Asbestos, Ship Breaking in Bangladesh, and World-Systems Analysis: Standing on the Shoulders of Those who have come before me.

As I dig into the historical research concerning these seemingly independent concepts and begin to conceptualize my analysis, I have found one scholar who’s work has directly touched on all three of these issues. R. Scott Frey authored a paper entitled “The International Traffic in Asbestos” in 2006 and authored “Breaking Ships in the World-System: An Analysis of Two Ship Breaking Capital, Alang-Sosiya, India and Chittagong, Bangladesh” in 2015. Unfortunately, Professor of Sociology Frey of the University of Tennessee Knoxville passed away in 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Scott_Frey. Professor Frey was a specialist in environmental sociology focusing on Asia and, as stated in this obituary, was a prolific writer and researcher. https://news.utk.edu/2019/01/02/in-memoriam-r-scott-frey/

Professor Frey’s 2006 analysis on asbestos wasn’t, in my opinion, ground breaking. Rather, it was a solid analysis on World-Systems for transferring asbestos health and safety risks to third world countries as the core sellers (places like Canada) had lost its first world markets (places like the United States) and so needed to find new customers (primarily in developing countries with a strong need to building materials and weak environmental laws).

Professor Frey in this paper primarily described the problems, but didn’t come up with potential solutions. In summary, a good starting point.

The 2015 article, on the other-hand, was exceptional. Although it mentioned asbestos as one of the environmental and health issues arising from ship breaking, the primary focus was on the World-Systems analysis on a much broader range of environmental and health issues, and what those issues mean for the world. Although Professor Frey’s analysis was all based on secondary source material, it is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in ship breaking, World-Systems analysis, or exporting toxic torts to third world countries.

My goal is to use Professor Frey’s work as a foundation for my analysis and recommendations, and to keep in mind how fortunate we are to have such an ability to build.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments, or would like to see complete copies of the referenced articles. I can be reached at TheAsbestosBlog@gmail.com. Thanks. Marty