I can say with some confidence that they are very happy now.
They are not pro-environment, they are just anti-people.
Did the Ban on Asbestos Lead to Loss of Life?
By JAMES GLANZ and ANDREW C. REVKIN (NYT)
Early in the trade centers' construction, builders abandoned asbestos as a fireproofing material. Now some scientists wonder about the decision.See NY Times article for continuation.
As the World Trade Center was being built in the late 1960's and early 1970's, scientists were learning that asbestos fibers in materials commonly used to fireproof steel beams could cause cancer in workers and bystanders who were intensively exposed to the fibers, especially around mines and manufacturing plants dealing with asbestos.
Anticipating a ban, the builders stopped using the materials by the time they reached the 40th floor of the north tower, the first one to go up.
Now some engineers and scientists — including at least one whose research supported an asbestos ban in New York City — are haunted by a troubling question: were the substitute materials as effective in protecting against fire as the asbestos-containing materials they replaced?
Asbestos, a fibrous, silicate mineral, was highly prized as a fireproofing component because of its high melting point and its resistance to chemical breakdown. It also conducts little heat and its fibers create strong, supple materials.
The question haunts those engineers and scientists, but not because they think asbestos insulation might have ultimately preserved the towers' steel beams and trusses, which buckled in Tuesday's infernos, causing the towers to collapse.
Virtually as one, experts on the development, testing and use of fireproofing materials say no standard treatment of the steel, asbestos or otherwise, could have averted the collapse of the towers in the extraordinarily hot and violent blaze.
But some wonder whether asbestos insulation might have kept the towers intact long enough for more people to have escaped. And more important, they say the disaster at the World Trade Center exposes a gap in their knowledge about many fireproofing materials.
Some of the asbestos insulation might have been removed at before September 11th, too.
From overlawyered.com archives.
Newsweek/MSNBC.. : "Subsequently, the asbestos was encapsulated in a honeycomb of plastic, and in the early '80s, after a 'fastidious, painstaking process,' it was entirely removed, he [Tozzoli] says. 'If they are finding asbestos in the ash, it is not coming from us.'"The Port Authority, the buildings' owner, engaged in prolonged litigation with asbestos manufacturers and its own insurers seeking to shift to them $600 million in costs of asbestos abatement. (British Asbestos Newsletter, Spring 1996, item #2; Mound, Cotton, Wollan & Greenglass, "What's New", "Cases").
Reader Maximo Blake writes to say: "To the best of my knowledge a majority of the asbestos coating the beams and elsewhere was removed in the 1980s. My information comes from a Port Authority employee who supervised the removal."
Just to add a bit more complication, a web search reveals a relatively recent Sept. 12, 2000 entry from the Port Authority's Construction Advertisements Archive in which the authority solicits sealed bids for ongoing "Removal and Disposal of Vinyl Asbestos Floor Tiles and Other Incidental Asbestos-Containing Building Materials" at the WTC, with bids due October 17, 2000.
Sometimes, there are materials that are too dangerous and need to be banned. Not always,but indeed sometimes.
Distinguishing between types of asbestos:
There is not one but MANY different types of asbestos fibre, divided into two main categories: amphibole and serpentine asbestos.
The amphibole fibres used commercially (amosite, crocidolite) are extremely hazardous. Because of their chemical structure and straight, needlelike fibres, amphiboles are very dusty, as well as highly biopersistent. Once in the human body, they can remain indefinitely in the lung tissue, and may cause cancer and mesothelioma.
Chrysotile, the most common serpentine fibre, is considerably less hazardous than ampibole varieties. Silky in texture, with curly fibres, serpentine asbestos is unlikely to remain suspended in the air. Thus, less of it is inhaled, and it does not stay in the lungs very long. The human immune system can eliminate these fibres fairly quickly.
The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) of Great Britain recently concluded that, like asbestosis, the appearance of lung cancer linked to chrysotile is a threshold phenomenon, meaning that there is an exposure level below which the health risk, if any, is so low as to be undetectable. Moreover, the HSE confirms that very few cases of mesothelioma are attributable to chrysotile, despite extensive exposure of thousands of workers in the past.
Today, asbestos means chrysotile.
What you need to know is that 99% of the world's current asbestos production is chrysotile, a fibre which, when inhaled in small quantities, poses no health threat. Indeed, the controversy surrounding asbestos concerns fibres and products that were used in the past often improperly and which are prohibited today.