Rachel P. Maines

Author Rachel Maines is no stranger to books on controversial technologies. In Asbestos and Fire, she bucks “conventional wisdom” on asbestos, arguing quite convincingly that the material saved many more lives through its fire-resistant properties than through its health risks from inhalation.


Maines starts by giving the history of the material from ancient times, noting that the Greek άσβεστος literally means “unquenchable”, leading many classical and medieval authors (who had obviously no actual experience with asbestos) to describe it as a substance that could not extinguished once lit, rather than the other way around. Even though asbestos had been mined in Greece, Cyprus and Syria during Classical and Hellenistic times, later authors were unaware of the source; theories included fibers from a flax-like plant and the fur of a giant rat that lived in volcanoes. The only ancient applications were novelties items – napkins that could be cleaning by throwing them into a fire, shrouds for cremated bodies (to keep the cremains separate from the fuel, for later recovery), and everlasting oil-lamp wicks.


By the Industrial Revolution, asbestos had no uses at all except as a scientific curiosity. Maines switches her emphasis to fires, starting with theater fires. In 1811, a theater fire in Richmond, Virginia killed 68 people, including the state governor (ironically, free blacks attending the performance escaped with few casualties, since there were in an isolated section with its own exit door). The list goes on: 1670 died in a theater fire in Quangzhou, in 1845; 200 in Quebec in 1846; 43 in Livorno in 1857; 900 in Shanghai in 1871; 600 in Tientsin in 1872; 283 in Brooklyn in 1876; 40 in Ahmednuggar in 1878, 200 in Nice in 1881, 1000 in Vienna in 1881, 170 in Paris in 1887 (at the Opèra Comique, presumably started by the Phantom); 186 in Exeter in 1887; 170 in Oporto in 1888, 650 in Kyoeng in 1888; 30 in Seattle in 1889; 2000 in Kamli in 1893; 22 in Baltimore in 1896; 131 in Paris in 1897, and 603 in Chicago in 1903. All these where the cause is known started when scenery was ignited by the lighting; the large open area of a theater makes it easy for flames to spread. The solution proposed was a fireproof curtain that could be lowered to separate the stage from the audience. Iron or steel curtains were tried but were so heavy they required power assisted lowering equipment and often jammed in the tracks. Asbestos proved to be the answer – lightweight and flexible enough to be rolled up. Building codes began to require asbestos curtains in theaters, and Maines quotes some. (She does go a little too far here, claiming that one of the reasons for massive fatality counts in theater fires was the “toxic” paints used for scenery. While it’s true that many of the paints used in the 18th and 19th century were full of heavy metals, the amount of lead, arsenic and antimony released by burning scenery is a trivial inhalation risk compared to carbon monoxide and other more familiar combustion products).


Other buildings also didn’t fare well – schools, night clubs and hotels all went up with regularity. Fire codes and insurance companies all began specifying asbestos “or equivalent” for things like fireproof stairway and egress pathway enclosures, ductwork, false ceilings, wall penetrations for steam and electric lines, and just about anywhere else that it might be useful. The trouble with the “or equivalent” phrase was that there just wasn’t anything with the combination of zero flame spread, low heat conductivity, flexibility and ease of manufacture as asbestos. Ironically, civilian fire deaths increased during WWII because asbestos was a strategic mineral and was prohibited from most nonmilitary uses. If anything, Maines goes a little overboard here, quoting and citing extensively from fire codes, fire prevention publications, and insurance company rules.


Her final chapter, alas, is a little uneven. Here she takes on the asbestos tort industry; her main point is the assertion that if the United States had national health insurance, almost all asbestos litigation would be eliminated. I’m not at all sure that I buy that. She does do some good service in pointing out the more egregious claims of asbestos lawyers – that the harmful effects of breathing asbestos were known to Pliny (no such statement appears in any of Pliny’s works), that there were many substitutes for asbestos (the asbestos lawyer making this claim cites numerous patents for fireproofing material as if a patent was the same as a tested material in production), and that builders used asbestos because it was cheap (in fact, as Maines documents, asbestos was often resisted because it was expensive. After the 603-fatality Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago in 1903, the charred remains of the supposedly “asbestos” stage curtain turned out to be some sort of plant fiber). She also points out that the asbestos tort industry acts as if asbestos had no beneficial properties at all and the standard texts don’t even mention its appearance in building codes. However, she herself repeats the claim that Irving Selikoff, who started the asbestos tort industry, didn’t have a medical degree (this has been debunked) and she doesn’t marshal her arguments very well. I personally think one of the best rebuttals to the frequent claim that people who do not buy the asbestos litany are “in the pay” of asbestos firms is that the asbestos tort industry and asbestos abatement industry are much larger and better financed than the asbestos manufacturing industry was; Maines never mentions this.


The book is extensively diagrammed and footnoted, but has no bibliography (although you can extract all the relevant references from the text and notes). All in all, well worth it; I think I’m going to read Maines’ other book (The Technology of Orgasm). Although maybe not on the bus.… (altro)

Maines, the author of the wonderful Technologies of Orgasm, here turns to hobbies, especially needlecrafts, and the way they make what was once work into a pleasure activity, with the aid of technologies that are designed and marketed to consumers who are interested in the hedonic value of the activity, not pure efficiency (whatever that might mean)—so they buy, for example, wooden knitting needles because those feel better in the hand rather than metal ones that allow faster knitting, or they buy sewing machines to do seams but don’t generally like machine embroidery. The book is really provocative, but far too short (128 p. text) to do more than hint at the issues of the extent to which, for example, manufacturers and retailers were able to drive or shape consumer demand, or what consumers thought of doing things for pleasure that used to be necessities. Maines suggests intriguing connections between female needlecraft hobbies and male hobbies (the cover even depicts a guy at an outdoor grill, which may say more about what the publisher thought would sell books than anything else), but again doesn’t get beyond suggestion. As a participant in what’s essentially a handcrafting hobby, I was hungry for insight, but despite what I learned I stayed hungry.… (altro)