Overview

For much of the industrial era, asbestos was a widely acclaimed benchmark material. During its heyday, it was manufactured into nearly three thousand different products, most of which protected life and property from heat, flame, and electricity. It was used in virtually every industry from hotel keeping to military technology to chemical manufacturing, and was integral to building construction from shacks to skyscrapers in every community across the United States. Beginning in the mid-1960s, however, this once popular mineral began a rapid fall from grace as growing attention to the serious health risks associated with it began to overshadow the protections and benefits it provided. In this thought-provoking and controversial book, Rachel Maines challenges the recent vilification of asbestos by providing a historical perspective on Americans' changing perceptions about risk. She suggests that the very success of asbestos and other fire-prevention technologies in containing deadly blazes has led to a sort of historical amnesia about the very risks they were supposed to reduce. Asbestos and Fire is not only the most thoroughly researched and balanced look at the history of asbestos, it is also an important contribution to a larger debate that considers how the risks of technological solutions should be evaluated. As technology offers us ever-increasing opportunities to protect and prevent, Maines urges that learning to accept and effectively address the unintended consequences of technological innovations is a growing part of our collective responsibility.

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9780813535753

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"""Against a backdrop in which the mere mention of 'asbestos' strikes fear, Rachel Maines reminds readers of the valuable role asbestos has played as an insulating and fire-stopping material. She shows the complexity of technological solutions through the example of asbestos: how and why a material developed for the purpose of saving lives was withdrawn from the market when its risks were perceived to outweigh its benefits. Anyone wanting to know about the history of asbestos use will find this book to be an excellent reference."" - Sara E. Wermiel, Ph.D., author of The Fireproof Building: Technology and Public Safety in the Nineteenth-Century American City"""

Against a backdrop in which the mere mention of 'asbestos' strikes fear, Rachel Maines reminds readers of the valuable role asbestos has played as an insulating and fire-stopping material. She shows the complexity of technological solutions through the example of asbestos: how and why a material developed for the purpose of saving lives was withdrawn from the market when its risks were perceived to outweigh its benefits. Anyone wanting to know about the history of asbestos use will find this book to be an excellent reference. - Sara E. Wermiel, Ph.D., author of The Fireproof Building: Technology and Public Safety in the Nineteenth-Century American City

""Against a backdrop in which the mere mention of 'asbestos' strikes fear, Rachel Maines reminds readers of the valuable role asbestos has played as an insulating and fire-stopping material. She shows the complexity of technological solutions through the example of asbestos: how and why a material developed for the purpose of saving lives was withdrawn from the market when its risks were perceived to outweigh its benefits. Anyone wanting to know about the history of asbestos use will find this book to be an excellent reference."" - Sara E. Wermiel, Ph.D., author of The Fireproof Building: Technology and Public Safety in the Nineteenth-Century American City""

Author Information

Rachel Maines holds a Ph.D. in history of technology from Carnegie Mellon University and is the author of The Technology of Orgasm.

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