Breaking ships at the end of their lives (versus sinking them to be a reef in the Ocean or turning them into museums) is big business with a lot of battles between purchasers/countries that want the business and steel against environmental and labor groups. Publicity matters; a lot. Just Google ” aircraft carrier San Paulo”…
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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:…
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What do you get when you combine asbestos, one of the most dangerous minerals in the world, https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/deadliest-minerals-and-gemstones.html (number 3 per this article) with ship breaking in Bangladesh, called by at least one article as “the most dangerous job on the plant.” Certainly a topic worth discussing and, for me, worth devoting the next 9…
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The below asbestos historical discussion contained in the July 1997 edition of Scientific American in “Asbestos Revisited” by James Alleman and Brooks Mossman discusses the ancient mineral background in much more detail than typical similar discourses and is worthy of a blog. That being said, the article contains one significant mistake: Pages 74-75 at the…
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The oldest United States National Electric Code in my collection is from 1896. It begins on page 373 of the 1896 book authored by N. Hawkins entitled New Catechism of Electricity: A Practical Treatise by stating that the National Code is the “wiremen’s Bible.” I have four original hard copies of this book should anyone…
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History requires a lot of digging and working through old documents. Early in my career, I was curious and interested in how the use of asbestos fibers in automobile brake friction material came about. To support this research, I purchased a number of automobile manuals and instructions. These are but a few of the manuals…
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Let us start of today with a scientific formula. The risk of bad or incomplete asbestos history = increasing the risk of mistakes, which leads to > than necessary bad science, law, and errors. I think that we have all been in the room when an otherwise knowledgeable person says something that sounds a bit…
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When it comes to asbestos related historical science, we have a number of failures that confuse rather than clarify. Just look at my blog from March 5, 2021 entitled “The Disappearing Blog on Chrysotile Asbestos” posted at https://theasbestosblog.com/?p=2052 for a discussion on some of these issues. The scientific literature on whether asbestos related cancers arising…
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As many of you have figured out, I have an extensive repository of historical asbestos related documents. The large number of diverse documents provides me the opportunity to help broaden our collective knowledge. Let’s go English this week with a 1985 publication by Sir Richard Doll which is a great primer for people trying to…
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I am taking this week off to be with family. I looked through my 70 plus blogs over the last year and one-half, and decided to re-post the one which I believe is the most thought provoking: my Challenger tragedy research. You can find it at https://theasbestosblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Space-Shuttle-Challenger-Thesis-1282022.pdf. This is my first of three such research…
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