I received my final documents from NASA under a Freedom of Information Act request that I sent in October 2021 as part of my Masters Thesis dealing with the Space Shuttle Challenger. One of my focuses in the paper was to address whether the statement that “the Challenger tragedy on January 28, 1986 was caused…
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Having submitted my Master of History thesis on the Space Shuttle Challenger (we have three theses in this program, so don’t get excited), I decided to join the ultimate challenge for either an attorney or a historian; brevity. I need to condense my 74 pages down to a one page slide supported by a three…
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Ship breaking (scrapping) is a classic situation of developed countries (in World Systems terminology, “core states”) sucking up the good parts of technology, production, capital, and profits, while exporting the bad parts to lesser developed areas of the world (“periphery states”) willing to accept what the core countries allow, in exchange for taking risks otherwise…
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The year was 1896 (or 1897) and the scientists employed by the United States Geological Survey at the Secretary of the Interior decided to expand their annual (almost annual) discussion on asbestos. One area on which they focused during this 1896-1897 edition was the ever broadening uses of asbestos in society during that time frame.…
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On March 5, 2021, I begged out of delving into the political aspects of Chrysotile Asbestos. Rather, I just laid out the history which, of course, is my forte. https://theasbestosblog.com/?p=2052. I stand by that history today and would like to note that the world seems divided on the extent of the danger from raw, pure…
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For those of you interested in the developmental history for asbestos substitutes, I have chosen to discuss this week the EPA Model Asbestos Worker & Contractor/Supervisory Training Manual, Student’s Manual provided for abatement training in the mid-1990s. To be clear, I have a number of other publications discussing the status of inventing substitutes and the…
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As I previously mentioned, my research into the Challenger Disaster has been aided by a Clark-Yudkin Research Fellowship from the US Air Force Academy Library, Special Collections. As I used their resources this week, let me tell you about a kid in a candy shop. First, you may ask, is why would this Library have…
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The International Mesothelioma Interest Group (iMig) held a virtual conference on May 7-9, 2021 discussing all things medical (plus a little more) about Mesothelioma and other asbestos related illnesses. The scope and depth of the discussions by doctors and medical researchers around the globe was staggering; in fact, overwhelming for those of us who are…
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As my weekly Blogs focus on history, I decided that we needed one which discusses the historical use of asbestos in electrical products. Electricians are one of the trades with a long history of exposure to asbestos, whether in the U.K., https://electrical.theiet.org/wiring-matters/years/2020/81-july-2020/asbestos-guidance-for-electricians/, the United States, https://www.ecmag.com/section/safety/asbestos-workplace, or elsewhere. As mentioned in the articles, electricians are…
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Last week, we discussed the yearly publications on asbestos by the USGS side of the United States Government. In this Blog, we will go instead to the Environmental Protection Agency to discuss the geology history side of asbestos, with a focus on where it is naturally located and the risk of inhaling those asbestos fibers.…
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