On the 1-handles of the product for a simply connected open 3-manifold

Although π 1 ∞ V 3 is an obstruction for killing stably the 1-handles of an open simply connected 3-manifold V 3 , one can always get rid of the 1-handles of V 3 × B n , for high enough n, at the price of a certain nonmetrizable slackening of the topology.