Dear Mr Sekar,
It is a recent article. If inhaling asbestos dust caused cancer, it would have
been mentioned and 80% it would have been banned from using.
But it has used at many places and still continued to use at least in slums.
Total replacing is difficult as mentioned in the article. All states in India
has not banned. Kerala has banned further use, also tin sheet using since such
use makes it difficult to vacate people during floods from top terrace of
building.
Thank you for reading the FORWARD and responding.
Gopalakrishnan
On Thursday, 23 November, 2023 at 08:10:28 pm IST, 'N Sekar' via
KeralaIyers <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks.
I remember to have read, years back, that asbestos was dangerous as it caused
cancer. I am not sure whether this was the reason why it was banned.
The article you sent refers to health effects due to inhaling " evil dust" -
may be cancer?
N Sekar
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 6:22 PM, 'gopala krishnan' via
KeralaIyers<[email protected]> wrote:
ASBESTOS
Dear friends,
When I was about fifteen years old, use of asbestosfor roofing started in my
native in Kerala. The asbestos sheets were large in size, do not requiremore
slanting as for tile roofing, required less supporting wooden frame. Most homes
started to have anextension hall in the front with asbestos.
Many homes removed backside room called chayippu,extended and reconstructed
with asbestos roof. They could be used like rooms.
Cinema theatreswhich were having thatched coconut leaf roofing were directed to
remove it androof with asbestos sheet to avoid firerisk.
The college Istudied in my native was having two floors, roofing was with
asbestos sheet (1961-1964) except Principalroom in the front, which had RCC
roofing with tower clock installed above it.
Asbestos sheetswere fire resistant. In telephone exchanges cabins were directed
to be replaced withasbestos in metal frames. It marred the appearance, but fire
risk was moreimportant. “Number please”manual exchanges were more prone to fire
risk…
However asbestossheets were fragile, though having more thickness.
Till tin sheets appeared, asbestos sheets were moreprominent. When I
constructed my home in Chennai in 2005, overhead water tankwas covered with
thick asbestos sheets were provided in aluminium frame. Aftertree branches
falling from nearby compound and breaking, mica sheets are fittedin aluminium
frame are provided now.
I understand thatKerala has banned furtheruse of asbestos now. But Tamilnadu
has not banned.
Today in Yahoo opening page I found an interesting articleabout asbestos
sheets. I thought of FORWARDINGit to my friends. This posting is 21 pages,
please read atleisure time.
Gopalakrishnan 23-11-2023.
ARTICLE
Asbestos was a miracle material, virtually impervious tofire. But as wefixed
city fires in other ways, we came to learn about its horrific downsides.
Few materials fell from grace like asbestos. Once cherished as analmost-magical
material, it is now the archetypal carcinogen. We spentover a century
integrating it into buildings, wiring, pipes, brake pads, andmore, and we now
spendbillions of dollars a year removing it.
But the standard story of asbestos as a mistake – oreven a crime – of massive
proportions does not do justice to the real benefitsit brought. Asbestos
wascentral to mitigating urban fires, which cost thousands of lives each year
asmodern cities grew larger, denser, and more flammable. But as we learned to
control urban fires without it, asbestos’s healthcosts seemed less and less
worth bearing. Asbestosis in its final days and soon the material will almost
disappear entirely.
Miracle materials are not all manmade. Asbestos is a family of sixnaturally
occurring silicates, made from the same elemental blocks as sand orglass,
organized in delicate fibrous strands that tease apart likecotton candy and
compare with steel in tensile strength. Chrysotile or whiteasbestos, the
commercially dominant form, is a serpentine silicate, withfibrous strands that
crumble to the touch; the remaining five are amphiboles(including crocidolite,
blue asbestos), spiky forests of short and fragile needles.In all its forms,
asbestoshas remarkable properties: it’s light, waterproof, and, most
famously,fireproof.
The unique structure of asbestos requires a uniqueset of circumstances to form.
Thefibers of asbestos are crystals precipitated out of a solution of minerals
inhot water under pressure. This is hydrothermal synthesis, a process used to
grow artificial crystals inlaboratory settings (or candy from syrup). The
low-silica rocks in which asbestos originates are foundnaturally across the
planet, and asbestos has been found and mined on everyinhabited continent.
The firstwritten record of asbestos was by Theophrastus, who categorized it
correctly by including it in hismineralogical work, On Stones. He did better
than most, considering that ananimal origin for asbestos was a common
misconception in the ancient world:asbestos was credited to everything from
phoenix feathers to the mythicalsalamander to Princess Bride–style literal
volcano-dwelling fire rats.
Its rarity and invulnerability to fire gave asbestos anair of mystique and an
association with power. Charlemagne is said to have had a tablecloth of
pureasbestos that he would throw into the fire as a party trick, and Emperor
Ashoka of India sent a gift of asbestos cloth to Sri Lanka.Earnest pilgrims
into the Holy Land were sold pieces of asbestos cloth asremnants of the Holy
Shroud, made credible by their immunity to fire. Benjamin Franklin paid for
histime in Europe by selling an asbestos purse to a collector (for which hewas
paid ‘handsomely’). Yet asbestos existed only as an interesting noveltywithout
a clear use.
That use case cameinto being in the late nineteenth century. The fast-growing
cities of the time were exceptionally flammable, withdensely clustered
buildings full of wood, fabric, and open flames.Electrification was new; fire
codes were yet to become ubiquitous (orstringently applied). In some cases,
even roads were made of timber.
Unsurprisingly, ‘Great Fires’ struck virtually everymajor city. Theaters, full
of flammable set elements and a tightly packedaudience, were a frequent source
of fire. The risky productions themselves did not help – 31of the 1,108 theater
fires documented worldwide between 1797 and 1897 werestarted by fireworks on
the stage.
Theater fires started mostly on the stage and thenspread to the audience. It
was critical that the two areas be separated to protect theaudience. Theater
owners attempted to separate the stage and audience withheavy curtains of sheet
metal, called ‘iron curtains’. Experiments on a scalemodel following a fire in
Vienna’s Ringtheatre in 1881 showed theirlimitations. A fire on the stage would
blow the hot metal curtain out onto theaudience it was meant to protect, not
only endangering them but alsoextinguishing the gaslights meant to light the
way to safety. In otherinstances, the curtain could collapse onto the stage or
fail to descend at all.
Engineers and regulators experimented with adiversity of materials for safety
curtains, settling on asbestos.
The 1903 fire at the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago ledto an exemplary
institutional response. The Iroquois supposedly had an asbestoscurtain that
failed to come down during the fire, but later investigation ofthe remnants of
the curtain revealed that the curtain was mostly vegetablefiber. Following the
fire, Chicago ordered all its theaters to be closed downimmediately, while in
New York inspectors went around setting fire to theatercurtains, in search of
dupes being passed off as asbestos by noncompliant ownership.The message now
was clear:asbestos, or nothing.
Theaters were not the only place where fires werecommon. Movie theaters,
schools, hotels, hospitals, ships, and ports allexisted under the threat of
fire. Asbestoswas gradually introduced in each.
Ports wereparticularly keen on fire safety.
A fire port-side could easily spread among ships anddestroy them, as it did
famously in the 1900 Hoboken Docks fire in New Jersey. A fire that started in
bales of cotton stored on a pier spread with thewind to stores of flammable
turpentine and oil, which exploded in quicksuccession.
Within 45minutes, the fire had destroyed three piers and three major
transatlanticliners belonging to the Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping company, and
claimed over200 lives. Navies and merchantnavies were eager and early adopters
of asbestos. When NorddeutscherLloyd finally rebuilt the pier, asbestos felt
was among the materials used.
The firstmass-produced asbestos products in the United States were gas
fireplaces, eventually joined by protective suits for firefightersand materials
for roofing, felting, and boiler insulation. Asbestosbecame the standard
material for applications as diverse as brake pad liningsand insulation for
electrical wiring. In the case of brake pad linings,asbestos was the only
reliable material until well into the 1940s, and remainsone of the few
permitted uses in the United States today. Scientific American wrote in 1919
that ‘new uses of this material arebeing found almost daily’.
Production keptpace: prices fell from $128 per ton to $30 per ton in the United
States from 1890–1904following the discovery of commercially viable deposits in
Canada and improvedmethods of refinement and transport. It was rapidly becoming
price competitive in construction in the form ofroofing tiles and in products
where it could be blended with cheaper material,as in asbestos stucco and
asbestos-cement shingles. One particularly clever product was asbestos paint,
which made woodenstructures flame-retardant.Patented in 1878, it was already on
federal buildings, including the USCapitol, by 1879.
My note- Asbestos paint is a new information to me.
Asbestos becamemore important than ever in World War II. It was classified as a
critical material by the USWar Production Board, and its scope expanded from
its traditional roles offireproofing, friction reduction, and insulation to
substituting othermaterials that were even more desperately needed elsewhere.
It became the material of choice foraircraft hangars and ordnance stores,
military prefabs, ductwork, and even commongutters and downspouts. Soon,
conservation orders were issued limitingits use and privileging defense
applications.
The Navy was atthe forefront of asbestos use. Shipboard fires engulfed vessels
that had limited meansof fire suppression. Newer classes of ships such as the
Essex featured asbestoscurtains and fire doors, and no ships were lost to fire
after 1942. In lateryears, as many as a third of all asbestos-related cancer
cases in the US wouldbe linked to US Navy ships or shipyards.
The postwar era combined a heightened awareness ofthe risk of fire with a
massive wave of new construction. Asbestos was cheapenough to use in every
building. America produced and imported asbestos at a fantasticrate. Asbestos
consumption tripled between 1940 and 1950, increasing from240,000 metric tons
to 400,000 metric tons from 1940–1941 alone. At one point, as many as 4,000
products contained asbestos, includingtoothpaste. Thingswould soon change.
As early as 1898, factory inspectors noted theeffects of asbestos on workers
who breathed in its fibers, with one going sofar as to call it ‘theevil dust’
(safety reports were a lot more colorful then). A 1918 reportto the US Bureau
of Labor Statistics, ‘Mortality from Respiratory Diseases inDusty Trades’,
explained that ‘in the practice of American andCanadian life insurance
companies asbestos workers are generally declined onaccount of the assumed
health-injurious conditions of the industry’.
In 1924, Nellie Kershaw, a 33-year-old Britishasbestos spinner, died. The
inquest concluded that the cause of her death wassuffocation traced to profound
scarring of her lung tissue from being laceratedwith microscopic asbestos
fibers. The coroner who led the inquest called it ‘asbestos poisoning’. Her
employer, the largest asbestos factory inthe world and the owner of asbestos
mines in Canada and South Africa, rejectedthe report.
Nellie Kershaw’s death was not entirely withoutconsequence. The coroner pressed
on, publishing his results in The BritishMedical Journal. Kershaw’s illness now
had a name –asbestosis – and a British government survey of the asbestos
industry in 1930found that a quarter of all workers were suffering from it.
The next year, Britain passed Asbestos IndustryRegulations, 1931, the world’s
first regulation dealing specifically withasbestos.
That did not immediately put a stop to asbestos, evenin the United Kingdom. The
event that finally did set off a wave of asbestosbans across advanced economies
came over 30 years later, at a conferenceconvened at the New York Academy of
Sciences in 1964.
This conference was organized by Irving J. Selikoffof New York’s Mount Sinai
Hospital. Selikoff had spent years interviewing workers involved with
asbestos,among them asbestos weavers, pipe insulators, and shipyard workers. He
later published results in1965 and 1968 that suggested asbestos might be a
carcinogen, but at the1964 conference, he may have had his greatest impact by
catalyzing theconversation in the first place. The conference itself was
largely aconsolidation of already available knowledge and presented little that
was newor surprising, but the momentum it generated made a definite difference,
and inthe case of Selikoff, enemies.
Asbestos use collapsed in the wealthy world almost asdramatically as it had
risen. The bans took off, slowly, in the early seventies. Denmark was first,
banning asbestos for insulation and waterproofing in1972. Sweden followed with
a ban on asbestos spraying in 1973. The first total ban came in 1980, with
Denmark again leading thecharge. Eachsuccessive decade saw more jurisdictions
join in restricting the use ofasbestos, partially or fully, for the first time:
eight more in the 1980s, 24in the 1990s, and 36 in the 2000s. The bans were
augmented with requirements to remove asbestos wherefound in existingbuildings.
As the threat of fire dwindled, Asbestos prohibitions spread.
Asbestos is now banned in at least 66 countries,including all members of the
European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia,and South Africa.
The United Statesis often cited as a rare industrialized country without a
total ban, but it was no laggard inpursuing restrictions, either. Thefirst
American restriction came in 1973, followed in quick succession byfurther
restrictions in 1975, 1977, and 1978. An effort by the EnvironmentalProtection
Agency to ban asbestos completely in 1989 was the closest the UnitedStates came
to a complete ban on asbestos. In 1991, a Federal appeals court overturned
provisions ofthe ban that would have come into force in 1993 and 1996,
effectively protecting asbestos usein brake drum linings, roofing and flooring
felt, and asbestos tiles.Despite this, the popularity of asbestos in the United
States continued tofall.
The move against asbestos in the United States wasglobally consequential. The
United States had traditionally imported nearly allof its asbestos and was the
largest asbestos importer in the world. In 1970,the United States had imported
close to 590,000 metric tons of asbestos; in2000, this had collapsed to below
15,000 metric tons. Global trade in asbestosfell from 2.4 million to 1 million
metric tons between 1970 and 2000, and the United States was responsible for 40
percent of this decline in volume.
Substitutes have been found for most applications.The majority of substitutes
are natural or synthetic fibers that are notconsidered carcinogenic.
Asbestoshas been replaced in fiber-reinforced cement by cellulose fibers,
ininsulation by fiberglass and mineral wool, and in clothing by aramid fibers.
Elsewhere, itsunique confluence of useful properties has proved harder to
replicate. Asbestoscement, which was used to make cheap, durable pipes and
prefabricated sheetsfor wall cladding, was by far the biggest use of asbestos,
accounting for 80 percent of asbestos production in 1988.A particularly
interesting niche where asbestos persists is in the productionof chlorine.
Asbestosdiaphragms are used in the chlor-alkali process, the dominant
technology formanufacturing chlorine, to separate the anode and cathode of
anelectrolytic cell. An alternative method uses polymer membranes instead.
Thesemethods have traditionally been considered ‘low concern’ from a health
andsafety standpoint; some researchers now suggest that we should be
moreconcerned, but switching to the alternative method is expensive.
The economiccase for asbestos slowed its decline in many places. Canada’s exit
wasparticularly protracted, given its former status as a leading producer.
Thecosts of damages and litigation, over $70 billion in the United States
alone,have resulted in widespread bankruptcies of asbestos manufacturers and
closuresof asbestos mines. The last asbestos mine in Canada, which wasalso the
world’s largest, discontinued operations in 2011. While Canadaceased mining, a
ban on export did not come into force until the penultimateday of 2018. The
town of Asbestos, Quebec, home to that final mine, abandonedits name in 2020.
The costs of abatement have been just as significant.That asbestos is
implicated in asbestosis (limited mostly to workers withdirect exposure, such
as Nellie Kershaw) and mesothelioma (cancer of themesothelium, which forms a
lining around the lungs) is universally accepted. What’s controversial is the
benefitfrom removing asbestos from all structures, given the risk to
buildingoccupants tends to be low. It is instead people who work directly
withhigh concentrations of asbestos – such as shipyard and textile workers –
whoare at high risk.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates thereare over 700,000 public and
commercial buildings in the US that containasbestos, as wellas 45 percent of
the nation’s 100,000 schools. The number of residentialbuildings that contain
asbestos is simply not known. Rachel Maines, the authorof Asbestos and Fire,
figures essentially every building constructed in thetwentieth century prior to
1980 contains it. The requirement to remove asbestosin the built environment
wherever found, so-called “in-place” asbestos, hasgiven rise to an abatement
industry in the United States with annual revenuesalready exceeding three
billion dollars. These are expensive projects, where aconsultant must be
retained, workers must wear protective gear, and theworksite must be isolated
with negative pressure.
The cost of such abatement at a national scale wouldlikely run into hundreds of
billions of dollars, for uncertain benefits. Asbestos isdangerous only when
inhaled, and it cannot be inhaled except as airborne fibersthat are released
when asbestos is disturbed. Since abatement takes theform of ripping or
scraping off asbestos from the places where it is found, itgenerates clouds of
airborne fibers where there were none, and needs to bedisposed of very
carefully by abatement workers.
While the healthconsequences of removing asbestos are not yet fully understood,
there are not currentlyreasons to be concerned. And natural sources of asbestos
can confound data. Forexample, a large study using data across California found
that the odds ofdeveloping mesothelioma declined by 6.3 percent for each ten
kilometers ofdistance from the nearest source of environmental asbestos. If
members of the‘control group’ in a study, who are assumed to have no exposure
to asbestos,actually had natural exposure to asbestos, researchers would
underestimate theharms they face and the risks of further exposure to asbestos
in occupationalwork.
How many lives didasbestos itself save in the final reckoning, net of the
deaths it caused? It’simpossible to say.This is what we know: Fire deaths fell
by over 90 percentin the United States over the twentieth century; asbestos was
present inthousands of applications as a fire retardant; and without effective
brake pads, the roadswould have been much more dangerous. However, at the same
time that asbestosbecame ubiquitous, fire codes matured, firefighting
technology improved, andthe insurance industry laid down stringent requirements
for coverage.
There are common-sense compromises that sit betweencomplete complacency and
abatement regardless of cost. New York City Local Law76/85 required asbestos to
be removed in the cases of demolitions andrenovations, but did not call for it
to be removed proactively from all placeswhere it existed. Theaterremains an
iconic industry in New York City, and many theaters continue to haveasbestos
curtains.
The same calculus features in global attitudes towardasbestos. Even as the
developed world has abandoned asbestos, others haveexpanded their production.
The two leading producers are Russia and Kazakhstan,which have built upon
Soviet-era operations to account for over 83 percent ofall exports. The market
is similarly concentrated on the importers side as well– the three largest
importers of asbestos account for over 65 percent of allimports, and the top
ten are all in Asia. Russia is itself a major consumer, inthird place behind
China and India.
India, where asbestos is called ‘the poor man’smaterial’ and asbestos roofs are
an alternative to safer, but more expensive,tin or fiberglass roofs, is also
beginning to move away from asbestos. The country banned thedomestic production
of asbestos in 1986, but not its use, becoming the largest importer ofasbestos
in the world by 2003. In 2011, the Supreme Court of Indiadenied a public
interest filing to ban asbestos, favoring continued regulationby states
instead. In 2018, the western state of Maharashtraforbade the inclusion of
asbestos in regional development plans.
The following year, the southern state of Keralaordered the removal of asbestos
roofing in schools.
The impact on trade figures has been slow butcertain. The global trade in
asbestos fell from over $500 million to under $300million from 2012–2018, with
India reducing imports by over $100 million,the most of any country. The
next-largest importers, Indonesia andChina, also cut down. As these countries
grow richer, they too may soon decidethat the costs of asbestos have come to
outweigh its benefits.
Author Mano Majumdar is a management consultant at a globalconsulting firm. He
has a background in chemical engineering, and has taught ata leading Canadian
business school
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