There are four well-known cases of environmental regulations that forced engineers to use ineffective flame-retardant compounds and may have led to loss of life: the Columbia space shuttle, which had to use the less-efficient foam insulation rather that Freon (see this, this, and this), the Challenger space shuttle, which had to use defective O-ring putty after the original was banned by the EPA for containing asbestos, and the World Trade Center, which was the first major skyscraper not to use asbestos, and hence collapsed sooner than it otherwise would have. Here is another case with less drastic but much more widespread consequences:
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Here’s the scoop:

The good news is that my website surpassed 5 GB of
traffic 2/3 into the
month.  According to my webhost, this should be enough for a “high
5-digit” number of visitors.  According to my own calculations, if
each visit consumes 50K of bandwith, I should be good for approximately
100,000 hits/month.  So, passing 5GB halfway into the month means
that I was getting about 150,000 hits/month.  I say style="font-style: italic;">was because the bad news is that my
host shut down my site when I went over the 5GB bandwith limit, and
becuase of my technical arrangement, I was not able to purchare
more. 

Normally, I could just switch to a backup server, but my site happened
to go down at the same time that I was putting together a new computer,
so I can’t access any of my files either.  So, I’m out of luck
until the 12th, when my monthly quota is reset (or so I hope). 
Till then, I’ll be sitting on my ancient Pentium 233 (with MMX!)
Mandrake Linux pc and checking the FedEx tracking website every 5
minutes to see when all the components for my new computer will
arrive.  Or maybe I’ll actually go spend some time outside.

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