For decades, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos from the town of Asbestos, Quebec, to produce fire-retardant products. Then, over time, people learned about the mineral’s devastating effects on human health. Dependent on this deadly industry for their community’s survival, the residents of Asbestos developed a unique, place-based understanding of their local environment; the risks they faced living next to the giant opencast mine; and their place within the global resource trade. This book unearths the local-global tensions that defined Asbestos’s proud and painful history to reveal the challenges similar resource communities have faced – and continue to face today.

For over a century, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos to produce a multitude of fire-retardant products from building materials to auto parts to household appliances. As use of the mineral became more widespread, medical professionals discovered it also had harmful effects on human health. Mining and manufacturing companies downplayed the risks to workers and the general public, but eventually, as the devastating nature of asbestos-related deaths became common knowledge, the industry suffered a slow, terminal decline. A Town Called Asbestos looks at how the people of Asbestos, Quebec, worked and lived alongside the opencast Jeffrey Mine, the largest chrysotile asbestos mine in the world. Dependent on this deadly industry for their community's survival, the town's residents developed a unique, place-based understanding of their local environment; the risks they faced living next to the giant opencast asbestos mine; and their place within the global resource trade. This book unearths the local-global tensions that defined Asbestos's proud and painful history and reveals the challenges similar resource communities have faced - and continue to face today.

For decades, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos from the town of Asbestos, Quebec, to produce fire-retardant products. Then, over time, people learned about the mineral's devastating effects on human health. Dependent on this deadly industry for their community's survival, the residents of Asbestos developed a unique, place-based understanding of their local environment; the risks they faced living next to the giant opencast mine; and their place within the global resource trade. This book unearths the local-global tensions that defined Asbestos's proud and painful history to reveal the challenges similar resource communities have faced - and continue to face today.

For decades, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos from the town of Asbestos, Quebec, to produce fire-retardant products. Then, over time, people learned about the mineral's devastating effects on human health. Dependent on this deadly industry for their community's survival, the residents of Asbestos developed a unique, place-based understanding of their local environment; the risks they faced living next to the giant opencast mine; and their place within the global resource trade. This book unearths the local-global tensions that defined Asbestos's proud and painful history to reveal the challenges similar resource communities have faced – and continue to face today.

On her deathbed, Sue asked her sister for one thing: to write about the connection between the industrial pollution in their hometown and the rare cancer that was killing her. Fulfilling that promise has been Nancy Nichols’ mission for more than a decade. Lake Effect is the story of her investigation. It reaches back to their childhood in Waukegan, Illinois, an industrial town on Lake Michigan once known for good factory jobs and great fishing. Now Waukegan is famous for its Superfund sites: as one resident put it, asbestos to the north, PCBs to the south. Drawing on her experience as a journalist, Nichols interviewed dozens of scientists, doctors, and environmentalists to determine if these pollutants could have played a role in her sister’s death. While researching Sue’s cancer, she discovered her own: a vicious though treatable form of pancreatic cancer. Doctors and even family urged her to forget causes and concentrate on cures, but Nichols knew that it was relentless questioning that had led to her diagnosis. And that it is questioning—by government as well as individuals—that could save other lives. Lake Effect challenges us to ask why. It is the fulfillment of a sister’s promise. And it is a call to stop the pollution that is endangering the health of all our families.

From the universally acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day comes a mesmerizing novel of completely unexpected mood and matter--a seamless, fictional universe, both wholly unrecognizable and familiar. When the public, day-to-day reality of a renowned pianist takes on a life of its own, he finds himself traversing landscapes that are by turns eerie, comical, and strangely malleable.