In recent decades, the vast majority of construction

The language "calls into question" in the question stem tells us that this is a Weaken question. We're trying to undermine the argument, and the way we do that is by attacking the arguments assumption.

Now, in many cases, there's a few steps to get to the argument's assumption--we'd spot the conclusion, find the evidence used by the author to back up that conclusion, and then look for shifts in scope and changes in terminology.

But here, we don't need to do any of that! This is a classic GMAT argument structure: causality. The author is arguing that because asbestos publicity and asbestos disuse occurred around the same time, that negative publicity must be the cause for asbestos falling out of favor. Whenever the author concludes that X leads to why, the author's assumption is very simple: "There is no better or alternative explanation."

So, we want to weaken that assumption. Which answer choice provides an alternate explanation? Which answer choice suggests that there is an alternate reason for asbestos to fall out of construction companies' favor?

That's (E)--there's a cheaper alternative to asbestos available now! And since that matches our prediction perfectly, that's the answer.

Hope this helps!