The shadow of death

摘要

Once upon a time, firemen in asbestos suits rescued children from burning buildings. Curtains had asbestos woven into them to prevent house fires. Every ironing board had an asbestos panel to rest the iron on. During the war, the gas masks that were issued to everybody in the country, man, woman and child, had a filter containing, you guessed it, asbestos. Over the years the asbestos in gas masks must have killed more people than the Luftwaffe. Anybody dealing with the tiniest amount of the stuff now arrives on site dressed as an astronaut; in the past, nobody wore any protective equipment whatsoever.