Cleaning up Asbestos

Written by Tim Nash

It is a sad truth to recognize but the legal system always moves slowly when it comes to matters of public health.  This is certainly the truth when it comes to the terrible health consequence we now know that are related to the use of asbestos in our clothing and as a building material in our offices, public buildings and homes.

We can report with some encouragement that after decades where asbestos was used in every imaginable form of manufacturing from clothing to break linings to insulation to cement, the government finally took notice of the huge health crisis that was coming from that reliance by industry on asbestos and outlawed the use of asbestos in any form of manufacturing in 1985.

While this was some time ago, it is informative to look back at how long asbestos was an integral part of hundreds of manufacturing processes.  It is shocking how long it took for government to take action if the knowledge of asbestos related illnesses.  Its not as though the asbestos health crisis took us by surprise and then the legal system sprang into action.  Despite the fact that asbestos was considered to be a miracle substance, its use in fabrics and as a building material is far from new.

In fact, historians have found references to asbestos far back in ancient greet writings.  It is also instructive that in some of those same writings, it was noted that the slaves the Greeks used to mine asbestos died of mysterious diseases of the lungs.  That should have clued us in right there that this was a miracle substance that we should avoid.  But the opposite was the case.

In the 20th century, the use of asbestos literally exploded.  With the rapid rise of the middle class after World War II, the building boom to accommodate all those young families took advantage of the fire retardant nature of asbestos to make buildings safer, at least in theory.  From 1950 until it was outlawed in 1985, asbestos was the primary filler ingredient in insulation for new buildings and millions of offices, public buildings and homes were laced with asbestos in the walls and ceilings.

Even during this boom period, the rate of illnesses from asbestos poisoning continued to rise.  The primary victims of asbestos related illness were workers who were exposed to the microscopic fibers that became airborne when not contained.  It is virtually impossible to detect when you breathe in asbestos fibers so thousands of workers filled their lungs with these fibers unawares.  In that it took decades for the cancers and other illnesses to manifest themselves, many times asbestos related illnesses were disguised as other forms of deadly lung diseases.

Finally, after 35 years of allowing the rapid proliferation of asbestos use in a vast assortment of industries, the evidence became too compelling that asbestos related illnesses were reaching an epidemic level.  With the implementation of laws to stop the use of asbestos in virtually all industries, the creation of new asbestos based products came to an end.  But the installed base of asbestos products was massive.

The systematic class action suits and the huge medical costs that were incurred due to asbestos related lung cancers has become a toll that has been taken on society that was to some extent due to slow government intervention.  To this day asbestos is still being removed form public buildings and homes all over the nation.  There will come a time when asbestos will be eliminated and the deaths will stop.  We can only hope that government will never dawdle like this again on such a dire situation of public safety and that they learned a big lesson from the impact of asbestos on public safety in the 20th century.