I see this in the news often when old ships retiring or being scrapped comes up. Why are ships so full of toxic / asbestos material, compared to other typical industrial things?
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Because fire aboard is absolute worst case scenario for a ship at sea. The long-term ill effects of asbestos were historically considered acceptable as a trade-off to reduce the much more immediate threat of a fire spreading aboard that could result in trapped crew members, explosions, or an order to abandon ship.
Edit: I should’ve explained: asbestos is a very effective fire-retardant.
To my knowledge, Asbestos is no longer used on any vessels built in a very long time. There are other equivalent substitutes. It’s the older ships that have all the steam piping and exhaust manifolds wrapped in asbestos and it’s expensive to safely remove.
If you’re referencing the CNN highlight of the Brazilian aircraft carrier *Sao Paulo,* a lot of it had to do with the fact that she’s 60 years old. She was commissioned in 1963 (she used to be the French aircraft carrier *Foch*) and asbestos was used *extensively* between the 1940s and 1970s (the US banned it’s use in 1977) before we knew how dangerous is was. Asbestos makes a *really* good fire retardant, and being fireproof in houses and ships is a good thing.
Not necessarily more than old buildings, there are/were a lot of buildings with asbestos in them. Many have already had it removed years ago due to legal requirements. In other cases the asbestos is safe so long as it isn’t disturbed (cut or drilled into), so it can stay in the building.
Asbestos was used on a lot of ships because most large ships have complex engines that require insulation, and a cheap effective form of insulation was asbestos. Depending on the environment, ships also needed insulation to keep people inside warm or cool.
Unlike buildings, ships don’t tend to last for centuries, so there are a lot of older ships that need to be disposed of, and which are full of asbestos. Cutting apart a ship full of asbestos is tricky, because it will disturb the asbestos and put asbestos particles into the air where workers can breath them unless the asbestos is carefully removed first.
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