On this episode of Distillations, we examine asbestos. Once heralded as an ideal building material — light, cheap, and heat resistant — asbestos is now recognized as a major health hazard. Remediating asbestos-laden buildings is a time consuming and costly venture, so thousands of buildings sit vacant in abandoned lots throughout the country. Bob Kenworthy tells us about one of these waste sites in Ambler, PA. Then producer Larkin Page-Jacobs brings us to Pittsburgh, PA, where an architectural wonder of a school building sits crumbling.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia.