Al Tompkins livens up a dry topic

Something wonderful happened yesterday morning. MATCOR was mentioned in Al's Morning Meeting, a compendium of ideas and story excerpts from a variety of Web sites. Al pointed out the seriousness of our nation's corroding infrastructure, and encouraged journalists to take a harder look.

Who is Al? Why does his opinion matter? And why should we in the corrosion business care? That's what I wanted to know.

My PR team clued me in. Apparently, Al's column is required reading for them, and legions of journalists around the globe.

We who work in this business -- from our partners to our competitors and our customers -- know that corrosion isn't a sexy topic. It's rarely top of mind, especially in the mainstream media.

For a guy like Al to take the time to thoughtfully consider this topic, and its implications, is a rare event that should be savored. Hopefully his bringing corrosion to the forefront will spark some old fashioned investigative journalism -- reporting that could expose what we industry insiders know is a ticking time bomb across this great nation, and around the world.

Our infrastructure is aging. With age comes corrosion. And with corrosion comes failure. The jury is still out on the cause of the New York pipeline explosion. But what happened could have been caused by corrosion, and should be used to illustrate the risk to people and economies.

Since mentioning MATCOR in his column, we’ve received a number of calls from journalists looking into corrosion stories. THANK YOU, AL TOMPKINS, for making that happen, and for devoting some precious time and space to call attention to this serious (and in our opinion, overlooked) issue.

I also want to invite anyone who wants more information on this topic to contact me, either by commenting here, or writing to me.