers, why hasn't anyone tried to sue the politicians (or the organisations succeeding them in interests) who mandated asbestos in the first place?

on Sun, 03 Sep 2006 09:23:12 -0400 we perused: *+-You do realize,I hope,that until 30 or 40 years ago nobody had the slightest *+-idea that asbestos was in any way dangerous.