Killing Me Slowly Japan
It was probably several months ago that the word アズベスト began being thrown around the office. Next many meetings lasting several hours began about アズベスト (thankfully I didn’t have to attend). When I went home at night, the evening news seemed to have a least one segment on アズベスト for a least a month. All the while I’m sitting here in the office watching these scramble meetings and seeing the attention it’s getting on the news and I can only think two things “They are only figuring this out just now!!??” and “That’s Japan.”
What is アズベスト you ask (at least those of you not in the katakana know)? Asbestos. Apparently there’s been some kind of cover-up on the whole asbestos causing cancer thing since something like 1989. Now I don’t know how they managed to do this, in fact it’s down right unfathomable that they could keep this information away from the public. Or maybe everyone has known but government just turned a blind eye towards fixing things because no one raised a stink, I don’t know. One thing is for certain though: the mess has finally hit the fan and governments are starting to take action.
One day, after one of the アズベスト meetings, the members all came back to the stairwell that I walk up and down every workday. They walked up about half way to the landing between the next floor, just high enough to reach the back of the further ascending stairs. Seeing this rather large gathering I decided to go investigate too. I joined in just in time to see one of them reach up and lightly scrape the back of the ascending stairwell and then see the resulting loose power easily come off onto his finger. アズベスト.
Holy shit. Going through my own family’s “asbestos scare” in the 80’s / 90’s and hearing about it being found and removed at various places, especially the schools, during that time I guess made me extra sensitive to the presence of asbestos. But seeing it in such a way that easily turns into an airborne powder was a little more frightening.
After the frequency of the asbestos meetings greatly subsided, little machines were sat in the stairwell. They had a clear hose running from the machine to a little nozzle at waist height on a stand. Everyone wondered what those machines could possibly be. I thought it was quite obvious they were testing the air for asbestos and when I told my coworkers they gave me the “It could be, but we won’t completely agree yet” response. Finally, at the beginning of this December, each stairwell was closed off for a one week period for asbestos removal.
I guess the fact that they decided to close off the stairwell means they did find asbestos in the air there. I probably won’t see any results of this for many years, assuming I’m even affected, but as I sit here with a slightly mysterious dry cough, I can’t help but think that Japan is going have a lasting impression on me for many years to come.