EDITOR'S NOTES Way back in the early 1980s, when I had a lot more hair and it wasn't so grey, I got a tip that the San Francisco school district had a serious problem with asbestos contamination. My colleague Jim Balderston and I checked it out, and yes indeed — the toxic stuff was in so many classrooms that thousands of students were at risk.
After we broke that news, and the district started scrambling to clean up the mess, we asked ourselves: How were things allowed to get to that point? Who screwed up? Who let it happen?Read more »