Asbestos

Asbestos - darkometer rating : 6 - Asbestos. The substance that was long used in buildings and elsewhere for its acclaimed fire-retardant and sound-insulating qualities has been banned by most of the western world because it has a major downside: it's highly carcinogenic. The very name now conjures up horrific images of diseased lungs! Millions have been spent in recent decades on removing most of the asbestos from modern buildings – in some cases asbestos contamination meant whole buildings had to be pulled down. (Thus was the argument, though flawed, for the demolition of the GDR 's " Palace of the Republic " parliament building in Berlin .) Moreover, much of the health problems that resulted from exposure to the dust cloud that was created by the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York (see " Ground Zero ") after the 9/11 attacks is attributed to asbestos too – and the fact that hundreds of tons of the stuff were still in the buildings at the time is an issue of some controversy. Yet, here in rural Quebec, Canada , the stuff was until recently still being mined – open-cast! Many people don't even know that the stuff is a naturally occurring, mine-able substance, and even fewer are aware that there is even a town named after it! Now, you wouldn't expect this to be marketed as a tourist attraction, but remarkably, here in the little town of Asbestos opinions about the health-hazard qualities of the material differ from the world-wide consensus on its dangerousness, and so tourists are not only invited to visit the town, you can even go into the old Jeffrey Mine – the (western) world's largest asbestos mine, at 2 km wide and 350 m deep. Or you can view it from a platform that is part of the adjacent Asbestos Minerals Museum (341 Boul. St-Luc, opening times: summer only, Wed-Sat 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., admission: 4 CAD).