Customer Reviews

Asbestos and Fire: Technological Tradeoffs and the Body at Risk

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This modest-sized book contains much information on the history, properties, manufacture, and value of asbestos. There are some quaint photos, such as that of an asbestos-based fallout shelter, and that of "giant candle snuffers" used effectively by British firefighters during WWII against German magnesium-thermite incendiary bombs. Statistics are provided on the production of asbestos as well as the hundreds of everyday items that contain asbestos.

The Our Lady of the Angels School Fire (pp. 127-131) is instructive. The lack of sprinklers and the prevalence of wooden-interior trim were bad enough, but so were the combustible ceiling tiles, made as they were out of wheat straw. Maines makes the following strong statement: "If Our Lady of the Angels had had asbestos-containing ceiling panels, flooring, and wall finishes, there would almost certainly have been time for all the building occupants to reach the exits and little or no loss of life...The role of combustible ceiling panels, so significant in the loss of life in the Chicago school fire, had drawn the attention of fire-safety professionals [much earlier]." (p. 131)

Maines puts the cancer and other risks of asbestos in perspective. For instance, she comments: "For parents sending their children in, say 1959, to what were widely known as firetrap schools, the possibility of disease in a relatively small number of adults three decades later...Almost as many persons in that one fire [Our Lady of the Angels School] as in all of the fatal cases of asbestos-related disease reported in publications by that time..." (p. 164)