I once worked with an environmental engineer who had a grandfather that worked at Wittenoom. He passed away due to mesothelioma, but her father who grew up there has not been affected, which is quite amazing given the circumstances. I have seen footage from Wittenoom of children playing in mounds of asbestos.
Today there are two general types of legacy asbestos products, friable and non-friable. Generally non-friable products such as asbestos-cement sheeting are considered safe to leave in place and are only dangerous when cut, broken or otherwise damaged. Friable products such as pipe lagging are very dangerous as they easily break down into fibers that can be inhaled.
It can be found in many old homes in odd places. I was removing some old putty around a window and a friend of mine who was an asbestos hygienist suggested that it could contain asbestos and took a sample for testing (all clear thankfully).
In another instance I worked on a demolition of a 1960's era multistory apartment complex. During construction of the concrete core walls the builder had used asbestos in the formwork, leaving some embedded in the wall at regular intervals. This meant that all of demolition waste was considered contaminated and was going to a special dump at a huge cost.
Finally, there was an infamous case in Canberra, Australia where a company called Mr Fluffy [1] installed loose friable asbestos as insulation in homes. A cleanup program in the 90's did not adequately fix the problem and so in 2014 the government finally purchased affected properties and demolished the houses.
Asbestos is bad stuff, but exposure causing mesothelioma seems to be a bit like Russian roulette. You might get it, you might not. But if you do, you will die.
From what I know and was also told by several doctors when a family member was dying of mesothelioma in his early 70's (despite never having worked more than casually a few times around asbestos in his much younger years), the illness is strongly suspected of being tied to a genetic predisposition that only affects a certain small percentage of people.
If one has this genetic disposition, it's apparently possible that even moderate or modest exposure early in life is enough to cause the (extremely deadly and almost impossible to treat) disease at some point later in life. This point can come years or decades after exposure.
And if one isn't predisposed, then even heavy exposure to asbestos probably won't cause mesothelioma. It is of course still possible to get other really shitty lung problems from the mineral regardless of genetic factors, but meso itself seems to be very selective. This apparently is why it's relatively rare despite widespread asbestos use for decades before recent years in much of the world.
> Do some people's lungs gradually clear away the asbestos particles more effectively than others'?
At least in terms of damage to the lungs, from what I gather (by reading wikipedia!) it's the degree of inflammatory response to the asbestos that is critical, not the presence of the asbestos itself. If your body thinks 'asbestos, oh shit!' and mounts a big response to attempt to wall off the particles etc. then you are in trouble.
Fun fact: asbestos is blowing around in the air pretty much everywhere at some level.
Fun fact: asbestos is blowing around in the air pretty much everywhere at some level.
Since it is naturally occurring, it could be that some sort of natural selection has happened over time to cause people who live in naturally asbestos-rich areas to develop far greater immunity to its presence.
One thing I always find interesting about Wittenoom Mine is that it's construction and then sale to CSR seems to be the seed capital for Lang Hancock and his daughter Gina Rinehart to build a giant empire in iron ore mining.
Gina Rinehart is the wealthiest person in Australia.
One of my dads friends had a business installing asbestos siding in the 1960's. He's in his 80's and seems fine. On the other hand his wife died of mesothelioma 20 years ago.
My father worked delivering asbestos, every one of his co-workers that did front line deliveries are dead, mostly lung health related issues seemingly related to asbestos. My dad is in his 60's and fine so far.
My uncle spent some weeks doing DIY projects with asbestos. Hes has mesothelioma now. Turns out he has (along with many in our family) a genetic disorder that makes certain cancers like mesothelioma much more likely.
Its a big pity that access to the region is tainted by the mining operations that made the area toxic, because Wittenoom and the gorges in the region are an absolutely astonishing part of the world - so much history of the original land owners in the area.
I visited it on school trips as a kid, and I'll never forget the sight of so many indigenous relics scrolling past the bus window. To think that it is all off-limits now, due to asbestos, is a real tragedy. Australia has so many of these kinds of deeply rich, deeply interesting sights that are tucked away behind a mining company's fence ..
So, its not like asbestos - in Australia - is only killing people. Its also masking a very significant degree of cultural heritage from the current generation that could benefit from understanding it more ..
Build on this even in 1942, just prior to the discovery of the link to Mesothelioma, we were busily figuring out every use case we could for asbestos - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC8L8ooBSgQ&t=1m8s
Despite the recognition of Mesothelioma in the early 1900s it took almost 40 years to associate the disease with Asbestos.
My understanding is that this was due to the 10 - 40 year average post exposure timeline for Mesothelioma to show up.
If Asbestos was discovered today would our contemporary understanding of materials science & safety prevent us from spinning up factories and use cases like this?
At least we think about it. The miracle material, graphene, has properties that could potentially cause problems when breathed in [0]. So at least we know what to look for and can mitigate.
That said, who knows what other material might come about that causes problems 40 years later in a different way. We will learn when it comes but at least we’re starting to be more aware of potential problems.
If this guy is to be believed, asbestos and other "amphiboles" are different from nanotubes insofar as they have small metal/iron content, which you can imagine reacting with oxygen in the lungs in a harmful way that something made from pure carbon may not.
If we know that certain materials have certain negative repercussions, can we extrapolate any of that learning to new materials to see if they have similar properties?
This sounded interesting so I looked it up; it seems it might be a popular misconception?
> The term asbestos is traceable to Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder's manuscript Natural History and his use of the term asbestinon, meaning "unquenchable". While Pliny or his nephew Pliny the Younger is popularly credited with recognising the detrimental effects of asbestos on human beings, examination of the primary sources reveals no support for either claim.
I've found many references to Pliny and Strabo around the web, but as the Wikipedia fragment implies yet no actual quotation about its dangers. It seems like a very specific myth to just come up though; my interest remains. Do let me know if you know more about this.
De re Metallica 1500's on the other hand mentions dangers to workers and environmental harm that mining caused. I've also seen references to the Romans banning lead smelting in Italy. Better to force slaves to do that work at the fringes of the empire than give up productive farmland close to Rome.
"But besides this, the strongest argument of the detractors is that the fields are devastated by mining operations, for which reason formerly Italians were warned by law that no one should dig the earth for metals and so injure their very fertile fields, their vineyards, and their olive groves. Also they argue that the woods and groves are cut down, for there is need of an endless amount of wood for timbers, machines, and the smelting of metals. And when the woods and groves are felled, then are exterminated the beasts and birds, very many of which furnish a pleasant and agreeable food for man. Further, when the ores are washed, the water which has been used poisons the brooks and streams, and either destroys the fish or drives them away."
I don't like it, but I think I agree with you. Examples that come to mind include the use of copper sulphate as a more-or-less unregulated pesticide in organic farms, mutagenic breeding as the "safe and natural" alternative to gene splicing, and a whole host of other natural (and therefore obviously safe and beneficial) practices.
I would disagree. We have a lot more information about the hazards of inhaling fine particles. When I worked in a lab, we were clearly made aware of the need for protection against fine silica (sand).
We may not be aware of the mesothelioma risk, but I would imagine we’d be aware of the hazard of inhaling asbestos particles and avoid exposure.
Remember, having asbestos in your home is not a risk as long as it’s encapsulated. It’s really the mining and manipulation of asbestos that’s the risk.
There is some concern about carbon fiber and carbon nanotubes, they share some of the physical properties with asbestos fibers. So I do think that we would be on it pretty quickly but whether we would change course before the symptoms appeared is a different matter.
If asbestos was discovered today we'd likely use the hell out of it because we'd know it causes cancer ahead of time and we'd take precautions (like not building it into things likely to release dust) the same way we do with all sorts of crazy molecules that get used in modern chemicals. It would be in your Ove Glove, not in your floor tiles. Tons of people wouldn't get cancer (because we wouldn't release the dust everywhere) and it would never be able to become a BadThing(TM) in the public's mind. It would just be another boring industrial compound nobody knows about. Same goes for lead paint.
If any of the people who disagree would like to share why that would be great.
>Would people buy oven gloves that had to be treated as hazardous waste?
You kind of answered your own question with the reference to e-waste. If the product confers some benefit and isn't hazardous in the form in which the users will use it then people will have no problem buying it.
>Where would you see this being used?
Things that very cost sensitive and aren't gonna see much human contact and will almost certainly enter a recycling stream before the paint wears off. 55gal drums come to mind.
Perfectly good oven gloves are already available, though, and they don't have a hazardous waste disposal charge tacked on. You also don't have to call in specialists to decontaminate the kitchen if you damage one.
> Things that very cost sensitive and aren't gonna see much human contact and will almost certainly enter a recycling stream before the paint wears off. 55gal drums come to mind.
People work around those all day. And lead wasn't added to paint to make it cheap, it was added mostly to increase durability. So you probably don't really want it for short-lived products.
I've heard this Charlemagne legend before but I'd love to see somebody put it to the test. I'm thinking the tablecloth would come out of the fire soiled with ash and bits of charcoal. I suppose it might still impress his guests but I don't think this party trick would work quite as well as the legend suggests.
Also, 'Salamander Cotton' is a delightful name for asbestos.
Less a tablecloth, more a placemat. And it is doubtful it was thrown onto the fire, where it would probably put the fire mostly out, rather than thrown into the fireplace to hang on something over the fire. There are also translation issues from royal to plain speak. Royals like this rarely did physical things. When the king is observed to "throw" something, it is more likely that he had it thrown by a servant who then placed the valuable object on a rack as planned. Readers of the time would not see a practical difference.
Legend has it that he threw a development team and a multitouch capacitive display in a fire and then pulled a fully built, finished iPhone from the flames.
In the early 20th century there were similar demonstrations done by asbestos manufacturers, and at least some of those were recorded on film. Fire resistance was basically the main selling point of asbestos, so they certainly marketed that heavily. I recall watching a video on YouTube of one long ago, but can't find it at the moment.
At this point: almost no one. The super majority of manufacturers and distributers of asbestos products have gone bankrupt. Kaiser Gypsum was one of the last solvent companies involved in a lot of asbestos litigation and they filed for bankruptcy a few years ago. Bankrupted companies of this kind generally establish trust funds for claims related to asbestos products, but those funds pay out paltry amounts. There are a few other large solvent companies though, so it depends on what caused the likely exposure. If, like many people, a person got asbestosis or mesothelioma while in the armed services, they are SOL because the VA pays squat.
In Australia, there are Government backed, employer funded workers compensation funds that will cover this. You can also sue the makes of the product as well.
In my grandfathers case, he successfully sued a company called "James Hardie". It's a slam-dunk case. They confirm that you would have been exposed to the product and then it's a mathematical equation to determine the claim value.
Tiger's Eye. A rock that is pretty much stabilized (sealed) asbestos. It's pretty popular with kids. You can buy it at rock shops. And yes, if it breaks in half, get rid of all traces of it.
“Trump is on our side,” said Vladimir V. Kochelayev, chairman of the board of Uralasbest, one of the world’s few remaining producers of asbestos, citing what he said were reports that the Trump administration was easing restrictions on asbestos use.
Remember the good old times, before the thousand deaths per day, when the President of the United States stepped in front of the television cameras and went on and on about the virtues of Asbestos to help out a struggling Russian town? Fun times, fun times...
Did we overreact in banning asbestos from everything? In many applications it seems well contained. Maybe we can use it if we're careful about its manufacture and disposal?
>Because of this enormous risk of death from asbestos exposure and general mining operations, many experts consider asbestos mining to be one of the most dangerous occupations in history.
It’s dangerous in a way that’s hard to monitor. If asbestos consumer products were being used hazardously or disposed of improperly, it could go unnoticed for a long time and linger in the environment. Compare to something like lithium ion batteries, which are pretty dangerous if mishandled, but very obviously so and only for short periods of time.
Yes, but in insidious ways. In the era of Charlemagne, many other things would have had significantly higher micromorts. As a dinner guest, I would have enjoyed the show rather than headed for the doors. At a dinner party today? No way.
According to the official CDC report which was used by the EPA to ban new uses of asbestos [1] the gist is that asbestos isn't a traditional poison. We measure most "poisons" in terms of Lethal Dose (LD50) or roughly paraphrased "how much of this would it take to kill 50% of subjects." We tend to think of something, like cyanide, as "very poisonous" if a small amount of something will kill you very quickly. But we measure lethality in other ways - "lethal concentration" (LC0 - whats the lowest concentration in air that has been observed to caused a fatality, LC50 at what concentration is 50% affected), lowest observed adverse affects level (will this mess you up like lead poisoning?), lethal time (LT0 - lowest amount of time observed to cause fatality, LT50 - time to cause fatality in 50% of population), and a host of others.
Asbestos doesn't have an observed LD50 (at least not in that report). No one has died within a few hours of inhaling asbestos like they would if, say, they ate Fugu pufferfish.
What it does have, is a very low LC0 and very long LT0 numbers. Only a little bit needs to get into your lungs, which unlike the pathway we observe in cigarettes, will stick around for a very long time, where it will eventually (on a long enough timeline) cause cancer. Exposure makes these numbers go up. 10% of asbestos mill workers die of mesothelioma, 2% of people who work with asbestos insulating boats and planes die of mesothelioma or related cancers - most within 5-20 years. If you're a smoker, the synergistic effects can further increase your risk of cancer by 90x(!). Other figures in other reports are a bit lower, but the panic was over the issue that there was no 'safe' dose of asbestos unlike with other toxins and no trivial environmental remediation.
I only gave it a scan; happy to be corrected by someone more informed on the subject.
By the way, whatever happened with Lockitron? I backed it in 2012 and the device I received never really worked. Reached out and was told there was a fix coming but nothing ever happened. I've never backed any sort of crowdfunding since.
The short version is we came out with an updated model in 2014 which fixed those issues and sold to Chamberlain in 2018. It's now the "Keyless Smart Lock by Liftmaster" [1].
With a few exceptions, crowdfunding is much more tame these days. You should look into again. There are some particularly great products on https://www.crowdsupply.com/ for instance. Aside from a few COVID delays from March-June, I back and receive projects nearly every month.
According to the research, several decades... and it's not even a certainty that you'll get mesothelioma or asbestosis. But it definitely increases the risk.
I lived in a house with an asbestos facade. As long as you don't need to change anything it is even better than bricks. Easier to clean. Fire safe. Doesn't age much in 50 years. They used it everywhere: facade, insulation, floor glue.
If it breaks however, the fibers go everywhere, especially to your lungs where they stay. People working with it died of all kinds of problems, but mostly cancer in the lungs iirc.
Also for asbestos roof - if it has been maintained and properly sealed once a decade or so, and is in good state, there is no reason to be worried. In that case it's actually much worse to remove it, and it is a great roofing material. However keep an eye on it if it shows signs of brittleness.
Exactly, it is the dust that is dangerous, not the bulk material. Avoid scratching, grinding, sanding, cutting, drilling and another kind of operation that turns some of the material into dust, especially airborne dust. Always wear a respirator when you have to work with it, always meticulously clean the area around it keep everybody (including pets!) out and if at all avoidable: simply don't touch it.
There are companies that specialize in asbestos removal and safe work on it, it is one of the things I check for very carefully when looking at real estate.
Finally, you find it in the most unexpected places. Floor coverings, roof coverings, liners, chimneys, stoves, ovens, as spray-on covering of steel beams and girders (and floor joists), the list if endless.
If you don't know what you're looking at in an older building and it's gray stop until you are 100% sure that it isn't asbestos.
Yes. Breathing it's fibers can cause serious disease and cancer. Asbestos was used as a common building material in New Zealand for insulation, roof tiles, ceiling tiles and texturing and more in the 1950-1990 period. If you do any renovation or changes that interact with asbestos, it basically has to be handled by a hazmat team.
I think it was particularly lethal to miners and factory workers. One of my great grandfathers died years after working in a factory that made mittens out of asbestos. Any process that disturbs the asbestos is going to be risky.
The first 40 floors of the World Trade Center, both towers, had every steel beam covered in asbestos. The collapse released 2,000 tons of fibers into the atmosphere on 9/11/01.
I don't know what the actual rates of lived saved by asbestos vs lives taken in. It's one of the classic risk evaluation problems: fires are big, scary and dramatic, people know who died in them, and so a tool that prevents it is welcome. On the other hand, asbestos being dangerous really only came into being after people noticed a pattern of increased early death in asbestos mining towns. We just don't process the risk of a statistically significant increase in early death, compared to the obvious risk of not using fire insulation.
I don't have a citation for that claim but mesothelioma kills tens of thousands a year. I think it's a safe guess that asbestos fireproofing hasn't been saving that many lives, at least not per year.
There's a lot of other nastier industrial products. Asbestos is in the public consciousness as particularly bad because it was used widely before we know it reliably caused cancer.
That said, it also reliably gives people cancer so it's bad reputation is not exactly undeserved.
My understanding is that it's only bad if disturbed and in the air. That's why popcorn ceilings, roof tiles, and insulation with asbestos is all "fine" and not mandated to be removed.
But yes, the long-term effects are the real problem.
All it takes to give you cancer is one asbestos fiber. Just has to punch through a lung cell and alter the DNA in just the right way.
That said, the probability is low for any given fiber. There is asbestos in aftermarket break pads, meaning if you live in a major city, you probably breath in small amounts regularly.
> All it takes to give you cancer is one asbestos fiber.
This is oft repeated, but is there evidence that it is true? Are the statistical odds of getting cancer from asbestos really modeled on the risk that you will encounter a single particularly insidious individual fiber?
The issue is that the lungs doesn't always manage to clean the asbestos fibers at all, so some may be stuck in the lungs forever. One stuck fiber might lead to a cancer. It's very unlikely of course, but it could happen. A thousand stuck fibers are a thousand times more likely to cause cancer, but just one could still be enough to do it.
With cigarettes for example it's different, since the self-cleaning process will clean and remove the remains of the cigarettes from the lungs fairly quickly unless the smoking is repeated over a long period of time and the system gets over-saturated and gradually breaks down.
I once worked with an environmental engineer who had a grandfather that worked at Wittenoom. He passed away due to mesothelioma, but her father who grew up there has not been affected, which is quite amazing given the circumstances. I have seen footage from Wittenoom of children playing in mounds of asbestos.
Today there are two general types of legacy asbestos products, friable and non-friable. Generally non-friable products such as asbestos-cement sheeting are considered safe to leave in place and are only dangerous when cut, broken or otherwise damaged. Friable products such as pipe lagging are very dangerous as they easily break down into fibers that can be inhaled.
It can be found in many old homes in odd places. I was removing some old putty around a window and a friend of mine who was an asbestos hygienist suggested that it could contain asbestos and took a sample for testing (all clear thankfully).
In another instance I worked on a demolition of a 1960's era multistory apartment complex. During construction of the concrete core walls the builder had used asbestos in the formwork, leaving some embedded in the wall at regular intervals. This meant that all of demolition waste was considered contaminated and was going to a special dump at a huge cost.
Finally, there was an infamous case in Canberra, Australia where a company called Mr Fluffy [1] installed loose friable asbestos as insulation in homes. A cleanup program in the 90's did not adequately fix the problem and so in 2014 the government finally purchased affected properties and demolished the houses.
Asbestos is bad stuff, but exposure causing mesothelioma seems to be a bit like Russian roulette. You might get it, you might not. But if you do, you will die.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Fluffy