It's the Asbestos
I was in middle school during the early 80's asbestos scare. The small Catholic school I attended was a pre-war building that was expanded some time after 1945.Pipes and heating ducts were visible in most rooms. They were insulated and wrapped and painted bright colors to try and make an ugly thing looks pleasing. I suppose I was in either 6th or 7th grade. The insulated pipe in question was near the wall of windows that looked out on Lincoln Avenue in West Allis.
I was taking or returning a book from the bookshelf near the windows when my classmate Nick started to poke his pen into the pipe insulation. Apparently someone had earlier punctured the outerwrapping with something small and sharp, and now Nick was enlarging the whole.
Each time he poked the hole small white flakes came out and floated weightless in the air. It was kinda neat, so he kept doing it, making a joke that it was asbestos.
He even got the attention of the teacher (whose name I cannot remember. Nice lady. Tall, thin, emotional, ...a believer in colorful spiritual auras that a friend of hers could actually see). The teacher saw this and a look of concern came over her face. She sent Nick and I to our seats and I remember thinking it had better not be asbestos because I was breathing it in.
She sent for the janitor/caretaker. He came by looking VERY annoyed.
"Don't play with that," he muttered. The look on his face seemed to say ...a little asbestos never killed anyone danggumit! Now stop playing with it or I will get in serious trouble for knowing that it is there and doing nothing about it!
It was clear by his behavior that it was indeed asbestos and that he had known about it.
Sometime after that (could have been a month or a year, I don't know), our school had some asbestos test and I guess they were going to remove the asbestos they found.
The reason I mention this is that I've spent the weekend removing two layers of linoleum tile from my bathroom floor, pretty sure that at least one of the layers has asbestos.
The top layer appeared to have no insulation, just some paper backing and contact cement underneath. Also, neither layer was actually tile, it was linoleum sheeting. The bottom layer is the real bastard. Very strong and thick tile with a paper and tar backing.
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