Asbestos
The America was at the time of its construction, the safest passenger ship in the world. Particularly in line with many of its fire protection arrangements a security level, which in many areas still can compete with modern standards it.
These high standards are in many ways their striving for perfection and absolute safety engineer William Francis Gibbs, but also the already in the 30s very progressive national regulations of the American Bureau of Shipping in the U.S. thanks to.
One can say that America's first major passenger ship in the world was, that modern fire regulations sufficed, and the several decades before they were ever unumgehbar held binding in international regulations.
Technically, America was the first so-called "Method 1" (Method 1) ship in the world. This design still in use today sat on passive fire protection by the lack of combustible materials in static construction, insulation, wall, ceiling and floor paneling.
To achieve this exceptional fire protection time fire resistant composite was named "Marinite" used in the America. This Marinite owed its fire resistance, especially a now outlawed Mineral: asbestos.
Marinite was used in sheet form for almost all of the wall panels and ceiling panels extensively throughout the ship, partly coated etc. with a thin wood veneer to replace flammable materials such as plywood. Although the asbestos was relatively bound in the Mariniteplatten consisted of mechanical stress on these boards, the risk of release of asbestos fibers into the air because the plates under stress could be porous.
Another use of asbestos on the ship was at their typical locations such as flooring or sound and heat insulation. The health risk of these panels and insulation on ocean liners were less at risk of the passengers, rather than in participating in the retrofitting shipyard workers, which motierten the boards, sawed or removed, and so a high concentration of asbestos fibers were exposed in the air. (Currently this topic is also the scrapping of contaminated ships in third world countries where workers are still exposed unprotected these hazards, which in some cases even, as in the case of the Platinum II (ex SS Independence) or the Blue Lady (formerly SS Norway and SS France), was a political issue.)