asbestos and WTC

[Professor Frink]

A relative recently complained to me about the "environmentalists" whose opposition to using asbestos in the World Trade Center was responsible for the "quick" collapse of those buildings after the planes ran into them. They say if asbestos had been used, the buildings would have remained intact, or would have taken much longer to collapse, giving more people the opportunity to escape. I believe the comments were in Insight magazine, and possibly from the Rush Limbaugh show, which I know this relative listens to.

I'm wondering, since I am unable to find hard info on web:

1) Is it in fact true that asbestos was not used in the building of the WTC towers?
2) If not, why not - "environmentalists" or other?
3) If it WAS used, is there proof of that documented somewhere? I could only find results of studies of air quality in Manhattan where asbestos was one of several things they were looking for, but that doesn't prove that asbestos was used in the construction.
4) Assuming that asbestos was not used - if it HAD been used, could it have stopped the steel beams from melting, would it have slowed things down, or would it have had no real effect? I imagine that it could have slowed things down, given enough of it, but then again, I don't think anyone built this building figuring that fire so hot as to melt steel beams would be an issue.

I know some questions here are hypothetical, but any insight would be helpful. I know there are other factors too - there were many people trapped on upper floors due to fire or cut off from stairs, and of course a number of people died instantly or quickly as a result of the crashes themselves.

Thanks.

 

[DangerousBeliefs]

Silly argument.

It's very hard to design a building simply for the purpose of withstanding a fully fuel loaded mid-size jet, which is piloted to crash into a building and explode.

It would raise the costs so high that they might as well not even build the building.

From what I've read and seen, no normal building process/design could have saved the first tower. There was too much fuel, burning at too high a temperature.

By the way, the buildings actually were designed to take hits from small aircraft and survive. I believe one of them actually was struck by a small plane prior to 9/11 with no major damage.

 

[Matabiri]

Plus, of course, if asbestos had been used the whole of the city would now be covered in asbestos dust. Which would be a Bad Thing.

 

[The Don]

Of course if they'd just built the towers about 200ft to the left, both planes would have missed

 

[Iconoclast]

A relative recently complained to me about the "environmentalists" whose opposition to using asbestos in the World Trade Center was responsible for the "quick" collapse of those buildings after the planes ran into them. They say if asbestos had been used, the buildings would have remained intact, or would have taken much longer to collapse, giving more people the opportunity to escape. I believe the comments were in Insight magazine, and possibly from the Rush Limbaugh show, which I know this relative listens to.

It really annoys me when people make these assertions that the World Trade Centre was in some way an inherently flawed design, it was anything but. It had a strength to weight ratio that's still unmatched for any tall building, the flexibility inherent in the design is the very thing that stopped these building collapsing immediately they were hit. It they'd tried the same stunt with any other skyscraper in New York it would have toppled over under the impact. Consider that the first impact disconnected around 70% of the vertical columns on both the front and rear faces of the north tower, yet it stayed up with all those columns missing.

1) Is it in fact true that asbestos was not used in the building of the WTC towers?

The answer to that one is: yes and no. My understanding is that the rules were changed during the construction of that building, so one of the towers had asbestos lining up to the 80th floor or so, the other to about the 60th. The floors above those were lined with a synthetic fire retardant.

2) If not, why not - "environmentalists" or other?

Well, the Federal regulations changed to make it illegal. I have no idea if this was due to pressure from the environmental lobby.

3) If it WAS used, is there proof of that documented somewhere? I could only find results of studies of air quality in Manhattan where asbestos was one of several things they were looking for, but that doesn't prove that asbestos was used in the construction.

30 seconds of Google shouldn't be too hard for a professor.

4) Assuming that asbestos was not used - if it HAD been used, could it have stopped the steel beams from melting...

Sure, they just need to come up with an adhesive that stays put when it gets hit with a jet liner travelling at 600-odd miles per hour.

... would it have slowed things down, or would it have had no real effect? I imagine that it could have slowed things down, given enough of it, but then again, I don't think anyone built this building figuring that fire so hot as to melt steel beams would be an issue.

The point of these insulating materials is that they only delay the inevitable, if there's enough heat the beams will soften to a point that the building collapses, the fire retardant slows the rate at which the heat from a fire will be transferred into the steel. Note that the beams never melted, they just softened to a point where they could no longer support the required load.

I know some questions here are hypothetical, but any insight would be helpful.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if there were no hypothetical questions? Here's a hypothetical question for your relative: ask him or her if he considered it even a remote possibility back in 1974 -- the year the second tower was completed -- that terrorists would try to run a large airplane into the side of a building at full speed with full tanks of fuel. I don't think you'll find anyone who would truthfully tell you they thought something like that would happen. Now, those towers WERE designed to absorb the impact of the largest commercial jet (at that time), a 707 travelling at cruise speed, but I really don't think the events that took place could have reasonably been forseen 30 years ago.

 

[Chaos]

*snip*

By the way, the buildings actually were designed to take hits from small aircraft and survive. I believe one of them actually was struck by a small plane prior to 9/11 with no major damage.

I think you are talking about the Empire State Building.

It was hit in late 1945 by a bomber aircraft (B-25) that had gotten lost in thick fog. No structural damage, 2 deaths.

 

[EdipisReks]

according to nova, lining the stairwells with cement instead of dry wall would have made the difference. drywall was chosen on a cost basis. the program never mentioned asbestos.

 

[Ziggurat]

according to nova, lining the stairwells with cement instead of dry wall would have made the difference. drywall was chosen on a cost basis. the program never mentioned asbestos.

From what I recall of that episode, that would have made the difference for people above being able to escape down the stairwell, and could have lowered the number of fatalities significantly, but would probably not have prevented the collapse of the towers.

 

[EdipisReks]

From what I recall of that episode, that would have made the difference for people above being able to escape down the stairwell, and could have lowered the number of fatalities significantly, but would probably not have prevented the collapse of the towers.

yes, but i remember some line about cement linings maybe having prevented a collapse. it's been too long since i saw it to be sure, however.

 

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Professor Frink

A relative recently complained to me about the "environmentalists" whose opposition to using asbestos in the World Trade Center was responsible for the "quick" collapse of those buildings after the planes ran into them. They say if asbestos had been used, the buildings would have remained intact, or would have taken much longer to collapse, giving more people the opportunity to escape. I believe the comments were in Insight magazine, and possibly from the Rush Limbaugh show, which I know this relative listens to.

This may have been the original source

People in a weakened psychological state due to recent trauma are vulnerable to exploitation -- you can sell them stuff they would ordinarily never buy. On the date of this article, we were all moving from shock to anger over WTC, and rational thinking was somewhat scarcer than it usually is (which is already scarce enough). That probably includes the author of this article. People in pain tend to lash out, and their choice of targets don't always make a lot of sense; but then, some people have some favorite targets they like to lash out at every chance they get, no matter what else is going on.

Rational thinking tends to be harder work than just letting your emotions run, so a lot of people go with that most of the time anyway; this can produce all kinds of absurd ideas. It can be hard to tell whether somebody spewing this sort of nonsense is actually one of these 'gut-thinkers' (which I regard as unfortunate but forgivable) or someone who knows better, and is just working them (which I regard as utterly contemptible).

Beyond those interesting psychological aspects, I hardly think the topic worthy of much discussion, but if pressed I suppose I would mention something about the potential death toll, over (say) scores of years, from permitting widespread use of a substance whose toxicity is well established.

 

[Mr. Skinny]

From what I recall of that episode, that would have made the difference for people above being able to escape down the stairwell, and could have lowered the number of fatalities significantly, but would probably not have prevented the collapse of the towers.

My recollection matches yours Ziggurat. Sturdier construction of the stairwells would have made a difference for escape, but really had no effect on the structural intregrity of the building.

As to the use of asbestos or other fire retardant on the structural steel........the Nova show seemed to indicate that the collision of the aircraft with the structure literally stripped the fireproofing from the structural steel by mechanical action....sorta like sandblasting.

I also recall that the towers were, in fact, designed to withstand the collision of the largest commercial aircraft in the air at the time they were constructed.

I was amazed that the structure didn't collapse immediately, but the Nova show indicated that the design allowed the load to be transferred quite efficiently to the remaining structural elements.

In my opinion, the use or non-use of asbestos is moot. The mechanical removal of any protective coating from the structural steel, combined with the overwhelming heat generated initially by the jet fuel, and later by the building contents, heated the steel to the point where it became plastic, and therefore failed.

 

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Even if the towers did not fall they would have taken them down anyway I think.

 

[ktesibios]

Even if the towers did not fall they would have taken them down anyway I think.

You're probably right. No Licenses and Inspections Department on Earth could have allowed structures so grievously damaged to be reoccupied, and how would one go about trying to repair such an awful shambles a thousand feet above the ground? From the moment the planes hit, those buildings were, in the sense of being space organized for human use, dead.

I recall the aftermath of the Meridian Bank building fire in Philadelphia. That was a fire that broke out on a floor that was being remodeled; it involved only three floors of a much smaller building and there was no demonstrable structural damage. But there were doubts about the continued safety of the building, and that was enough to prevent it from being reoccupied.

Lawyers for the city, the owners and the insurers spent the next seven years wrangling about what the best thing to do would be (proposals included repair, dismantling the building down through the fire floors and making it into a shorter building, and demolishing the whole thing) and who should pay for the work.

Ultimately, the building was demolished. They basically started at the top and disassembled it.

 

[davefoc]

The discussion I have seen compared the survivability of steel beam construction like the world trace center to reinforced concrete construction like the twin towers in Malaysia. There is some thought that the reinforced concrete structures might have remained standing after such an event.

This is a link to a discussion of the collapse of the WTC.
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html

The basic idea is that the attachment of the floors to the support columns was weakened by the fire to the point that the attachment failed. A theory that I have seen is that the support beams required the floors for stability so when a few floors gave way the support beams crumpled which allowed the floors above to come crashing down on the rest of the building.

 

[xouper]

The Don: Of course if they'd just built the towers about 200ft to the left, both planes would have missed