Last night, Louise Slaughter, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from New York, brought a serious message to Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” Slaughter is working to ban insider trading on Capitol Hill and helped author the STOCK Act. If passed, the bill will prevent members of Congress and their staff from being able to profit from insider information. Of particular interest is the privileged knowledge Congressmen have on the status of legislation that can affect industry regulations or the stock market as a whole. It seems like common sense: the intent of the more...Over the course of a century, usage of the toxic substance asbestos in Europe has largely mirrored use of the material here in the United States. Many countries either have a ban or strict regulations on asbestos use, which has been the case for about 20 years. However, it was only this week that the first Europeans were convicted of crimes associated with the use of asbestos, which is known to cause deadly cancers such as mesothelioma. Previously, companies, not people, had been the only parties held accountable for asbestos-related damages. In Turin, Italy, a court has more...Despite the fact that society has observed negative health effects associated with asbestos all the way back to the days of the Roman Empire, the toxic substance is still in use today. In the United States, up to 3,000 cases of the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma are diagnosed each year, while approximately 5 million pounds of asbestos is processed. At Ban Asbestos Now, we are working to change that, and we're always looking for examples of how asbestos became such a major part of our society. The fact is, despite the grim realities associated with more...Protecting historic buildings is an important part of preserving our culture, but historic structures face a constant stream of threats both from both man and nature. While fights over buildings are often dramatized as battles between preservationists and construction developers, the reality is that many of the decisions made on whether or not to save a building are based mostly on the cost of maintenance, renovation or demolition. Asbestos abatement is becoming a more prevalent issue for parties looking to protect older buildings. Many of these structures, which have been more...There are plenty of examples of advertisements from the past promoting how great asbestos was. The Johns-Manville Corporation was one of the earliest adopters of asbestos-containing building materials, specifically the asbestos roofing advertised in this piece from 1919. Immediately following World War I, the United States was in a rapid state of development and asbestos was starting to become a popular building material. As the advertisement points out, “The mushroom-like growth of American communities has brought more...