Standing on the rim of the world’s largest open pit asbestos mine reveals a panoramic scene. Opened in the late 1800s, it is about half the size of the island of Manhattan and the source of untold tons of asbestos. The pit descends about 1,000 feet down slopes created by terraced access roads. Big mining trucks haul out fibrous, gray, raw asbestos. A billboard put up by Uralasbest in Asbest proclaims “Asbestos is our Future”. In the Russian region of Sverdlovsk Oblast, on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains, there is a......

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