Posted on 06/22/2017 11:07:53 AM PDT by Sean_Anthony
Too late for asbestos; it will never be brought back. But there's always the hysteria that will beset us tomorrow...
There was no single cause of the tragic 24-story Grenfell Tower conflagration in London. The British newspaper The Telegraph lists eight factors, including lack of dual staircases, lack of sprinklers both outside and inside, and sub-standard fire doors—none of which at this time appear to have violated the law. But nothing contributed more to the sheer speed of the spread, blocking both exits and preventing rescues, and hence the horrific death toll, than what’s called “cladding.” That’s a covering or coating on the structure.
According to The Telegraph, fire safety experts warned as much as 18 years ago that the cladding used on buildings such as Grenfell Tower—used to improve both energy efficiency and aesthetics—posed a deadly threat because it essentially turns a high-rise into a chimney, funneling the heat upwards. Why? Partly it’s “breathing space” between cladding panels allowing oxygen to enter and partly because the cladding was made of aluminum and . . . polyethylene. “Ethyl” means a petroleum byproduct. And while petroleum byproducts may be good for heating and cooling insulation, petroleum burns.
Does the city hall still exist?
Many types, such as commonly found in old floor tile, is not harmful if not disturbed but removal is more dangerous because in aged condition it is more brittle and subject to becoming airborne in dust from breakage.
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Old linoleum with asbestos can be easily removed safely if you flood the area while scraping ...
This is an interesting article. I just scanned it but it seems to point out the smoking link.
http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1262&context=plr
However, if it is over 1% asbestos and you are disposing of it not mixed with a whole building demolition, you need to bag it and send it to a particular landfill registered.
If I had one room with that material, I would use floor leveling compound to fill any voids and then tile over the top to encapsulate it in-place. I would do that without testing it so I officially don’t know what it is should I later sell the property.
“Asbestos is a lot like a big boulder. It’s fine until you disturb it.”
When used for insulation I think it’s been shredded so particles can come loose and blow around. In our former building they took out all of the asbestos insulation between floors. Same at our largest shopping mall several years ago.
Asbestos is a general term for several minerals. The one that is dangerous and increases the chances of lung cancer in smokers is the one that was used to insulate steam pipes on ships. All the hysteria about anything called asbestos was ginned up as an exercise in pulling a major group of products off the market and ruining multiple producers while extracting vast amounts of money from them, much of it going to fund leftist causes. Sort of like Alar and DDT.
The author is a Jack*ss. His thesis is that, sure, you don’t wanna work in a cloud of Asbestos, but there is no proof that a SINGLE FIBER will hurt you. So what?! He wants us to continue to build with millions of tons of Asbestos because there is no reason to believe a “single fiber” is dangerous? If we start lining buildings with asbestos, will the potential exposure be a “single fiber”? What about when the cladding must come down? Over the decades I’ve watched many coworkers succumb to Asbestos disease. Yes, they breathed more than one fiber. Lets start lining the universe in it again! Unbelievable.
I have read that the Twin Towers World Trade Center was originally insulated with Asbestos. It was removed, (because of the asbestos scare) and this inferior product was sprayed on the infrastructure.
The Engineers who designed it expected Asbestos to protect the structural members in the event of a fire. The Structure was not designed with an inferior insulation product in mind.
When the planes ignited a fire, the new stuff just fell away and the intense heat weakened the steel, causing it to fail and both buildings collapsed.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed because someone had stripped out the asbestos and replaced it with an inferior insulation.
They should have left it alone.
The UK fire codes at the time the building was designed (1967) and built (1972) did not require fire sprinklers or more than one staircase.
I’d be extremely interested in reading that analysis, and would appreciate any clues you can provide on where you saw it, author or organizations, etc. With particular scientific analysis and experiments, it might be possible to make the judgement that proper fire-proofing would have protected the steel in both the frame and the floor slabs from the heat of mass quantities of burning aviation fuel. My understanding was that the building was designed to resist impact from a 707, and burning fuel was not specifically considered. If asbestos structural fire proofing was indeed abated, that was a very foolish move almost surely driven by artificial legal, not actual concerns. Even if asbestos f.p. would not have averted collapse altogether, it might have slowed the process down and better protected the stairwells, allowing more to evacuate in time.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2001/09/14/asbestos-could-have-saved-wtc-lives.html
"The Port Authority claims that over half of the applied asbestos-containing fireproofing had been removed by September 11, 2001."
https://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2008/090508_b_asbestos.htm
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