CHRYSOTILE ASBESTOS WOULD SAVE LIVES
(AP) New York - Researcher E. Charters was quoted today as saying at a conference on Building and Fire Safety Codes before the Frank Lloyd Wright Architectural Society of America, that "Asbestos fire safety products were once the bulwark of public building fire safety. In the past two decades we have seen a lack of knowledge, and knee-jerk reactionary regulation make public buildings all over North America dangerous. No more graphic example bears this out than the tragedy of the attack on the WTC and the subsequent fire."
Mr. Charters, a former Canadian Mining Engineer for the last quarter of a century said he was uniquely qualified to judge the brouhaha surrounding asbestos by the panic reaction that was associated with the unjustified removal of Chrysotile Asbestos in public buildings and the replacement with the fundamentally less protective Gypsum products.
"We have had to deal with the broad brush techniques of government in assessing hazards in the Mining Industry. They went from total lack of action and recognition of true hazards to the large scale loose association of pariah substances with all sorts of benign products, without so much as a study. Because of some completely ill-educated opinion coming from Unions in the USA and some guesswork by dust-illiterate so-called enviromental engineers in the US, our government banned the use of Aluminum dust prophylaxis in Canadian Gold mines. Then, twenty years later, they were surprised to see the incidence of silicosis on the rise, that this treatment was designed to prevent. In one of the few prolific gold mining areas of Canada, Hemlo Ontario, silicosis is becoming epidemic.
The McIntyre foundation in Canada had studied the matter for ten years in the 1920's and made the recommendations that made the Aluminum dust treatment common in Canadian mines. This, and the increase in mine ventilation, was widely credited for the almost complete drop off of new silicosis cases in underground mines in Canada since that time. The only places that did still got silicosis cases was the Iron mining industry of Quebec, where Silica exposure was heavy and the treatment was not in use.
So what does the government do? After 50 years of favourable statistics, they do away with the program with an attendant whispering campaign, launched by people who had never seen the usage or results of the aluminum treatment, the Americans.
No doubt the Canadian regulators will scratch their heads and wonder how it is that the beast has resurfaced, when all their pundits were adamant that the low incidence of silicosis in Canadian gold mining had to be for other reasons than the Aluminum treatment."
"Similarly", Mr. Charters went on to say, "We now are seeing the results of prejudice against a benign and harmless minerals with great safety benefits, Chrysotile Asbestos. It was widely used in schools and public buildings throughout the world for one reason. In event of serious fire it was the only material that was found could forestall the spread of heat and ignition, long enough for the public to escape these structures. Governments caved into lobbyists and pressure groups in the 1960's who railed against the high cancer rates in Asbestos mines and mills. But when they placed stringent bans on the usage, and mining of Asbestos, they failed to comprehend or even adress that Asbestos is not one mineral but several with widely varying characteristics from a health standpoint. In all cases where the mineral was associated with health concerns, the species was short fibre Blue Asbestos, called Crocodilite by mineralogists. But the long fibre type of Asbestos, called Chrysotile or Serpentine, was never associated with a single case of Asbestosis.
Work the McIntyre foundation had done 30 years before these bans had explained why certain dusts are harmful. The harm created by dust in the lungs is partly effected because of its size. When dust is extremely fine, in the 0.5 to 2 micron range, its removal from the lungs cannnot be effected naturally. The dust thus accumulates to chemically and physically impair lung function. Crocodilite has this propensity of creating very fine dust upon grinding. Chrysotile Asbestos, on the other hand cannot create such fine dust as its fibres are extremely cohesive and macroscopic. The government regulators ignored these facts and the statistics exonerating Chrysotile and simply labeled all Asbestos dangerous.
Even when researchers pointed out that by using wet processes in treating Crocodilite and binding it with resins, or other carriers, that even that substance could be used safely, the government would hear none of it. Bad environmental work place practices had taken their toll and forever branded these useful rock products from the workplace and from protecting people."
"If these practices of injudicious reaction and precipitous unscientific associations of regulators cannot be curbed then we run the risk of ill-educated public opinion fed by fear and lawyers governing our every decision of public policy. I hesitate to see how decent civil protection can be achieved without study, careful thought and cautious action of scientific minds.
If just cost were not the overriding factor in building the WTC and a proper risk-benefit analysis had been done of comparison of lives lost through supposed risk by exposure to the protective substances against the real risk of fire hazard, then the WTC would not have been built like it was, and several thousand people may not have died. For that many people have died by Mesothelioma in the same time, the building's engineers would have had to blow finely divided Crocodilite through the ventilation system in quantity for all the ensuing time since the building was built.
It is high time we returned to a reasonable balance in industry, with regards to acceptable ratios of risk, and benefit. It would be possible to spend considerable money in order to make even such a risky substance as Blue Asbestos safe as construction material, before it became prohibitive in light of the risks in not using it. We use every day in Industry substance of some considerable risk safely. Phosgene gas, cyanide, high molarity acids, dynamite, and even fiberglass insulation, all have their considerable risks, all have their considerable benefits. Would we were to ban any of them because of perceived safety threat, we would be much the poorer. Without accepting that safety is a matter of implementation of a substance or practice, not the inherent character of the substance we will always operate in a primitive and unprogressive manner, doing irreparable harm to our real safety and the quality of our lives.
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