There's a line in the CNN story that caused me a chuckle:
"The environmental campaign group said at the time it contained "high levels of asbestos and other hazardous materials." Two activists climbed the ship's masts and hung banners reading "Absestos carrier: stay out of India."
Asbestos is a lot of things, but particularly lethal is not one of them. My summer job in college was sampling asbestos in large industrial facilities and in abatement projects, and learned a lot about the issue. (It also beat flipping burgers.) The big takeway is that asbestos is a health concern, but pretty much only if you are occupationally exposed to it for career-length durations - shipyard workers, asbestos miners, and the like. Short of that, you tended to be pretty much ok - the whole asbestos issue really centers around how absymally we as people tend to deal with
risk. Here are some numbers to internalize, and then I'll get off my soapbox:
Rate of lung cancer among the general population: ~1.8 per 100K people
Rate of lung cancer among those exposed occupationally to asbestos over a 20 year career: ~5 per 100K
OK, so asbestos clearly is not harmless. Some more numbers:
Rate of lung cancer among smokers (2 pack/day) with no other known risk factors: ~10 per 100k.
Now we're getting somewhere - smoking is about twice as hazardous as being occupationally exposed to asbestos. And by "occupational exposure", I mean without any sort of protection at all. If you were a pipefitter in a shipyard "back in the day", the airborne asbestos in compartments and holds would essentially be so thick you couldn't see the other side. That's a lot of asbestos...
Rate of lung cancer among those who were occupationally exposed to asbestos AND were smokers? ~500 per 100k.
Bingo - asbestos is what is known as a co-carcinogen (i.e., it works in conjunction with something else) - by a factor of about 50 to 100. Of course, it dind't help that if you tended to be a shipyard worker or miner back in the first half of this century you also tended to smoke. But the big takeway is that non-occupational exposure to asbestos, like "there's some wrapped around a pipe in my basement" is an additional risk that's so low it's tough to actually measure it. If anyone is still reading at this point, they can learn more here:
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/shingi/2005/12/dl/s1221-8e.pdf
Since we suck at relative and absolute risk assessment, we ended up getting rid of asbestos - which is damn shame, since it is such a useful material. Asbestos concrete is insanely strong, and asbestos brake shoes were cheap and effective. It's a great fireproofing material and fantastic insulator.
The net result is that you can have a lot of valid reasons for not wanting an old French carrier in your backyard - but fear of asbestos probably isn't a good one....
