The space shuttle isn't the only instance where the replacement of asbestos with more eco-friendly materials may have resulted in tragic loss of life. As veteran journalist Ralph de Toledano detailed in Insight, the decision not to use the heat-retardant asbestos to protect steel supports on the highest floors of the World Trade Center when they were built in the 1970s meant that they collapsed faster than they otherwise would have, leaving less time for people to escape during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001
See, this is just plain stupid. The fact is that virtually everyone who was situated below the impact points of the airliners got out. The overwhelming majority of the missing/fatalities were on the floors above the impact points, and those floors the planes hit directly.
"Fuller O'Brien made this product going back long before World War II," says Ross, now a scientific adviser to the free-market Consumer Alert organization. He tells Insight, "It was putty used in the aircraft industry for all sorts of purposes." Like Feynman, Ross did his own experiment by putting the old and new putties in his freezer to simulate the cold temperatures of the fatal shuttle launch. "The [asbestos] putty was still quite puttylike, quite pliable," Ross recalls. "The substitute putty got very hard and wasn't sticky. You can imagine that under cool temperature the Fuller O'Brien product was much superior." Why had NASA risked using a new type of putty when the old stuff had worked successfully on nine previous missions? Because the previous putty contained tiny amounts of politically incorrect asbestos, and its producer, the Fuller O'Brien Co. of San Francisco, stopped making the product for fear of lawsuits after asbestos was made the subject of media scare stories and alarmist claims by environmental groups. Malcolm Ross, who had studied asbestos as a research scientist for 41 years at the U.S. Geological Survey, notes that the U.S. Air Force also suddenly had two launch failures with its Titan 34-D rockets after substituting for the asbestos-based putty. This followed a string of 50 successful launches with the old putty.
And this is dishonest - the asbestos issue is bogus. The reality of the Challenger situation is/was as follows:
1) The putty that was originally used to seal the Shuttle O-rings (not the o-rings themselves) contained asbestos. It additionally remained flexible and effective at low temperatures.
2) Use of the original putty was discontinued because the paint manufacturer that made it quit doing so, due to the asbestos issue.
3) The replacement putty that was used ALSO contained asbestos.
4) The formulation of the replacement putty was such that it did not remain flexible at low temperatures; instead, it stiffened badly, failing to contain the hot gases in the rocket boosters.
5) NASA knew this, and pressured Morton Thiokol to give the go-ahead for the launch despite safety concerns. To their everlasting shame, Thiokol caved.
I suppose it's more fun to point fingers and scream, but reality varies considerably from the statements made by the writer.
Snidely