Today's NY Times is reporting the following article (the link is good
for one week):
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/nyregion/14TOWE.html?searchpv=nytToday
There have been questions raised--NOT answered--about the quality of
the fireproofing used in the World Trade Center Twin Towers, both the
product used and how it was applied. I only raise this topic in the
context of environmental ethics because of the article's mention that
when the towers were being built, the contractors were using an early
version of a fiber-based, asbestos-free fireproofing material.
Investigators are now trying to figure out if the fireproofing
material itself might have been faulty, whether the fact that it was
applied to rusty steel was a factor in its failure, and a number of
other things.
In the book we've been discussing this week, Wildavasky mentions that
when bans of substances such as asbestos occur, there may be
unforeseen public health risks and consequences, just as there are
indeterminate risks involved with the substances themselves. Somehow
the 'radical contingency of existence' comes to mind when I think of
the WTC being built in that period of transition from an asbestos to
a non-asbestos world . . . . fwiw.
-j
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